Dice

Dice (singular die or dice; from Old French dé; from Latin datum "something which is given or played") are small throwable objects with multiple resting positions, used for generating random numbers. Dice are suitable as gambling devices for games like craps and are also used in non-gambling tabletop games.

A traditional die is a cube, with each of its six faces showing a different number of dots (pips) from 1 to 6. When thrown or rolled, the die comes to rest showing on its upper surface a random integer from one to six, each value being equally likely. A variety of similar devices are also described as dice; such specialized dice may have polyhedral or irregular shapes and may have faces marked with symbols instead of numbers. They may be used to produce results other than one through six. Loaded and crooked dice are designed to favor some results over others for purposes of cheating or amusement.

A dice tray, a tray used to contain thrown dice, is sometimes used for gambling or board games, in particular to allow dice throws which do not interfere with other game pieces.

Dice likely originated in the ancient Middle East. One of the oldest known dice games was excavated from a Mesopotamian tomb, dating to the 24th century BC. British archaeologist Leonard Woolley discovered the dice in the Royal Cemetery at Ur with a board game known as the Royal Game of Ur. Two types of dice, stick dice and tetrahedral dice (dice with four triangular surfaces), were found with the board game. Unlike modern dice, the numbers on the opposite sides of Mesopotamian dice were consecutive numbers rather than numbers that add up to seven.

The Egyptian game of Senet was played with dice. Senet was played before 3000 BC and up to the 2nd century AD. It was likely a racing game, but there is no scholarly consensus on the rules of Senet. Dicing is mentioned as an Indian game in the Rigveda, Atharvaveda and the early Buddhist games list. There are several biblical references to "casting lots", as in Psalm 22, indicating that dicing (or a related activity) was commonplace when the psalm was composed. It is theorized that dice developed from the practice of fortunetelling with the talus of hoofed animals, colloquially known as "knucklebones", but knucklebones is not the oldest divination technique that incorporates randomness. Knucklebones was a game of skill played by women and children; a derivative form had the four sides of the bone receive different values and count as modern dice.

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