Two boys in Trapp Spring
The best-known story of Texas 42 begins in 1887 in Trapp Spring, a small school community in Parker County, roughly 45 miles west of Fort Worth, that has since become part of Garner. William A. Thomas, 12, and Walter Earl, 14, wanted to play cards, but their families were devout Baptists who counted card playing as a sin and would not allow it. As the story goes, the two were found in a barn hayloft in the middle of a hand of auction whist, and they were punished for it. Dominoes carried no such prohibition, so the boys worked out a four-player game with bidding and trumps on a standard double-six set of 28 tiles. By the fall of 1887, the story says, the game was ready, and they began teaching it to friends and neighbors.
Joe Celko's Texas 42 page on pagat.com adds that fundamentalist Baptists of the day called playing cards "the Devil's Picture Book" but had no quarrel with dominoes. What the boys invented was not a pale substitute but a new game with its own character, tight enough for a lifetime of study and warm enough for a kitchen table after supper.
They did not set out to write history. They set out to play a fair game under the rules their households could accept.
The spelling wanders depending on who is telling it: the Handbook of Texas and the 2011 legislative resolution write Trapp Spring, texas42.net writes Trappe Spring, and Pagat writes Trappe Springs.
Why it is called 42
The name is arithmetic. Every hand holds exactly 42 points:
| Source of points | Points |
|---|---|
| Tricks: one point for each of the seven | 7 |
| Count dominoes: 5-0, 4-1 and 3-2 (5 each); 6-4 and 5-5 (10 each) | 35 |
| Every hand | 42 |
In the Handbook of Texas, a game runs on a cumulative point total, and the first team to reach 250 points wins. Most players today keep score in marks instead, with seven marks taking the game, and tournaments score the same way.
How we know the story
No document from 1887 records the invention. The story reaches us through a chain of retellings. Thomas told it in a 1927 interview with the Dallas Journal. Fort Worth Star-Telegram writer Christopher Evans drew on that interview for his article "Texas 42 was in the cards" on August 3, 1985. The Handbook of Texas entry by Dennis Roberson and the Legislature's 2011 resolution both follow Evans. Thomas died in 1946. We tell the Trapp Spring story as tradition: well attested and officially honored, but not a contemporary record.
Competing claims
Trapp Spring is the version the Handbook of Texas and the Legislature follow, but it is not the only one on record. Two old documents point to Mineral Wells, about seven miles west of Garner, and one of them names Thomas himself.
In the papers
July 15, 1915 - Wills Point Chronicle
Reprinted from the Temple Telegram, this article credits a Santa Fe passenger brakeman from Temple named Giescke. On a health leave in Mineral Wells, it says, he noticed that the count dominoes totaled 35, added the seven tricks, and called the result forty-two. He brought the game home to Temple, and travelers carried it across the state. Paul Proft has posted a transcription and a scan of the original on texas42.net.
1927 - Dallas Journal
William A. Thomas's interview is the first known published telling of the Trapp Spring story: he and Walter Earl worked out the game in Parker County in 1887 because their families forbade cards. Evans's 1985 article, and everything that followed it, rests on this account.
July 1, 1940 - Fort Worth Star-Telegram photograph
A photograph of W. A. Thomas at a domino table, held in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram Collection at UT Arlington Libraries Special Collections, carries this description: “The domino game called "42" had its world premiere in Mineral Wells, Texas, in 1886. W. A. Thomas, collector of Internal Revenue for North Texas, invented the game when he was 10 years old.” That is a different town and a different year from the version told in 1927 and 1985.
Until someone finds a document from the 1880s, Trapp Spring stays the most widely told version, with Mineral Wells as an alternative that has paper behind it. We would rather show you the disagreement than hide it.
Word of mouth across Texas
There was no advertising campaign. Thomas and Earl taught the game to their families and their community. On his trips hauling fruit from his father's orchard into nearby Mineral Wells, Thomas showed the game to people in town, and when the Thomas and Earl families later moved to Windom in Fannin County, they introduced 42 again. From there it spread by word of mouth to family parlors, picnic tables, and the back rooms of small-town cafes. By 1940, the Handbook of Texas says, folks were learning and playing 42 in every corner of Texas, and players praised it as a fun game that promoted good, clean fellowship.
It was an early favorite in the Texas A&M dormitories that housed students from rural areas. During World War II, Texas servicemen took the game overseas and taught it to their fellow countrymen.
Towns in the story
Several communities hold a place in the lore and championship history of 42:
Garner (originally Trapp Spring)
Garner is the traditional birthplace of the game, named in both the Handbook of Texas and the 2011 resolution. It was here, as the story goes, that William Thomas and Walter Earl turned auction whist into a domino game in 1887.
