A Problem Squared - 058 = Bluey's Beats and Undies Cheats

Episode Date: April 24, 2023

In THIS episode...   🎶 What's the time signature of the Bluey theme tune?   🔐 How can you get the security tag off an item of clothing at home?   🐹 The first answer to the first A Peanut Squared.   🗂 And some Any Other Business.   If you'd like to visit or participate in the Polyplane exhibition at Rutgers University, find out more on their website here: http://polyplane.org.   You can watch Adam Neely expand on Bec's answer for irregular time signatures here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KCpJx_2K_g.   ***Merch Competition UPDATE: DO NOT SEND YOUR PREFERENCES TO THE PROBLEM POSING PAGE!***   Send in your sizes for those T-Shirts! And phone it in if you want THE HAT! Put your down preferences HERE: bit.ly/APSgiveaway   And finally if you'd like to find out which Muppet YOU are, just speed ahead of Matt and Bec and find that out here: https://www.buzzfeed.com/jenlewis/which-muppet-are-you.   Send your problems, solutions and t-shirt specifications to our website: aproblemsquared.com.   And, finally, if you want even more from A Problem Squared, find us on Twitter and Instagram.

Hello and welcome as we roll the dice on another episode of... Hang on. A Problem Squared. Oh, excellent. okay uh my name is matt parker mathematician and dice roller and i'm joined by beck hill there you go comedian and tv presenter That's the piddliest dice for me. For the listeners, I got out an extra dice and rolled it just for Beck. Yeah, thank you.

You're welcome. It's the attention to detail. What would you have gotten if you'd rolled a different answer? It would be a very different show. No, this was the number of your names I was going to say, and I rolled two too so that worked out really well joined by oh dwayne the jock jock ronson yeah oh not even not even dwayne the rock they're waiting they're waiting no no the home brand it's the tribute act yeah they're waiting

in the hallway i should tell them that they're not needed. Yeah. Dwayne the Jock Ronson is a Scottish tribute. A real strong guy. Yeah. Well, tell them to go home. I'm hosting. Wow. The dice have spoken. On this episode.

Snake eyes. Snake eyes. I've been having a right old time with time signatures. I've got an unusual problem that we're going to solve together. Oh, no. It's not good. Ah, any other business? Ness.

Ness. There's another dice there that just said nis sorry i'll break for now so beck how have you been keeping i've i'm not getting much sleep oh yeah oh so as as a old old-time listeners i meant like or long time or long time long time listeners long time listeners will know that i have a blounge because we do a blounge we put our lounge room and bedroom together during lockdown because i was doing more work from home and i needed an office so we turned out office a boffice so we turned our old bedroom into a boffice. Yeah. And it sounds like a lot more goes on in there. It does, yeah.

Sorry, you turned the boffice into an office. The downside of that meant that our, because we have a very large enclosure for our hamster, they're meant to be minimum a metre by 50 centimetres. It's a big old space. Yeah. And it doesn't fit in the boffice. It is in the blounge.

And you never strive just for the minimum requirements in any scenario. And we recently got a new hamster called Peanut. And Peanut is very little and very active. And you were saying that, this is a chat we had before we started recording, we were having just a general peanut catch up. And you were giving me a size comparison between peanut and pudding yeah and long-time listeners will remember the previous hamster pudding yes yeah and putting i mean they're both dwarf hamsters so they don't get that big

anyway but we thought that they were the same size but then we saw peanut we make these little food puzzle balls imagine a rubber band ball but hollow yeah i hide a couple of treats in like little pellets and things and then put it all together i get it pop it in the enclosure and because it rolls it spends like a good hour or so pushing it around the cage trying to get the food out yeah yeah when we made them for pudding you know it'd be like a hamster with a fairly large football size okay yep but peanut is so small it's like the size of peanut oh right okay so when he tries to like grab it and flip over on his back it's i mean it's adorable it's very cute so yeah he's very small and very very

active and runs around in his little wheels a lot more little they're big big wheels yeah and it's been keeping me awake oh you're not up all night making puzzle balls no no i just just the sound of something running around in a wheel that's fair enough that is a distracting noise because everyone sleeps in the lounge not everyone like not neighbors no no yeah the whole household is in the lounge my husband and i sleep in the lounge yes and and peanut is it yeah but peanut sleeps during the day and the thing is i'm quite good with white noise i even play white noise on my phone because i have a little bit of the old tinnitus and so i like to have something on because

otherwise i can just hear ringing all the time and so i don't mind the sound of the wheel turning but it's it's not constant it's a periodical oh nice hey wow someone's paying attention if it was a tile a specific t-shirt shaped tile and um it is very distracting and then what will happen of course is i'll get used to it and then when he stops i become convinced that it stopped because he's run so fast he's flipped his way across the cage and hurt himself. It's never the case. But yes, I keep waking up either because he started running or he stopped running. People with children, I understand. I get it. It's basically the same.

