A Problem Squared - 024 = Pumpkin Bores and Bumps 'n' Doors

Episode Date: October 31, 2021

APS 024 is out now!  And it's a spooky October edition! In this episode... * What's the largest hole that can be carved in a pumpkin without the pumpkin collapsing?    * How do you stop noisy ghosts rattling doors when you're trying to sleep?   * And, Cupboard of Nupboard: The people have spoken!

Hello and welcome to A Problem Squared, a podcast dedicated to solving some of your problems. That's right, if there's something strange in your neighbourhood, who are you going to call? Ghostbusters, obviously. But if you're finding range or the nth route, who are you going to call? Still not us because we don't have a phone line. However, we do have a website where you can enter your details and we might address your problem within six to 12 months. I'm your host, Bec Hill,

also known as the gatekeeper when I go walking due to my impressive stride. And I'm joined by your other host, Matt Parker, also known as the Keymaster for his obsession with typing out words that have the least amount of distance between the letters. I'll accept that. There you go. Wow. Gate. Good. Like that. Initially, it was going to be that if we were in Ghostbusters, that you would be the Peter Venkman to my Slimer. I also would have accepted Gate Master,

like in terms of like logic gates. But what, then I would be the Key Master? Come on now, Matt. I don't know. No one's going to believe that. Yeah, that's a good point. I will take Key Master. You could be Zool.

Yeah, for my typing. You could be Zool. There is only Zool. So there you are. I mean, Keymaster. You could be Zool. Yeah, for my typing. You could be Zool. There is only Zool. So there you are. I mean, great intro. Also, like, you managed to slip in a disclaimer with the six to 12 month window around responding to people's problems,

which I think is still mildly optimistic. I think it's more in the window of zero to 24 months. I would say we might respond to it and just not even give a... just not give a promise anything. I think this episode, episode 024, are we both responding to problems that have come in like quite recently? I feel like they're both very recently submitted problems. Yes, these ones are recent because this episode comes out on Halloween. Hello everyone who's listening to the episode on the day of release and if not, just imagine that it's Halloween. I'd put out a

specific request for any spooky problems that we could try and solve. And we're tackling one each. In fact, in this episode, I'm looking into the biggest hole you can make in a pumpkin. I'll be helping someone with some pesky poltergeists. And we have the results from the cupboard or nuppet survey. Let's get started. What have you been up to since we last spoke?

Oh, my goodness. I went to Leeds. That's probably my big, big outing. Oh, did you have some hot Leeds? I did have some hot Leeds. I was following up on some Leeds because your friend and mine, Seb Lee Delisle, was doing a laser installation in Leeds. Oh, nice. in leeds in my diary i had seb leads delisle uh like the name of name of the trip which i found deeply entertaining yeah so seb was installing lasers to project lightning effects onto a

building he had like nine outrageously powerful lasers which combined with the equivalent of 400,000 laser pointers. So for people who are into, like a normal laser pointer is like milliwatts of power. So it's like 0.005 watts or something. Whereas the ones Seb had, the lowest power ones were 11 watts going up to 30 watts. That's a lot of watts. So I went up there to film a video about some of the programming involved in controlling these lasers. were 11 watts going up to 30 watts. That's a lot of watts. So I went up there to film a video about some of the programming involved in controlling these lasers.

And while I was at it, I realized there's a new hands-on math exploratorium that's just opened in Leeds called Math City. And I was very excited. So I went to Math City. They gave me free entry. That's what being a math celebrity gets you. Free entry. That's why they call me the Math City Keymaster. They do. So I went and played with all

their stuff. It's great. I made a bubble big enough for me to be inside. So I have now been inside a bubble. That's a big bubble. You're not a small person. Not a small person. Takes a big bubble to encase this guy. So that was a lot of fun. And I went to Leeds train station that recently opened their platform zero. Yes. I didn't realize this until I was in Leeds. I went, wait a minute, is this the, cause last year, and you know, because you because you were integral to this process. Yeah, I would say that. I visited every train station with a platform zero in the United Kingdom, of which there were eight. They're a lot of fun.

