IT REQUIRES PREPARATION, experience and specialised equipment to traverse the Cairngorms in winter. One thing it doesn’t require is a 120-sided die. This probably doesn’t surprise you. Nor, in all likelihood, the die’s creators, who have admitted that when it comes to marketing this mathematical curio, “there’s no real use for it”. But the D120 (or ‘disdyakis triacontahedron’ to give it its technical name) remains a strange and wondrous thing, even amongst other dice. Unlike the colourful six-sided cubes we’ve all known since childhood, the star-like elegance of the lesser-seen D8, or even the meaty charms of the Dungeons & Dragons staple D20, the D120 took a team of mathematicians to design it. And even they required a lot of computing power and the sifting of literally a quintillion choices (that’s one with 18 zeros after it) to arrange its sides into a ‘fair’ configuration as likely to land on one number as another. That said, I’m not suggesting you should take it in your rucksack at the expense of your axe, crampons or down jacket. That would be silly.
What I am suggesting is that this unlikely lump of plastic can, in its own way, highlight the magnificence of the Cairngorms National Park. Firstly, they are physically similar. The
