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I once saw dice with a "cylindrical" shape, and numbers printed on the sides. The friend who had them called them "clippide", although a google search returns nothing. What is the real, official name of such dice ?

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From the wikipedia article on dice.

The full geometric set of "uniform fair dice" (face-transitive) are:

  • Platonic solids, the five regular polyhedra: 4, 6, 8, 12, 20 sides
  • Catalan solids, the duals of the 13 Archimedean solids: 12, 24, 30, 48, 60, 120 sides
  • Bipyramids, the duals of the infinite set of prism, with triangle faces: any even number above 4
  • Trapezohedrons, the duals of the infinite set of antiprisms, with kite faces: any even number above 4
  • Disphenoids, an infinite set of tetrahedra made from congruent non-regular triangles: 4 sides
  • "Rolling-pin style dice" (also called "rolling logs") are the only way to make dice with an odd number of flat faces. They are based on an infinite set of prisms. All the (rectangular) faces they may actually land on are congruent, so they are equally fair. (The other 2 sides of the prism are rounded or capped with a pyramid, designed so that the dice never actually rests on those faces.)

I believe you are talking about a rolling log/rolling pin style dice.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ I've also heard them called "log dice" as in tree trunks. \$\endgroup\$
    – MrHen
    Sep 3, 2010 at 18:47

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