And a new one opened in Leeds. So I went there as tradition dictates. I stood on it and I took a photo of me pointing at the zero on the sign. I saw on Twitter that someone spotted, someone was like, I think I just walked past Matt, stand up, Matt. They saw me lurking about. You can say hello in post. Yeah, hello to that person.

For the record, people, you're all always very welcome to come up and say hello. I've been around you when people have been nervous to talk. You're not intimidating at all. You're lovely. Yeah. As you know, I'm a deeply unpleasant person normally, but I'm obviously able to... That's why I always try and hang around you when you're near fans. As soon as we're away from them, you're awful to me.

Yeah, exactly. But how have you been, Bec? Have you been to Leeds? Oh, a while back. I liked it. I'd happily go again. So what have you been doing not in Leeds? Well, since I last saw you, I had the book launch for Horror Heights. Oh yes. I couldn't make it. I'm very sorry. Right lie, Matt. Hugely disappointed. Was very much looking forward to seeing you on soft play equipment designed for children. I held my book launch party at a events place in North London,on which had a little arcade like video games ball and

video games and a like a punching machine one of those punch bag machines not a machine that punches and oh what was that oh sorry that's the punching machine buy my book uh i set up a slime station so people can make their own slime. And then there was this three-story soft play area with like four or five massive slides in it. We had like a photo booth and stuff. It was great. You know I would have thrown myself into that. Yeah, we did like hide and seek

and tag, that kind of stuff. It was real fun. It was nice. And then I had such a fun time that I was like, I must find out if there's more places like this in London. And I did. I found there was a place in East Croydon.

They had bumper cars and laser tag. That was good. So I thoroughly recommend it. You've discovered a new hobby. Yeah. Play spaces. As a hobby and being safe, I would like to do more of that. More soft play areas, please. More slides. There are probably loads

of these places around the Earth. So any listeners who know an adult appropriate soft play location, let us know. We'll make a list and then as we travel around the planet we will endeavor to drop by. Yeah! And review. harshly review, whatever your local city has to offer in terms of adult soft play locations. So I have a list of geometrically interesting

children's playgrounds that people have sent me. If I ever go somewhere in the world, I just search for the name of that city on my computer. But these, I mean, the problem here is these are just kids' playgrounds. So I then have to go and find them as an adult. I've got to wait until there's no kids using the children's playground so I can then document the geometry. See, but if you're with me, you'll get away with it. You'll be fine.

That's true. Everyone will be like, oh, he's a good dad. Who's that deeply unpleasant guy and his and his daughter the very large child our first problem comes from eric vh via twitter who says what is the largest single hole relative to the size of the pumpkin one can carve out of a pumpkin without the pumpkin collapsing? How should one cut said hole? Great, great question.

That's for you, Matt. Great problem. I don't know why this is a problem. Eric, maybe there's a competition in the household who can make the biggest hole in their pumpkin. And Eric's like, I know just the crack team of problem solvers to help me with this but i saw that and i was like oh this is amazing because i already know there is an area of mathematics that i've previously looked into and i think is very interesting about how big a hole you can put in a thing and i suspected the answer was that you can put a hole in a pumpkin that is bigger than the pumpkin.

And I've now done it. I've confirmed it. You can put a hole in a pumpkin that is bigger than the pumpkin. It feels like this. This feels like something you would sell in a shop. Like it feels like an emperor's new clothes thing where it's at. You just like, and here it is. And you hold up your hand and there's nothing in your hand.

Exactly. Yeah, no, no, no, no. And it's not. So there's another challenge, which is can you cut a hole in a postcard big enough to climb through? And the answer to that is yes, you can because you cut it in such a way that it Constantinas out and then you can fit through it. This is not that.

