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Puzzle time

How many petals around the rose?

I figured it out in under a minute (my first guess was half right, three subsequent rolls allowed me to fine tune and confirm the answer).

If you know the answer, please don’t spoil the fun for others. Let ‘em figure it out for themselves. ;)

Related: Bill Gates and Petals Around the Rose at a 1977 computer conference. Memorizing dice rolls. Fascinating.

(via MeFi)

Posted in Games. Tagged with , , , , . See also: Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika |Propaganda |Freeline Skates: Because There Aren’t Enough Ways to Kill Yourself Already |Eugenics wars |Cartoon Skeletons .

By Michael Hanscom
June 4, 2004

10 comments

10 Responses

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  1. Johan Svensson said
    on June 4, 2004

    I did solve it in a couple of minutes. Once I stopped staring at the dice and thought about the name of the puzzle it was easy.

  2. Tim Who? said
    on June 5, 2004

    “Dr. Duke would always explain that the smarter you were, the longer it took to figure it out.” Well if that’s true? I must be smart.

    I won’t say how long it took, but it was a looooong time. Damm you Michael….Damm you. I had real work I needed to do this morning!

  3. Neil said
    on June 5, 2004

    About 8 rolls for me.

  4. GodOfBiscuits said
    on June 5, 2004

    It’s SOOOO typical of billg. brute force instead of elegance.

  5. Ryan Waddell said
    on June 7, 2004

    It took me FOREVER to figure this one out, so I must be super intelligent.

  6. ChristianWDP said
    on June 7, 2004

    It was pure luck I was able to figure it out. Due to a lucky roll on the fourth try should helped to do a process of elimination. Still to early in the morning for puzzles.

  7. Prairie said
    on June 7, 2004

    I got it! I got it! It only took me three days, and I thought I’d never get it, but I got it! This is very much proof of what I’ve often said—my brain just does NOT function well in visual/spatial/mathematical sorts of situaitons. Though you’d think I’d have done better thinking about the wording of the title—I’m on friendly terms with words. Faced with the numbers on the dice, my brain just shut down, I guess. It was going back and thinking about the title that finally worked for me.

  8. Raef said
    on July 3, 2004

    There are two (2) possible answers for that puzzle,

    1) Use your imagination… “The name of the game is Petals Around the Rose.The name is Important.”

    and;

    2) Use SIMPLE mathematics… [addition and subtraction]

Continuing the Discussion

  1. Just Like a Dream linked to this post on June 4, 2004

    Evil!

    Once again, Michael has just proven he is evil. Petals Around the Rose is maddening. I didn’t get it and had to beg someone to give me the solution. Once he did, I felt much better. Unfortunately, I shared the…

  2. Your Local Goddess linked to this post on August 5, 2004

    Petals Around the Rose

    The Petals Around the Rose problem was working its way through blogs a while ago. By this time, I had…

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