Get Your Rules Straight

I like board games. I also like game systems, i. e. sets of game components with which you can play multiple games. Although fancy, modern game systems such as Icehouse and the Piecepack are nice, old standbys such as an ordinary deck of playing cards or a set of dominoes have stood the test of time, and often allow one to enjoy playing games with people who aren't hardcore gamers.

The problem with these older game systems is that, with games having been passed down over time by word-of-mouth, and with games evolving as they spread from region to region, a single game often ends up with many subtle variations. If you ask a person to play a particular game with you, that person may say "Yes, I know how to play that game", but it turns out that the rules that you're familiar with differ slightly from the rules that the other person knows. So you have to negotiate on the finer points of the rules before you start playing. Or in the worst case, you don't negotiate on which rules to use until the differences arise during game play, by which point the two of you had already been making strategic decisions based on different rule sets.

When I learn a card game from a group of friends, I will usually take the time at some point afterwards to look up the rules in some sort of "official" reference. But there are multiple such references, and they do not always agree. For example, the rules for Gin Rummy as described at pagat.com differ slightly from those presented in Play According to Hoyle: Hoyle's Rules of Games in the area of scoring. Specifically, Hoyle specifies a Gin bonus and an undercut bonus of 25 points each, while the pagat page specifies a Gin bonus of 20 points and an undercut bonus of 10 points. The pagat page does, however, list the other option as one of several common variations.

However, I'd now like to turn your attention to dominoes. There is one dominoes game that I like in particular, in which a player scores points if, after playing a tile, the open ends of the structure all add up to a multiple of five. I have seen several names for this game, and several different variations as well. Let's take a tour, shall we?

• The Game Cabinet calls this game Five-Up, but lists Muggins and All Fives as alternate names. It states that the start player is determined before the draw, and that the first double played is a "spinner", i. e. the ends can be built off of. It does not state whether the ends of the spinner are counted for scoring before they have been built off of.


• The aforementioned Hoyle book calls this game Sniff, but uses the term "muggins" to refer to points scored. It states that the first player is determined by lot, independent of the draw. The first double played is a spinner, but can be played either endwise or crosswise; if played crosswise, the unsprouted sides do count for scoring.


• The Domino Plaza has rules for Muggins, in which the start player is determined before the draw, and there is no spinner, thus the layout always has only two ends. This site also has rules for The All Five game, also known as All Fives or Five Up, which it states is the same as Muggins except that all doubles played are spinners.


• The Macintosh shareware game Dominoes by Allgood Software has a game called Muggins, in which the start player is determined after the draw, based on whoever is holding the highest double. Also, the first double played is a spinner, but it behaves strangely. It is always played crosswise, but after its second side has sprouted, each of its ends does not count for scoring until sprouting.


• Last but not least, the Puremco company's Domino Rules page has separate rules for six different such games (assuming I haven't missed any): All Fives, Five-Up, Merry-Go-Round, Muggins, Seven-Toed Pete, and Sniff. I'm not going to bother to list the differences among them and the ones listed above, but suffice it to say that they're all slight variants of the same game, and each one lists several variations of itself as well.

I'm going to assume for now that the Puremco site has the canonical versions of all the game rules, since it is the most comprehensive, and doesn't claim that any two games are exactly the same but with different names. The company also publishes a book, called Puremco's Great Book of Domino Games, which presumably contains all the same game rules as on their Domino Rules web page. However, I suspect that the content of this book is exactly the same as that of Great Book of Domino Games, considering that the title, author, and page count are the same, though the latter book's cover price is $3.00 less. I'm guessing that they bought the publishing rights to the book, and then rebranded it.

So, the next time I want to play a dominoes game with friends, in which a player scores when the ends of the structure add up to a multiple of five, which one will I suggest? I have no idea. The one I'm most used to is the one in the computer game, but the rules for counting the ends of the spinner for scoring are weird, and aren't the same as any of the other rule sets listed above. The Hoyle rules for Sniff allow you to have the same effect by playing the spinner endwise, but it's up to the player whether to do so.

Maybe I'll just go alphabetically, and choose All Fives. Using Puremco's rules, of course.