A Problem Squared - 027 = Postcode Tray Score and Mesh Mask Decor

Episode Date: January 31, 2022

In this episode...   * How do you reuse an old radiotherapy mask?   * What is the optimal way to utilise postcodes in Scrabble?   * And, the results of our 2021 listener survey are in.    For more on radiotherapy masks, head on over to Macmillan. And do check out the Bravery Unmasked project for some truly incredible mask transformations.   If you want want even more from A Problem Squared, find us on Twitter and Instagram.   And as always, if you've got a problem or a solution, hit us up on our website www.aproblemsquared.com.        

Welcome to a Problem Squared or APS, the podcast. And APS is a bit like the alphabet in that it's in alphabetical order. I'm joined as always by Beck Hill and Hill is a bit like the alphabet in that it's in alphabetical order. And I, Matt Parker, am a bit like the alphabet in that I'm systematic, predictable and follow arbitrary patterns of my own choosing. Yep, that's what they say about you. I was so pleased to realize Hill was an alphabetical order. Yeah. I was like, I can't not use this.

And then I just didn't really, didn't finish writing anything for me. And Hill's also close together in the alphabet. You've just got jk yeah whenever i'm like doing it and i'm like hi and i'm like ah it's good i don't yeah matt parker is like the alphabet in that there's letters in it that's about to say uses letters when numbers would probably do. No longer has an ampersand. Wait, what? Well, in the alphabet, ampersand used to be in the alphabet.

Yeah, but you said no longer. Did Matt Parker have an ampersand in it? I used to use an ampersand. Matt and Parker in code. No, you're right. Yeah. Matt and Parker. Yeah.

Yeah. I used to spell Parker with an F sound. P-N-K-R. Did you really? No, I did not. I wouldn't put it past you. That would be amazing. I've just remembered we should be doing a podcast.

Oh, yeah. Sorry, guys. Sorry, everyone. On this episode. I'll be looking at uses for radiotherapy masks. I've analyzed the optimal way to use postcodes in Scrabble. And we've got the results for our listener survey. Oh, we're so excited.

In any other business. It's going to be good any other business this time. So much any other business. And you should listen. Beck, the reviews are in We got reviews We got more reviews We should compliment the people who are taking the time to give us lovely reviews Yeah, no, no

Amazing We got three more reviews They've all been five stars They've all been five stars Chaz Monstrous Energy Thank you, Chaz Monstrous Energy Thanks, Chaz, Emmy It says, overall, a great podcast

They didn't say sometimes. No, that's true. That's true. They said, overall, a good podcast, complimenting Matt's YouTube stuff. Oh, you didn't mention me, but that's fine. I'll take it. I will take all of them. We've got Mon Recurrent, or maybe Recurrent.

Recurrent. It's probably that. It is definitely that. I'm sorry, Mon. Brilliant podcast, five stars,al parts entertaining and informative. A buffet of maths rolled up in comedy with sprinkling of cheerful banter. Wow. Oh, my goodness.

They should write our intros. Yeah, they should, actually. That was better than what I managed to come up with. Yeah, a lot more. Really, yeah. Wow. And someone here says they've been a long-time listener, first-time reviewer. Dingtastic podcast.

Oh. Dingtastic. Who is that that all my problems have been solved mr r math so in the words of mon recurrent ding ding beck how you doing this fine january 2022 oh so well because we've moved my flat around. Yeah, very exciting. So anyone who's been listening for a while might know this. I live in a very, very small one-bedroom flat in London. Correct. And I work from, I mean, I know everyone works from home these days, but I... You particularly work from home.

I particularly work from home and I work in the kitchen. But it's, you know, I'm a crafty person. You say you work in the kitchen, you've got a full setup. You've got an office in the kitchen. It's not a big kitchen either. Which means that, I'm a crafty person You say you work in the kitchen, you've got a full setup You've got an office in the kitchen It's not a big kitchen either Which means that if I'm making flip charts It's almost like a galley kitchen Like it's a long kitchen

Yeah Not a lot of space No But that was the only space that we had Because it was a little one bedroom flat And I managed to convince my lovely husband To let us combine the lounge and our bedroom You collapsed down the two other rooms.

Yeah, which isn't ideal. Into one room. I've been referring to it as the blounge room. I don't know if that's going to catch on. I like a blounge room. It sounds like somewhere you have desserts. It does. Shall we retire to the blounge room?