That's why you've been attending those groups. I've got a friend who's about to meet her adopted daughter that she's been approved for, her husband. And it's been very hard not to go, yeah, yeah, I understand. We picked up peanut recently. She's got to be like, you absolutely do not. Get out of my life. How about you?

What have you been up to? Oh, I made a shape. End of story. That's the whole. I don't want to brag, but I make shapes every day. Yeah, ooh. Throw them. So a friend of mine is running a collaborative maths art project

in New Jersey, in Rutgers University. And what they're doing is getting people to send in shapes. So people make a shape and they send the shape in. And then they've got a massive like wire frame, which is like, you know, a couple of meters in each direction. And they're going to hang everyone's shapes inside the frame. So it'll be suspended somewhere in this massive. Oh, cool.

Not a box, but it's like just. A Faraday cage. Yeah. And they're going to suspend them in specific locations. What they're going to do. And I forget which axis is which, but it's something like the distance like in one direction will be the number of faces that your shape has and the distance in another direction would be the number of edges

and the distance in the third direction is the number of vertices and so the 3d coordinates where they hang your shape is based on the properties of your shape but what's particularly clever about this project is there is a mathematical relationship between the number of faces, the number of vertices, the number of edges on a shape. So if you take the number of vertices and subtract the number of edges and then add the number of faces, you always get a value of two for all shapes. I don't know how well you remember my show humble pie yes i complained bitterly about the inaccurate football signs in the uk yep the whole section is devoted to me

getting very upset i've not only seen that show multiple times you have and read your book and seen you do that bit oh on various occasions yeah i do know what i still enjoy it i still enjoy it getting me getting angry about street signs. Yeah, I enjoy watching you get angry. But because of this cool relationship, it's called the Euler characteristic for 3D shapes that haven't got a hole in them. Because of this relationship, the Euler's characteristic,

that equation is also the equation for a plane, for a flat surface. And so it means it doesn't matter what shapes people send in, if you hang them according to their coordinates for faces, vertices, and edges, they will all lie in one perfect, like it won't be flat. It's going to be on an angle, but they'll all be in one plane. They'll all line up perfectly across the middle of this thing. You say shape.

I say shape. But what does... You say shimali. But what does that... Polyhedron. Okay. So it's where each face is equal? No, faces can be whatever you want.

But you can't have curvature? You can have curvature and this thing would still work. Yeah. But... So if you do a sphere... The word shape is too general. Polyhedron. So it's got to be faces that are joined together with edges.

Yeah. And have corners. Pizza shapes wouldn't work. Pizza shapes wouldn't work. Even hexagon ones. Barbecue shapes wouldn't work. Because there's a curved edge. Oh, for listeners, I should say pizza shapes is a bit like mini cheddars.

Oh, yeah. With different shapes and flavors. And tastes way better. I don't just mean a circle. No, a pizza shape. Yeah, like a wedge. A disc. But a pizza shape is technically 3D.

Right. But with curves. It's technically a hexagonal prism. That would work. Yeah. Now the curvature is actually fine because the relationship of faces, edges, and vertices doesn't rely on there not being any curvature. That's true. It would still work, but people would get a little upset because,

strictly speaking, a polyhedron shouldn't have that, but it would still work in this art installation. Would like to see the shape i made yes so i got on the live stream yes and i did not know what shape i was going to make i opened it up to the viewers nice i did know what i was going to make it out of because i asked my friend lisa to send me a bunch of acrylic offcuts from previous projects because she makes things for me. Fun. So actually that box over there is all the leftover acrylic offcuts.

And so I basically got the live stream and said, Hey everyone, I want to build a shape for this project. It's called Polyplane. I've got all this acrylic. I had a drill and some cable ties and you can make things up. No, they do it in inches. So I do apologize. Up to like 14 inches across you can

make these great crazy and you can do obviously all sorts of numbers of faces and you can do all sorts of crazy shapes and we're like right where are we going to build and we ended up are you ready with a tetrahedron so matt is showing me a picture of what at first sight appears to be a three-sided pyramid. A triangle-based pyramid, yeah. Yeah, yeah. First of all, this is the simplest polyhedron you can make. So we were going to build a big shape,

and we did a bunch of working out and what shapes we could do, but you have to reserve your spot on the plane because if someone has already built a shape that's going to go somewhere, it's going to clash. Yeah. Oh, so you're limited by the number of of yeah and then someone went no one's done tetrahedron yet oh great what that's like the easiest one yeah and then so we're like let's do that but we reserved it yeah and we we knew you can build them up to like 14 inches across

but then we went to like you got to register on the website so we were registering it and we put in the size and And it said no. And because it's right in the corner, the maximum size you can build it is two inches across. And so that's what we made. A comically small. You've made a Christmas tree ornament. We basically made a Christmas tree ornament. Yeah.