It does not involve rearranging or stretching or altering the pumpkin. You can make a hole in a pumpkin big enough that you could then fit that pumpkin through the hole. Through itself. Through itself. Absolutely. Like an auroribus? Is that what it's called? Like a pumpkin eating its own tail.

Yeah. And I knew about this because there's a thing called Prince Rupert's Cube. Is that a piercing? No. Could you have a piercing bigger? Huh. No. So, a Prince Rupert's Cube.

Very different. No. So a Prince Rupert's cube, very different. This was an idea in the 1600s of, can you make a hole in a cube big enough to fit that cube through? And the answer it turns out is yes. And the reason why it works and the reason why everyone's like, well, hang on, how can you have a hole bigger than the thing in the thing? And it's because the size of something changes depending on the way that you hold it up. So actually I've got, Oh, I've got a Rubik's cube here. Okay. So, so if I'm holding this Rubik's cube up so Beck can see it and I've got it face first. So you're looking straight at it and all you're seeing is a square because it's exactly face on towards you. If I was to rotate it to the side a bit like it's a rectangle now oh this is like

that viral tiktok video where the guy keeps putting things through the square hole like a round peg through the square hole and like then uh and then like like a triangle through the triangle yeah i saw that watching it it's captioned like software developers watching users use their products is the context I saw that shared in. And it's so good because all those shapes, somewhere in them have a square cross section or something smaller than that square as a cross section, which means they all fit through that hole. It's exactly the same with this. If I was to cut the cube diagonally down the top here, I'd expose a big rectangular face because that's the cross section there. So if I wanted to put this cube through a hole, the smallest hole probably I could fit it through is a square this size,

and I could slot it through that way. Whereas it'd be a bit bigger if I tried to do it this way, it wouldn't fit. And I can actually put it diagonal first. So if I hold it that way, if you look at a cube. It's a hexagon. It's a hexagon. Yeah. It's exactly a hexagon if you look dead onto one of the corners. And the great thing about that hexagon is that hexagon is bigger than that square.

So I could actually, if I held the cube this way, I could cut a square shaped hole right through it this way. And it would be big enough for the same cube to fit through on this orientation. Right. So what I'm saying is the smallest cross section of a cube is smaller than the biggest cross section of a cube. And so it means you can cut a hole through the biggest cross section that would fit the

smallest cross section. Oh, Matt, we're going to get photos of your Rubik's cube held at those different angles. We'll pop them onto Instagram and Twitter at a problem squared. So anyone who's listening, who wants to quickly see a visual can pop on and have a look. Even better than the Rubik's cube. I, a few years ago, made some cardboard models where there's actually the hole in the cube to fit the same size cube through. So you can see on the first photo, and again, we'll share these on our social media accounts. There's two cubes side by side, but one doesn't look much like a cube, like it's missing a huge section. That's because I've put that hole through it, but I've got a

side byside picture. So you can see that both the cubes are the same size. And then the other photo has one cube passing through the other one. So even though they're the same size, one fits through the other one. And because I knew about this Prince Rupert's cube, I thought, well, hang on. What if I can do the same thing with a pumpkin? Is there a cross section of a pumpkin, which is small enough to fit through a different cross section of the same pumpkin? The key thing is you work out which orientation of the pumpkin has the greatest cross sectional area.

And so I went and bought two pumpkins that were as close to the same size as possible. I then got the first pumpkin and spent ages trying to orientate it to work out what would be its smallest cross section. And then I took a photo of it and I cut it out. Actually, oh, here, I've got it here. So Matt is holding up like a black shape. Silhouette. Silhouette of a pumpkin. There's my cross section of my pumpkin. And then I projected this back onto the pumpkin, but I reorientated it to what I thought was the biggest cross section, drew it on with Sharpie, got a knife. Then you've got to keep the knife perpendicular

to that cross section. And the temptation is to stab the knife in perpendicular to the surface of the pumpkin, which is how most people, you carve a pumpkin by stabbing straight into it. What you need to do is ignore the surface of the pumpkin and keep the knife pointing to that biggest cross section. And then if you follow that around, that's what gives you the tunnel going in the correct direction through the center. And do you want to see it? Here it is.