Oh, yes, please. I've got a bit of a sweet tooth. Blounge anyone? Yeah. You just walk in in like a little tuxedo, little butler. Blounge man. Wobbling. So we've done that and now we have a very big bedroom.

You put the bed in the lounge room is what you're saying. Yeah. And then in our bedroom, we've got the built-in wardrobe. Like I say built-in wardrobe. It's not like a big wardrobe it's just it's connected to the wall yeah so now we have a walk-in wardrobe slash my office so the kitchen's all kitchen kitchen's all kitchen wow and then the bedroom now has a fold-out couch bed in there so if we have any visitors they have a spare room so you've got

a combination spare room office walk, walk-in wardrobe. Yeah. Oh, and now we've moved the narrow bookshelf from the lounge into the bedroom. Yep. I've put my human head on there. I feel like we have to unpack why you were able to unpack your human head. Yeah. You've got a replica of your head.

Yes. Yeah. A perfect, like really proper prosthetic head. I would describe the amount of lifelike as disturbing. Gav doesn't like the fact that it's there, but I was like, this is my room now. You put what you want in the blounge. It is your head, but it's also technically the head of younger Beck. Yeah.

Yeah, it is. And I've still got like my old black bob haircut and stuff, but she's happy. She's not actually, she's got eyes closed. She's bob haircut and stuff. But she's happy. She's not actually. She's got eyes closed. She's out on the shelf. Out on the shelf. Are we going to share a photo of this on the socials? Yes.

Yes, why not? People don't have to imagine your. Yeah, no, I'll take some photos. I'll put it on a Problem Squared Twitter and Instagram. Brilliant. With no context. Absolutely no context. Brilliant.

We'll just post them. Listen to the podcast, people. Otherwise. No comment. It's bewildering social media. Yeah. Although speaking of optimal use of your apartment, you're not in the cupboard. I'm with you.

Yes. Yes. We're in the office again. Isn't this exciting? Because we haven't talked until this moment. I've been silent since. You came down. You're mute.

You're like, save it for the podcast. We did have a few conversations. We genuinely do that, by the way. Don't tell me. Don't tell me. We'll be like, oh. And then we're like, oh, we'll catch up about that in the podcast. But today, at the time of recording, I am 14,998 days old.

Ooh. Which means in two days, I'm going to have my 15,000th day birthday. Why didn't you invite me? Just a little quiet, intimate affair. Oh. Just me. Even Lucy's like, you're on your own, buddy. Yeah, 15,000 days.

It feels like only you get to celebrate it because you're the only person who can be bothered doing that. You and Henry Baker. The arithmetic, yeah. The only two people in the world. So he's got his tour about being 10,000 days, which he's toured for several years, so that's achingly out of date. I did celebrate my 10,000 day birthday.

I did very quickly, Bec, check how old you are in days. Oh, thank you. Have I got your birth date? You do, creepily. Is that where all my money went? Exactly. And this is your mother's maiden name. Yeah.

Last three digits. First pet. You are, as we speak, 12,855 days old. Oh. What did you do for your 10,000th day birthday? I think I had a cake. I feel like that was a cake-based one. And I don't have plans for, we're recording this on a Friday,

so my 15,000 days will be on the Sunday. So day off from work. We haven't got plans yet, but we'll do something, something to mark 15,000 days. I mark a lot of weird occasions though. So speaking of that, a date we can all look forward to, you'll be listening to this on or after the very end of January 2020. Yeah.

Hopefully before the 22nd of February because the 22nd of February, 22, the date is 22222 and it's a Tuesday so Tuesday Tuesday on the 22nd of February 2022 is gonna be it's gonna go on Tuesday it's gonna be too good what are you gonna do I'm gonna oh well I'm planning what are you gonna do a video of course you are because I'm trying to get a bunch of YouTubers to all join in on a ridiculous collaboration Tuesday, Tuesday video. Oh my goodness. To be confirmed. Including me?

That's what I'm hoping. I'm a really well-known YouTuber. Oh, definitely. Did you not get the invite? Apparently your Christmas tree has more views than me. More views than you. So there you are, everyone. Make sure you celebrate Tuesday, Tuesday.

Once a century. And it may not even be a Tuesday next time. Our first problem is from Chris, who went to the problem posing page at a problem squared.com to say, I love the podcast and it's been keeping me sane whilst I've been going through radiotherapy for a brain tumor. Wow. Now officially tumor. Wow. Now officially medicinal. Yeah. This podcast.

