I have ten sets of very special dice. Each die is a standard six-sided cube, but instead of a number of dots on each side of the cube, a letter of the English alphabet appears. Each letter is separately identifiable, so I cannot confuse a N with a Z, or an H with an I, etc. Each set contains four different dice, and there are 24 different letters printed on the 24 sides within each set.
One day I sat down with my son, Loki, and asked him to record some of the words I could spell by randomly rolling the dice in each set. When I was done, he alphabetized each list and handed it back to me. These were the words he had listed for each set:
Set 1: JILT, JOIN, KING, LOKI, NINE, PILE, PISA, QUIT, RUIN, SHIP, SILK, TAXI
Set 2: BOWL, DAMN, DUMB, FOIL, FOXY, GAVE, GEMS, IRAQ, JAMB, JOTS, MENU, MICE, NOEL, PONY, RANK, YELP
Set 3: COPY, DASH, DOVE, FROM, GASP, HAUL, JADE, KNOX, MASK, PUNS, RITE, SIGH, TUBA, WAXY, WONK
Set 4: BILK, CODE, FLAX, GORE, HUMP, JEST, LOGS, MILD, PUNK, QUIZ, RANT, SAVE, TAZE, TRAY, VERB, WEAK
Set 5: BURN, CLOP, DIRT, FIND, FIVE, HAND, HELD, HOME, JOIN, JULY, QUIP, RIFT, SMUG, TAXI, THAW, TOGA
Set 6: BLOX, BOTH, CHOW, DRUG, FURL, GAMS, JOVE, JUNE, LOVE, MAXI, PUCK, QUAG, QUID, SOAK, TANK, WIPE, WOLF, ZINC
Set 7: BANG, BOXY, EACH, GLUB, IRON, JOKE, MILD, MOTH, NEWT, PAVE, QUIZ, ROCK, RUGS, TOFU, YARN, ZANY
Set 8: CITY, CLUB, DAZE, FOXY, GIFT, JOHN, JUMP, LAVA, MOBY, PAID, RAKE, SLAG, WINO, WIRY
Set 9:AXLE, BACH, BEGS, ELMO, EXIT, FIND, GRUB, JADE, MINK, OVAL, PLOW, POEM, RACY, SNOW, SOAP, TUBE
Set 10: ABUT, ACHY, BOTH, DUNG, FIST, GOLF, HILT, MARX, NAVY, PAWS, POUR, QUID, RASP, SLIM, WADE, ZONE
I looked over his listings and said “I don’t recall rolling some of these words, son.”
He replied with a grin “Yeah, in each set I added one extra word that specifically cannot be rolled with those dice.”
"But I was going to use this as the basis for a geocaching puzzle,” I said. “How can I do that now with bad data?”
“Don’t worry, Dad,” he said. “Geocachers are pretty smart. I’m sure they can figure out in each case what the extra word is. Heck, that might not even be necessary in some cases.”
That darn kid is always giving me trouble. I knew we shouldn’t have named him for the Norwegian god of Chaos.
Cache is located at: N AA BB.CCC W DD EE.FFF
This cache was featured on the GEOCACHING PUZZLE OF THE DAY BLOG on 4/10/15.
5/12/16-Added new Small Brown Bison tube. Look up. Added half-star to terrain rating.