This week's RPN is even geekier than usual.  This week let's you simulate the dice puzzle 'twixt Oppenheimer and Einstein John Tierney proposed for the NY Times science blog.

The puzzle essentially states that Oppenheimer is given three blank dice, and has to fill them in with the numbers 1 through 18, using each number once.  Einstein then examines the dice and chooses one to play with.  Of the remaining two, Oppenheimer picks one and they go to dice battle.  Whoever rolls the highest number wins.

We simulate it at Oppenheinstein.

The question Tierney proposes is who has the advantage?  My hunch is that it's Oppenheimer, but I haven't get gotten a chance to prove it.  I note that it's fairly straightforward for Oppenheimer to construct three dice that are evenly matched, which gives nobody the advantage:

1-6-7-12-13-18
2-5-8-11-14-17
3-4-9-10-15-16

My guess is there's a way to dot the dice so that each die has have an advantage against one die but a disadvantage against another die.  This way, any die Einstein selects, Oppenheimer simply selects the die that can beat it.  Of course, having to do "real work" keeps me from spending any more than the hour it took us to build out the simulator.