Thank you, speedfreek, for your references. The article cited in the following is from one of them.

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"We use optimal filtering and the combination statistic to rule out the infamous 'soccer ball universe
model'"

This statement is quoted directly from the last sentence in the abstract for the article entitled "Extending the WMAP Bound on the Size of the Universe" by Joey Shapiro Key, Neil J. Cornish, David N. Spergel, and Glenn D. Starkman, submitted in Apr 2006, downloadable from http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0604616).

Until this article is withdrawn by the authors or its substance refuted by other articles, I'd think it should stop speculation about the Universe's having the geometry of a dodecahedron with opposite faces "glued" in the topological sense, which had impressed me from the first time I heard of it as too improbable to be taken seriously. I see the possibility of Universe's having the geometry of either a 3-torus or Dr. Gay's doughnut as equally improbable. I'm not at all convinced that the Universe has the geometry of a four-dimensional hypersphere either, but I've tried unsuccessfully to find any plausible argument for rejecting it and find that it seems to readily provide plausible answers to every question I've been able to come up with..

If anyone can provide a plausible argument against the four-dimensional hypersphere Universe, I'd like to be told of it. It envisages the Universe as having originated at a point or at least within an extremely small three-dimensional volume at the center of a four-dimensional hypersphere the three-dimensional "surface" of which is the curved and finite expanding three-dimensional Universe that we seem to find ourselves in.

I feel that people are too quick to jump on the infinite flat Universe model that people have read into the WMAP data. As I see it, WMAP has thus far found the Universe so nearly flat as to be unable to detect any curvature, allowing people to jump to the unwarranted conclusion that the Universe is precisely flat and infinite.

I'd like to consider any plausible models for which others would argue.