While playing Scrabble with my sister I noticed a Magic 8-Ball (the toy that is filled with liquid and an indicator that says things like “Reply Hazy - Try Again”) on a nearby shelf of her living room. I suggested that we settle all word challenges using the 8-ball instead of the dictionary as a good-natured alternative. After the game I began to wonder how many replies there were and what the shape of the indicator was. I had recorded thirteen different answers when My sister called from the computer in the other room “Twenty.” She found a site on the internet which explains the innards and lists all of the replies.
One day I was bored and began to wonder if I could replicate the icosahedron indicator inside the ball. I drew a pattern of triangles on a sheet of paper. Then I began to record the replies in their correct orientation. I quickly became adept at positioning the triangle on an apex and flipping to an adjacent facet. Soon I had all twenty replies. Then I simply cut out the connected triangles, folded along the lines and bent them together. Et voila, I held in my hand a near perfect reconstruction of the mysterious oracle of the 8-ball.
(My sister, incidentally, sent the question to the Straight Dope as to the origin of the 8-ball. I think there is even one on Dick Van Dyke’s desk in the writer’s office of the old Dick Van Dyke show.)
Has anyone else done something so completely inconsequential yet gotten so much personal satisfaction out of the act?
I believe that we had a similar thread on this a little while ago. Anyway go here http://8ball.ofb.net/procedure.html
and all your questions should be answered.
And remember that Magic 8 Ball™ is a registered trademark of Tyco Toys, Inc. , etc…
Haven’t you people ever played (or seen people play) Dungeons & Dragons? The icosahedron inside a Magic 8-Ball is only slightly larger than an ordinary 20-sided die.
(There’s a Magic 8-Ball on a manager’s desk right now … which tells you something about how my workplace sets its corporate strategy.)
Some comic, perhaps George Carlin, spoke of a guy who took apart a Magic 8-Ball and drank the liquid. He sat in a corner for a week, saying, “Better not tell you now.”