Yeah. Tetrahedron. So I packaged it up and sent it off. And as people are listening to this podcast, they are all installed in New Jersey. So if you want to make a shape, you've got time. So here's the Polyplane website. You can see they've done like a 3D model of what they think it's going to look like. That's where my tetrahedron is going to be.

Down in the corner there. Love it. If you want to participate, they show you where all the submissions are. So this is like the plane where all the shapes are going to be. And they mark out shapes and how much space they're taking up and so that's that's me down there great so it has to be within that space yeah yeah yeah you claim one of the empty bits and you make the shape okay the only condition is it's got to be able to survive outside it needs to be able to survive a little

bit of like rain and stuff i want it at that point okay uh back for comedy reasons i don't fully understand you want to have a 69 face shape some people are building them out there wow oh my someone might have already done it i changed my mind there is a spot if you wanted to do an octagonal prism yeah i want to do that that would fit that would fit oh okay right okay so maybe if we do it if we do it it'll be new jersey if you want to go see it our first problem this episode was sent in by lawrence on the problem posing page at problemsquared.com and they say hey long long time listener that's what we call them they wondered if they could help them with a musical problem okay they say here my daughter

and i both love bluey the australian kids tv show about an adorable canine family and they equally love its theme tune however the timing of this song confuses me what is the time signature for this song is it in three measures of a quarter and one measure of five quarters would you how'd you pronounce that five fourths yeah or is it in one measure of 1.25 i'm just simplifying down the fractions into decimals or is it actually four measures of you wouldn't write four and four as a fraction you'd say one anyway uh with a counted pause i don't understand now i know what you feel like yeah reading reading maths you're like this is meaningless help help there on behalf of me and lawrence what's going on what's the time signature what time signature is the bluey theme song okay so you know how music in sheets is

divided into bars oh yeah they draw like a line yeah and the time signature is how a musician understands the rate at which notes was played oh okay like like the not frequency but like the tempo the yeah yeah yeah now time signature right is also referring to how many notes are in that bar and generally music tends to be four to the bar so so that's like saying if you go to a bar and you order some pizzas and they say the maximum order here is four pizzas per bar yeah that's it wouldn't be four pizzas in a bar oh so a whole pizza would take up the whole bar oh so if it's one over four then for the whole bar that's just one note one pizza at a physical bar right yeah but if the measurement is four four which is what most music tends to be i've heard four four mentioned yeah

so four four would be four quarters of pizza in a bar. Now it's the same amount of pizza. You're just splitting it up differently. I.e. different notes. Right. So instead of the whole note just being the same note, you could have four notes in the same amount of time. Yeah, they're smaller.

Yeah. Okay, right. And different songs have different ways of dividing up the bar. Yes. And this is mainly so that when people are all playing the music together, they all play in time. Right. So as long as everyone is counting, so normally you have like one, two, three, four, one, two.

So you're numbering the bits of the bar. Like by the time you get to four, that's the whole bar. Yes. Because the bar is worth four. And then you start again. One, two, three, four. That's the next bar. Yeah. And you don't count zero through three because zero has two syllables and that would be harder to get exactly got it okay because by the time that you get to one yeah zero one two three yeah okay got it right so going back to the question read

out the part to me that you didn't understand so they say uh what's the time signature for this song is it in three measures of one four and one measure of five four or is it actually four measures of four four yeah now i think they mean three measures of four four right you think that's a musical typo i think so so they're saying is it is it four four four four four four five four or is it always 4-4? Yeah, that's the question. That's what we're here for. That's right. So I think the next bit, we're going to have to play the Bluey theme.

That makes sense. I'm not familiar with the Bluey theme. So it's got weird pauses in it and then they shout stuff and it carries on. Yeah. I can see why people are confused about the time signature. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. The reason for the pauses, if you're watching the show, is that in the intro, the family of Blue Heelers, which is the breed of dog, they're doing musical statues. Ah.

So they're dancing. And when the music stops, they got to stop. Yeah. But mum keeps dancing the first time, which is why they go, mum. Because she's out. Yeah. And then the music stops they gotta stop yeah but mum keeps dancing the first time which is why they go mum because she's out yeah and then the music starts again they all start dancing music stops dad is still dancing dad yeah there are several different ways of counting the time signature for this oh no yeah so what lawrence was saying originally was, was it three lots of what I believe they meant four out of four. Four, four, yeah.

And then five, four. Is that to allow for the pause? Yeah. Got it. So I'm going to play it again. And you're going to count over it. With me counting over it. Got it.

One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four, five. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. One, 2, 3, 4, 5. 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Right, so the name of the character is on that fifth extra beat. But the pauses in that five, they change slightly.

Ah. So technically that is correct. That is one way of counting it. Yep. That's our favorite type of correct. Ah. So technically that is correct. That is one way of counting it. Yep. That's our favorite type of correct. Yes. However, you can also count it as four over four because the song does work as that. One, two, three, four, one, two, three, four.

