Purchased by the Museum in 1981, the set pictured on the left is not a domino set, but is a commercialized version of a class of games which includes dominoes. This class of games is known as "Polyominoes". The major principle of games of this class is the matching of like numbers or symbols in a given sequence. In domino games, a player is faced with matching only two sets of numbered pips. In the comerical game "Contact", a player is challenged to match three sets of numbers. While this latter comerical game is called "Contact", it is one of the "Polyomino" games known as "Triominoes".
There are even more complicated "Polyomino" games such as "Tetrominoes" (match 4), "Pentominoes" (match 5), "Hexominoes" (match 6), and so on. The Museum has a computerized version of a "Tetromino" game created by the Microsoft Corporation which is called "Tetravex", and a number of other "Pentomino" games in the collection. To view these "Pentomino" games, click on the menu item on the upper left.
The game of "Contact" was manufactured by Parker Brothers Incorporated, Salem, Massachusetts, and has a copyright date of 1939, but the Museum copy may have been produced after this date. The box lid is 9.8cm long x 16.5cm wide x 3.2cm high and the box bottom is 9.3cm long x 16cm wide x 3.2cm high. There is a 5.2cm long cardboard platform which sits in the box bottom to hold the game pieces.
There are 36 paper covered wooden equilateral triangular playing pieces that are 4.5cm on each side. Each of these pieces have 3 numbers ranging from 1 to 10. Numbers seem to have been placed on the tiles at random. An included instruction book explains how to play the game. There appears to be two modes of play, one similar to the game of dominoes as shown on the box top. A second mode seems to be a type of "Hexominoes" (match 6) puzzle, as pictured in the included box in the lower right of the photograph.
Last update February 4, 2010