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3, 7, and 100-sided die
Q: So I know there are 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, and 20-sided dice in Dungeons & Dragons, but are there any other-sided dice in existence? What are they used for? — Jay, San Diego, CA
The Oracle Speaks:
Sure!
There’s 3-sided dice that are mostly used for gaming (especially Dungeons & Dragons).
There’s 7-sized dice that can be used for backgammon.
There’s a 1-sided die (just a sphere) and a 100-sided die (again, used for D&D), but these are mostly just gags.
You could also say that a coin is a sort of 2-sided dice.
Here’s a company that sells a collection of oddly-shaped die: D3, D5, D7, D30, and D100 (left).
Q: So after the release of Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief, there was the expectation that they would greenlight the sequel, The Sea of Monsters. But they didn’t. Have they yet? — MAGPIE, Toronto Canada
The Oracle Speaks:
Not that I can tell. If they’re working on the project, they’re keeping it very, very quiet. But when a movie studio declines to greenlight something, rarely do they come out and announce, “We’re done with this! Screw the sequel!” Keep in mind that they still have a DVD to promote, and they want fans to be as excited and enthusiastic as possible. And the talent has no motivation to announce the bad news either, because they’re usually hoping against hope that the studio might change its mind.
Speaking of which, if 20th Century Fox is still on the fence about the sequel, it might be because they want to take a look at the DVD sales before they actually commit. It’s happened before: the 1999 crime thriller The Boondocks Saints played in only five theaters for one week — but went onto to gross $50 million in video sales, something that eventually resulted in a 2009 sequel.
(It’s a little different in the case of this movie, however, because the stars are teenagers and are rapidly growing up.)
But if the Percy Jackson franchise really is dead (as I suspect it is), it doesn’t surprise me too much. The movie was something of a disappointment, grossing only $226 million world-wide on a budget of almost $100 million (keep in mind that the studio splits the gross with theater-owners, and they had to spend at least another $50 million to promote the film).
My opinion of the movie? Rather than film the book as it was, they tried to turn it into another Harry Potter. They almost completely eliminated the humor, which is by far the best thing about the book (and the only thing that keeps it from reading like, well, warmed-over Harry Potter).
I think they had their shot, and they blew it — which also doesn’t surprise me as I think two of the Harry Potter movies Percy Jackson director Chris Columbus directed (Sorcerer’s Stone and Chamber of Secrets) are by far the worst in that series.
Q: How is mead different from wine and ale different from beer? — Manny, Orlando, FL
A: Ale is probably closer to what you think of as beer than mead is to wine. Ale is made from barley (like most beer), but without the addition of hops, which are the female flower clusters of a type of plant; hops adds bitterness to beer. Ale is usually bittered instead with certain herbs.
Lightly-alcoholed ale was drunk widely in the ancient world in place of water, as it had natural preservatives; to actually get drunk, stronger ales were used.
Mead, on the other hand, is made from fermented honey, water, and yeast, and is even sometimes flavored with hops.
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