You know, keep going that way. And then you just allow for the fact that there is a pause. Pause in the song. Yeah. There are different terms for the pause. I think for martyr is one of them but that can also mean elongating notes and things like that again not trained i feel like a lot of music and art is breaking the rules anyway well it's funny you should say that because i spoke to a a composer i spoke to a friend who studied classical music and did a master's in

music or one of those things i think that exists but i've spoken to many many people you spoke to a lot of people i've spoken to an opera singer oh my goodness i've spoken to a lot of different people in relation to this you're just showing all in relation to this genuinely i spent about two to three hours on the phone yesterday to different people. And it was really interesting because they all sort of had different answers, but then some of them sort of worked. And then we realized that actually it's because time signatures are a bit like money in that they are a made up concept to help us understand things.

They don't really exist. No. It's sort of there to help us along the way. Basically, if you want to sing a song or write a song and you decide to ignore time signatures, the time signature police aren't going to kick the door down. Oi, keep it in 4-4. Right?

You can write whatever tune you want. Oh, absolutely. And, I mean, there are many songs out there that are very popular where people cannot work out what the time signatures are because maybe there wasn't one sufjan stevens actually is a fantastic example i don't know if you're familiar with their illinois album i'm not it's a great album as well i thoroughly enjoy it i had no idea how much of Sufjan Stevens' music either changes time signature or just uses different time signatures for different parts so that it sounds like different songs being played at the same time. Why not? So you could count it that way with three measures of four and then a measure of four over five.

Or you could just do it as all of it as measures of four and just leave a beat yeah to allow for the musical statues thing there's been a few different opinions about this online as well because the pauses are different rates and there was someone who's trying to teach their kids when to yell out the name because the rate changes each time so you don't know when to oh when can you yell it out that's great great. They worked out that the pause starts and then gets incrementally less with each name. Oh, it gets smaller. So they worked out that with the first one, you've got a pause of about three.

So you go one, two, three, mom. But with dad, it's one, two, dad. Then banjo, one, banjo. And then bluey is just bluey. Yeah. two dad then banjo one banjo and then blue is just blue yeah i feel like there are a lot of parents out there who have had to listen to this theme song a lot of times and therefore had a lot of intellectual time to throw at it yeah to analyze every last aspect of what's going on yeah of course after i reached out to all of these professionals for their advice with this, I then found out that there is a YouTuber called Adam Neely, spelled N-E-E-L-Y, who has been asked this question

of what the time signature of blue is and goes into depth on it a lot. So if you want to get a bit more information about it, I do recommend checking out Adam Neely's page. Adam Neely did then explain that because time signatures are artificial that technically all music can be counted as 4 over 4. Oh, I was just going to say. Even music

that is definitely not. All music can just be counted up. Why loop? Just start counting and keep going. Number every single one why yeah sure what is this in uh it's in 17,712 yeah over 17,712 i came across some interesting arguments for the tallest man with the broadest shoulders which is a sophia and steven song which is a five over four beat yeah then the next bar is a six over four beat. Yeah. Then the next bar is a six over four beat. And the argument was whether it's five and four interchanging

or just 11 over eight. They just, the whole song, make the whole thing one big fraction. Yeah, that's right. Well, Bec, you've done an incredible amount of research. You've answered it as satisfactorily as it could be. Yeah, my answer is yes to both of those things. It is. And do you know what?

Because it's relative, sure, if they meant one over four for the first four measures, probably. If you count it weird. I'm going to give you a ding, ding, ding, ding. That's a four-four dinging. I have a whole ding. I'll give you a D-I-N-G. Thank you.

D-I. That's it. There you are. Appreciate it. This next problem is for Matt. Yep. I don't know who it's from because it literally, it just says in our running order sheet,

Matt's unusual problem. Yes, it just says in our running order sheet, Matt's unusual problem. Yes, it does. And I think you could argue I set this problem myself to be solved by us now. Okay. It's a bit of an unusual problem, hence the name. It's going to start embarrassing and I fear may end dangerous. So let's see what happens. So my problem, I've got it here.

Now, I apologize in advance. I'm going to have to show you my underwear, which I'm not wearing, but I've got two pairs of underwear. Do you want to actually, they're perfectly clean. They've never been worn. Can you just tell, just to describe to the listeners what's wrong with my two pairs of underwear. Yeah.

So Matt has two pairs of, can I say the brand? Yeah, it's going to be relevant. The Bonds. Oh, I see. So these are Bonds trunks. Yep. Two pairs. They are very, very clean.

Like boxer short kind of things. They are joined at the crotch. Yeah. In a sort of, you know, inverted, if I was to hold up one pair, the other pair's upside down. So almost like the number eight with a security tag. Yep. It says warning.

And then it's just got a little picture of something breaking. Yeah. I think it's trying to say if you break this ink or something's going to go everywhere. Yeah. I feel like that. No one wants ink on their undercarriage. Well, exactly.