We can joke because I've now finished my therapy and received a mesh mask of my face slash head that was needed to hold my head still throughout my radiotherapy sessions. What should I do with the mask? There's a problem. They then add in, my wife is an artist, and I thought about asking her to paint it like a popular arachnid-based superhero. But I think there could be a more creative answer out there. And then there's no ending punctuation.

That's just the end of the problem. Beck? What arachnid- based superhero are they thinking of? I mean there are several There's Black Widow That's a Oh yeah that's true That's a spider

The Tick Ticks are arachnids Yep So the Tick the superhero Superhero the Tick Scorpion Oh what from Mortal Kombat or Yeah sure why not

Why did you say several Matt We just solved it So Beck How are you going to help out poor Chris Who's now got a mesh Mask of their face and head Well As you now know

I have a human head of myself. You are weirdly qualified. Well, I took on this problem because I felt like I was in a position to be able to help. But I should say, I wasn't aware of this, that when you're having radiotherapy, you need this mask to sort of stop you from moving around. But it makes sense. It's a big mask too, Jess. Yeah, it's a bit like if you were to lie down and lie a towel over your face.

Yes. It just looks a bit like what shape that towel would be, except it's a mesh. If the towel then froze in place. Yeah. It's not like a masquerade mask or even like a face mask. It's a full head and shoulders. Yeah, but not the back. Not the back.

And it's actually, it's interesting you say that because I did a little research into masks in general. Oh. And in art, if it does encompass the full head, like the back of it as well, then that is called a head. Oh. But if it doesn't enclose the back, then it's a mask. The BAFTA award, that's a mask.

That's a mask. But if you see the bust of someone, that's a head. That's a head. Well, an Oscar is a whole person. Yeah, but including the head. I couldn't think of any other award which is just a head. Yeah. I think I might be a bit off-putting.

Yeah, exactly. It's a prize. It's your own head. You awarded that to yourself i did yeah it's made of this thermoplastic you can put it in some warm water or hot water it goes soft and then they pull it out then they lie it over like a hot towel it's exact that's how they describe it as well so it's described as, you know, it can feel a bit hot, but it is like just if you're having a facial,

one of them genuinely says it's like having a facial, just lying this hot towel over and it cools down very quickly. Yep. And then goes rigid. Some of them are made of different, like there's one that's done of perspex, but it seems to be most commonly this mesh one. I don't know specifically what Chris's one looks like. Right. But the ones that I saw are perforated.

So they look a bit like, you know, the perforated waste paper baskets. And you get to keep it afterwards. And doing things with them afterwards is really common. It's incredible. And again, we'll pop some pictures up on socials, but lots of people like to paint them all sorts of arachnid superheroes and actually just for the record

the the purpose of this mask is not just a gift to take home afterwards it's to hold you still yeah in fact another term for it is an immobilization mask whoa so it keeps you lined up because you want to make sure the where your therapy is hitting the right spot hitting exactly the right spot right yeah yeah and a lot of people have different ways of of tackling it there's some people that really like having it it is almost like having an award they've gone through this they've gone through this experience they owned it they got the thing yeah in fact there's art competitions where people do stuff a lot of artists have incorporated them into their work and then there's other people who you know go i don't ever want to see that again i've you know so um it sounds like it's a really personal thing it would really come down to how chris relates to

this mask and the feelings that they have towards it right i just mean all the things that occurred to me i was like i don't think i'd actually do that if it was my mask from having gone through that experience. Yeah. So I can only tell you what I hypothesize that I would do with it. Or if you were to give me one that someone didn't want. Just a blank one. Yeah. No attachment.

No attachment. What I would do. What are you going to do? Yeah. So I've written a list. Oh, really? Oh, wow. Oh, wow. Oh, you have literally written.

I've already mentioned that it's a bit like a waste paper basket. So that's number one. Number one. Yeah. They get them all for free. Interesting bin. Yeah. It's got a wider entry.

So if you're chucking paper into it, it's more likely to get in, but it will fill up very quickly. That's great. Like a lot of times I'm writing, it's things from my brain. And if I get rid of it, I can throw them back, they came from like try again back in the head back in the head funny you should mention it because it looks a little bit like a net could be a bit of a back of the net situation so you could make a novelty basketball hoop for small balls gotcha lacrosse uses a uh sort of net, like a loose net.

Yeah, a loose net on a stick. Yeah, but you know how there's those plastic ones for kids where it's just a handheld thing. Oh, what's it called? Yeah, there's a name. You catch the ball in that and then throw it. We were all forced to play it at primary school in Australia. You like sling the ball.

