A Problem Squared - 053 = Elementary Monikers and Rotatory Chronikers

Episode Date: February 13, 2023

In this episode...   🪨 Which human names are the least elemental?   🕰️ Why do clocks run clockwise?   🧳 Some news from the business briefcase!   🪵 And an even NEWER stumpdate.   If you'd like to know how to bring plants and more specifically, your stumps, into the UK without an infestation of termites, have a look how, here: https://www.gov.uk/bringing-plants-and-wood-into-great-britain/from-outside-the-eu   Here are the free IMBD data sets used by Matt in his problem: https://www.imdb.com/interfaces/   And if you'd like to find out which Muppet you definitely are you can speed ahead of Matt and Bec, and find that out here: https://www.buzzfeed.com/jenlewis/which-muppet-are-you   If you've got a problem or a solution, hit us up on our website aproblemsquared.com.   You can buy A Problem Squared 'DING' t-shirts here https://a-problem-squared.teemill.com.   And if you want want even more from A Problem Squared, find us on Twitter and Instagram.

Welcome to A Problem Squared, the podcast dedicated to solving your problems. If podcasts were Australian cities, then this show would be Perth. Sure, we're not filled with cool nerds and musicians like Melbourne or Infinite Monkey Cage, and we're not as well known as Sydney or no such thing as a fish, but we do have a larger population than you'd think, and a lot of them are Brits. Your hosts are Matt Parker, whose total online following is roughly the population of my hometown of Adelaide. And I am Beck Hill, whose total online following is roughly the same population as Barbados. Oh.

Yeah. I've got an Adelaide worth of followers. Sounds way more impressive than it is, but it just turns out that Barbados is a lot smaller than Adelaide. You get a whole country. I know. I could have found a country for you, but I was like, nah. I get the smallest city.

That's a bit terrifying, imagining all of Adelaide following me. It is, like if you're walking home. Exactly. I'm like, what's that noise? Turn around, Adelaide. Oh, heaps good. Oh, I'll buy you a nice coffee. Oh, fruit chocs.

That's what the noise would be. Very specific to Adelaide. In this episode... I find which names are the least elemental. I counter someone's question about counterclockwise. And we'll open the AOB briefcase to see what's inside. I hope it's business. It might be.

Other business. Not the primary business. No. Matthew. not the primary business no matthew rebecca how have you been since i last saw you last time i saw you you were in australia and now i'm in the uk and you've kind of got two options here back i can talk about obviously the transition of changing continents hemispispheres, and weather systems. Or we go straight into the stump date. Oh my gosh. Yes.

Give me more stump date, please. Okay, everyone. It's stump date time. So for people who are listening with this. We need a musical sting for stump date now. We need something for stump date. Stump date. Send in your stump date stings.

So the shortest version of the background you need to fully in your stump date stings So the shortest version Of the background you need to fully appreciate This stump date There was a stump My family burnt the stump Because of the pandemic I couldn't partake in this Miraculously We dug up part of the stump root system

And I was waving it around And it was roughly the size Of a milk carton let's say like a big chunky bit of bit of root and we asked people to send in offers or suggestions of what to do now with this hunk of jarrah root and i was like oh i'll bring it back to the uk we can then get people to turn it into i don't know coasters or something now the stump date is i do not have the stump with me here in the uk and the stump is now in a slightly different form so two things happen one was i realized that i've basically got a chunk

of wood i pulled out of the ground and i can't just up and take that to a different country because what if there's like insects or something in it what if yeah but i don't think the uk cares about that does does it? Well, the UK hasn't got termites or like white ants. There's no ants that eat wood over here. What? And that's really handy. So, and they did have, there was somewhere in like the southwest where someone brought back a bit of wood from overseas and there was like a termite colony like in one house yeah and they quarantined the

house and quite recently they've declared victory they've gotten rid of the termite colony yeah and the savings like the cost of having 27 year war on termites is very high now i didn't want to spark another 27 year war on ants so i was like i can't just bring this lump of wood back into the uk without making sure there's no critters in it so i looked up how to sanitize wood that you want to put actually the most helpful resources were for putting it into a reptile enclosure so if you want to give your lizard a stick, you want to make sure it's a clean sanitary stick. And so basically you've got to bake your wood at 150 degrees Celsius. Oh, no. No, it didn't catch on fire.

