Industrious Dice
91 points by 082349872349872 10 hours ago | 7 comments
  • oatsandsugar 10 hours ago |
    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 9 hours ago |
    This would be a fun video to send to your DM before showing up with these dice.
    • hinkley 8 hours ago |
      Oh no a boulder fell on your character. 200 points of crush damage.
  • hinkley 8 hours ago |
    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 an hour ago |
      The article points this problem out. It's recreational mathematics, not intended to be practical.
  • robinhouston 6 hours ago |
    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 4 hours ago |
    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).