1970: Name Dominoes
| Name Dominoes |
 Title text: In competition, you can only play a name if you know who the person is. No fair saying "Frank ... Johnson. That sounds like a real person! Let me just Google him real quick." |
A large version of the comic picture can be found here.
Explanation
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This explanation may be incomplete or incorrect: Created by a BOT - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon. If you can address this issue, please edit the page! Thanks. |
The title text spells out a rule that a player may only place a tile if they know who that person is. This is a variation of a rule in another board game Scrabble, where a player may only place a word if they know for a fact that it is a word in the dictionary. This rule implies that players are allowed to create new name dominoes tiles and that it is not a fixed set (as a fixed set would have no need for this rule).
A large board is covered in rectangular "dominoes", with each domino bearing the name of a well-known person or character. The dominoes are arranged as if a game of dominoes were being played, but instead of the game requiring the number of spots of adjacent dominoes to match up, this game requires adjacent names to match up. Because most people have two or more names, different matches are made at each end of a domino. The match can be exact (e.g., "Kevin" on one domino adjacent to "Kevin" on another), homonymic (e.g., "Klein" adjacent to "Kline"), or nickname-based (e.g., "James" adjacent to "Jimmy", which in turn is adjacent to "Jim"). Sometimes last names are matched up with first names (e.g., "Elizabeth Warren" adjacent to "Warren Beatty"), and in some cases only a single name is used (e.g., "Garfield"), in which case a half-size square "domino" is used. Some people have three or more names (e.g., Frank Lloyd Wright), in which case matching to a middle name (Lloyd) is possible.
The figures named come from a wide variety of fields: scientists (e.g., Isaac Newton), historical figures (George Washington), musicians (Drake), politicians (John Kerry), actors (Kevin Costner), writers (Washington Irving), fashion designers (Oscar de la Renta), and so on. Most of the names are real people but a few are fictional characters, possibly non-human (Super Grover).
Transcript
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This transcript is incomplete. Please help editing it! Thanks. |
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This comic is a long list of names overlayed onto black domino tiles, arranged so that each touching side corresponds with the first or last name of another person. This will be difficult to transcribe. 108.162.221.53 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)
- Would it be possible to use a fixed width format and try and transcribe like an actual scrabble board? I think there are unicode characters for upside-down and rotated text that we could use for the flipped names. But yes, definitely will be difficult.172.68.211.244 18:21, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
- The transcript doesn't need upside-down and rotated text. It should be enough to mention that some tiles are. A first draft with all names would be good, but even mentioning all the connections would be to complex to read. Think about the reader... --Dgbrt (talk) 18:39, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
- How about using a fixed-width font and then representing each domino with an alphanumeric character, and then put a list below of what each character corresponds to? Even though there are more dominoes than characters, duplicate uses of a character (but referring to different names) can be easily disambiguated if we assign each character in order, left to right and top to bottom. 172.69.70.71 20:04, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
- I have made an image where each tile is numbered from left to right. See this picture and Explanation here. I have created a transcript from this list. And the table --Kynde (talk) 14:01, 22 March 2018 (UTC)
- Do you think that maybe Randall created this comic just to screw with this wiki? 108.162.221.53 14:51, 22 March 2018 (UTC)Martin
- Certainly, a real explanation to Randall's Name Dominoes doesn't need a numbered list or one of these overwhelming tables. A short overview (a small bullet list would be the best) to the rules implied by the image and shown in the title text would be a proper explanation. Everything else is trivia at maximum. And I can't resist: This table, whenever it will be completely filled, tops them all...--Dgbrt (talk) 21:30, 22 March 2018 (UTC)
- The purpose of the transcript is so someone can search the site for a phrase (or in this case, a name) used in a strip, and find the page for it. Encode the words using upside-down UNICODE letters would defeat that purpose. JamesCurran (talk) 22:12, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
I see alternative names or nicknames sometimes matches together. But is the Chris Pratt/Chris Evans match with Topher Grace a bit of a stretch? I see that Topher is a variation of Christopher and Chis is a shortening of the same. But I guess it must be an acceptable move if Randle put it in the comic. Maybe it’s worth special points or something. 162.158.38.70 18:14, 21 March 2018 (UTC)TheStewart
Walter White/Walt Whitman is a reference to Breaking Bad. 172.68.58.101 18:20, 21 March 2018 (UTC)Pat
And Garnet being used to join Ruby and Saffire is clever... 141.101.98.64 18:23, 21 March 2018 (UTC) This is a reference to Steven Universe where there is a character, Garnet, who is a fusion of Ruby and Sapphire.
"The title text spells out a rule that a player may only place a tile if they know who that person is" is mention as a reason for it not to be a fixed set of dominos, But I took it to mean you can't use "Jim Jones" unless you know of Jim Jones; as in, I could challenge your use of it by asking "okay who is he?". Maybe saying "oh, he went to school with me" or something wouldn't count, anymore than "crft is too a word!" works in Scrabble Afbach (talk) 19:36, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
Harrison Ford is from Blade Runner I believe. 162.158.2.124 23:07, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
Ma Bell is interesting... is it the only one that not an actual person? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_System
Alistair Cooke's name is misspelt "Alistiar"; it'll be interesting to see if this gets corrected (as errors sometimes do). Not to be confused with Alistair Cookie, a short distance away! -- Peregrine (talk) 08:45, 22 March 2018 (UTC)
I think maybe Chris Isaac (Canadian football quarterback) was intended to be Chris Isaak (American rock musician, singer, and actor). Can we just assume that was a mistake? Imperpay (talk) 14:29, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
Maybe a table?
