History
These dice were discovered by George Sicherman of Buffalo, New York and were originally reported by Martin Gardner in a 1978 article in Scientific American.
The numbers can be arranged so that all pairs of numbers on opposing sides sum to equal numbers, 5 for the first and 9 for the second.
Later, in a letter to Sicherman, Gardner mentioned that a magician he knew had anticipated Sicherman's discovery. For generalizations of the Sicherman dice to more than two dice and noncubical dice, see Broline (1979), Gallian and Rusin (1979), Brunson and Swift (1997/1998), and Fowler and Swift (1999).
Read more about this topic: Sicherman Dice
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