Member Avatar for G-Do

Hi all,

I added a new script to the code snippets page. This time, it's a logic puzzle called "Petals Around the Rose." The goal is for you to infer what algorithm is being used to "score" rolls of five colored dice without peeking at the code. The snippet is implemented using Tkinter, so it's a little on the longish side.

You can find the script here.

I hope you like it!

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by jrcagle

Dani AI

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Nice, compact Tkinter demo from and a good classroom fit as noted. The puzzle's scoring is simple once you see the rule: only 3s and 5s contribute, because the "rose" is the center pip and the "petals" are the surrounding pips — a 3 has 2 petals, a 5 has 4. That gives the per-die mapping 1->0, 2->0, 3->2, 4->0, 5->4, 6->0, and the roll score is just the sum of those values.

A concise Python helper to compute the score:

def petals(roll):
    # roll: iterable of integers 1..6
    return sum({3: 2, 5: 4}.get(face, 0) for face in roll)

# quick checks
assert petals([3,3,5,1,2]) == 2+2+4
assert petals([1,1,1,1,1]) == 0

Practical notes for anyone running or adapting the Tkinter script years later: update module names for Python 3 (Tkinter -> tkinter, tkMessageBox -> tkinter.messagebox), convert print statements to functions, and replace xrange with range if present. If the GUI window does not appear, run the script from a terminal to catch tracebacks, ensure the mainloop is called (root.mainloop()), and avoid time.sleep() in the GUI thread — use root.after() for delays.

Ideas to extend the snippet: add a "reveal" mode that progressively explains the rule, a reproducible seed option for classroom demos, keyboard shortcuts for rolling, and unit tests for the scoring function so behavior stays fixed during refactors. For clarity and reuse, isolate the scoring logic into a small module and keep the Tkinter code only for UI.

Member Avatar for jrcagle

Great game. I've used it with my math students once upon a time.

Rumor has it that Bill Gates took a while to figure it out. :)

Jeff

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