I think a table would be a useful and user-friendly way of capturing everything that's going on here. Forgive this feeble attempt. I am not an html coder. I know enough to go steal something somewhere and see if it works:
| Domino | Notability | Connections | Mode |
|---|---|---|---|
| Alistair Cookie | A parody of Alistair Cooke "played" by Cookie Monster in the Sesame Street sketch "Monsterpiece Theatre" in the 1980s, a parody of the PBS series "Masterpiece Theatre". | James Cook Alastair Reynolds |
Last-Last (approximate) First-First (approximate) |
| James Cook | 18th century British explorer, navigator, cartographer, and captain in the Royal Navy. | Alistair Cooke Cokie Roberts |
Last-Last (approximate) Last-First (approximate) |
| Chris Columbus | Film director and screenwriter. | Columbo Christopher Columbus |
Last-Only (approximate) First-First (approximate) and Last-Last |
Imperpay (talk) 23:27, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
- I like that idea. Especially because it would mean that all those links are removed from the transcript. As far as I understand transcripts (at least in this wiki) they don't inlcude any meta information (e.g. nothing that is not shown in the comic). Elektrizikekswerk (talk) 08:48, 22 March 2018 (UTC)
- Yes great example of a table, and yes no wiki links in transcript. I will put this in the explanation now. --Kynde (talk) 09:42, 22 March 2018 (UTC)
- I have now made an image where each tile is numbered from left to right. See this picture and Explanation here. I have created a transcript from this list. And the table --Kynde (talk) 14:01, 22 March 2018 (UTC)
- Great job, thanks for the effort :) Should the table be moved to a separate page? Beacuse it's really massive... And another thing: I think the name list in the transcript as it was before (excluding links, of course) was better. At least for someone who is not visually impaired Elektrizikekswerk (talk) 14:52, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
- I have now made an image where each tile is numbered from left to right. See this picture and Explanation here. I have created a transcript from this list. And the table --Kynde (talk) 14:01, 22 March 2018 (UTC)
- Yes great example of a table, and yes no wiki links in transcript. I will put this in the explanation now. --Kynde (talk) 09:42, 22 March 2018 (UTC)
And I thought Alistair Cookie was a reference to the fact Alistair Cook is batting like a muppet. BTW I have WG Grace and Grace Darling in my hand - but i cannot seem to fit them in. 141.101.107.204 17:16, 22 March 2018 (UT
I've created a table/spreadsheet of all the numbers, with a,b,c meaning first, second, and third part of name, respectively, here. Also, Van Jones is missing in both the numbered image and all text on this page. Ad1217 (talk) 04:40, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
- Cool. Thanks for pointing out that I failed to number the tile after 249. I'm now correcting the image adding this as number 250 and correcting the numbers after that. Ad1217 could you update your spreadsheet, and would it be OK to add a picture of this to the explanation? (I spotted an error in your spreadsheet as well, as you have used 286b rather than 268b at the bottom, but correctly used 268a --Kynde (talk) 09:55, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
- Feel free to use it however you like! Also, it's publicly editable, so feel free to fix any other issues. My plan is to write a script to map names->boxes, then ideally make an html table with text transformed correctly, but it could take a bit of time before I get that working right. Ad1217 (talk) 08:24, 24 March 2018 (UTC)
Does anyone else see the connection between "Six degrees of Kevin Bacon" and the fact that this picture is basically a network/graph? 108.162.249.136 05:25, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
- I was disappointed that Kevin Bacon isn't a clear node of some sort. The joke could have been extended by adding a Paul Erdős tile. --Quantum7 (talk) 08:41, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
I wonder if Randall used an algorithm to build this. It would be interesting to generate dense domino packings automatically. Does he have an official github account or similar? --Quantum7 (talk) 08:42, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
I'll continue looking into it, and thought it might be worth mentioning. Could this be some kind of QR code?
Would it be helpful to fill in still-missing entries of the Notability column of the Table of Names. I can volunteer to do that. These Are Not The Comments You Are Looking For (talk) 10:49, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
- Looking at some of the missing entries in the Notability column for common names (eg. John Lewis, Chris Evans) and wondering what the best approach to this is. To me as a British person, John Lewis is a department store and Chris Evans is a radio presenter and former Top Gear host, however I realise this is not the case everywhere - Chris Evans is also an actor who featured in the Marvel films (probably more likely who Randell was referring to). Would it be best to list all notable people with that name (how do we decide who is notable enough?...) or should we just link the Wikipedia entry for people with that name? AlChemist (talk) 10:49, 3 March 2019 (UTC)
Other languages
Can "Name Dominoes" grids written in another non-English alphabet be assembled? ColorfulGalaxy (talk) 08:36, 13 December 2022 (UTC)
Yo-Yo Ma is American, not Chinese
...according to [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yo-Yo_Ma#). 172.70.114.210 (talk) 15:50, 29 October 2024 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)
- Well, the Yo-Yo Ma article says American, but born in Paris of Chinese parents and only moved to the US at age seven. (No clue given as to whether he was naturalised, on arrival/later, or one or both parents were US citizens to start with.)
- By my reckoning, he's at least Chinese-American (and has taken that label at face value for some of his life). Wouldn't know how much he still possesses official natural-born Frenchness on top of that (if his actual arrival wasn't in an embassy grounds, or something additionally complicating). These sorts of things can be messy to tie down exactly, and often vastly reinterpretable according to the situation. 172.70.162.142 17:01, 29 October 2024 (UTC)
- According to the Simple English Wikipedia, Yo-Yo Ma is a “French born Chinese-American”. 42.book.addict (talk) 17:28, 29 October 2024 (UTC)
