Dominoes
Dominoes in Europe and North America

Modern dominoes first appeared in Italy during the 18th century, but they differ from Chinese dominoes in a number of respects, and there is no confirmed link between the two. European dominoes may have developed independently, or Italian missionaries in China may have brought the game to Europe. Having been established in Italy, the game of dominoes spread rapidly to Austria, southern Germany and France. The game became fashionable in France in the mid-18th century. The name domino does not appear before that time, being first recorded in 1771, in the Dictionnaire de Trévoux.There are two earlier recorded meanings for the French word domino, one referring to the masquerades of the period, derived from the term for the hooded garment of a priest, the other referred to crude and brightly colored woodcuts on paper formerly popular among French peasants. The way by which this word became the name of the game of domino remains unclear. The earliest game rules in Europe describe a simple block game for two or four players. Later French rules add the variant of Domino à la Pêche ("Fishing Domino"), an early draw game as well as a three-hand game with a pool.

From France, the game was introduced to England by the late 1700s, purportedly brought in by French prisoners-of-war. The early forms of the game in England were the Block Game and Draw Game. The rules for these games were reprinted, largely unchanged, for over half a century. In 1863, a new game variously described as All Fives, Fives or Cribbage Dominoes appeared for the first time in both English and American sources; this was the first scoring game and it borrowed the counting and scoring features of cribbage, but 5 domino spots instead of 15 card points became the basic scoring unit, worth 1 game point. The game was played to 31 and employed a cribbage board to keep score. In 1864, The American Hoyle describes three new variants: Muggins, Bergen and Rounce; alongside the Block Dominoes and Draw Dominoes. In Muggins, the cribbage board was dropped, 5 spots scored 5 points, and game was now 200 for two players and 150 for three or four. Despite the name, there was no 'muggins rule' as in cribbage to challenge a player who fails to declare his scoring combinations. This omission was rectified in the 1868 edition of The Modern Pocket Hoyle, but reprints of both rule sets continued to be produced in parallel for around twenty years before the version with the muggins rule prevailed. From around 1871, however, the names of All Fives and Muggins, became conflated and many publications issued rules for 'Muggins or All Fives' or 'Muggins or Fives' without making any distinction between the two. This confusion continues to the present day with some publications equating the names and others describing All Fives as a separate game.

In 1889, dominoes was described as having spread worldwide, "but nowhere is it more popular than in the cafés of France and Belgium. From the outset, the European game was different from the Chinese one. European domino sets contain neither the military-civilian suit distinctions of Chinese dominoes nor the duplicates that went with them. Moreover, according to Michael Dummett, in the Chinese games it is only the identity of the tile that matters; there is no concept of matching. Instead, the basic set of 28 unique tiles contains seven additional pieces, six of them representing the values that result from throwing a single die with the other half of the tile left blank, and the seventh domino representing the blank-blank (0–0) combination. Subsequently 45-piece (double eight) sets appeared in Austria and, in recent times, 55-piece (double nine) and 91-piece (double twelve) sets have been produced.

All the early games are still played today alongside games that have sprung up in the last 60 years such as Five Up, Mexican Train and Chicken Foot, the last two taking advantage of the larger domino sets available.

Some modern descriptions of All Fives are quite different from the original, having lost much of their cribbage character and incorporating a single spinner, making it identical, or closely related, to Sniff. Most published rule sets for Muggins include the rule that gives the game its name, but some modern publications omit it even though the muggins rule has been described as the unique feature of this game.

Dominoes is now played internationally. It is recognized as an "ingrained cultural activity within the Caribbean " but is also popular with the Windrush generation (who have Caribbean heritage) in the UK.

In the U.S. state of Alabama, although rarely prosecuted, it was illegal to play dominoes on Sunday within the state until the relevant section of the Alabama Criminal Code was repealed, effective April 21, 2015.
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