Yes. Yes, of course I do. This is it. This, are you ready? This is a pumpkin with the biggest hole put through it. So this pumpkin has a hole bigger than itself. There. There's not a lot of pumpkin left. Yeah, I'll describe it. What Matt is holding is a crown made of pumpkin skin. Yeah, a band.

It is a pumpkin's belt. What's interesting about it is it's not just like the band from the middle of a pumpkin because to be able to fit it through itself, the hole needs to be a little bit bigger than its width. Yeah. And so this is actually a diagonal band. It wraps around the pumpkin. So this bit starts on the top of the pumpkin and then the band goes down the diagonal

and then there's a bit at the bottom of the pumpkin. And you can see some of my sketching is still on here. Yeah. Again, I'll take photos of this. And so here's another pumpkin that's the same size. And are you ready? I can just, look at that. It just fits through that. There it is. It went through. Nothing but rim. Exactly. There you are. You don't have to squash it. No, no, it goes, it just, yeah, it goes through. It goes straight through. I feel like this would be more impressive if I had seen both pumpkins side by side, because even though you've explained what you did to me, there is still something in my

head that is like oh it's just a bigger pumpkin it's just a big it's just a hoop of pumpkin yeah yeah this came from the same size pumpkin how because the thing is with a cube you can actually fit a cube that's bigger than the cube through another cube so you can actually have a cube which is six percent bigger by length fit through a cube. Because you can see what I've left of the pumpkin here is a bit of thickness. So actually I could have made it even thinner and you could fit an even bigger pumpkin. So this hole is actually bigger than the original pumpkin because then it gives it plenty of clearance for one to go through. So on a

cube at 6%, I don't know on a pumpkin how much bigger a pumpkin could be and fit through a smaller pumpkin. But I just experimentally found that I could get this one to fit. You've got photos and footage to show these two pumpkins. I've got a side-by-side photo of the two pumpkins to start with and then I got all the footage. If I get time, I will put it up on YouTube.

On one of my YouTube channels, I'll put out the footage. It's a Halloween miracle. Exactly. So Eric, I hope that answers your question. Well, actually, as the keeper of the dings for this one, what I will say is that Eric's question was how big can you make the hole before the pumpkin collapses in on itself? So I think what we need to decide is whether a hole that has another, like it's because what you've got there is a pumpkin with essentially two

holes in it. Oh, don't, don't. Yeah. I know you love this stuff. I've read your book. Yeah.

Don't start, don't start the number of holes but okay carry on because otherwise i mean couldn't you in theory just cut out a very small piece of pump like you know say you're cutting out an eye of a jack-o'-lantern yeah but then you take the eye and you say this is the the biggest hole. The rest of it. Yeah. It's the difference between, and I found this interesting when I was talking to people. Some people imagine a pumpkin as being a hollow shell and some people imagine the pumpkin

as being a solid object. And so I always imagine it as a solid object and you've got to scoop out everything inside. So for me, solid object and I've punched a hole through the middle of it. Other people are like, it's like a balloon. And so a hole is just puncturing the outer shell of the pumpkin. I've taken it to be a solid object that I've then tunneled a hole right through the middle of. So I would say this is a pumpkin with one hole in it. Matt, have you ever seen a jack-o'-lantern where they haven't scooped it out? No, but that's not a pumpkin. That's a jack-o'-lantern.

The question was. Oh, I see. And for the record, I'm going to put this on my doorstep and put a candle in it. Please do. So I'm fully committed to this being my Halloween pumpkin. My Mather Lantern. Mather Lantern. Nice.

I will take a photo of it on my front doorstep with some candles. Like it looks like someone badly peeled a bit of a... This was not easy to carve. Yeah, what did you use? Because that was Eric's other question was, how would you cut it? I used the smallest, pointiest knife. I was very careful.