Yeah. At dangerous speeds. Yeah, you do. At one kidding so i think you could also turn it into one of those the ball will probably bounce at weird angles but so there's some options there fruit bowl fruit bowl yeah i like it i've suggested you could maybe use it for fencing not making a fence out of it yeah no no like as a mask for the sport of fencing yeah yeah i mean i'm not sure if the perforations are too big the sword could just still be very form-fitting yeah exactly

reduce your mobility though because it's gonna lock your shoulders in place not all of them are shoulders oh okay sometimes they're cut they've been cut down they've been cut and what i should say being a thermoplastic means that you can reheat it and remold it so because you don't have to keep it in that shape if you don't want i mean i think the novelty of it is that is the shape of your face but if if you did want to you know use it for anything else pop it in a hot bath very hot bath maybe ice sculpture yeah that could oh can you try that please chris that's a real one I actually wanted to try now. We've accidentally come up with a genuine suggestion.

Yeah, line it with cling film or plastic, you know. This is really specific, but you could recreate that bit from Around the Twist, an Australian kids' show that did make it to the UK, actually. But the youngest kid in the show, Bronson, he kissed, it's the Ice Maiden. It's based on the story of the Ice Maiden. And there's an ice sculptor of a girl and he falls in love with it and he kisses it and his lips get stuck to it yeah there you go you can do that Chris I feel like we're overlooking just jelly like a massive oh yeah jelly yes jello serve it in the blound room

that's what they serve in the lounge room yeah i one thing i i would properly do with mine i reckon i write horror you know for kids yep so i would paper mache it with white paper yep and then maybe put a little bit of plaster over it i've connected to the wall and then painted to match the wall. So it looked like there was a, not a bust, but like just the face. It looks like someone's pushing their face. You know that creep? Yep, yep, yep. Oh, that's nice.

Maybe you could try and do some of your hands as well. Some kind of a ghoul that's trapped in the wall. A planter. We've done this with your bicycle helmet. Oh, yeah. But you could use it as a planter because then you've got drainage. You have flowers and stuff. stuff and mulch in there oh i had two others which was you could position a light bulb behind it and have an interesting light fixture yep which would be really cool

combine that with building into the wall that'd be great uh chris was talking about painting the mask but actually i was thinking it could also help you paint your actual face. So if Chris puts the mask on and then paints through the holes, Chris can do the Roy Lichtenstein pop-up. Oh, the dot effect. Yeah, the makeup. I thought you were going to say this way you can do your makeup on the inside of the mask where you can see it clearly and then just pop it like a stamp.

Boom. Then you're wearing your makeup. Why hasn't anyone invented that yet? There you go. Oh, there you go. Well, there's another use. You could put serums and stuff in there, have an actual face mask. Actual face mask. Loads of stuff.

But I do feel like if, Chris, if you're not sure what to do with it and your wife is an artist, ultimately I feel like it's slightly offensive that you've gone to a podcast. Probably, yeah. I know that if my husband wanted to do something with him and he asked a podcast what to do with it instead of coming to me. Without a point. Be slightly offended. I think he secretly wants to put jelly in it.

Yeah. He knew we'd give him permission to do that. Yeah. So there, that's so there that's that's uh solutions for it that's great and thank you chris as well for well first of all well done yes yeah congratulations for for going through all that and thank you for enlightening us i did not know about those processes yeah spider-man that's the other one oh all right problem number two this is for you matt it's from daniel good daniel who says what uk postcode has the highest scrabble value does this change if you

include the actual digits in the postcode i do love the range of problemness of the problems we get sent in. This is clearly a thought experiment. Don't get me wrong, some of my favorite problems are thought experiments. Yeah. What I love about this is Daniel sent this on the 1st of January. Yeah. I made a note of that. He's just lying there hungover on the 1st of Jan going, wait, what if you could, what if postcodes were legitimate Scrabble words? I'm going to bet Daniel was playing Scrabble with some friends and tried to play a postcode. Tried to play a postcode, yes. And they're like, you can't do that.

He's like, that's your problem. So we should also clarify for listeners in other countries. Oh, yes, yeah. UK postcodes are particularly unusual. So you and I, growing up in Australia, are used to four-digit postcodes. Yeah. Which is a bit low resolution. Yes.

