Courtyard Dominoes
About Courtyard Dominoes
Courtyard Dominoes sets a full domino set on a table in a courtyard beneath a vine, then removes every border between the bones. What remains is a flat field of pips — no edges, no divisions — and the puzzle is to draw those borders back in. Every pair of numbers must appear exactly once across the finished layout: two-three, blank-six, six-six, one of each and no more.
The game spans 126 layouts arranged across seven courtyards. It opens with the set up to three — ten bones — then steps through the sets up to four, five, and finally the full double-six set: twenty-eight bones arranged on a seven-by-eight field. Every layout carries exactly one solution, and a solver has verified each one so that nothing needs to be guessed; every answer follows from counting alone.
Several scenes show a grey and white striped cat resting on a red wooden bench with four horizontal slats. Green grape clusters and leaves hang from a wooden trellis against a light-coloured stone wall in several scenes as well.
How to Play Courtyard Dominoes
The goal is to cut the entire field so that every pair of numbers appears exactly once. The list at the side tracks which pairs are already placed, so counting what remains is always visible.
A bone placed incorrectly comes off with a second touch. Nothing is timed and there is no way to lose — the layout always has a solution, so it can be taken apart and rebuilt at any pace.
Tools Available During a Layout
- Mark: flags a cell as a personal note without changing anything on the table, so you do not lose your place
- Hint: places one correct bone
- Undo: removes the last bone laid
Stars and Progress
- Three stars are awarded for completing a layout without taking back a single bone
- Progress saves automatically, across devices
Controls
- Drag (touch): lay a bone between two neighbouring cells on phones and tablets
- Drag (mouse): lay a bone between two neighbouring cells on a computer
- Second tap/touch on a bone: remove a wrongly placed bone
Games You Might Like
If the careful, board-clearing logic of Courtyard Dominoes appeals to you, the broader puzzle games catalogue on Playgama holds many more challenges built around counting and pattern recognition. For tile-matching that rewards the same methodical pair-spotting, Mahjong Lines asks you to connect identical tiles along paths of no more than three straight lines to clear the board. Mahjong Puzzle: Tile Match layers on rising difficulty as you study layouts and plan each linking move ahead of time, much like reading a domino field before committing a border.
Arrows shifts the logic to direction and precise calculation, clearing a field of curved arrows without collisions — a different shape of the same careful planning Courtyard Dominoes demands. And Mahjong Classic offers a guaranteed-solvable solitaire across named layouts like Turtle, Dragon, and Spider, echoing the single-solution guarantee that makes every Courtyard Dominoes layout trustworthy.
