2008/7/23 Samuel Klein meta.sj@gmail.com:
This would also be great. Note that a question harder than "what goes on the back?" is "what do the top and bottom of the sphere look like?", which is a question to work out with a talented spherical-puzzle designer. (for the top, it would be nice to have an estimate of the # of unfinished pieces, or a tentative design, but since the original point was to indicate the unfinished nature of the projects, a true 3D model would also be unfinished)
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Wikipedia-logo.png
Um, let's see. There's a completed central belt of four tiles by three rows - this is presumably mirrored on the back, so twelve.
On the lower part, I make one blank row of four, mirrored on the other side, total eight. There is a row below this we can only just see, which is more obvious on the top side - again, eight, somewhat distorted. (Remember, the globe is tilted towards us, so we don't see the south pole clearly)
At the very bottom, we could just have one (circular) tile with eight segments on the rim. Alternately, two D-shaped pieces (half-octagons), or four very small ones.
The top is easier because it's unfinished, so we can just shade the blank bits a neutral grey on our sphere (or leave them out, or make them translucent). I make it maybe two blanks - though a row of four might be better - to continue the line with Japanese on it, and nothing above.
Total, leaving aside the caps, thirty or so. Forty if we fill in the missing tiles. Can we rustle up thirty more visually different characters? I'm sure we can... anyone have a handy list of what writing systems we've used so far?
For the cap, well, a single odd piece would be nice. Something based on the WMF logo, perhaps, or a real oddball like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:ICS_Whiskey.svg (though "V" might be an even more appropriate one, given the standard meaning - "I require assistance"...)