If you will. Yeah. So I looked up the postcode from the suburb where I was born in Australia, or at least where I grew up in Dunkirk. And the postcode there, 6023, the most recent data I can get from 2011, there are 5,646 different dwellings in that postcode. Wow. So if you were to address something just to 6023, you've got over 5,500 possible houses it could be going to.

Yeah. My postcode here in the UK, 32 houses. Yeah, quite the difference. It's not even the whole street. Yeah. It's just a bit. If you live in the UK and you put in your postcode, it'll bring up like a drop-down menu.

Yeah, of all the ones there. And you can just pick your house. Exactly. I'm pretty sure the building we're in right now has its own postcode, which is just insane for those of us from other countries that use a handful of digits. There's a few places where you just have to put the postcode on and you know the thing will get delivered.

I know that a friend of mine in Limerick, someone put his nickname on a letter and it got delivered to him. Wow. It was just his nickname and then limerick oh really that was it to him that's so good i got something to lucy by uh writing her name and drawing a diagram of where her house was oh wow and it got to her oh i was so pleased without an address not no address like like the town and then the drawing of the house. Like a map of this house with an arrow. Do any postal workers listen to this?

I'm interested to know whether that made someone's day because it's like a treasure hunt and they had something to do. Actually, I got over here. I know I've gone off mic across the room. This was returned to me recently. This is a copy of my book. All right. So I posted.

Matt's just come back with a parcel from the other side of the room. Yep. That I posted in the US to someone else in the US. So I was in the States. I posted it to someone. Turns out they changed office since they gave me the address to send the book to them. And you have to put your return address.

So I just wrote Matt Parker, Stand Up Maths, and then not even the right postcode. This is actually a discontinued postcode that used to be for this building because I'd only just changed offices. So I looked up and I got the wrong postcode. This arrived here. Wow. So my name and the wrong postcode still got to me in this building.

And also your handwriting for stand-up maths there is not. It's not good. It's not legible. No. That's incredible. This was an afterthought. I was like, what's the point of putting my UK return address on a book I'm posting within from, this was going from San Francisco to LA.

And I was like, we're not going to need to go via London. And it showed up here. That's amazing. This idea doesn't San Francisco to LA. And I was like, we're not going to need to go via London. And it showed up here. That's amazing. This idea doesn't work in the US. They have five digit zip postcodes. They did try to bring in. Why are they called zip codes? I don't know why they're called zip codes.

That's a good question. So Lawrence just looked up and zip is partly an acronym for Zone Improvement Plan and partly marketing because if you use a ZIP code, your post will zip its way super fast to where it has to go. If it's connected with the address apparently. And you've got the rest of the address because there's only five digits which means there's a maximum of 100,000 possible zip codes. And the US has a population of just over 329 million people,

which means on average 3,295 people have to share a zip. Oh, yeah. In Australia, it's roughly 2,500 people per postcode. Smaller population, smaller set of postcodes because we have four digits. Yeah. There'll be fewer actual houses. Fewer per postcode. Yeah.

The area, average area per postcode in Australia is 769 square kilometers. Wow. So they're not very... Whereas here, it's like street. Here, it's down to the street. Yeah. They do, in the US, they tried to bring in Zip Plus 4, which was the standard 5 and then an extra 4 to get you down.

Oh my goodness. Much more specific. But I believe it didn't take off because the fiercely independent aspect of the US culture didn't like the idea of the government assigning numbers to citizens. Although the US Postal Service does use Zip Plus 6 behind the scenes. So there are actually 11 digit codes for pretty much every building, but people never interact with them. It's like phone numbers where humans need to better remember and use them.

We have them to make an automated system more efficient. Yeah. So different countries have different approaches to postcode. The UK has a particularly unusual one, which is a mix of letters and digits. Yes. So you have one or two letters at the beginning, one or two digits after those letters. The second digit is sometimes a letter. Sometimes, yeah. Sometimes. You've then got a space, then you've got one digit and then two letters. Yes. And that's the system. I ran through all the possible combinations. There's just over 1.7 billion possible postcodes in the UK

following that format. A lot of them aren't used because those first letters tell you what postal region you're in. Yeah, so they probably won't get mixed around as often. Exactly. So where we're sitting right now, our postcode will start GU. We're actually in GU7, We're sitting right now, our postcode, we'll start GU. We're actually in GU7, which means we're in the 7th Guildford postal region. If you were to relax those requirements, everything in terms of all the requirements in the UK postcodes, they just have to look like a postcode. There's almost 3 trillion possible codes.

