http://crux.baker.edu/cdavis09/roses.html
This is either extremely simple, or annoyingly difficult.
Two things you need to know:
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The name of the game is “Petals around the Roses.”
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The answer is always even.
Good luck. 
Extremely easy, got it the first time.
You got in one roll? That’s incredible. I mean, really. It took me a good 10 minutes of rolling, rolling… I was going to start writing down formulas! I had trends that would seem to work, and then die out. Then suddenly I got it. Thanks for that puzzle!
it took me several tries to get it and then having read the background info, I stopped and looked at as what other angle could this be seen from. I then thought no it can’t be “that”! but after about 10 right answers I guess I did get it right.
I solved it after 5 tries.
After 9 or 10 rolls, I thought about your hint and got it in one.
How often do we have to do Petals Around the Rose?
I must be really stupid, because I don’t get it! AGAIN! :mad:
Yup, one roll. I mean, what else could it be? Seems completely intuative to me.
Okay, I just got it. I don’t know why I didn’t see it before, but now it makes sense. :smack:
I don’t think you are stupid. I know my daughter isn’t stupid and it took her 20 minutes to get it. Then again, she’s only 2 1/2 so I cut her some slack.
I remember this from before. The problem is that the answer is so obvious that it seems stupidly obvious so you don’t try it.
It wasn’t too difficult after reading the hint. But I think the game’s title is a bit misleading.
Got it first try! Yay!
Granted, I rolled once and thought about it for about a half hour, but then I guessed right, and again, and again. Sure was a :smack: moment when I got it.
There’s nothing “obvious” or “easy” about it.
For some of us, solving a system of equations is “obvious” and “easy”. For some of us, solving a New York Times crossword is “obvious” and “easy”.
There’s something about that particular puzzle that you might have jived with, but there’s nothing easy or obvious about interpreting the phrase “petals around the rose” as the total number of pips around the central pip on dice with 5 or 3 showing.
It’s a stupid puzzle with no systematic method of solution, nor can I imagine what sort of special intuition would be involved in making the same interpretation of the key phrase as the author intended.
What might make it interesting would be if the words “petals” and “rose” actually conveyed some cryptic message that would point the solver towards the answer. As it stands, it just as easily could have been “how many frogs around the lilly pad?” or “how many kids around the table?”
If this puzzle is so obvious, how did you eliminate the possibility that the answer was the numbers on the die on either side of a die with a 1 showing?
What makes the real answer make any more sense than that?
Thank you Trunk. I agree that it’s not a matter of intelligence at all. Just a matter of how you look at things. For a while I was trying to come up with some sort of algorithm that would work. (i.e. only look at odds, and then subtract one from the largest odd number, or something) Then finally I stopped thinking about it so hard and then it seemed obvious.
Got it in one. beams happily
Trunk, with regards to your question:
the numbers on the die on either side of a die with a 1 showing?
Here’s how I did it:
[SPOILER]Basically, I looked at the phrase first. ‘Petals around the rose’. You were right in that it is arbitrary, and ‘frogs around the lilly pad’ would have worked the same. However, I disagree that is doesn’t point you in the right direction. I thought of it like this: OK, the author is looking for a [blank] around [another blank.] All I had to do was figure out the blanks. They key word is around. What is around something else?
I think it’s just a combination of luck and a way of thinking that makes the people who got it quickly immediatly think ‘oh, dots around the center dot.’ But yes, it could just as easily be the total dots around the center die when it is showing a 1, and had my first guess (which was the correct one) not worked, I would probablhy have tried that next. And if that was wrong, then I would have tried something else, but still keeping in mind that i was looking for something that was ‘around’ something else, not caring whether or not is actually is like a rose or petals, because for whatever reason I knew those words didn’t matter as much as ‘around.’
[/SPOILER]
I’m not saying anyone who takes a long time to figure it out is dumb, not at all, As it’s been said before, different people just think in different ways. For some people, the ‘obvious’ answer is to find a formula or algorithm, for others, the ‘obvious’ answer is something else.
>How often do we have to do Petals Around the Rose?
Um, until we get it right?
My apologies, I haven’t gotten into the habit of searching through old threads yet.
Thanks for posting this link. Now I feel like such an idiot that I am going to throw myself off a bridge. I read the clues and I don’t get it. I read the spoiler boxes and I still don’t get it. I worked on it for quite a while and only got it right once but I have no idea why it was correct. I guess I will just keep trying.
Damn you super-intelligent people. Freaks…all of you are freaks! (I do mean that as a compliment.)