H04033 APRIL 2004 NOTES AND QUERIES 4/26/04 HARDY FORUM ARCHIVE

FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD LINKS

CRAPS AND THE REDDLEMAN QUERY

From: gary.alderson@btinternet.com

Subject: The Madding Crowd

Date: April 26, 2004 3:13:39 PM PDT

Regarding "The Madding Crowd", you can find some links, and also a whole load of other things, at the attached website of the West Gallery Music Association.

http://www.wgma.org.uk/

I have sympathy for the quires of Hardy's novels, being the leader of a church music group myself. The musical style may be totally different (we tend towards rock music) but having worship music that is representative of the combined musical tastes of the congregation is as relevant today as when William Dewey was leading the quire.

regards

Gary Alderson

From: jgould@andover.edu

Subject: Craps and the Reddleman

Date: April 27, 2004 7:49:47 PM PDT

One of the joys of teaching tenth graders is that they ask wonderful, literal questions. We are now reading RETURN OF THE NATIVE, and several of them got very interested in Wildeve and Diggory Venn's dice game in Book III, Chapter 8. In looking carefully at the scores, they noticed that (1) there seem to be 3 dice (hand-carved, apparently); (2) the lowest score of a single cast seemed to be 3; (3) one score was 27, with three different numbers; and (4) a single cast can total over fifty! Doubles and triples are possible results.

How can all this be? Three six-sided dice can total only 18. One student concluded that each die must have 10 or 12 faces; it seems to me that each must have 20! Surely no one was whittling 20-sided dice (which I've seen only because I have a son who used to play Dungeons and Dragons). Does anyone know anything about Dorset dice, or the rules for Egdon craps in 1840?

John Gould