full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Dan Finkel: Can you solve the cursed dice riddle?

Unscramble the Blue Letters


You can use Hephaestus’ furnace to seal the dots in place before the sun rises, but once slaeed you can’t move or remove them again. How can you craft your dice so that, when rolled and semmud, every total comes up with the eaxct same fnqreecuy as it would with standard 6-sided dice?

Pause here to figure it out for yourself. Answer in 3

Answer in 2

Answer in 1

Normal dice can roll any sum from 2 to 12, but sums in the mldide tend to come up more frequently than ones on the ends. We can see the odds of rolling any sum by making a tlbae, with all the possibilities for one die represented on the top, and those for the other on the side. The table lets us see at a gancle that there are six ways to roll a 7, but only two ways to roll a 3.

Open Cloze


You can use Hephaestus’ furnace to seal the dots in place before the sun rises, but once ______ you can’t move or remove them again. How can you craft your dice so that, when rolled and ______, every total comes up with the _____ same _________ as it would with standard 6-sided dice?

Pause here to figure it out for yourself. Answer in 3

Answer in 2

Answer in 1

Normal dice can roll any sum from 2 to 12, but sums in the ______ tend to come up more frequently than ones on the ends. We can see the odds of rolling any sum by making a _____, with all the possibilities for one die represented on the top, and those for the other on the side. The table lets us see at a ______ that there are six ways to roll a 7, but only two ways to roll a 3.

Solution


  1. middle
  2. glance
  3. table
  4. exact
  5. frequency
  6. summed
  7. sealed

Original Text


You can use Hephaestus’ furnace to seal the dots in place before the sun rises, but once sealed you can’t move or remove them again. How can you craft your dice so that, when rolled and summed, every total comes up with the exact same frequency as it would with standard 6-sided dice?

Pause here to figure it out for yourself. Answer in 3

Answer in 2

Answer in 1

Normal dice can roll any sum from 2 to 12, but sums in the middle tend to come up more frequently than ones on the ends. We can see the odds of rolling any sum by making a table, with all the possibilities for one die represented on the top, and those for the other on the side. The table lets us see at a glance that there are six ways to roll a 7, but only two ways to roll a 3.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations




Important Words


  1. answer
  2. craft
  3. dice
  4. die
  5. dots
  6. ends
  7. exact
  8. figure
  9. frequency
  10. frequently
  11. furnace
  12. glance
  13. lets
  14. making
  15. middle
  16. move
  17. normal
  18. odds
  19. pause
  20. place
  21. possibilities
  22. remove
  23. represented
  24. rises
  25. roll
  26. rolled
  27. rolling
  28. seal
  29. sealed
  30. side
  31. standard
  32. sum
  33. summed
  34. sums
  35. sun
  36. table
  37. tend
  38. top
  39. total
  40. ways