Domino Solitaires and Puzzles
Solitaire Games
Solitaries involve moving tiles around a tableau. Sometimes they can be added to the tableau from a hand, and often they can be discarded from the tableau (or hand) to foundation piles or a discard area. A game is successful when all the tiles are transferred to the discard, or when the tableau is organsied into a given pattern.
Solitaries can be classified by how the tiles move from hand to tableau to discard:
- Connecting Solitaires: The tableau is based on connecting rules and also serves as the discard. The goal is to empty your hand.
- Total Solitaries: Tiles are discarded when their pips add up to a certain total.
- Pattern Solitaries: The aim is to form certain patterns of tiles in the tableau, which may then in some games be discarded. These games often start with all the tiles in the tableau.
Most solitaire games can be modified to allow more than one player if they include a hand and a tableau. Players get their owns hand to play against the tableau. A player adds one tile to the tableau in turn or continues to add tiles until blocked. The game is won by the first player to domino.
Index of Domino Solitaire Games
Here is a list of traditional and invented domino solitaire games on pagat.com.
| Game | Players | Equipment | Game type | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cosmic Turtle | 1 | [C32] | ||
| CrissCross | 1 | [6:6] | connecting:cross equal end matching shedding | |
| Dominoes Freecell Solitaire | 1 | [6:6] [9:9] [12:12] | connecting:disconnected other matching rules pattern scoring | |
| Guo Wu Guan 過五關 | 1 | [C32] | ||
| The Seven Pis | 1 | [6:6] | connecting:disconnected equal end matching shedding | |
| Up-Down-Stop | 1 | [6:6] | connecting:disconnected other matching rules shedding | |
| Xiàng Shí Fù 相十副 | 1 | [C32] | connecting:disconnected other matching rules | |
Notes on the index
Invented games, mostly submitted by readers of pagat.com, are listed in italics.
- Players
- The preferred number of players is shown in bold. Other numbers with which it is possible to play are shown in grey.
- Equipment
- Western domino sets are indicated by the highest number of pips on a tile end - for example [6:6] is a standard double 6 set of 28 tiles, [12:12] is a set of 91 tiles with up to 12 pips on each end.
- Game Type
- Indicates other families to which the game belongs.
Domino Puzzles
Domino puzzles can depend on either the shape of the tiles or on their pips. The puzzles based on the pips can be either based on connecting tiles or on the totals of the pips.
Among the puzzles based on just the shape of the tiles, the most famous is the "Dominoes and Checkerboards" family. The puzzler attempts to place dominoes on a grid of squares, and only the shape of tiles matters.
The connecting puzzles usually provide a tableau without any of the pips on the tiles shown and the puzzler attempts to place the tiles in that pattern using the rule that ends that touch must be in the same suit.
The totaling puzzles are provide a tableau without pips shown, but the goal is place the tiles in such a way that certain totals appear in the rows columns and/or diagonals of the tableau, without regard to a connecting rule for the ends.
For more on Domino Puzzles see Joe Celko's Mathematics of Dominoes page.