So, so I bought, I bought, it was a two pack that may not surprise you of underwear that I bought in Australia. So I, as a matter of public record, only own a single type of sock.

Cause when I was at university in Australia, many years ago, I was like, why buy more than one type of sock? when I was at university in Australia many years ago I was like why buy more than one type of sock because if all your socks are identical any two socks make a pair yeah you can grab any two socks and you're away and so to this day I wear black explorer socks but it meant when I moved to the UK which has now been most of the time since then yeah I could I could I could only buy socks when I'm back in australia yes and so it became a thing whenever i was in australia i have a similar thing there you go yeah i have no further

questions um but at the same time i don't know why but i also locked in place that i just buy underwear at the same time so i buy all my underwear i buy the bonds underwear in australia because i was buying explorer socks yeah and you buy them from the same place because it's the same company. Yeah. So I was back in Australia recently. You were there. We had a lot of fun. Not when you were underhand shopping.

Not when I was buying underwear shopping. No, right before I left, I was like, oh, I need to stock up on socks. So I actually went down to Big W at Caron Up Shopping Center, for people who know their shopping centers in Perth. Grabbed a bunch of socks. I grabbed some underwear while I'm here. Chucked it in the basket. grabbed a bunch of socks, thought I'll grab some underwear while I'm here, chucked it in the basket, bought it, left, like flew out a day or two.

I had a stump to deal with, flew out. Yeah. Got all the way back here, unpacked it, took the packaging off and then realized, number one, Big W security tag. This is not expensive underwear. This is not like fancy. But sometimes those things get nixed the most. I guess so. And Bonds undies are quite sort of

like famous in Australia. Yeah, yeah. They're iconic. Most people I know when they're Australians, when they're back in Australia, will buy Bonds brand something. Yeah. I'm a Target girl myself. I go for just home brand fair enough um and different target to the us yes just you know while we're talking brands and so i got

back here unpackaged them and and i was like what on earth and so now i've got choices because like i said they're not particularly expensive yeah so i So I could just cut my losses. Yeah. But I'd have to cut both of them to get this off. Yeah. Unless you want to keep it on. Or I cut one off and wear the other one with the tag on. With the security tag and a bit of material from another pair. I don't think I want to do that. But also I don't want, I'm not a wasteful person.

I feel like I don't want to buy something and then waste it. Yeah. So I feel like if I can salvage this, I should. But they're out of the packaging. I could take them back to Australia, but I was like, there must be a way to get the security tag off. So, Bec, do you know? Also, how do you explain it when you bring it back?

I doubt you've still got the receipt. No. So you're just going in. No packaging. Like with like two pairs of underwear. And so could you remove this security tag for me? Yes. No. No.

So it happened to me once many years ago. I bought a coat. Yeah. And I put a hair tag on it happened to me once many years ago. I bought a coat. Yeah. And I put a hair tag on it. And there's two ways you can get a tag off. One category of ways is hit it with something like a hammer or something. Smash it. That's genuinely my thing was, right, we could go out the back.

Go out the back. Grab a hammer. Yeah. Bam. Done. Now, what I'm pretty sure these symbols mean, and we'll put a photo of these out is that they've got some kind of ink or dye or something in there that's going to cause an absolute mess if you smash it to discourage that exact process and my previous case with the jacket i did that

but first of all i froze it in liquid nitrogen so so when you smash it you just brush all the dye off yeah it's all frozen. So I was doing shows at Bloomsbury Theatre. It was Christmas time. And I realized I had the tag on. And the chemistry building is directly opposite Bloomsbury Theatre in London. Yes. So I was like, Andrea, you got any liquid nitrogen?

He's like, come on over. And we froze that bit of my jacket in liquid nitrogen, smashed it with the bottom of a taut stand, which is like a big, chunky bit of metal. Yep. Smashed everywhere. Very scientific. Brushed off the ink before it started to melt job done great so that's an option but we're in goddoming and i haven't got a liquid notch oh the other category of ways of doing it is to recreate the way they do it in the shop they've got like a machine thing yeah but

what does the machine do oh is it a magnet one magnet one? I think it's a magnet one. Some of them are magnet ones and I feel like some of them are just things that unclip it. Well, Beck, Beck, I don't know what sort this is, but I have a magnet. Alright, show off. So I thought we would give it a go with a magnet and see if it is a magnet one if it pops off. And if it doesn't pop off, we'll have to share photos of it and get some suggestions from our listeners on how I'm going to get this off my pants. Yeah, we'll try and get Matt's pants to pop off.

That's not what we're going to call this project. I mean, I've just done a very quick look online. Oh, yeah, what have you found? One method is to use rubber bands. Rubber bands? Place the ink cartridge of the tag face down. Right. Yeah, basically what it's suggesting is wrapping a rubber band around it to help reduce the speed at which the ink spreads when you pry it apart.