I always think if this goes wrong, in what direction will it go wrong? The pointy bit of the knife was never cutting towards any of my fingers or me because it would slip so easily. That's good safety advice, actually. I'm glad you mentioned that because we cannot afford to be sued. I feel the need to mention that because this is not an easy thing to cut.

So my answer to the problem is you can make a hole bigger than the pumpkin through the pumpkin and it hasn't collapsed. That's, you know, perfectly stable. Can you authorize a ding or do you want to throw this back to Eric? I'm going to throw this one to eric because it is very impressive so i'm tempted to ding it for that alone but i think i had the same visual as eric and my brain was like i'm trying to imagine putting one hole in a pumpkin scooping everything out and seeing at what point it become yeah at what point does it stop being a hole and you've just made a bit a bowl turn into a plate the answer to that is no pumpkin because the hole is

all of the pumpkin like that's that's the limit solution for that whereas this is an actual tunnel that's true pumpkin i'm impressed i mean from me it's a personal ding okay but eric give us a shout i respect we need to go back to eric to see if this this meets then i'm just saying when i solve a problem i don't factor in the preconceived solutions that the problem poser may have i just go wherever wherever the solution leads me i think that's why people tune into this show practical advice like how to tunnel through a pumpkin our next spooky problem comes from greg also on twitter because they were replying to beck's tweet saying hi beck very formal for a tweet good on you greg how do i stop the ghosts in my place

from rattling all the doors during the night when i'm trying to sleep and I have to get up at 4 a.m. for the early shift at work? Greg's really painting a picture here. I've pleaded with them, had a stern talking to them, but they won't listen. So, Beck, can you fix Greg's spectral problems? Yes, I reckon I can. Good. I really enjoyed trying to solve this problem a lot. So the first thing I noticed about Greg's tweet is that Greg doesn't say,

how do I get rid of the ghosts in my place that are rattling all the doors? No, just stop them. Specifically from rattling all the doors. Just to stop them from rattling all the doors. And so I thought, okay, maybe the ghosts aren't the problem here. Because, you know, they might be trying to not rattle them, but it might be the doors are the issue. It'd be like trying to tell the wind to stop moving stuff

when the answer is to make the stuff less movable. stop moving stuff when the answer is to make the stuff less movable. So I thought I would look up tricks on how to stop rattling doors. So I went down a really fun door deep dive. A door dive. To sort of solve this. And I thought it might be interesting before I solve the problem to do a little quiz. Because one thing I didn't realize is that doors have a lot of elements that have names. Okay. How many door elements can you name? I reckon the door, you got the handle.

Is there a strike? There's a door jam. I think that's the strip of wood inside the door. Is there an alcatrave? Is it like the outside bit? Yeah, yeah, yeah. How am I doing? You're touching.

You're touching. Because I know you've got the actual frame of the door. Then you've got the sticky out bits that blends the frame into the walls. And then you've got the strip. Is that the formal? Yeah, yeah, yeah. On the inside of the frame, you'll have, I want to say door jam. It's like the small inset bit of wood that stops the door from overshooting when you close it.

So what you're referring to is actually called a doorstop. A doorstop. Oh, it's not very creative. Without the doorstop, when you close the door, it would swing through the frame and damage the hinges. Oh, good. Protect the hinges. But you're sort of right because sometimes the doorstop is built into the jams. So what are the jams? Let's get into it. So jams, written J-A-M-B, like lamb. Oh, that's how people have described our theme song. It's a top jam. It's a top jam.

