How did dice get numbers on them?

Answer 1

It happened after dice had been used in game playing for almost 3,000 years. Sometime around

that epoch, or close to it, the dice manufacturers, at their annual convention, had to face the

situation that they had all ignored and repressed for all those centuries ... the game was just

not popular any more, and their sales of dice ... never a market leader ... were now totally sinking

through the floor. I mean they were all taking the pipe. Where originally there had been a dice

manufacturer for every two or three caves, now there were whole cities without a single one.

In spite of repeated government stimulus, bailout, welfare, and designation as historic structures,

these factories had steadily closed in droves throughout the length and breadth of recorded

human history, and they continued to do so. It wasn't only a matter of financial survival either ...

if you could see the kind of mindless drivel that had replaced the game of dice, you'd understand

that it was just as much a matter of honor, of manhood, of self-esteem. Wherever you looked,

whole families were turning away from their dice, getting more excitement and tittilation out of

burying stones, chewing their toenails, and throwing apples in the river. A pall hung over

that year's dice manufacturers' convention, like a pall. They knew that someone had to do

something in a hurry, or this convention would be their last; next year at convention time,

they'd have to spend the week at the office, or ... even worse ... stay home.

It was against this backdrop of seeming hopelessness that Murray ... a newcomer to the industry ...

mounted his campaign for the presidency of the dice manufacturers' trade association, there at the

annual convention. It didn't take much for Murray to run away with the election. He had the vote

locked up the first time he took the podium, and pointed out to everyone that even though there was

still plenty of crap, they weren't even doing it with dice at their own convention ! Murray's solution

to the whole problem was a simple one, as some of the best and most revolutionary ideas in history

have often been. Instead of the classic six-sided, symmetrical, featureless, polished cubes that

they had been manufacturing and peddling for centuries, Murray explained how a total, cataclysmic

turnaround in the dice market would follow a simple modification to the product ... assigning a

number from 1 to 6 to each face, and carving the corresponding number of shallow depressions

into the face.

My tale has already exceeded any amount of the dear reader's time and attention that I could

reasonably have requested, and so it must end without further details. It remains only to mention

that Murray obviously had it right. Dice became what they is today. The game, the game piece, and

the production lines that continue to bring it to us, were all revived. And if there remain any who

would doubt the value of Murray's contribution to the modern game, they need only consider how it

might be different if dice still had no spots. See what I mean ?