Tim's Problem Dice
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- čas přidán 28. 03. 2024
- Visit Tim's Toy Shop, at www.grand-illusions.com/
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Tim has many sets of dice in his collection. There are some that he is not quite sure how they are designed to work - he calls these his 'problem dice' - and here are some of them!
First, a hexagonal prism, where each of the six sides has the numbers 1 to 6 on it. However on each face the numbers are in a different order, and a different colour. What game is this dice designed to work with?
From Japan, a pair of very unusual dice. Are they even dice? Maybe made from rubber, they are almost like gear wheels, with 5 'cogs', which are not of equal thickness. One cog has a little arrow on it, the others are labelled 2, 3 4 and 5. Tim shows the package, so maybe someone who understands Japanese can enlighten us?
From Germany, the Blitz Rechner, which means 'lightning calculator'. It consists of a set of 5 dice of different colours, and there is a 3 digit number on every face. The idea is that, however the dice are arranged - you could roll them or shake them - you have five 3 digit numbers on the top faces of the five dice, and if you know the trick you can add up those five numbers very fast - like lightning! - provided you know the trick. So these dice are only a 'problem' for other people, but not for you, because you know the trick!
A yo-yo that has a large dice (or die as there is only one) at the end of the string. This one is a problem - Tim has not worked it out yet!
Finally, from the Gathering for Gardner in 2018, a set of 8 dice, called 'Magic Cubes', designed by Jerry Farrell. You need to arrange them in a 2x2x2 cube, in such a way that the numbers add up to 12 in every direction. Tim has had these for six years now, and still has not solved it. More problem dice! - Věda a technologie
The Japanese "dice" aren't dice, they're pencil erasers or at the very least look like them. I saw another video about them the other day. The different points are shaped and sized differently to help with different levels of precision. You can also tell from the art on the packaging that that's what they're for.
I mean, sure...but you COULD use it as a die too if you wanted to.
And the numbers are actually the width in millimeters I guess, from 3 to 6, while the triangle one might just mean a pointed tip for extra precision
i have seen similar erasers used back in my art department days.
it's so weird. I just saw a yt short about those erasers a few hours ago!
@@megamegaO Doubt they'd be fair dice, though. They look like rolling a low number is a lot more likely than rolling a high number.
I live in Japan and I can read Japanese. On the package it's written that these are pencil erasers. These erasers are actually quite popular and they are not meant to be played in any kind of game. The numbers on them in fact is just to indicate the thickness of each side of the erasers just as pencils also got numbers to indicate the thickness of the lead.
even just google translate on a frame of the video. "you can erase just the one line you want to erase without it sticking out! Perfect for the width of the ruled line!!!"
what an embarrassing mistake on their part lmao
@@amandak.4246 Probably given to him by someone who picked them up in an airport in Japan as a gift and told him they were some kind of dice.
As someone already mentioned the first dice is called the Lucky Log. It is a gambling dice. It looks to be fair however certain colors combinations are very much unfair, ie. Red beats gold, gold beats yellow.. and so on. The genius is that a shark can choose colors combinations that have them loose in the beginning of a game, then switch to winning combinations after the stakes have been raised. You play by both players calling out a color and then rolling the dice, whichever of the two colors is highest wins. I.e. A red five beats a gold four.
A five is greater than a four, so in that case, the color would be irrelevant, no? I could see the color being a factor if a red four beat a gold five; is that, then, how it works?
The first die is a gambling game. One player picks a color, and the magician picks a color. The die is rolled, and whatever color has a higher number wins. Best of 10 rolls.
The game is fixed though. The order of colors is Red,Black,Green,Yellow,Blue,Gold. Your opponent picks first. Whatever color they pick, you pick the color to the right of their selection. For example, if they choose Green, you choose Yellow. If they choose Blue, you choose Gold. This will give you a huge 88% chance of winning.
You can reduce the odds by picking a color further from their selection.
What if your opponent always picks gold?
@@michami135 You pick red. The order is circular. Pause the video on the die and check for yourself. The point isn't that you always win, it's that of the 6 faces, you're going to win on 5 of them. So the odds are always in your favor.
The second "dice" from Japan, I do believe are actually erasers. The points are to make erasing easier, it's made from a plastic that can easily be cleaned off of graphite it picks up from normal usage.
Tims clearly just smarter than the company, choosing another use for it.
@@WitchKing-Of-Angmar Would last longer as a set of dice for sure.
@@ToxicAudri I imagine even though the material is resilient, it would wear down fast as an eraser.
My guess about the first die is that it's a "fair order deciding" dice. 6 players choose a colour, then roll to decide which colour gets which place.
My thought is how "fair" it really is. considering it only used six out of 720 permutations
It's for gambling. And it's "rigged". Player 1 chooses a colour. Player 2 chooses a colour based on the first. The die is rolled and the player with the highest number (based on their colour) wins. Player 2 can win 80+% of the time.