Didn't know that. And the term comes from the French word jam. I'm probably mispronouncing that. It means leg because the door jams are actually the vertical insides of the door frame. So they're the legs of the frame. It's what keeps the inside of the frame and it's where your lock jam and your hinge jam would be. So the lock jam is the inside where the little latch of the door will go in. Right. Yep. And then on the hinge jam, that's where you put the hinge. Yeah. And

the other one you said, it's the strike plate. Yeah. So that is the little metal plate that you would put on the lock jam where the latch would slide into it so i have a um lay interest in physical security and exploits like non-destructive entry like lock picking and that whole genre of things that's why i know i knew about the strike because often it's easier to fit a bigger strike or whatever the hole is that the latchy thing goes into because it doesn't have to be as well aligned but if you've got too much room to move in there it's possible to like shim something in there and push the latch back you get a credit card and there's meant to be there's like if you look on some latches there's like a little tiny tube

latch next to the main bit that sticks out. And that's meant to be held back by the strike. And when that's held back, it stops the other one from retracting as well, unless you turn the key. So that means you can't get a shim or something in there to push it back. But I suspect it also means if your strike's too big or the hole in the plate, your door would rattle. And that's exactly right, Matt. You've hit the nail on the head. That is one of the large causes.

Well, they call me the key master. That is why they call you the key master. Mox. So one of the common reasons for rattling doors is because that strike plate is a little too loose. When the wind moves your door, then it has space to move back and forth because essentially the hole is bigger than the latch so one way that you can stop your doors rattling if that's the case is a lot of strike plates now actually have a sort of little metal bit that if you take it off sometimes you can actually leave it on the door but essentially you can bend it slightly to make

it smaller so that the latch has less room to move so yeah that's that's one reason for rattling doors rather than breaking down all the different reasons because we could be here all day i thought i'd come up with some other ways that you could stop rattling doors oh yeah so a very popular one is is to use weatherstripping, which is sort of like spongy tape or like felt sort of stuff. And you put that on the door jam so there's less space for your door to move when it is closed. And that should not only stop the rattling, but also it should minimize any sound leak, which means that if you put that in your bedroom door, Greg, then noise that's happening in the rest of the house might be harder to hear.

There you go. There's other options if you don't want to get too technical, which is just... Wedge the door. Wedge the door. Yep. What about bead curtains? I would say that if Greg's ghosts are rattling the doors on purpose or not, it's probably easier for them to do the same thing. I don't know how ghosts, maybe they pass through the gaps. I don't know. Maybe they're like

Terminator. Exactly, like a Terminator. You know when you walk in, walk out like fridges and you get like the, there's plastic strip curtains that you still push through. Oh yeah, yeah, like in butchers, in butcher shops and stuff. Just have those throughout the house. Yeah, there you go. There's another option, Greg. We're getting creative now. I like it. But I did find out a little fact about doors, Matt. Yeah. Love facts. Love doors. January, the month of January is named after Janus, J-A-N-U-S.

Who is the god of doors. No. And that's why January is the first month because it's meant to be opening the door into the new year. That's amazing. Isn't that nice? And of course, if these options for some reason don't work, or maybe Greg is like, actually, the doors never rattle.

It is the ghosts. The ghosts are the problem. I looked up what you should do if you have noisy flatmates. Let's call them housemates. And you're not asking them to, he's not saying, how do I get rid of them? He just wants the rattling to stop. So he's already focused on the problem. Yeah, which is a good first step.

The first thing you should do is not confront the housemate. So it could be that Greg, if you're sort of pleading or doing a stern telling off in a way that makes them feel attacked, they might actually be less inclined to listen to you. So the best thing to do is wait until the moment where no one is sort of at the height of their emotions and just have a sit down have a quiet pleasant chat with them maybe have a cup of tea or something meeting yeah write down the things that are bothering you beforehand just so that you can make sure that you've worked out any of your emotions first and and you can see it from a more logical standpoint that if it continues you may have to find different housemates. So that is the place to start.

If they don't listen, then it's worth having a more sort of formal chat about it where you actually introduce some rules. The ghosts might have some rules that they, there might be a reason that they're rattling them. So they might have some rules in place as well. It might be a fact that the ghosts work nights as well. They work late. Yeah, they're ghosts.