It's still spurting ink everywhere, but not as fast as it would be otherwise. They're real helpful, real good. Oh, actually, no, it doesn't. So it says the rubber band should place pressure around the pin, which loosens it. Oh. So whatever the thing is, the machine that goes in and squeezes it. And does a thing, yeah.

To undo it. I feel like if it was easy to get off, it defeats the point of having it. If it's a magnet one, find a high powered magnet. Would you say you have? Well, Beck. Is it with you now? Yep. Yep.

Now, some ground rules before I get this magnet out i am scared of this magnet it is a terrifying magnet is it going to give us like a mri don't put it near a laptop or a phone okay don't be careful magnetic objects will stick to it at speed okay it's the kind of magnet where if you owned two of them, it could cause serious injury by crushing fingers. Wow. So you have to be super careful if you have two of them. I used to have two of them. Oh, no.

And someone I gave this talk to previously didn't listen very closely. They had one underneath a rug and one on top of the rug. Oh. And now I'm making the one on the top of the rug race around by moving the one there. But then they took it off the end. And even that little distance, the acceleration where they clipped together, one of them smashed into shards just because it goes so fast, so quickly. So I've gotten rid of the old one.

That's a terrifying magnet. I got one left. The safer way to carry them is in lots of padding so nothing can get close to them. Yeah. So it's in the canvas bag over there. I'm glad you pointed that out where I could have easily just put your laptop down thanks i just love the idea of you walking around with this bag and like women's jewelry flying off okay i'm moving my babies pewter dummies i don't know okay you want to pop your laptop elsewhere? As far away as possible? Yes, I do.

Don't put your phone there. So. Try and move it. Magnet stuck to the table. I just moved it and it's just stuck to the table. Yeah. Careful. Yeah, that is quite terrifying.

Yeah. What's terrifying about it is 99% of the time it's a not very heavy bit of metal. Yeah. But then 1% of the time it's got a violent mind of its own. There must be a bolt or something under the table there. Okay, I got the magnet. I'm going to try it on the pin side, we think, first. I'm imagining it's suddenly just going to fly apart

and the day is solved. Okay. Oh, it's stuck to it. Definitely metal in there. It's sticking to the magnet. But I just figured it's stuck to it. Definitely metal in there. It's sticking to the magnet. But I just figured they kind of push it on a metal thing and then one end kind of comes loose. No. No.

I think it's hammer time. Are we going to go liquid nitrogen? Is that what's going to happen here? Or just do it. Just whack it with a hammer. I mean, they're underpants. And an elastic band. What do you care if they're a little bit dyed?

That's a good point. We have two options here, Bec. We can either just go hit it with a hammer now. I mean, you know I've offered that. I know. Or we can open it up. We can put some photos online and get people to suggest other ways of getting it open. Or we just treat it as art.

Or this is it now. This is it. It's just, you know, I almost don't want to admit defeat by just hitting it with a hammer. Because we can always, we'll always have hit it with a hammer. Yeah. I mean, we can freeze it in a freezer rather than. The liquid nitrogen option.

Yeah. I guess that would work. Yeah. That's the fun. You've just got to wait for gotta wait i don't know what the melting point of ink is yeah i think just wear them as is oh wear them as is and just tuck just sew them together yeah for comfort yeah yeah okay fine or wear them as is oh you know what everyone's gonna know why would we even have that as an option? So that's my problem. It's still an ongoing problem, it turns out.

We'll get to the bottom of this. Hey. That's a past joke. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. That's good. It was worth it. So right now that is no ding.

No ding. No ding for you. No ding in my days. That is an undeezing. Undeezing. Undeezing. Because there's no. It's an unding-dee-zing.

This has just been disappointment after disappointment. Get ready for. Oh. Any other business ah i know that's handy what are the chances uh so first up back you set a peanut squared yes two episodes ago yes for any new listeners that is a hamster based problem for any young listeners or people with. With young humans around. Or people who know young humans who might want to do a simpler problem. Got it. Yes.

So the question was if Peanut has five grams of pellets a day. Yep. And a hamster, a dwarf hamster lives on average for about two years. Exactly. How many grams of pellets would peanut need in his whole lifetime and uh we posed that we've had an answer come in yeah from long time listener long time listener and long time answerer yeah yep we've got dexter dexter we always enjoy dexter's answers because dexter goes above and beyond yes and and shows they're working out. Yes. We appreciate it. So Dexter, this is the way that I would do it traditionally.

Yep. Which is to go five grams. Yep. Times 365 days. Yep. Times two. Yeah. For two years is 3,650 grams.

Yep. And then has written power up. 2024 is a leap year. So add another five grams. There you go. Don't is a leap year so add another five grams there you go don't forget that leap year so in total it's 3 655 grams or shortened to three kilos uh 0.655 yes in fact this is given in several different units involving milligrams yeah and the current bag that I have for peanut is only 750 grams. Oh. So.

