4 December: Dice Day

One for all my gamer friends today - Dice Day and 10 things you may not know about dice.

1. The word dice comes from the Old French dé; and the Latin datum "something which is given or played".
2. The word dice is plural. If you have just one of them, the correct word is "die".
3. Dice have been around a long time. British archaeologist Leonard Woolley discovered dice in the Royal Cemetery at Ur with a board game known as the Royal Game of Ur. The ancient Egyptians played a dice game called Senet, which was probably a racing game of some kind.
4. It's thought that dice evolved from knuklebones, an ancient game of skill and method of fortune telling using the bones of hoofed animals.
5. Gaming isn't the only use dice have been put to. Divination using dice is called cleromancy.
6. Mention "dice" to most people and they think of a six sided cube with different numbers of dots (or pips) on each side. Dice don't have to be cubes. People who play role playing games will be familiar with four, eight, twelve and twenty sided dice. Just as on a six-sided dice, the numbers on opposite sides always add up to seven, opposite numbers on a ten, twelve or twenty sided dice will add up to nine, thirteen and twenty-one respectively. Four sided dice work slightly differently as they don't have a side facing upwards when thrown, so numbers will either be placed on the points or in the middles of the edges.
7. Any solid shape can be made into dice. Rarer examples are 24, 30, 48, 50 60, 100 and 120 sided dice, and even dice with an odd number of faces. There are even spherical dice. Often these are joke dice with just one pip on them, but there are specially weighted spheres which have the numbers one to six on them.
8. Dice are usually made by a plastic injection moulding process. The mould includes the indents for the pips. The dice are submerged in paint and then tumble polished so that all the paint comes off except for in the indents for the pips.
9. Dice don't always have numbers on them. Some games require dice to have other symbols on them, common ones being Playing card symbols on poker dice and letters for the game of Boggle. I've also seen them with colours, animals and worms. Wikipedia mentions dice with sexual positions depicted on them, but I don't play those sorts of games!
10. A loaded die is one that has been tampered with to increase the odds that a certain number will come up. Dice may be loaded with weights or by shaving off edges. Casinos take the precision of their dice very seriously - they all have serial numbers, so dice cannot be swapped, and they measure each dice with a micrometer before play.

What happens when superheroes get together for Christmas! My latest novel. Perfect if you want to lose yourself in a book after Christmas lunch!

A Very Variant Christmas

Last year, Jade and Gloria were embroiled in a bitter conflict to win back their throne and their ancestral home. This year, Queen Jade and Princess Gloria want to host the biggest and best Christmas party ever in their palace. They invite all their friends to come and bring guests. Not even the birth of Jade's heir just before Christmas will stop them.

The guest list includes most of Britain's complement of super-powered crime-fighters, their families and friends. What could possibly go wrong?

Gatecrashers, unexpected arrivals, exploding Christmas crackers and a kidnapping, for starters.

Far away in space, the Constellations, a cosmic peacekeeping force, have suffered a tragic loss. They need to recruit a new member to replace their dead colleague. The two top candidates are both at Jade and Gloria's party. The arrival of the recruitment delegation on Christmas Eve is a surprise for everyone; but their visit means one guest now faces a life-changing decision.

Meanwhile, an alliance of the enemies of various guests at the party has infiltrated the palace; they hide in the dungeon, plotting how best to get rid of the crime-fighters and the royal family once and for all. Problem is, they all have their own agendas and differences of opinion on how to achieve their aims.

Not to mention that this year, the ghosts who walk the corridors of the palace on Christmas Eve will be as surprised by the living as the living are by them.

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