Dominos are black and white rectangles that children like to line up in long rows and knock down. They are also the building blocks for a wide variety of games.

Dominoes have many nicknames: bones, cards, tiles, men, spinners, and tickets. A domino is a flat, thumb-sized rectangular block with one face divided into two parts, each bearing from one to six spots or dots (known as “pips”), and the other blank or identically patterned. A domino is typically twice as long as it is wide, which makes it easier to stack them after use. A domino set usually contains 28 pieces.

Most people are familiar with domino games involving one or more players, who compete to score points by matching a sequence of matched ends. Dominoes can be arranged in a variety of shapes and patterns, and the resulting layouts are called a “domino board.” A popular game for two players involves drawing seven tiles from the stock or boneyard, placing them on-edge in front of each other, and then playing against each other by matching pips on adjacent ends.

The first player to complete a row wins the game. A more advanced game requires a domino to be placed in the center of the row so that its pips overlap those of an adjacent piece, but it is still possible to score points by matching other ends.

Dominoes are not only fun to play with, but they can be used to teach important lessons about cause and effect. For example, if your child’s soccer team wins the championship game against its biggest rival, that victory can create a “domino effect” of goodwill within the community and may even lead to state playoffs.

In a literary context, the term domino can refer to a story’s plot beats—or scenes—in a sequence. For example, a scene might be a car crash, a trip to the zoo, or a debate in Congress. If a scene in a novel or nonfiction work is important enough to warrant its own chapter, it should have a domino effect, in which the action of that scene leads naturally into the next one.

As anyone who has ever played with a domino set knows, it can be exciting to knock down the first one, then watch as all the others fall afterward. But the real magic comes from creating a series of dominoes that stand right where you put them until you knock them over. This is because each domino has inertia, or a tendency to resist motion, until it receives an external force.

Lily Hevesh started playing with dominoes when she was 9 years old. Her grandparents had the classic 28-piece set, and she loved setting them up in straight or curved lines and then flicking them to watch them cascade down. In 2017, she built this 15-color spiral of dominoes, which involved 12,000 dominoes. It took her three days to create it.