That's obviously a lot more than the population. Yeah. You would actually get tens of thousands of postcodes per person. In terms of area, you're well below a meter. So technically the UK postcode system could be used, like you could have a postcode for your cupboard. So like, so when you order online shopping, yeah, you could, you could, you could put the postcode of where it has to end up in the house. Yeah. Which I think would be amazing. Thankfully, I was able to find a fantastic website. I was on Google, d-o-o-g-a-l.co.uk slash ukpostcodes.php. And I was able to download as a CSV file all 2.656.001 million UK postcodes.

That's a big spreadsheet. It's a big old spreadsheet. It's too big to be opened in Excel. Right. So you can only interact with this file using like software or something a bit more clever. So I wrote some Python code to search through. I also wrote some Python code to assign the Scrabble values

for the letters to every UK postcode. Oh, wow. Now, the second half of Daniel's problem was if you use the digits. So if you just use the letters, ignore the digits, there are four postcodes in the UK. They're all very similar, which give you 35 points. the uk they're all very similar which give you 35 points so i've picked of the four my favorite is wc1 x9qz okay which is in london it's kind of halfway between king's cross and angel stations oh just south of the road that joins those two stations together and you're getting

good points because in scrabble a w is going to give you four points c is giving you three points x i mean i wish x was 10 that's 8 they'd be very pleasing if x was 10 but then again c should be 100 anyway uh q z and q and z are both 10 points Yeah. So the fact that you can combine those. And in fact, all those top postcodes are all variations on that theme. They're all like WC1X8QQ or WC, actually WC1X8QQ was retired in 1984. That's no longer an active postcode. Postcodes come, postcodes go. Why do they retire? Don't know. If you want

to play a Scrabble hand that's based on a postcode and you just ignore the digits WC1X9QZ I have, if there's a tie in points as the winner, quote unquote winner pick the one with

more distinct letters. So instead of one of the QQs or ZZs, pick the one with more distinct letters. So instead of one of the QQs or ZZs, I've gone for a QZ. Yeah, nice. It's just nicer to mix it up. But then you've got to work out, hang on, because Daniel wants to include the digits, how would you play digits in Scrabble? And they just said, does this change if you include the actual digits?

But the problem here is you could just add on every digit, but if you've got 99, is that 99? Or if you're like GU17 or 18, do you add on the two-digit number or do you add on all the single-digit numbers? So I did it both ways. Of course you have. Of course you have. Of course I have. Why not?

I was writing the code. It's easy enough to do. And so if you add on all the digits individually, as you would imagine, nines are good. So there's two postcodes that tie for 50 points in Scrabble. There's BN998ZZ. Pretty good postcode. It's almost Brooklyn 99.

It's pretty much Brooklyn 99. It's BN99. Because Zs are giving you 10 points each in Scrabble, which is pretty good. A B is giving you three points. An N will give you one point. You can also have EX399ZZXM. x myth and actually that one i looked it up it's just near westwood hoe yeah uh in north devon there you are spelt with an exclamation mark oh yeah

yeah that's right it's like the only place that's actually it's like legitimately part of it if you want to be excited about it you got to put a double exclamation mark on the end of it. Yes, yes. Just to emphasize you're serious. You're not just saying the name. If you combine the digits, then Brooklyn 99 wins. BN 99, 8ZZ, the other one. If you count the 99 as 99, it blows every other postcode out of the water.

131 points. It's between Bognor, Regis and Brighton On the south coast BN, it's a Brighton postcode My mate Steph grew up in Bognor, Regis There you go I remember that because that was a funny name Imagine before royalty visited It was just Bognor

No wonder they added Regis That's what I would If I had a pet pig. Bognor the pig. Yeah, it'd be way cute. Oh, Bognor. And then finally, this was your suggestion of using LeetSpeak to actually get...