Mineral Wells
Mineral Wells was one of the first towns to learn the game, from Thomas on his fruit deliveries. It is also home to the alternative origin stories: the 1915 brakeman article and the 1940 photograph that dates the game's "world premiere" there to 1886.
Windom
Windom in Fannin County is where the Thomas and Earl families moved after Trapp Spring. The 2011 resolution says the game became popular in Fannin County after they arrived.
Hallettsville
Hallettsville hosts the annual Texas State Championship. Its first open state championship was held in 1981, and it has traditionally been the highest-level open 42 tournament in Texas. The National 42 Players Association (N42PA) was formally organized here: its bylaws date the group's first annual meeting to March 5, 2005, in the town's KC Hall, just after that year's championship.
Waco
Waco is home to Puremco, a domino maker founded there in 1954. In 2000 the Austin Chronicle described it as the last domino factory in the United States, and once the largest.
New Mexico
42 crossed the state line too. New Mexico holds its own annual open state championship, played straight 42 and sanctioned by the N42PA, and Curry County, New Mexico, appears among the local 42 clubs listed on the N42PA Facebook group.
Texas collegiate traditions
From dormitory rooms to lifelong-learning classrooms, 42 has a long life on Texas campuses:
Texas A&M University (College Station)
42 was an early favorite in A&M dormitories that housed students from rural areas. Paul Proft's research on texas42.net traces the earliest documented 42 activity on campus to a 1910 issue of The Battalion, and a March 21, 1911 Battalion article mentions a "partner in the progressive '42' game." The Dixie Chicken on Northgate, an Aggie tradition since 1974, hosts a "42 and Brew" domino tournament. For the 1992-1993 academic year, Matt Hurt and Eliot Williams wrote rules for the Lechner Hall 42 Tournament, with a list of "Outlawed Games" that included Low Boy and Cajun Hokey Pokey.
Texas Christian University (Fort Worth)
TCU's Silver Frogs lifelong-learning program teaches the game. Its Fall 2026 catalog lists "Learning 42 for Beginners, the National Game of Texas," taught by Dennis Roberson, and "Intermediate 42: Fun and Competition in Silver Frogs!", along with a 42 Dominoes shared interest group whose members play and help newcomers learn.
Texas Tech University (Lubbock)
In 1997, Texas Tech University Press published Winning 42: Strategy and Lore of the National Game of Texas by Dennis Roberson. According to the Handbook of Texas, 42 was handed down by word of mouth until the 1990s, when this book put its rules, strategy, and history in print. Paul Proft's texas42.net points to an older title, the 1977 Dominos Texas Style, which names W. A. Thomas as the game's inventor.
University of North Texas (Denton)
The UNT Libraries host The Portal to Texas History, a free digital archive that includes Texas newspapers and broadcast material. Among its holdings is a January 9, 1964 WBAP-TV news script from Bonham: when the domino room in the Fannin County courthouse was turned into a jury room, the sheriff, a domino player himself, gave the players free space in the basement of the jail.
Famous Texans at the table
The game's footprint is inseparable from small-town Texas life, but it reached the halls of power too. Roberson's Winning 42 devotes a chapter, "42-Playin' Texas Celebrities," to famous Texans who grew up playing the game. A 2023 article from the Texas Municipal League Intergovernmental Risk Pool, drawing on the book, names President Lyndon B. Johnson, who kept a game of dominoes going in the upstairs living room of the White House to relieve stress, singer-songwriter Robert Earl Keen, and journalist Bill Moyers. The same article quotes First Lady Laura Bush, speaking during the White House years: "I hope that someday when George and I have more time to relax and play dominoes, we will pick it up again. We had such fun playing 42 with our good friends."
Zavala blue and the Republic
Our deep blue nods to a well-loved Texas legend: the so-called Zavala flag, a blue field with a white star and the letters T-E-X-A-S, often credited to Lorenzo de Zavala, statesman and signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence. The Handbook of Texas is clear that the historical record does not support that story: the 1836 convention journal credits Charles Stanfield Taylor, not Zavala, with suggesting the letters around the star. We keep the blue anyway, as a nod to the stories Texans tell about who they are, not as a claim about 1836.
Official State Domino Game
House Concurrent Resolution 84 of the 82nd Texas Legislature made 42 the official State Domino Game of Texas, and Governor Rick Perry signed it on June 17, 2011. The House adopted it 144-0 on May 13, 2011, and the Senate adopted it, as amended, 31-0 on May 25. Because it is a concurrent resolution and not a bill, the designation is honorary: it changes no law and no rule of play. What it does is put the state's name on the game. Its closing words read: "RESOLVED, That the 82nd Legislature of the State of Texas hereby designate 42 as the official State Domino Game of Texas." The resolution also retells Evans's 1985 account, hayloft and auction whist included.
