Petals Around The Rose Spoiler

WARNING: The text and examples below provide hints for solving the PetalsAroundTheRose puzzle. For some people, the hints are so strong as to constitute a complete spoiler; it seems to depend on each individual's approach to puzzles or something.

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Moved from the PetalsAroundTheRose page: I couldn't think of a way to improve that page without giving away too much! -- dm

Here are some rolls:

        Roll #1:
                 ..... ..... ..... ..... ..... 
                 :o o: :   : :o o: :  o: :o o: 
                 :   : : o : :o o: : o : :o o: 
                 :o o: :   : :o o: :o  : :o o: 
                 :...: :...: :...: :...: :...: 
        Answer is 2 


        Roll #2: 
                 ..... ..... ..... ..... ..... 
                 :o o: :o o: :o o: :o o: :o o: 
                 : o : :o o: : o : :   : :   : 
                 :o o: :o o: :o o: :o o: :o o: 
                 :...: :...: :...: :...: :...: 
        Answer is 8 


        Roll #3: 
                 ..... ..... ..... ..... ..... 
                 :  o: :o o: :o o: :o o: :o o: 
                 : o : : o : : o : : o : :o o: 
                 :o  : :o o: :o o: :o o: :o o: 
                 :...: :...: :...: :...: :...: 
        Answer is 14

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For an amusing story about Bill Gates and others being introduced to the Petals Around the Rose puzzle in June 1977, you might like to check out http://www.borrett.id.au/computing/petals-bg.htm

Seen elsewhere as "Polar bears around the ice hole."

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I stared at the PetalsAroundTheRose page for many hours, and eventually "gave up" and checked here. I still have no frickin clue. Some spoiler! I guess this means I must be a super-genius. (At least that's what I'll tell myself)

• You may well be a super-genius, but do note that Bill Gates is not, as is well documented elsewhere, so I wouldn't decide based on comparing yourself to him, if I were you. :-)

Have you considered the clue that the answer is in the name?

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Figured it out after about 10 minutes. It's really quite a dumb gimmick, something like the puzzle equivalent of a really bad pun

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I'd like to record an interesting ALMOST right answer. The first even number below the sum of the odd numbers. The right answer is of course the sum of all the odd numbers minus the number of odd numbers.