I assumed that's what they meant. Yeah. It's funny you say that because I was interested to know if there's any British postcodes that say something quite funny yes in late yeah so i asked on twitter and actually we retweeted it from the problem squared account as well yep and we got some people responded very funny answers not necessarily family friendly no even though they're just postcodes no but they are funny we're still not going to share them so if you want to see them yeah yeah go on twitter yeah and uh and check out that or add your own i should also say anyone listening who isn't aware of leet speak it was that late 90s early to probably it's probably 90s noughties

yeah where you would write stuff but you would use numbers within like a hacker yeah it's root with in leet speak it's with double zeros. And Leet is spelt with two threes. Yeah. Instead of E's. So what we're going to do is in Leet speak if you wanted to write Woot instead of putting O's you'd put zeros. What I'm going to do is if there's a postcode that should have a zero I'm going to use an O. Because you don't get numbers in Scrabble we can play the letters instead. Using the standard leet substitutions, I swapped them into characters and then swapped them into the points you'd get for playing them in Scrabble. And two postcodes tie, very similar, both on 55

points. EH222QQ. That's Edinburgh. Because two becomes Zs. Yes, so it's Edinburgh Because 2 becomes Z Yes So it's Edinburgh I used to live in Edinburgh And EH222QZ So I went with QZ Because there's more distinct characters Yeah And so I looked it up It's Roman Street in Delkeith, Scotland And if you were to go to visit it

From where we did our show in 2019 Yeah Seven and a half miles It's a two and a half hour walk Oh If we wanted to pop out visit it from where we did our show in 2019. Yeah. Seven and a half miles. It's a two and a half hour walk. Oh. If we wanted to pop out. Well, we like walking. We do like walking.

We could go visit the postcode in the UK, which would give you the highest score in Scrabble. And if you're listening to this and you live on Roman Street. Oh my goodness. If you're an EH22. You've won a thing. I don't know what it is, but you've won something. Well, I would love to post them something because then we write the postcode on it. Yes.

Send you a postcard with a postcode. Amazing. And the only other option would be to actually spell out the numbers in the characters. But you only have seven tiles at your disposal. And so I ruled out anything which you couldn't play in a single hand. Right, of course. In Scrabble. So for these, you would be using either all seven when you start the game

or you'd have to use six of your tiles and then run it off another one on the board. And I've not factored in like multiple word or letter scores. This is just the straight up value. There you are. Dalkeith in Scotland. Yeah, well done. Highest Scrabble score for all postcodes in the UK. I give that a D1NG.

I'll give it a Dalking. Finally, it is time for any other AOB business. Bec, what have we got? Woot. Woot. A-0-B business. The old 408. Old 408.

We got some feedback from two people about Sleepy's problem. Some help and advice. Yes, which I thought this was great. One said, I wanted to humbly suggest an alternate solution to Sleepy's problem. If they aren't satisfied with sticking to their current schedule, they should have a kid. Nice.

And they didn't give us a name, but they said, grad student with two adorable, reliable alarm clocks, one who screams at me and one who climbs on me. For the record, they typed all of that into the what is your name field. Yes. On the problem posing page. Yeah, messed up our spreadsheet.

Solution edition. Yeah. And we also had one from Worst Wordmonger who said that they often have to flip to an extreme sleep schedule with night shifts. Oh, night to day and day to night. Yeah. And they said this works for them. I haven't tried it yet, but you know but it's worth having a look into it.

They basically said that most of us sleep in monophasic sleep, which is where you do one big sleep and that's it. But there is a biphasic sleep pattern, which some people do. And that's what this person does. So what they do is they split up their sleep and have basically like a couple of four hour naps oh okay so an example they give as they say if you're falling asleep at 3 a.m yeah but you want to be falling asleep at 10 a.m more reasonable you sleep from three till seven i'll say when you're naturally falling asleep, you do four hours then. Yep. And then you wake up

after four hours. Whoa. And then you take a nap like in the middle of your day. So they say from, you know, say from noon to four. Oh, just so you're not super tired, right? Yep. And then they go to sleep at 10. Oh, okay. So instead of moving when you're falling asleep, you go to your normal falling asleep point, do half a sleep. Yeah sleep, fully asleep for half the time, then nap is required, and then hit the new time running and see how long you can sleep for. Yeah. Wow. And they said it

has worked for readjusting their body clock for years now. Good on them. I mean, I don't know. I don't know. That's a good option. Re-endorsement. It's interesting. We also got a ding from Lois. Oh.

How far can you see problem, which we're not reopening. No. We've solved that. It's closed. They say that they are dinging the Pyrenees to Alps answer, which seems impressively long compared to the others and longer than I imagined was possible. Thank you, Lois.

We will take that as a big old ding. Yay. The longest ding we've ever seen. Careful how you say that. I know. Yeah, I was like, huh. And finally, in any other business, tell us the results of the survey, Matt. So we did our annual survey.

