Muggins

Muggins, sometimes also called All Fives, is a domino game played with any of the commonly available sets.

[1] Muggins is part of the Fives family of domino games whose names differ according to how many spinners are in play.

The aims of the game are to domino, i.e. be first to shed all one's hand tiles, and, during play, to score points by playing a tile that makes the total number of pips on all endpoints of the layout equal to a multiple of five.

[3] The following year, rules for a game called Muggins were first published in The American Hoyle.

[6] The cribbage board was dropped, 5 spots scored 5 points, and game was now 200 for two players and 150 for three or four.

Despite the name, which is the same as a term used in cribbage to challenge a player who fails to declare his scoring combinations, no such 'muggins rule' was mentioned.

This confusion continues to the present day with some publications equating the names and others describing All Fives as a separate game.

Some modern descriptions of All Fives are quite different from the original, having lost much of their cribbage character and incorporating a single spinner, making it identical, or closely related, to Sniff.

[9] At the end of the 19th century a new variant appeared in which the first doublet to be played became a spinner that was open four ways.

[12] Points are earned when a player plays a tile (also called a domino or bone) with the result that the count (the sum of all open ends) is a multiple of five.

A player who cannot match must draw until obtaining a playable tile or the boneyard is exhausted.

Most accounts of the rules state the requirement to announce the count, but not all mention that the opponent may call "Muggins!"

[13] Because players can score either by making the ends add up to a multiple of five, or by being the first to get rid of all their dominoes, players must balance the need to score throughout the hand with the need to get rid of their difficult dominoes.

Champion dominoes players are able to identify these insights, combine them with other information, and remember them throughout the hand.

Modern rules sometimes admit the feature of the first double becoming a single spinner, but this variant is more commonly known as Sniff.

When the game first appeared around 1900, the rule was simple: the sniff was played crosswise; any open end still counted and there was no limit on the length of the arms.

Fives and Threes emerged in the early 20th century and is a popular league and pub game in Britain today.