# Any sided dice

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-sided-dice/215784>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [November 28, 2003, 10:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-sided-dice/215784 "2003-11-28T22:05:32Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![Crook\_d\_Dope](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/c6cbf5/32.png) [@Crook\_d\_Dope](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crook_d_Dope)\
**Post date:** [November 29, 2003, 6:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-sided-dice/215784/21 "2003-11-29T06:57:55Z")

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Roulette and Bob Barker solved this problem long ago (analogously to LSL’s crosssection approach above). As the manufacturing is stressed you just make the things bigger :).

My personal preference would be to glue a n-sided teepee onto a hemisphere or cone and spin the thing.

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**Author:** ![Mac\_Guffin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/2bfe46/32.png) [@Mac\_Guffin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mac_Guffin)\
**Post date:** [November 29, 2003, 11:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-sided-dice/215784/22 "2003-11-29T11:51:55Z")

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> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by JamesCarroll \*  
> \*\*What if you started with a sphere and drew _n_ lines from the center to the surface such that they are evenly spaced. Use that intersection as the center and expand each circle on the surface until it touches its neighbor. Flatten the circles leaving the other areas round. There would be “non number” areas, but since they are round the die couldn’t settle on them.
> 
> But then since when two circles overlap you can draw a straightline between their intersections, couldn’t you keep expanding to the point where the “non number” area is the smallest and use the straightline to create an edge?
> 
> \*\*

this pretty much exactly describes the 100 sider I saw.

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**Author:** ![Shade](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2bfe46/32.png) [@Shade](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shade)\
**Post date:** [November 30, 2003, 1:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-sided-dice/215784/23 "2003-11-30T01:45:20Z")

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> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by KP \*  
> \*\*Simply paint a sphere in (numbered?) regions of different colors, and read the color off the uppermost point. This is not as easy to read as a flat-faced die, and it would take much longer to come to a rest, but it could work in principle with an optical reader device. \*\*

You could use this with the free-spinning-inner-wheel. Have an inner sphere weighted at the bottom, with a spot on top, and a semi-transparent outer sphere divided into regions. The result is the region the spot lands in.

How’s that?

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