Okay. Now, I also looked into how you're meant to dry wood. Because if you're not careful, it'll split. And I was like, well, this tree has been dead for decades. So I was like, it's definitely dried out to the ambient sand temperature. But there's still going to be some moisture. But the thing is, it takes like days, if not weeks or years, to properly dry a chunk of wood so it doesn't crack or anything.

And I was like, I haven't got time for that. I got one day. So I basically put it in the oven and very slowly brought the temperature up but you're meant to like seal the ends so it dries at a constant rate from the sides and i was like no no no wang it in the oven gradually crank it up and i baked it for several hours at 150 degrees celsius making sure it didn't smell burnt at any point in time and we did get some mild additional cracking but nothing too bad so it's in slightly worse shape but now it's definitely not got anything alive in it so in theory it's now safe safe to bring um back into the uk okay and um i did just do a quick cursory glance to see uh what the UK government have to say about bringing in bits of wood.

They got some opinions. Okay. If you're bringing plants and plant-based products, open brackets, like wood, close brackets. So there's no ambiguity here. I was like, what if I can get away with it's not a plant? No, they specify like wood yeah from outside the eu switzerland and lichtenstein you'll need not you will need you'll need very informal the uk government out of out of character if i may you y'all need a phyto set a phytosanitary certificate and your oven didn't

come with one of those i don't know it does not and i was like could i just write on a bit of paper nah it's cool i baked it at 150 degrees so basically i need to get a certificate from the plant health authorities in perth to say that my my chunk of stump is safe to come back into the uk i've left it in a cupboard in perth and i stump is safe to come back into the UK. I've left it in a cupboard in Perth, and I don't want to go back to Perth and find the cupboard full of insects. Or just like there's no cupboard there. There's just no cupboard.

There's a pile of sawdust. The whole apartment block's gone. It's gone. Yeah, so the chunk of stump is safe. It's been home treated. I couldn't bring it back to the UK. So we've got a couple options here. We can either get someone in Perth who thinks they can do something with my jarrah root.

And then if it's processed, I think it counts as a different category, but I don't know. Or we need to get a certificate from the Plant Health Authority. I think we start with phase one. If anyone is in Perth or Australia, I guess like, I don't know, you can't even, maybe even state to state would be an issue. Yeah, state to state probably. If you're in WA and you do things with wood and you can make something to commemorate the stump, I will send it to you within WA. If we can't find anyone, I'm back there in April this year for the solar eclipse. I will find some kind of plant expert and I'll get the certificate to bring it back into the UK where I'm sure we'll have more people who can do wood-based things to it.

So there you are. That's the stump date. You can now play the outro music. That's the stump date. You can now play the outro music. I've decided now that what I really want is for the stump to be turned into a little statuette of a stump. A twin-puller stump. Yeah, like an ode to the stump.

But a whole stump, you know, with roots and everything. Yeah, a whole stump. I might try and find... I could ask my parents for the earliest photo of the stump. See what it looks like. Can you make it look like this, please? Like someone going into the hairdressers. Like this. All right, well, I'll play you out.

That was stumped. And how has your stump-free life been, Bec? Oh, so stumpless. It's been great. I've got done my hair, got my hair done. First time I've had it done since pre-lockdown. It was in there for five hours. I'm naturally brunette.

And I thought, I haven't been blonde for a very long time. Not since I was a fair bit younger. And so I was like, not since I was a fair bit younger. And so I was like, great, I'll go blonde. But because there's been so much dye in my hair, when they put the bleach in, it went a sort of weird salmon color. And then they said, well, we can sort of go a sort of pinky-ish, you know, sort of coral color. But the ends were still quite greenish. And I said, well, let's lean into it and we'll go for a whole watermelon vibe. So I'm feeling very summery and it feels great.

It really suits. Yeah. Like, let's say mermaid hair. It's mermaid hair. Oh, producer Lauren literally just said mermaid hair as I said that. Yeah. There you go. Yeah.

And it's fruit based. So it's like a watermelon style. Yeah. There's a YouTube channel called Internet Comment Etiquette. Eric, who runs that, got a haircut to look like a pineapple some time ago. See, my haircut doesn't look like it. Like, it's not like I've been styled like a watermelon. I should make that clear.