@@MartinTowell I suspected it could be one of those mathematical tricks.
@@MartinTowell It looks to me that gold beats blue beats yellow beats green beats black beats red beats gold - each one of those numbers is 1 above the last one, such that if that number comes up 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6 it's a winner, but if it comes up 1 it loses to a 6. 5/6 win probability, so 83.3%. Not bad!
Numberphile has a video on that. I forgot what they said, but it seems like you need 4 d100 to roll and get a fair order.
I notice that on the "blitz" dice, it looks like each die has the same digit in the middle on every side (so the tens always add to 300), and the first and last digits appear to keep the same total (e.g. on the black die we can see 543, 147, and 840).
I'm not exactly sure how the maths works but I'll bet those two details are the key. I love mathematical tricks like that!
Edit: Ah-ha! The sums of the end (first and last) digits across all the dice is 47. So 47 minus the sum of the ones digits, times 100, plus 300, equals the sums of the 100s digits. Which is the same as saying 50 minus the sum of the ones digits, times 100 as Tim explained.
The japanese one is a type of eraser Tim ! It’s great because it doesnt leave much trash and also because it has varying sizes for different purposes like small mistakes or big ones.
Tim: I bought this stuff, and I don't know what it is!
I haven't watched this channel for years and I'm so glad I revisited it, and I gotta say, Tim, you don't look a day over forty, thank you Grand illusions for making really cool videos and thank you for sharing the wonders of entertainment of the past
Might need those eyes checked.
If that’s your baseline for 40, whoo boy…😅
Im still waiting on the dungeon maker dice to be restocked on Amazon. Each side is a room of a dungeon, but also a number, so they function as both regular six-sided dice and a creativity tool.
Really? Because it's that hard to design a dungeon, is it?
@@theusher2893 this statement assumes that dice aren't objects of fun.
That first dice can determine the order a six-member DnD party proceeds through narrow dungeon paths.
Yeah, you’d need a 720 sided dice to determine that (6!=720).
@@ferretyluvUnless you as the DM say "these are the only six options we'll be choosing between" since setting boundaries is one of the DM's job. To be truly fair you could kill off two of the party and switch to those four 12-sided "go first dice" 😁
A six member party sounds wild, I could barely manage my 5 person party when I used to host sessions.
@@talonman1825 In college, our DM tried to combine two large groups into a single game... it didn't work.
Another way is to pick a D6, first throw indicate the first person to go through. For second throw, you just take the ace as "rethrow". Then you use a D4.
Then back to D6 where each person has 2 numbers.
Lastly, you flip a coin.
Or even simpler, you use 6 tokens and shuffle them.
1:31 that's a mirekeshi eraser from kokuyo
czcams.com/video/BlMGd45VixE/video.htmlsi=C3Zul1mlci0a4eR1
Tim, I absolutely love your videos; thank you for keeping our inner kid and curiosity still going. I say that instead of “alive” bc I think what makes us gravitate to these vids and make their subjects even exist and created is that as long as we are alive, that kid of ourselves is as well, even if we don’t let it go out to play. So thanks for reminding us to play some. :)
The Japanese ‘dice’ have been featured on this channel before in the episode ‘Tim Rubs It Out’, all about erasers! Go to the 2 minute 15 second mark
1:27 "they roll nicely"
*rolls terribly*
1:50 irony aside, they roll fine here.
That's what happens when you try to use an eraser as a die.
i imagine a boardgame thats so needlessly complex and stupid, has 100,000 spaces, has dice that can move you up to 999 spaces in a single turn, requires you to slap the person on your left for no particular reason, then play the knife game but instead they're actively trying to prevent you from playing the knife game with them, and it becomes more of a serial killer knife chase situation. great for parties, even comes with free little packs of pcp in those little raisin boxes you got during lunch back in grade 2
is that what the first die is for ?
This man never disappoint with his toys ..
The first item is called "Dr. X Lucky Log"
I kinda hoped Tim might have a set of non-transitive dice - there's a great Numberphile video on what they are and how they work
He's shown those a couple of times before, even sells some on the website. They are truly fascinating things.
According to another comment, that's kind of what the first one is
The second are erasers for different widths of things to erase. Probably if they didn't have numbers on them you wouldn't have thought they were dice
Anyone knows where I can find the "Magic Cubes" puzzle from Jerry Farell ? Or a DIY version of it? Thank you in advance!
works.bepress.com/jeremiah-farrell/187/
Try a local magic store, not sure if that helps.
I googled “sudoku cube” and it showed similar things
Love the Alien reference at the start of the titles! 😊
I would watch a 3 hour video to see Tim solve that puzzle.