N42PA and Hallettsville
Organized play found a home in the National 42 Players Association (N42PA), a social and recreation club founded in 2005. According to its bylaws, members first met formally on March 5, 2005, in Hallettsville's KC Hall, right after that year's Texas State Championship, which the Hallettsville Chamber of Commerce sponsored. N42PA-qualifying open and invitational tournaments use "straight 42" rules, which leave out plunge, nello, and sevens, and members collect points toward a year-end Tournament of Champions. Hallettsville's open state championship dates to 1981. Smaller weekend tournaments, often part of a town festival, fill the calendar the rest of the year, and the Texas Senior Games award 42 titles annually. If your first 42 game was on a phone screen or a browser tab, the lineage of those tournament tables still runs straight back to Parker County.
The game also owes a debt to the people who wrote it down. Winning 42: Strategy & Lore of the National Game of Texas by Dennis Roberson (1997; fourth revised edition 2009, fifth edition 2020) is the book Joe Celko recommends on Pagat as the definitive source for anyone serious about the game. Gary McClish's essay Power Bidding in Texas 42 (2012), published on texas42.net, makes the case for bidding aggressively. Paul Proft's texas42.net has collected rules, variants, tournament results, and historical documents for more than two decades. John McLeod's pagat.com, online since 1995, hosts three separate Texas 42 pages among its hundreds of traditional card and domino games. And Darrell's Texas 42 Page on Facebook, run by its admin since 2011, helps players find local 42 events.
Timeline
| Year | Event |
|---|---|
| 1887 | Trapp Spring origin, by tradition (Thomas and Earl) |
| 1915 | Wills Point Chronicle reprints a Temple Telegram story crediting Giescke in Mineral Wells |
| 1927 | Thomas tells the Trapp Spring story to the Dallas Journal |
| 1940 | By now 42 is played in every corner of Texas (Handbook of Texas); a Star-Telegram photo dates an 1886 Mineral Wells premiere |
| 1940s | Texas servicemen take 42 overseas during World War II |
| 1977 | Dominos Texas Style credits the game to W. A. Thomas |
| 1981 | First open state championship in Hallettsville |
| 1985 | Christopher Evans's Star-Telegram article |
| 1997 | Winning 42 published by Texas Tech University Press |
| 2005 | N42PA's first annual formal meeting, Hallettsville |
| 2011 | HCR 84 names 42 the official State Domino Game of Texas |
Why Follow Me 42
Follow Me 42 exists to carry this uniquely Texan tradition into the place today’s players actually gather: online. Distance, deployment, college, and diaspora no longer have to mean giving up the game you grew up on. We are building respectful, faithful tools so that bidding, trump decisions, and the old familiar count tiles can travel in your pocket or on your desk. This site's deep blue is a nod to the Zavala flag legend; the star-and-42 mark is ours, meant to sit alongside the play you already know from kitchen tables, porches, and wherever your crowd draws tiles. The Legislature gave the game an official title; generations of Texans gave it a heartbeat. Our job is to help it follow you wherever you go.
Sources
Where a claim rests on tradition or on a single secondary source, the text above says so.
- Handbook of Texas: Forty-Two (Domino Game), Dennis Roberson, Texas State Historical Association
- H.C.R. No. 84, 82nd Legislature, enrolled text and bill history, Texas Legislature Online
- Origin and History of 42 and the 1915 Mineral Wells article, Paul Proft, texas42.net
- W. A. Thomas, Fort Worth Star-Telegram Collection, July 1, 1940, UT Arlington Libraries Special Collections
- News Script: Domino players, WBAP-TV, January 9, 1964, The Portal to Texas History
- National 42 Players Association, Constitution and By-Laws, and A Brief History of the N42PA, texas42.net
- Texas 42, Joe Celko, and 42, John McLeod, pagat.com
- The Texas State Domino Game: 42, Texas Highways, November 8, 2022
- 42 at Texas A&M and Winning 42 contents, texas42.net
- The Classic Charm of Texas 42, Texas Municipal League Intergovernmental Risk Pool, 2023
- Silver Frogs Fall 2026 catalog, TCU
- Day Trips: Puremco, Gerald E. McLeod, Austin Chronicle, November 17, 2000
- Handbook of Texas: Flags of Texas, Charles A. Spain Jr., Texas State Historical Association