I think the color is, but my haircut doesn't look like a watermelon. Yeah, if you had all of it cascading down your back, that would be like a slice of watermelon. But it's not like I've got a big triangle cut. No, nor if you just got like a massive green orb around your head. No. But you could arrange your hair in a triangle formation. I'm going to try. I'm trying to.

I mean, listeners can't see, but I'm literally trying to do that right now. And it never even occurred to me. I'm going to try and lie down and get my mom to take a photo. All right. Done. There we go. Guess what? I also got a haircut.

Gone for a kiwi fruit. Yeah. Thank you. Oh, we're matching. Well, look, I'll dye your head next time we're there i mean i have shaved all of my head the same length like beard top the works so i like it it suits you did you do your eyebrows the same length as well no i didn't but this is the lazy cut where i set my like the clippers to one setting and just do everything.

Do the works. You're right. I should do eyebrows to match. Yeah. Next time. Next time. Our first problem comes from Jordan, who says, Hi, Matt, Parker and Beck Hill.

And in the names, Jordan has put in brackets the PA from Parker and the BE from Beck Hill. Interesting. You know how on Breaking Bad, the opening credits highlight the symbols of elements from the periodic table when they appear in the actor's names. Assuming that an actor's name must require an element symbol to be in it, who's the most popular actor who can't appear on it? What's the most common name that doesn't work? What's the longest name that doesn't work and they've signed it off from jordan with the o in brackets from jordan

so the problem is basically which names do or don't have elements in them somewhere so um i wrote a little bit of code back that can take any name or word indeed and tell you what elements are in it. Do you want to know what your options are? Oh, yeah. You got five. You can have hydrogen. Classic. Just the big H.

Hydrogen. You can have beryllium. That's B-E. Or boron. Just B. Beryllium. You are. People have described you as beryllium. Does beryllium have beryl in it?

Because I went to the South Australian Museum today and was laughing because it was like, varieties of beryl, and I just imagined a bunch of little old ladies. A bunch of different beryls. Yes, yep. That was the beryllium exhibition. Now, more accurately,

you have been described as boron, so that's an option. Big old capital B. Carbon, iodine. That's it. Five of them. Five elements. Wow.

That's impressive. Considering there's only seven letters. There's not many letters. You're getting a lot of elements. I get six elements. Phosphorus, argon, potassium, erbium. Erbium? It's like elements. Phosphorus, argon, potassium, erbium. Erbium? It's like a seasoning.

And tetaneprotactinium. A lot of this is going to be me mispronouncing elements. I'd like to apologize for all the chemists. That's elements 85 and 91 that I just butchered at the end there. So I basically, I put together some very quick code that takes a bunch of text and just tells you which elements are in it. So now all I got to do is check all the names and see which ones do or don't have any elements in them.

But actually, you know what? The first thing I did, I got my old code that, remember the five letters, words, five words, five letters that all have 25 distinct letters? Oh yeah. Oh, that popular code i know i still had that terrible terrible code but the first little chunk of it is just importing the 370 000 words like the massive data set of every word and i was like well i only when i'm coding i like to just solve one little problem at a time so the first problem i solved was

can i write some code to count the number of elements in some text? And I was like, okay, before I worry about finding names or doing any of that, I'll just see if I can attach that bit of code to my old code, which was just import every word.

So I deleted the rest of the terrible code, put in this new bit and ran it. Well, I can tell you which word has the most elements in it. And I can tell you all the words that have no elements in them which would you like first the one with the most elements 19 elements and the winning word is and this is very on brand for the podcast i can't pronounce it correctly also on brand bell bell neotherapeutics having a therapeutical hot bath

oh yeah um so specifically it's like a medicinal hot mineral bath so like when you go to a spa and they're like hey we got this hot mineral water and you can soak in it for a while for medicinal purposes if you're wondering what that's called it's bell B-A-L, not bell, sadly, B-A-L, ball. Ball neotherapeutics. Now, there are actually, there are seven words that all have 19 elements in them. But that one is the shortest. So, as in like, because I was like, it's easy to have more elements if you've got more letters. So, I think the word that should get the credit is the shortest one because it's doing more with less.

Okay, I'm just going to paste them on the chat so you can see them. There they are. There's all seven words that contain 19 elements each. They're all awful words. I do like tetrabromofluorescine. There you go. Or pseudopathogenesis. Pseudopathogenesis. I like it being suede based though. The word cosine has 10 elements in it. 10 elements? Yep.