You have to get up at 4 a.m., but maybe when you're going about your day, Greg, it's waking them up. And you might need to make some compromises. I think a lot of ghosts do work the night shift. They're coming home after a hard night's work and Greg's not cutting them any slack. Yeah.

So if that doesn't work, then might be worth uh taking it up with uh either a landlord if you if you have one or um depending on the level of uh of disturbance you know you can take it to like a council or tribunal or something like arbitration of some form. But I did look up also how to get rid of ghosts if it came to that. Oh, that's extreme. Yeah. I mean, there is a lot of information out there and I'm not in a position to verify any of it. Wow. On the internet you say. But I would say apparently sage is a thing. You can use some sage to burn and clear out negative energies.

Yeah, try that. Burn some sage. I guess you put it onto a CD-ROM. Yeah, I'm just going to go burn sage to disk. And ghosts hate pirating software. They do hate pirating. Yeah, that's true. Ghosts and pirates, famously.

Don't get on. No, or they are the same thing. If there's anything we learned from Pirates of famously, don't get on. No, or they are the same thing. If there's anything we learned from Pirates of the Caribbean. They're ghosts of pirates and they're like, this is what our profession has become. Yeah, they're really upset. They're burning sage. Yeah. And then the other one was sound Reiki, which Reiki is a type of energy healing. Reiki is an interesting one because I actually

place it somewhere around the same range as ASMR. Which I find incredibly relaxing. I'm not judging. There's something just about that that is very calming. Reiki is one where they sort of instead of massage like someone just sort of holds their hands over you and it's it's meant to be about the transferring of i i like like yourself i say i think there's probably a lot of benefit to these things depending on your yeah belief in their effectiveness however what i realized was we

have common ground in that the reiki thing overlaps with like crystals and minerals oh yes and i'm a big fan big fan of minerals right and so yeah we have a lot of common ground uh discussing gemstones and things because i i'm coming at it from a geological point of view and they're coming out it from a Reiki point of view. Yeah, I used to collect stuff like that whenever I went to the museum as a kid. Yeah. So, yeah, that's a, find, find, finding common ground. That was my policy. Rocks.

Is there a Venn diagram out there? I bet there is. There's probably one of those memes where it's like geologists and, uh, and. Crystal healers. Yeah. And spiritualists. Check out that rock. And then there's like a shaking hands emoji in between them.ers. Yeah, and spiritualists. And then there's like a shaking hands emoji in between them. Yeah, yeah.

And that's gemstones in the middle. Minerals. But sound Reiki was something that I looked at people use. I thought that might be like Tibetan bowls or something, you know, where it hits like a certain pitch or frequency of vibration. But the lady that I found that was explaining it sort of likened it more to using a calming voice, which again, I'm like, yeah, that would work. That's good conflict resolution advice in general. Yeah. So maybe, Greg, maybe you just need to hire someone with a more soothing voice.

I used to have a history teacher who had the most soothing voice that I always fell asleep in her class. And it wasn't because she's boring. It's just she had a really, really relaxing voice. So just use a more relaxing tone. Yeah. If all else fails, I mean, just go on YouTube and put in Sound Reiki and like a ton of videos come up. So maybe just play that and just see if it helps. If you do it super loud, Greg, whoever's there will leave. Yeah, exactly. There

you are. Wow. How to clear out guests at the end of a party. Just put on SoundReiki and turn the And now on to any other O business B. Any other AOB business. Yeah. Oh, I would never tire of that. We did a poll after last month's episode on... The people have spoken back. Yeah. Because we asked you cupboard or nubbed

nubbed and just the context for anyone who doesn't know what was going on back previously recorded from a cupboard at home and then last month came to visit me and we recorded live live in my in my office slash studio that's right And then we asked you, which do you prefer? Should I record in person or should I record in a cupboard? Did you have a preference, Bec? I won't lie. It was quite nice not being in a cupboard. It was nice to have you visiting, to be honest.

