[HN Gopher] Industrious Dice
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       Industrious Dice
        
       Author : 082349872349872
       Score  : 126 points
       Date   : 2024-10-17 17:32 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (mathenchant.wordpress.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (mathenchant.wordpress.com)
        
       | oatsandsugar wrote:
       | This is glorious. What a world we live in.
       | 
       | How can we make a die that functions as a d6, but has "less
       | pips". An elegant dodecahedron as the solution. Less pips but
       | more sides. Not an economic solution, but I love that these
       | problems are being solved.
        
       | pavel_lishin wrote:
       | This would be a fun video to send to your DM before showing up
       | with these dice.
        
         | hinkley wrote:
         | Oh no a boulder fell on your character. 200 points of crush
         | damage.
        
       | hinkley wrote:
       | That is the nerdiest thing I've ever seen and it's appropriate
       | that he was wearing a top hat while presenting it.
       | 
       | However, the point of dice is typically not so you can count the
       | numbers but so others can count them. People sitting at a table
       | with you cannot see "up", they can only see from an angle and so
       | these dice while mathematically cool are completely impractical.
       | Great example of white tower design.
        
         | mkl wrote:
         | The article points this problem out. It's recreational
         | mathematics, not intended to be practical.
        
           | PaulHoule wrote:
           | Would be a feature not a bug for this "game"
           | 
           | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Razzle_(game)
        
       | robinhouston wrote:
       | I'm (pleasantly) surprised to see this on the front page of HN!
       | 
       | If anyone really wants to nerd out on the rhombic triacontahedral
       | die, my proof of uniqueness is at https://s3.boskent.com/rhombic-
       | triacontahedron-die/uniquenes...
       | 
       | I first discovered the result computationally, using a program
       | written in https://sentient-lang.org/, before finding the 'human'
       | proof described in that PDF.
        
       | penteract wrote:
       | Such a waste of faces :). Give a tetrahedron's faces 0,1,2, and 4
       | pips and throw it into a v-shaped groove so that it lands on an
       | edge. (This is also a solution to numbering the corners of a
       | cube).
        
         | tromp wrote:
         | So you get, with equal probabilities, 0+1, 0+2, 1+2, 0+4, 1+4,
         | or 2+4 = {1,2,3,4,5,6}. Same as 2:07 in the video, but using
         | only 1/3 of the faces. Brilliant!
        
       | cjg wrote:
       | Or a d6 with the 4, 5 and 6 faces blank. When you roll, if the
       | face isn't blank, that's your number. If it is then flip the die
       | over and subtract that number from 7.
       | 
       | Only uses 6 pips.
        
         | ejddhbrbrrnrn wrote:
         | Pip position encoding can get that down to 3. One pip on 3
         | adjacent sides.
         | 
         | Centre pip = 1, Edge = 2, Corner = 3
        
           | quirino wrote:
           | If we're gonna go that route, you can just put a single pip
           | on a corner and derive all of the other positions from that.
        
             | gcr wrote:
             | Nope, that's rotationally symmetric around the (pip, center
             | of dice) axis.
             | 
             | Put the pip on the face, but near the corner.
        
               | ejddhbrbrrnrn wrote:
               | Or the edge so, the pipped face is 1, then go over that
               | edge for 2, keep going around for 3 and 4. If we consider
               | that "going east" then 5 is on the north pole.
        
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       (page generated 2024-10-18 23:02 UTC)