In fact, it's equal shortest word for 10 elements. Cosine. And there's no shorter word with 10 elements in it than cosine. That's cool. Cosine is working real hard. It has less letters. It's got, in terms of letters, C-N-O-N-E-S-I-S-C-O-I-N-I-O-S. There's nothing. That is satisfying. Nothing is not pulling its weight there.

That is like getting all the meat off the bone. So every pair of letters in cosine is an element, and all the letters individually are elements apart from E. So that's as good as you can get. So cosine. C-O-S-I-N-E. So is that a... Like a trigonomic function. Got it.

Not cosigning on a document. Cosigning on an angle. Yeah. Yeah. Right. So then I also went and found all the words that don't have any elements in them. And the longest word

that doesn't have a single element in it is, well, there's two tied for first place, deadmelt and de-leaded. De-leaded. Not a single element. Even though it literally got the word lead in it, which I think is very funny. Ha! That is that is great okay so now we get down to names i found an adequate looking database of names and i ran it through and it spat out a whole bunch of names so i did a database of

first names first like gemma gemma with a j doesn't have um any letters in it gemma with a j hasn't got any elements in it. And these are the names of the actors who are in it or just people's names? This is just people's names. So then I was like, okay, I can't just keep... I found a file that was like every name ever. And I ran it through and it was super unhelpful. Because number one, I don't think it was every name ever.

And secondly, now I'm like, but I don't know who are actors. So then I was like, right, I'm going to do two things. First of all, I'm going to run through the name of everyone who's ever worked on Breaking Bad. So I went to IMDb and I got the 1,226 credited or even uncredited, but they worked on it names. Now there are some duplicates in there because some people did more. Which sounds like a lot, but that's not just the cast. That's like crew and writers and music. Yeah, you name it.

And some people have been credited in different ways across different episodes. So there are duplicates in there as well. But they're all names associated with every episode of Breaking Bad. I then ran all those names through the code to see if there's anyone they'd ever put on the show which didn't have an element in their name. And the answer is no. Every single name that's ever appeared on Breaking Bad has had an element in it.

The worst case, the absolute worst case, was a stunt performer who was only in two episodes named Joe Ordaz. And Joe Ordaz only has oxygen. You can choose first name or second name. It's oxygen in both cases. They are the only person who worked on Breaking Bad that only has a single possible option for their element. They have to have oxygen. I feel like we need to tell Joe. Yeah, Joe orders.

We need to find Joe and tell them. You're as close as anyone came. And then, yeah, everyone else. Everyone else has a name. So finally, I'm like, okay, my goal here really is just to work out who's the most famous person who wouldn't be allowed to have been on Breaking Bad because their name hasn't got a single element in it. And so I went to IMDB, which is the Internet Movie Database, and you can download their data.

Not all of it, but they will let you download a list of every single person mentioned on the website. And so I downloaded it. Or 12,218,507 people who have been credited on anything. I then went through those 12 million and a bit names and spat out all the ones that didn't have a single element in them. So I now have all 1,565 names on IMDb that do not have an element in their name.

The data is not good quality, though. Like, some of them are, like, single digits. One of them is 100%, like, 100% sign is the name. Is their name. Yeah, apparently 100% has worked in the camera department on some films or TV shows, right? There's, like, the data is a mess, but it's, like like a mess in that

there's a bunch of entries that are a bit ridiculous, but it's not a mess in that it's missing names. Like I did a quick search for a bunch of people and they were all in there. So I feel like it's just cast a very wide net again. But the issue is, I don't know how I can kind of sort through this data to find out who are the most famous

or most prominent actual actors because this is the free data you get you'd need you can get a pro account for imdb and that gives you like star ratings but I couldn't be bothered doing that couldn't be bothered or you know don't need it I think you'll find that people who are on television a lot Matt tend to have professional accounts oh oh really you've got a wait have you got one are we on different sides of the famous enough to have a professional imdb account line nuts am i even on imd am i in that day i better be in that didn't even check to see if i was in the data set oh there i am i'm listed writer stand-up maths. Oh, my goodness. Lucy's in here too.

There we go. Yay. Here we are. Matt Parker. Very out-of-date photo there. Thank you. I've got hair. Oh, so in the top right, you've got the IMDB Pro star meter.

