Crap (game)

From Discworld & Terry Pratchett Wiki
Jump to navigation Jump to search

Mentioned in Mort, crap (singular) parodies Roundworld's dice game craps which has been around since at least Roman times, but is played with three eight-sided dice, not two six-sided dice.

In the game, the phrase Tuphal's Eyes means a three (a single pip on each die, the lowest possible number), parodying the Roundworld phrase snake eyes.

The most infamous Crap game on the Disc is that run by Cripple Wa in Ankh-Morpork.




Annotation

Crap in the singular gives a, shall we say, scatalogical nomenclature to the game.

Dice with variable numbers of sides are not unknown on Roundworld. For an equal distribution of chance factors - i.e. an equal chance of rolling any of the spread of numbers - a prerequisite is that the dice be a regular polyhedron, and the familiar cube is but one of a number of these. While the consensus dice over the eras have been cubes, other variations used in Dungeons and Dragons and other board games include the tetrahedron - four sides; the decahedron - ten sides; the icosahedron - twenty sides; and of course the octahedron - 7a sides. It is quite possible that Discworld gamblers have learnt the potential of the octahedral dice, and use this for preference.