Thank you to the 128 people who filled it out. Yeah. And of those 128 people, 127 answered the have you ever seen a penguin question. Oh, wow. And most people have. A mere 8.7% have not. Everyone else has. However, the vast majority saw it in a zoo. So 71%. 90 out of the 127 people have

seen a penguin, but they saw it in a zoo. Only 19 people had legitimately seen a penguin. So about 15%. So 15%, that still feels pretty high. 15% of our listeners have seen a penguin. That's pretty cool. And that's the kind of helpful data which we use to inform and develop the podcast or data. Where else is easier? Data. Data.

Data. Possibly more importantly, we ask people to tell us what their favorite problem we solved was. And a lot of people did say, last time I said I'm going to have drop-down menus to make the data coding a bit easier, and I didn't do that. So I had to wade through all the responses, categorize them myself, add them all up, and I've got a tie between the two problems from last year that people said was their favorite it's between how long would the longest queue of animals from the one species be and how close can a human voice get to approximating a ding oh so ding versus q

equal equal top. Well, there you go. So we want to keep our listeners happy. We either have to keep going to places like Antarctica or get celebrity guests on. Yep, yep. It seems that's the secret. Although third place, unexpected third, I did not see this one coming. How many leaves would a human need to fulfill our calorific requirements?

Yeah. On the photos photosynthesis not like to eat no no no how many leaves would you know yeah if you had leaves to photosynthesize how many would you that was the that was the interesting place didn't see that coming wow it's it yeah you do need a drop down because i've got a i know that you were looking through it everyone described the problems in different ways they Oh, they were all done different. So many. Some people went and got it from like the show title, like the punny way we phrase it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And other people described it.

We should do it that way. We need a wiki. Next time, remind me, drop down menus, finite options. Yeah. It'd make my life so much easier. We need a wiki that just explains what all the problems are. Oh, that too. A lot of people were like, can't remember them.

Love the podcast, but can't remember a thing. We can't blame them. We don't remember them either. I got no idea. In a switch from quantitative to qualitative, in the free text box, a lot of people, like their number one bit of feedback was just more episodes. Yeah. We get that a lot, actually, don't we?

Yeah. I mean, one a month is apparently not enough. Which is nice. I appreciate being part of that. Yeah. And so we realized that we have a goal on our Patreon to get to pi hundred supporters, which is 314. Yeah. And so how about we, we try to see if we can do two episodes a month once we're past the Pi hundred barrier.

I like that. That's exciting. Yeah. Because I only just found out as well that you can set your own amount on Patreon too. There's a custom amount. So if you can't. Yeah. Like if you're like, oh, I can only spare like a pound a month, you can do that. You can

scroll down to custom amount and say you're only going to give a pound a month. You could type in Pi pounds, you know, go wild. We should also flag up, we're going to switch it. So at the moment it charges per episode, we'll change it to be per month. So no one's going to get charged any more than they currently are. We'll put out hopefully an extra episode every month once we get to Pi 100, but no one will be charged more frequently. Oh yeah.

Yeah. That is a good point. And we're not far away, are we? I think from getting, from reaching 314. We're hoping people will be so excited with the extra episodes, the increased value. There will be a flood of people signing up. Oh yeah. I think we should do more things as well. We should introduce

more rewards for the tears down the road and perks. Do some live shows as well. I wouldn't limit the live shows to Patreons though. I think. Maybe a very quiet live show. So anyway, yes, get involved.

We hit by 100, more episodes. Yeah. Twice as many. That's an increase of 100%. Yeah, that's it. But also everyone who can't afford it and, you know, just tells other people to listen to us, they will also get to enjoy that as well, won't they? Absolutely.

Yeah. Finally, thank you to all our fantastic Patreon supporters. You literally make this podcast possible. And as always, we've picked three names at random from our supporters. I'd like to thank Bejomi. B-E-J-O-M-I. Or could it be Beomi? Maybe.

It's a cool name. Whatever it is. I like it. All lowercase. Alex Hackman. Good old Alex. And Jonathan a cool name. Whatever it is. I like it. All lowercase. Alex Hackman. Good old Alex. And Jonathan Markloff. Thank you all very much for supporting the podcast.

Yeah, thank you. This podcast has been a Problem Squared. You've been listening to myself, Matt Parker. Of course, we've got Beck Hill. And our producer is Lauren Armstrong Carter. Armstrong Carter, of course, being in alphabetical order. It's a lot like the alphabet in that regard. To quote what someone put in the free entry box in our survey

for any other comments, is this your card? No. Oh. Sorry. I'll let them know.