3. Tile games have been found in
China as early as 1120 CE. Some
historical
accounts
have
traced
evidence
of
the
existence of the pieces, way
back to a soldier-hero
named Hung Ming (181-234 CE).
Other historians believe that
Keung T'ai Kung, in the twelfth
century BCE had created
them.
4.
5. The Chu sz yam (Investigations
on the Traditions of All
Things) stated that dominoes
were invented by a statesman
in 1120 CE. This person is said
to have presented them to
the Emperor Hui Tsung, and
that they were circulated
abroad by imperial order
during the reign of Hui's
son, Kao-Tsung (1127-1163 CE).
Other interpreters say that
this document refers to the
6.
7. Michael Dummett wrote a
short piece in the history
section of his "Game of
Tarot" (page 35) dating the
introduction of dominos in
Europe to Italy, possibly in
Venice and Naples, in the 18-th
Century . Although domino
tiles are clearly of Chinese
inheritance, there is a debate
over whether the European
tile set came from China to
Europe in the fourteenth
8.
9. A single domino was found
with the Mary Rose wreckage
(early 16-th century), but it
seems likely to have found
its way there much later. On
the whole, there is so much
evidence for games in the 16th century and 17-th century
that if dominoes existed they
would not have escaped the
record.
10.
11. European
dominoes
are
rectangles that are twice as
long as they are wide. There
is a single tile for each
combination of the faces of a
pair of dice; the blank suit is
the throws of a single die,
for a total of twenty-eight
tiles in the standard Double
six set. Other sets with
larger numbers of tiles
were invented later, with the
double nine and Double
12.
13. The game moved from Italy to France
in the early 18th Century and became
a fad. By the late 18th century, France
was also producing domino puzzles.
The puzzle were of two types. In the
first, you were given a pattern and
asked to place tiles on it in such a
way that the ends matched. In the
second type, you were given a pattern
and asked to place tiles based on
arithmetic
properties
of
the
pips, usually totals of lines of tiles
and tile halves. The book CREATIVE
PUZZLES OF THE WORLD by van Delft
and
Botermans
(Abrams,
New
York;ISBN 0-8109-0765-8 (hardcover)
or ISBN 0-8109-2152-9 (softcover);
14.
15. The game arrived in
Britain in the late 18th
Century
from
France
(possibly
via
French
prisoners of war) and
quickly seems to have
become popular in inns
and taverns at the time.
16.
17. The
word
"Domino"
is
French for a black and
white
hood
worn
by
Christian priests in winter
which is probably where
the name of the game
derives from. Domino games
are played all over the
world, but they are most
popular in Latin America.