So you're going to need five of them. Yep. I will say Dexter then wrote pi is greater than tau, which I think is just Dexter trying to appeal to the judges. They've also put their Casio calculator in the shot. I don't know if that's intentional. Oh, definitely. It must be.

Yeah. Very impressive. And then Dexter said by dexter aged 10 and then 48 over 365 which is a viable time signature i'm sure yeah equals 10.1314168378 and has also added i was seven when you started this thanks for making us feel old wow We've been doing this for years. I know. That's why we're now so good at it. Up next in any, and yet we're not running out of ways to introduce the show. We've also had an answer from, I didn't see this one.

I've only just scrolled down. Oh, wow. James Morgan says, my daughter asked me to send you this and it's a page of working out. So how have they done it? They, oh, well, I haven't got that far down. Oh, in watermelons. So they did it the way I would do it.

So I did 365 plus 366. Yep. And then multiply that up by 0.005. I went straight to kilos. Okay. Of course you did. Yeah. Thank you. There you go. I went straight to kilos. Okay. Of course you did. Yeah. Thank you.

There you go. 3,655 grams of food. And then in watermelons. Well done, Emily. Thank you very much, Dexter. And thank you very much, Emily. And of course, there may be other answers from other people. Oh, yes.

By the time this episode comes out. Apologies if we've not read it out. Yes. Thank you for sending it in. It's just because of the time of recording. Yeah. And there are no prizes. Well, not for that that but i do have some prizes unrelated do you remember remember we had the trebuchet yes the live show we wanted to trebuchet a t-shirt into the audience because it was very

funny literally launched the t-shirt bingo i ordered a bunch of t-shirts because people normally have like a t-shirt canon we have a t-shirt trebuchet yeah very funny t-shirt didn't make it in time no so we gave away other i think we gave away like my t-shirt at Trebuchet. Very funny. T-shirts didn't make it in time. No. So we gave away other, I think we gave away like my t-shirt. Yeah, we did. Yeah. Yeah. But I drew on them. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. Yeah. And we got some from the festival and all that jazz. But the t-shirts did later show up. Yes. And I put some of them into my normal wardrobe circulation. Yeah. In fact, I was wearing a t-shirt yesterday.

Yeah, me too. I wear mine quite a lot. There you go however i have both more t-shirts than i can plausibly add to my wardrobe without looking a little self-obsessed and they're in different sizes that i don't not sure if i'm going to be in the near future so i've brought that was the bag that had the magnet in it i wrapped it up for safety so they've all safety. So they've all been magnetized now. They've all been magnetized. Or demagnetized. I can't remember.

So here's the thing. We have a range of T-shirts, and they're in different sizes, and they're different types. So what I thought we could do, because we've got one here that says, name another podcast who launches their merchandise via a trebuchet. I'll wait.

That's wait. W-E-A-T-H-T. Like a mass experiencing a force. Yeah. And they're in different colors. Some are in magenta and some are in blue. I would say that's maroon. Or maroon.

Maroon. I think they say maroon here. Do they? Say maroon. Australia's the only country that says maroon. What? Yeah. That's a new bit of data.

That's funny because they say data here. Yeah. The brand. The band. Maroon 5 is maroon what yeah that's a new bit of data that's funny which is which is why yeah the brand the brand the band maroon five is maroon five maroon five maroon five yeah but now they sound ridiculous oh wow i didn't know i've been living here for like 17 years i didn't know that so she thinks that you're a weirdo if i said maroon i sound like a real maroon on is that how they pronounce moron here apparently yeah yeah right so here's what i here's what i propose and correct me if you've got a better idea uh everyone can enter once you've got to name the slogan you want okay name the color you want yep then the size you want and the ones that we happen to have the first people who match get them

oh nice how's that that works right yeah and if there's no exact matches closest match And the ones that we happen to have, the first people who match get them. Oh, nice. How's that? That works, right? Yeah. And if there's no exact matches, closest match. And is this via Twitter or the problem posing page? I'll make a web form. There'll be a web form and we'll tweet it and we'll put it in the show notes.

It'll be around. So via the specific link that is in the show notes. Yes, there will be a specific. Because then I'm going to have drop-down menus for all the, otherwise people put in comedy answers and I spend half a day filtering out joke answers. So there's going to be no freedom. There'll be some drop-down menus.

