hist-games: "Seven-sided Backgammon" reconstruction now up

[Chas]

SEDWilkins at aol.com wrote:
> 
> In a message dated 5/3/2002 10:28:40 AM Eastern Daylight Time, Jim wrote:
> 
> >
> >   As for his 7-side die, I gave it a thousand rolls and it
> >  gave reasonable results.  He said that that had been his design
> >  method - cut a length of a pentagonal prism, roll it for a while,
> >  and adjust the length depending on whether "end" or "side" was
> >  too common.
> 
> Hmm. I think I'm picturing something else.
> 
> The 7-sided die in the Alphonse ms. for the "Zodiac" game appears to be long
> and narrow--I don't think the "ends" are in play at all. Whichever side comes
> up determines which ring the player moves in.
> 
> Unless, of course, I missed the point at the beginning of the discussion . . .
> 

On another page of the MS http://games.rengeekcentral.com/F84V.html (I
just fixed the broken link the image wasn't displayed for a while) there
appears that there may have been two forms of 7-siders 
a "log" or stave die with seven sides and what looks like pointed ends,
A short pentagonal version that had two 5-sided faces and and 5
rectangular faces.

Anyone have a translation of the text on preceeding, or following pages
for a discription of that illustration?

Chas
--
MacGregor Games
http://www.historicgames.com