tabletop time machine
1760 DOMINOES
We needn’t start by describing dominoes, but it is worth noting whereabouts they belong in the ludic universe. They are essentially gaming objects characterised by being flat, rigid, easily handleable, and played on a blank surface rather than a board with significant markings. Thus they belong to the same class of games as playing-cards and Mah Jong tiles, carrying their own significant markings on one side (the face) and a blank or otherwise common pattern on the other (the backside), and so, as Girolamo Cardano observed of playing-cards in the 15th century, being “played from ambush, because they are concealed.”