Dominoes 03-01 (reversed) pairs, and generic backsides. Dominoes Dominoes is a family of tile-based games played with rectangular "domino" tiles. Each domino is a rectangular tile with a line dividing its face into two square "ends". Each end is marked with a number of spots (also called "pips", "nips", or "dobs") or is blank. The backs of the dominoes in a set are indistinguishable, either blank or having some common design. The domino gaming pieces make up a domino set, sometimes called a "deck" or "pack". The traditional Sino-European domino set consists of 28 dominoes, featuring all combinations of spot counts
Dominoes double-15, and double-18. Larger sets such as double-21 can theoretically exist, but are rarely seen in retail stores, as identifying the number of pips on each domino becomes difficult, and a double-21 set would have 253 pieces, far more than is normally necessary for most domino games even with eight players. The oldest confirmed written mention of dominoes in China comes from the "Former Events in Wulin" (i.e., the capital Hangzhou) written by the Yuan Dynasty (1271–1368) author Zhou Mi (1232–1298), who listed "pupai" (gambling plaques or dominoes), as well as dice as items sold by peddlers during the reign