And then it says C rank. Is it a number value? What have I got? Yeah, so I think it's ranked you out of the other people. Okay, I want my star rating. I want Lucy's star rating. And I want your star rating. Let's get to the bottom of this.

So Lucy, Professor Lucy Green, her star meter is 366,623. Right. She's in almost the top third of a million of all stars. You are 350,000. No. 264. Oh, my goodness. I'm a trivial amount more famous than my wife.

That's well within the margin of error. You're still 16,000 ahead of her. It's not much. This guy, 96,391. You are were top 100 000 celebrities in the world wow i'm not sure i have never been starstruck in your presence until now that's oh my goodness top 100 000 also known for fruit-based hairstyles oh i've gone down 22 000 this week apparently else. Oh, I've gone down 22,000 this week, apparently. What?

I guess that's when Makeaway Takeaway was on TV, I guess. The series came out in October, and then it jumps up, so maybe it was a while for the data to come in. There's some fun graphs, actually. In fact, I'll see if I can look at your graph. Oh my god, you know

what, I go up and down, but I'm not straying too far from that 300,000 line. Last 12 months, down 100,000. Oh, there can't be many careers where you get an actual plot of when you were at your peak and now it's all downhill. No, it's true. So, Matt. Yep. I can look up how your star rating has gone ever since you were first listed.

Oh, my goodness. When was my heyday? In the movie database. I'd be able to look back and see when I made it to the top. And back down again. Yeah, they say you rank 300,000 in the world twice in your career. Once on the way up, once on the way back down. You're pretty solid.

Thank you. Lucy's has a big old jump really you know hers is like in the million in the one million mark and then she gets to 2018 and form she was in the top 100 for a while she hit top 40 000 look at her and i've sent mine as well which which just looks like um i won't i won't lie it looks like i'm on the way up. As of sometime in 2021, you've been hovering pretty solid in the top 100,000. Well, Beck, now that you're logged into Pro,

you've actually solved one problem for me. Because what I did was just go through and eyeball all the names that were in my IMDB database who haven't got an element in their name to see if any famous people jumped out. And two did. So there are two famous people in the data. And they are Adele and Mr. T. Both Adele and Mr. T have no elements in their names. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that I think

Adele is more famous than Mr. T. Now, don't encourage me to pity this foolish behavior. So, now, I feel like people are going to have strong opinions in different directions. I'm going to call it Mr. T, but arguably Adele is more famous, at least during the era when Breaking Bad was on. So it should get the title, but I don't know. Who knows what algorithm generates the star meter? You know what? For fun, I'll show you Mr. T's full graph.

Two. There you go. That's a pretty consistent career. Now, all only goes back until the late 90s. I feel like by then, you know, that's after the A-Team and other bits and pieces. Yeah, yeah. But even in the early 2000s, it hit the top 50. That's amazing.

So the solution to Jordan's problem of who's the most popular actor who can't appear on Breaking Bad, it's Mr. T. Which is such a shame because that would have been a great episode. It would have been. Maybe at the very end of the episode they would have had just like a, I would discuss a lot of things about drugs in this episode, kids. Don't forget to say no to drugs. And that's when they bring in Mr. T. That's what that show was missing yeah well i'm very impressed matt and i think that definitely deserves a ding is there any elements in ding there are three nitrogen indium and iodine elementary dear matt Hmm. Elementary, dear Matt.

We have a very concise problem in from Dimitri, who went to the problem posing page at aproblemsquared.com and said, why do clocks run clockwise? Were there ever clocks running anticlockwise? Right. Bec, you've got a spin on this. Yes. I mean, well, firstly, I would argue that if it's a clock, always runs clockwise. But, you know, that just is suggesting that the direction it goes, that is correct.

It's glib. Yeah. But why do they sort of circle from the top going left to right and the bottom going right to left? Yeah, I feel like clock direction is pretty standardized. Yes, yeah. And there's a really sort of simple answer, really. I haven't been able to find anything in my research that suggests otherwise, but it appears to mainly be because the clocks that we're used to were invented in the Northern Hemisphere and that's where sundials would run with an arc going from left to right. So they were already used to that motion. So it just made sense that that is the direction that a clock would go interestingly in bolivia in 2014 the national congress building in la paz

received a new clock that has hands that move anti-clockwise just as a way of saying well we're in the southern hemisphere so you know we're gonna do it the this is how we should do it yeah yeah and i uh i rate that i think that's really cool. There are a few other notable clocks that run counterclockwise. One of them is Paolo Uccello inside the Duomo. I think it's Uccello. Double C in Italian. I always can't remember. Is it Uccello or Uccello?

