so six equations would be the 5 dice euqalling the wrong number 6 times, and then trying to figure out what variable attached to each of those dice would result in the single answer?

Wow, and here I thought I was going to have another one of these puzzles I couldn't figure out. The rose is on the dice!

YES I FINALLY GOT IT HOLY CRAP STUPID CRAP CRAP HOLY CRAP I HATE THIS PUZZLE BUT I FINALLY SOLVED IT WHOOOOOOOOO!

Took a little less than two hours for me. Kept trying to come up with math formulas and stuff.

Big hint: Think of the significance of petals in comparison to the rose (as in, real life roses, not the dice). Picture each dice individually, not as part of a group.

Best way to solve it is to just keep rolling and checking the answer. Come up with the craziest/most simple theories that you can, check them to see if they are right, if they are not discard them.

*laugh* yeah. Forget about the x + y - z * a / b = ? kind of stuff. Don't bother keeping track of the results either. Hasn't got anything to do with the answer.

Well what is and isn't on the dice does have a lot to do with the answer, just not in the way you would first think. Keeping track helped me figure out the logic to it.

What was the most obscure theory you had? At one point I was thinking in terms of connecting the dots and making X and / and stuff and that each had a certain number of petals...this pointed me on the right track and I got the answer a few minutes afterwards .

NOTE TO PEOPLE WHO HAVE NOT SOLVED: Do NOT use the theory I just stated just cause I said it helped me get close. Different people will solve it differently cause our minds work differently and mine just happened to pick it up from that .

I was keeping a record of the rolls and results.

E.g. 5 3 1 4 1 = 6

Then
5 + 1 = 6
4 + 3 - 1 = 6
5 + 3 + 1 - 4 + 1 = 6
531 / 41 = ?
511 / 34 = ?
and so on.

Ive solved it the mathematical and non-mathematical way in about 15 seconds. Then I got bored so I dug around on the net about it and found this very interesting article about when Bill Gates got introduced to the game.

For those of you who REALLY want to test your lateral thinking skills, I suggest you hop on over to Puzzle Donkey. Go through the PuzzleDonkey 3 competition first, but do the past competitions as well because the guys behind it put some awesome work into making your brain bleed.

Maybe its because I do lots of logic puzzles and lateral thinking, but it was seriously the first possibility I tried.

I'm tired and thinking simple.. Got it in one go

I actually realised I kinda did get it in one go, I was just thinking on...a larger scale.

I can't get the first answer in any of them! Not even the one that seems to obviously be 'chess' !

*grin* That was fun, took me about 5 minutes or so. I had no idea what it was until I got a roll of 0 petals on the rose, and it just clicked. I had specifically been trying to think laterally too, adding up the first and last dice, or two of the middle ones, or the top row, or the bottom row. The fact that the answer was always even confused me as well, because I kept thinking it meant that the answer had to be multiplied by 2 at some point.

Hehe. I resigned myself to not thinking mathematically at all, since there was that quote about how "the smarter you are, the harder it is." Just thinking about the meaning of the name, it went pretty quickly.

I can give you help up to 1.13 (at the moment) of the current PD4, because I am stuck half-way through this one and can't work out the last couple of bits of it.

2 tries and I got it correct.

The problem is I don't know how I got it right. It still doesn't make sense to me.

I feel cheated. That does NOT look like a rose at all. But you have to pretend it does to get the answer. Blast it.

Meh, I got up to the 6th and got bored.

Means you haven't gotten it yet. Think harder

got it first time around