It was lovely. Yeah. We put out a poll. And Matt, would you like to say how many people voted in that poll? 539. Rounded up 1,000 people. Yes. Yeah, that is technically.

To the nearest thousand, that's 1,000 people. And 59% of that. What is that, Matt? What is 59% of 539? 3 thousand people. And 59% of that. What is that, Matt? What is 59% of 539? 318 people. 318 of you told me to get back in the cupboard. Back in the cupboard. 318 people looked at that, not only thought Beck should get back in the cupboard, but then went and hit the cupboard button on the survey. Yeah. The poll

was on Twitter and despite it being from a problem squared and despite the poll saying this is for listeners of a problem squared, I have a theory that some people voted on it who don't listen to the podcast. You think it was brigaded by non-APS listeners? I just feel like, I mean, our listeners are fun. I think enough of them would do it as a laugh. Yeah, that's true.

But I feel like our listeners are really nice. I don't think our listeners would send you back to the coverage. I don't think they would. Unless, of course, it's a sound quality thing, in which case perhaps some people thought that the sound is better. So this is the difference now. You've got this one to go back to after last week's. Which one sounds better? Because right now, where are you right now, Bec?

I am in the cupboard. You're in the cupboard. You're in the cupboard. The people spoke and you listened. Back in the cupboard. You're back in the cupboard. It was really nice getting some fresh air, things, some greenery. Back in the cupboard. Being in the same room as another Australian. Back in the cupboard. It was really nice getting some fresh air, things, some greenery. Back in the cupboard.

Being in the same room as another Australian. Back in the cupboard. Get back in the cupboard, Bec. I don't think we should underestimate both our listeners and just people who follow us on Twitter in general's inclination to pick the funniest option. Yeah. If I saw that poll come up, I'd vote cupboard.

Exactly. Although I'd be tempted by the wordplay. I'm amazed 221 people tried to get you out of the cupboard. Yeah, that's true. And I want to thank every single one of you. I guess if you voted cupboard, but it was a joke, tweet us at a problem squared. Just let us know.

Should we do another poll and ask people if they took the previous poll seriously or not? I'm just trying to get you out of the cupboard, Bec. That's my only motivation here. Thanks, Matt. You're welcome. Until we find a way, you're back in the cupboard. And another item on our Any Other AOB Business list is last month we mentioned that if you like the podcast and can't become a patron, that, you know, please just stop and tell someone that you like it. Send them a message or tweet about it. Share it.

Exactly. stop and tell someone that you like it um send them a message or tweet about it share it exactly but it also had the the lovely effect of of um bringing us some new new patrons so we thought we would actually introduce something to say a little thanks to to everyone who's been supporting us like that at the end of the episodes i've uh quickly whipped up a random patreon supporter generator it's a pseudo random name selector. It's a spreadsheet. I made a spreadsheet. And so every episode, there's a chance people might get thanked at random. When you say generator, it's not like creating supporters.

It's not like a name generator. That's true. We will always say it. There might be a chance it might be your name. Well, knowing us, it's a chance It might be your name Well knowing us It's a chance both ways We may or may not remember to do it And we may or may not pick any given name

You make the podcast possible So everyone else can enjoy it But this time we've picked Johannes Orland Bibi Rosenberg Joanne Killman And Steve Music Hannes Orland. Bibi Rosenberg. Joanne Kilman. And Steve Music.

Thank you very much for being our lovely patrons. I bet they all voted to release you from the cupboard. I think so too. Do you know what? If anyone can keep me in the cupboard, it's the people paying. That's true. They should get a super vote. Yeah, yeah.

Our patrons vote should be worth 10. It's not like we did an episode about voting or anything And of course we'd also like to thank Our wonderful producer Lauren Armstrong Carter And my co-host Matt Parker The Keymaster The Keymaster Exactly

And what is key But not another word for legend Oh Thank you I'd give you a double thanks for that matt out done can't top that i was going to thank myself but i i want to leave it at that nah i'm just gonna put my pumpkin crown on call it a day.