Look, it's the podcast where we can't pronounce things. We know this already. That one's really fascinating because it runs counterclockwise, but it also was before 12 hours were assigned to morning and night. So it would just run from sunrise to sunset. That was the only time it would run because it was like, that's the only time you need to know time. That's all you need.

Yeah, and that was mainly for religious practices and agricultural i feel like at that point it's less a clock and more just an arrow pointing where the sun is pretty much yeah yeah you're getting pretty close to sundial town around around that it's over there it's up there now it's over there now it's down there now and see you tomorrow bye that's it that was it and in prague the jew Jewish town hall has two clocks. One is your standard Roman numerals running clockwise. The other one has Hebrew letters on the dial and runs counterclockwise. So they think that, again, that comes down to religious practices,

the way that the temple priests would proceed counterclockwise around the periphery. It's also the Torah is marched counterclockwise. Have you ever seen a clock going backwards? It looks weird. We're so used to seeing clocks going the way that they go. If you see a backwards clock, it genuinely messes with your head. I'm pretty sure I saw somewhere like in a hairdresser's having backwards clocks, like totally mirror image clocks behind you.

So you look at it in the mirror. It the right that's so clever that's like how ambulance always has it backwards it used to threaten me as a kid that's you know when i first came and heard the problem my initial thought process was this is gonna be one of those arbitrary things like and i honestly thought it's not like the solar system has a dominant rotation direction like if you view the solar system from the down from the north hemisphere pretty much everything in the solar system goes anti-clockwise and so i was like oh it's not going to be like if the solar system's anti-clockwise viewed from above it's going to be something a bit more arbitrary but it turns out no it literally that. It's because we're rotating

counterclockwise in the northern hemisphere that means what gives us the apparent motion of the sun means that sundials go clockwise and that's where we got our clocks from. So the direction of clocks rotating is because of the dominant

angular momentum that came from the protoplanetary disk that's good that's good to know good answer yeah that's exactly how i was going to say it too sorry i sorry i stole your wrap-up yeah well there were some other suggested theories but i didn't think they stood up as much to that one some people thought it went back to the eye because obviously the terms clockwise and counterclockwise didn't exist before clocks no it that we just called wise and counterwise and counter yeah anti-wise it was anti-wise the closest they had to it was so they they would tend to just have left going from left to right or

right to left that was kind of the more you know because there was no reason other than saying circling yeah they there was a record of them the term widdowshins which comes from scottish i believe and widdowshins would mean counterclockwise And that was the idea that you were sort of walking left around something. And that was seen as quite evil. So there was an account of a woman who was being tried as a witch because she was walking Widdichins around houses. So she was just walking left around the houses. I mean, doing notoriously which things i'm sure of it yeah yeah that was uh one of the other reasons that people thought it might be because you don't

want a clock to be going left because left is evil and right is good and in fact i never even realized this the reason we say right to mean correct comes from the term that left is seen as bad and oh really so right is seen as as good right so when we say right we genuinely are saying it's it's facing that way facing that direction now i prefer the angular momentum of the solar system argument over the humans are ridiculous and can somehow form opinions and meanings to turning left or right yeah i want to live i'm going to live in the first first you know the latin for left is sinister yeah i made a sinister gag oh sorry i was too busy trying to remember all my facts no it's one of the many non-hilarious jokes I scatter hidden throughout the podcast.

So, yeah, there you go. That is, that's the answer. Wow. There's your little wing ding. Well, on behalf of Dimitri, you get yourself a mini ding. Ding. Hey, Matt. Yes, Bec. Do you want any? Any what? Any other. Yes, Bec?

Do you want any? Any what? Any other. In addition to something. Any other business? Oh, business. So, two episodes ago, I predicted we would hit one million downloads on the 11th of January. And I recorded that in advance of this happening.

It went out after that happened. And so for the people listening, this is now old news. They've known about this for two episodes now. But we, living in the past, have just realized that I was correct. We hit one million downloads sometime around 7.30 p.m. Greenwich Mean Time on the 11th of January. So I was correct down to the day. And I'm sure it had nothing to do with you and I pushing it on Twitter and being like, hey, everyone, we've nearly hit a million downloads.