And you know what? I have a whole separate box, which is, if you need to be funny, please do it in this box. I was going to say, I think it should be that anyone who sends in a joke answer is disqualified i'm still gonna go through the process of disqualify anyway anyway anyway that's how we're gonna do this there is a wild card though oh we've also got the hat from new york oh okay so when we were in new york we did a problem which was to work out how long a new york minute was and matt and i decided that that meant recreating scenes in new york we did a problem which was to work out how long a new york minute was and matt and i decided that that meant recreating scenes from new york from a terrible mary kate

and ashley olsen film yeah and there was one bit where she's wearing a red sort of beret cap type thing and we managed to find one and bought miraculously while walking around funnily enough neither of us are keen to keep it no so that's also in the mix so can people just say red red hat red hat from new york but if you say red hat and you're not the first person who said red hat oh and you can't enter you're throwing your vote away and you can't enter again oh so i'm just saying that that's um that's what's going on there that's that, that's the competition. Great. And I will let you put your postal address in on the form. Yeah. So I don't have to chase people afterwards, but I will delete all the ones who don't win

straight away. Yep. So just so you know, and I won't even, I won't even say who's won. It'll just show up in the post one day. Yeah. Tell us a photo. If something shows up in the post. Some people do prizes because they're like, oh, this is way of collecting data. Oh, the post one day. Yeah. Send us a photo if something shows up in the post. Some people do prizes because they're like,

oh, this is a way of collecting data. Oh, it'll engage you. But you're doing it because this is taking up space in your house and you don't need them. Yeah. Final bit of any other business? Well, we're going to pass to our future selves who will have had made a shape.

Hello, everybody. This is producer Lauren speaking. this is the audio i got from matt and beck who are probably making a shape if you want to see that shape you can find it on social media at a problem squared i have the first australia which says we prod you. We prod you. Thank you so much for listening, everybody. We value all of our listeners, short-time listeners, long-time listeners, medium-length listeners. You're all valuable to us, and we appreciate you all equally,

except our Patreon supporters who are extra equally appreciated because they fund this whole thing. You may have noticed no ads, no sponsorship. We do it because we enjoy hanging out, but we've got bills to pay. So thank you very much, everyone on Patreon. And we pick three names completely at random from Patreon to thank every single time, which this episode include... Ian Roberts. Or Ayan Roberts. Rob LeFerts.

But I'm going to do Rube LeFerts. Lefferts. Lefferts. Leff- Ferts. Josiah Douglas. Or Jossia Dowglaze I like Josiah

Jos- Jos- I- R Josiah! Thank you to them and everyone else who is This has been A Problem Squared I've been Matt Parker, I've been joined of course by Bear Kale and finally one extra dice Five dice

Ooh Ah by Bear Kale. And finally, one extra dice. Five dice. Ooh. Ah. I'd like to thank our producer, Lauren Armstrong Carter. That's lucky. Yeah. What are the chances?

Imagine if it was Dwayne the Jock Ronson producing. I mean, they were waiting for their last chance to get involved. No deal. No dice, some would say. Ah. No deal. No dice, some would say. Ah. No dice. Okay, Beck.

On a Saturday morning, can you be found dot, dot, dot. It's not a question. It's you can be found. You can be found dot, dot, dot. It's not a question. It's you can be found. You can be found. It's a threat. It's true. From the Muppets. I can be found on a Saturday morning.

But when people do find you inevitably, are you reading the newspaper? No. Playing an instrument? No. Hung over? Used to be. Used to be? You've turned over a new leaf.

Cracking jokes. For a temporary amount of time. Yeah, well, cracking jokes. On a Saturday morning. Saturday morning. Beck, don't joke for free. Working. That's the same as cracking jokes.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's not helping. Hanging out with a friend. A brave friend. Watching TV. Sleeping. Eating. TV. Sleeping. Eating. Ooh.

Ooh. Those are good questions. Saturday morning. Any time before noon, I guess. I mean, technically I'm sleeping every morning. That's true. Until a certain point. Some of the morning is asleep.

Yeah. Arguably most of the morning. Yeah, more than half. Yeah. until a certain point some of the morning is asleep yeah arguably most of the yeah more than half yeah uh i do i do sometimes do some work i definitely definitely weekends have no meaning for me which i'm not i'm not saying is a good work-life balance but we all have our routines that work for us it's also tricky when you're work. Sometimes what you enjoy is your work. Yeah. A lot of my career is me finding ways to monetize what I'll be doing anyway. Yeah. Like the first person I called with the Bluey problem was one of my oldest mates. Yeah, there you go.

And she and I had a great chat up. Chat up. Catch up. What are we doing now? Are we working? Are we cracking jokes? Are we hanging out with a friend? I'm just going to go sleeping.

That's a good one. I wouldn't be hanging out with a friend. But technically. Cracking jokes, eating, working. Like I do want to say cracking jokes. Saturday morning. I don't think I would. I want to say that, but yeah, Saturday morning.

I think sleeping. Yeah, we're both sleeping? Yeah. Sleeping. Sleeping. Sleeping as well. So three-way sleeping. You can do that while sleeping.

Yeah. Oh, actually. Actually, there was the Saturday before I decided I need to stop drinking for a while. Yep. I was violently vomiting from drinking too much the night before. Oh, really? First time in a long time. Wow.

Do not recommend. I was very hungover. But I wouldn't say that is normally me. That's not normal. No. That's the exception. Yeah. Because you're a good role model.

Exactly. Yeah. Kids. That was Beck cracking a joke, everyone.