Dominoes, also known as bones, cards, men, pieces, or tiles, are small rectangular blocks used in various games to line up in long rows and knock them over. Some games involve scoring points by counting the number of pips on the winning player’s dominoes, while others require blocking opponents’ play. Children and adults alike enjoy lining up dominoes in straight or curved lines and flicking them to see them fall. They are fun to play alone, but they are even more fascinating when arranged into elaborate displays of geometric shapes and colors.

For more than 20 years, Lily Hevesh has been using her collection of more than 2 million dominoes to create spectacular sculptural installations. She creates everything from a simple ring of dominoes to a 15-color spiral made of 12,000 pieces. She works on projects for movies, TV shows, and events, including a Katy Perry album release. But she is most proud of her YouTube videos, which feature hundreds of thousands of dominoes falling in slow motion.

Hevesh’s domino creations have taken her all over the world. She’s traveled to places like the Taj Mahal and Mount Everest, but she has also worked at home in New York City. When she is working on a project, she builds test versions of the dominoes to make sure they work properly. She often films these tests so that she can make precise corrections if necessary.

The word “domino” comes from Latin, where it means “a king or queen.” The first domino set was produced in the mid-18th century in Italy and France and became a fad among Europeans. By the end of the century, dominoes were being manufactured in England as well. In addition to the traditional game of laying tiles, dominoes are also used for a variety of puzzles and as decorative ornaments.

While most dominoes are made of wood, they can also be found in other materials, such as bone or plastic. A typical set contains 28 dominoes. They are usually twice as long as they are wide, which makes them easy to stack and re-stack. Each domino has two ends – sometimes called squares or spots – that show the value of the piece. In the most common version of the game, each end has a value between zero and six pips. A domino with six pips is called a double-six, while one with no pips is called a blank.

Most domino games are played by a group of players, and the first player to play a tile wins. Each subsequent player must try to match the value of the previous tile with the value of a tile in his or her hand. If a player cannot match the value of an existing tile, he or she “chips out” (plays the last domino in his or her hand) and play passes to the next player. The winning player is the first to finish playing all of his or her dominoes.