These days you can find dice in board games and casinos all over the world. But they are much, much older than you might think and have an amazing history filled with amazing artefacts as well as some pretty awesome facts…
10 – A Disdyakis triacontahedron Dice has 120 sides!
While it has never been handmade it can be created with a 3D printer and is said to have the largest number of possible faces on a fair dice, aside from infinite families (such as right regular prisms, bipyramids, and trapezohedra) that would be impractical in reality due to the tendency to roll for a long time.
9 – The worlds smallest dice could fit on the end of a pencil!
Manufactured by Iriso Seimetsu Co., Ltd. each one of these super small die measures just 0.3 x 0.3 x 0.3 mm! For perspective sake pencil lead is 0.5-mm in diameter!
8 – The world’s most expensive dice cost £13,583! ($17,925)
To be fair this is no ordinary dice. It was an incredibly valuable Roman glass gaming die sold at auction by the famous Christie’s auction house. It was deep blue-green in colour and had twenty-sides each with a distinct symbol on its face.
7 – A lot of casino dice are handmade!
While this is not the case for a lot of casinos these days once upon a time there were handmade because no machine could make sure each die had the greatest probability of being fair. And yes, a lot of these are still used in casinos today.
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6 – The oldest dice found was dated from 2800–2500 BC!
Found in an archaeological site in south-eastern Iran, it is thought it was once used in a backgammon-like game called Senet which was played before 3000 BC and up to the 2nd century AD
5 – No one knows where dice truly came from!
While some people think dice originated in Egypt the truth is no-one knows for sure. Cave paintings and hieroglyphic stores even seem vague about its origins.
4 – The name ‘dice’ (or ‘die’) is Latin
Its said the name of dice is “something which is given or played” in Latin and is mostly taken from the old French word of ‘dé’.
3 – Cheating Dice are very real!
It’s not as hard to make a ‘ loaded, weighted, or crooked’ die as you might think and its the reason most casinos use slightly transparent dice to show they are not cheating the player.
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2 – There is such a thing as a spherical die!
You might think that is simply a ball covered in dice characters, but in reality, also has an internal cavity in the shape of the dual polyhedron of the desired die shape and an internal weight. The weight will settle in one of the points of the internal cavity, causing it to settle with one of the numbers uppermost. For instance, a sphere with an octahedral cavity and a small internal weight will settle with one of the 6 points of the cavity held downwards by the weight.
1 – Dice have been found in cave drawings!
While not confirmed to be actually playing dice there is still images of dice-shaped objects what were found going back 40,000 years in a cave drawing! I wonder if they had Yahtzee back then?!?