Nah, we were rolling towards it at the time. I'm confident. I mean, maybe I factored that in, you know. Sure. At the time. I'm confident. I mean, maybe I factored that in, you know. Sure.

So, I refreshed it at 7.45pm and we had tipped over by then. So, that's why I'm saying it was about 7.30pm. So, I'm very proud of that prediction. Yeah. Which means that my subsequent predictions are also very likely to be true as well. So, that's good to know. Oh, fingers crossed. So, in theory, 2 million downloads in November. Bring it on.

We heard from Bennett, who sent us the question about what are the similarities between Perth, Scotland and Perth, Western Australia. Yeah, Taylor 2 Perths. And they said, although you made my problem undingable, despite the number of bells in your answer i appreciate the work you put in oh well done i've become a patreon oh that's nice of them i think becoming a patreon is like giving a problem a super ding yeah if anyone wants to super ding us why does that sound wrong they're dead i decided to not follow it up also to super ding us is if you take out the spaces, that's Super Dingus. Good old Super Dingus. Super Dingus has seven elements in it. Super Dingus should be our mascot.

And it's just... Some would argue it already is. Which one is it? Is it both of us? Who knows? It's not Super Ding Guy. There's no i in super ding guy oh no wait super ding go oh no we're going off topic again no yeah anyway this is

any other aob that's not what this is all about and as always we love to thank you wonderful listeners thank you for helping us hit 1 million listeners i i know we've already thanked you in previous episodes but we mean it this time yeah now now you now we know you've delivered on the goods we're very yeah so thank you so much thank you to everyone who shares this podcast with anyone who might like to listen to it and of course an extra thank you to all of our brilliant patreon supporters who all get to listen to our bonus podcast i'm a wizard and you can be a patreon supporter of any level in order to get that so we appreciate you but most of all we want to give a special thanks to three people chosen at random from our list of patreon supporters you get a

nice little shout out at the end of the show and this episode we would like to thank bill merrill eric herman's dad sonner i think you got that i think that's how you pronounce it and kate sherrod or sherrod sherrod that that silence there was us uh she rodard. Was us doing Sherards for Kate. It's one word, one syllable, Kate. I'd also like to thank my wonderful co-host, Matt Parker. Thank you. And the population of Adelaide, myself, Bec Hill, and the population of Barbados.

On behalf of all of us, thanks. And the Brisbane of our show, Lauren Armstrong Carter, in that she's pretty, warm, far away from both of us. Far, far away. You've been listening to Problem Squared. Goodbye. Bye. Bec, I've got a question for you. I need you to pick a song.

Like just any song? Okay, I've just sent you a grid of nine songs. And you've got to choose a song. Choose a song. Ooh. Oh, it's a close one. I mean, there's some interesting choices there. But I think I'm going gonna go with pump up the jam by technotronic oh really i was torn between pump up the jam and under the bridge me too those

were my two yeah well if you've claimed technotronics pump up the jam i'll take under the bridge and um we have now completed question one in BuzzFeed's Which Muppet Are You quiz. Ooh. There you go. Next post-credits scene, we'll do question two. Okay. Wow, this is playing the long game.

It's going to take a while. It'll be worth it. Imagine when we find out which Muppets we are, though. It's great because everyone else can run ahead and do the quiz in front of us and work out what Muppets they are. Exactly. And if they can try and work out what we are though. It's great because everyone else can run ahead and do the quiz in front of us and work out what Muppets they are. Exactly. And if they can try and work out what we are, we'll find out if they're right or not in a number of episodes time. Fantastic. I really hope it's Animal. Which Muppet do you think you are? I have a sneaking suspicion

I'll end up with like Beaker or Dr. Honeydew. Like one of those. I think my nerdy answers are going to bump me in the science Muppet direction. Yeah, possibly. I mean, obviously everyone wants to be Gonzo because he's the best one. Yeah, nah. To be fair, given one of my favorite things to do in my career is hosting variety nights, I may even get Kermit. I was thinking you're a bit of a Kermit.

From a career point of view. If I was just going to go straight in, I'd say that you're a Kermit. Okay. Yeah. And I'd like to think I'm Gonzo, but I think I'm more Fozzie Bear. I think I have to tell everyone when my jokes are happening. You're 100% getting Fozzie Bear. Plus I've got a tiny hat.