What do pitch, roll and yaw mean in dice control?

Dear Frank:

In the Golden Touch Dice Control Revolution! book, I am having difficulties understanding the section on "Primary and Secondary Hits" on pages 55 to 59. I don't understand:

1. what a "quarter pitch yawl" is
2. "roll plus or minus from the original set"
3. and basically not understanding the logic of the entire procedure

I would greatly appreciate it if you would please reply.

Yours truly,
MB

Dear MB:

I am going to have one of Golden Touch Dice Control instructors, Skinny, answer your question:

Dear MB:

Thank you for your excellent question.

You are reading the most advanced book on controlled shooting that exists. It does assume a certain knowledge that can be garnered from some of the other books mentioned on pages 10 and 11.

To explain the answer to your question I need to define the terms pitch, roll and yaw. I notice there is a typo on page 56 of the book where it appears as "yawl" instead of yaw. Yaw is the proper term. I am using these terms related to the motion of dice in the same manner as they are used in relation to airplanes. Rotation about horizontal axes is called pitch or roll depending on the horizontal axis where the rotation occurs. Rotation about the vertical axis is called yaw.

When a plane climbs or descends so that its nose is higher or lower than its tail that would be considered a pitch. If it were to rotate about its fuselage where one wing goes upward while the other wing banks downward that is called a roll. I suspect you have heard the term barrel roll when an airplane rotates a full 360 degrees about its fuselage? Finally if it were to rotate about the vertical axis, similar to a car spinning around on ice, doing a 360 on ice, that would be called yaw.

When trying to control the dice, we want to eliminate roll and yaw of the dice completely. We only want them to pitch together in unison in the air and land together in unison on the same faces that we set them with originally. For example, if I set the hardways set, completely eliminate roll and yaw and have the dice land on the same faces that I set them with originally, it will be one of the hardway sets showing on the top faces when the dice come to a halt. As the dice rotate pitching forward in unison there will only be hardway sets showing on the top of the dice. When they come to land there will be a hardway on the top faces.

Now if one die has more energy than the other die, it is possible it will continue to rotate forward (pitch) one more time after the other die comes to rest. If it pitches one extra face, that is called either a quarter pitch or single pitch. It is called a quarter pitch because it has rotated an extra one-quarter turn in a pitch motion. If it pitches forward 2 times more so that the bottom face ends up on top, that is a double pitch.

If one die rotated an extra quarter turn about its vertical axis that would be called a quarter yaw. Finally if one die rotates an extra quarter turn clockwise (to the right) or counter-clockwise (left) about its fuselage (remember the airplane) that would be a quarter roll.

Without the typos the phrase on page 56 should read, "A secondary hit is when one die or both dice land on one of the other sides of the dice a quarter pitch, yaw or roll plus or minus from the original set." In other words one die rotates an extra one-quarter turn from the original set in a pitch, yaw or roll rotation. Plus or minus just refers to the direction of the movement. Forward or backward (pitch), clockwise or counter-clockwise around the fuselage (roll) or clockwise or counter-clockwise around the vertical axis (yaw) would be what plus or minus refers to.

I hope this answers your questions and explains the technical jargon in the book. If not you may need to refer to some of the other books I mentioned before where they go into more detail with pictures and illustrations.