I think that Tim hasn't got dementia yet is because he always has his brain figuring out stuff instead of just starting at a wall in a hospital bed/ wheelchair
You are amazing Tim. Thanks for your videos
The first die is: The Dr. X Lucky Log
I found this explanation:
There is no gaff on that log. It rolls perfectly normally.
The game involves non-transitive numbers. You pick any color - I can then always pick another color that will "beat" you most of the time. If you pick green, I pick yellow (or whatever). You can then roll the log 100 times and my yellow number will be higher than your green number the majority of the time. Ok - so now you pick yellow. I can then pick red and roll a higher number than you the majority of the time. If you pick red I pick blue, and so on.
Non-transitive games are "circular" in the sense that one thing beats another that beats another that beats another and so on until the last thing on the list beats the first thing on the list. An easy example is Rock, Paper, Scissors. Rock beats Scissors - Scissors beats Paper - Paper beats Rock. If we played in such a way that you chose first I could always choose something to beat you. Even if you then choose my initial choice, I can still beat you ad infinitum. That's why Rock, Paper, Scissors players have to reveal their choices simultaneously to have a fair game. The rolling log works the same way. If you and I chose colors on the rolling log in secret, wrote them down and then only revealed them after each had made his/her choice, then the game would be completely fair.
Do you have links to where these can be purchased? That first die is really cool and the puzzle.
1:56 this is just erasers I think actually but I love the idea of using them as dice! ❤
I'm imagining some sort of game using that first die where all the players' turns happen simultaneously, maybe some kind of gladiator combat game played on a hexagonal board? Hmmm now the gears are turning...
The die has cast...and Tim got lots of it
Japanese ones are erasers and the numers ar the thickness of that part of the eraser
the rubber is more a precition eraser, the number is the size of the corner, bigger erase larger area. I can be used as dice 5.never saw it this way
guess u gotta "roll" with it
The last one, I think there are 8!((6×4)^8)/(6×4) = 184 926 527 815 680 possible arrangements, maybe divided by any equivalent arrangements I've forgotten to factor out.
the Japanese one is an eraser not a die.
I have a die that is about 7 inches (18 CM) square that is solid steel.
Jesus, that’s completely impractical. That would be so heavy.
@@ferretyluv Hard to roll.
With steel weighing about 8 grams per cm³, that'd be about 45kg (almost 100 lb)
@@MartinTowell A friend gave it to me. He used to work at Mosher Steel in Dallas, Texas. Said it was Triple S 100. Used as bridge pins. Left over in the shop, he got someone to cut it up and drill the numbers.
What an odd collection of dice,T im!
i thought the sound of the japanese "dice" sounded quite off, made me think they where not dice but some type of rubbery tool or part. turns out, they are erasures.
Do you have Sicherman dice?
Yo the counterweights in terraria are real?!
the eraser can still be a dice
I always thought it was grandad illusions😂
The German dice remind me of how a soroban works.
Don't die in a cast, because then you'll be forged for failure.
Quirkology!?
Omg I used to always watch quirkology ❤️
1:57 those are erasers not dice.
As others have said, those arent Japanese dice. They're erasers. I can see why youd be confused though.
me thinks Tim needs to "eraser" that 5 numbered Japanese "dice" segment.
“If you can read this I’d love to know more about it”
Well they aren’t dice, they’re erasers, that’s what the packaging is calling them
The purpose of the numbers on the erasers? Uncertain
Update: I looked into it
The number indicate the thickness of that side of the eraser. 1 being very precise and 5 being broad. These aren’t dice at all, the numbers are just labels for different points of a precision eraser
I wouldn’t be surprised if students in Japan have used these for impromptu dice before. They would certainly do the job
They have a little advertisement on their website, which of course isn’t English but:
The arrow indicates a sharp point.
The numbers indicate the width in millimeters.
3mm 4mm 5mm and 6mm respectively
It also appears as though you’re meant to use the plastic portion of the packaging as a tube to hold it, similar to our rectangular erasers. Others are sold with a much nicer hard plastic tube if I understand the advertising correctly
The packaging reads:
1行
消し
消したい1行だけを はみ出さずに消せる!
消しゴム ミリウ
罫線の幅にピッタリ!!
アンジャ
Google Translate says the Japanese things are labelled "erasers".
He didn't imply otherwise, he uses it as an eraser in another video. He isn't misrepresenting your Japanese obsession I can assure you.
Grandy Nice
Alien computer
Nice
Bro im first 🥇
No, you’re not.
Great)
Aha!
id say the first die is used in the place of 6 d6.
Those japanese ones, aren't dice. Those are erasers, wth different level of precision, for all your erasing needs.
I thought this was going to be some video about weird dice in VSauce-Style, but it turns out it’s just a horrendously bad researched video.
I think youd love tumblr user foone they have a weird dice of the week.
Your voice doesn't sound too good. Have you been well?