A Problem Squared - 065 = Central Parks and Baseball Larks

Episode Date: July 31, 2023

This is a single problem, AOB-less and DIY episode...what could be more New York? 🏟 Baseball fun in New York City! 📍 How central is Central Park really? 📜 Vibe for this episode: "It's real man" A NOTE TO ALL LISTENERS: Please be aware that audio quality may not be what you're used to. This episode deviates from the usual format. The structure heard here is what we like to call: Freeform.  We've put a map of Manhattan on Twitter if you want to have a look at that as you listen! As always, send your problems and solutions to our website: aproblemsquared.com. And if you want more from A Problem Squared, find us on Twitter,  Instagram. and Patreon.

Hello and welcome to A Problem Squared, the podcast which is a lot like a baseball game in that there is far more maths. There's a lot of maths if you know where to look for it. Than some people expect. But there's also fireworks and fun. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I'm joined by my co-host, Matt Parker,

the aforementioned maths section. It's been a long week, Bec. It's been a long week. And I am, Bec, the arguably fireworks. Yeah, fireworks. Yeah, not in terms of loudness or sparkliness, but more to do with my IBS. In this episode...

We're in New York. We did a show. It's very exciting. We went to a baseball game. And we've solved the problem of how central the park is. So stay tuned. Matt. Beck. Hi. Oh goodness. Oh my goodness. So what a week. Yes so firstly hi listeners. Now if you are new to the podcast I just want to say first of all the sound quality is usually much tighter. That's very true. Yeah, we are currently recording this in an Airbnb in New York.

In Brooklyn. In Brooklyn. Right next to a busy road. Yes, next to a window on lapel mics. Yes, with an elevated subway line. Yeah, without our producer present due to time difference. Yep. I mean, we're really...

We've got absolute free reign. Lauren has her work cut out for her this episode. We are traditionally in a studio in the UK. Yes. But and but we're this is we're almost at the end of our New York week like we are recording this hours before I depart for the airport. Yeah. So we want to make sure we can talk about the whole week and thank everyone who came and said hello. Yeah. So we did a show on Thursday night at Caveat, which was an evening run, sorry to tell.

And we had a bunch of podcast listeners come in, which is very exciting. It's always a pleasure to meet podcast listeners, especially because it makes me feel uh a little less dead weighty so i appreciate that also you had you've had some people tell you at other talks and stuff that you've done during this week that they listen to the pod yes absolutely i i was speaking at the academy of math and programming which is a course for high school students that my dear friends at Jane Street run and some people there. Not only do they say hello afterwards, quite a few of them listen to the podcast.

Hello to all of you who are listening now. Hi. One of them emailed you to let you know I didn't properly promote the podcast. Yeah. In my educational talk, or the word educational. And Matt has vowed to make up for this by doing a special video. Oh, really? Oh, that's good.

Yeah, he's just found out. It's been a relentless week. I've filmed two videos, which have been a lot of fun. Did the live show, a bunch of talks, and met a bunch of people. Yeah. And enjoyed New York, the chaos of New York. Yep, that's right. I got slightly thrown by the fact that there's table service at the caveat now.

Oh, my goodness. I always forget about table service. Yeah, so I thought that there were some people talking quite loudly in the audience. Well, there were. There were people talking quite loudly in the audience. They were talking loudly, to be fair. And then went to do some classic... Classic crowd work.

Crowd work. Then realised, wait, they're not being rude. I seem rude because I'm having a go at people just ordering some drinks. And the staff. So for people who aren't familiar with this, in the UK, you get your drinks before the show or during an interval. Yes. And then you take a seat.

And if you haven't got your drinks in time or you haven't got food delivered it won't show up during the active show yes whereas in the u.s there's like people wait staff walking around in the like amongst the audience yeah taking and delivering orders yeah Sometimes at pretty much speaking volume. Yeah. And. It's distracting. It's distracting, but there's the weird social contract that everyone just completely ignores. Yeah.

Unless you're a tourist who isn't used to it and then gets ready to have a bit of. A bit of. A bit of banter. Classic backbants. Yeah. And then just comes across like I'm furious with some people just ordering some drinks.

Just having a good night out. Yeah, just having a nice night out. Then realised that I didn't have time to get into that. I could see your brain. You're like, oh, do I gracefully pull myself out of this nosedive? Yeah. Or do I just abandon ship? I just abandoned it and then pushed on and hoped everyone would forgive me,

which by the end, when I did some terrible karaoke. You won them all back. Yeah, I like to think that more than just they pitted me. No, yeah, yeah, no, you had them completely on board. It was a lot of fun. And we went to a ball game last night. Yes. Yeah.

We took ourselves out to the ball game. We did. Well, actually, someone else. A kind friend, Truman took ourselves out to the ball game. We did? Well actually, someone else. My kind friend Truman had tickets to the ball game and invited us along. Yes. We had an immense amount of fun. Oh my goodness. It turns out that what I need to get me interested in sport is some form of activity to do while the sport is happening. Because Truman has put together this incredible scoring card specifically for the games. Yes.

Baseball is renowned for having a lot of stats. Yes. There's all sorts of things you can record. And on the screen at the game, they will give you some summary stats and they'll give you some detail about what's going on but if you really want to get oh there comes a subway train is it the j train so it's got it sounds like a j train you don't think it's the m no that's the j if you really want like a play-by-play record of what's going on then you need to write it down yourself and truman's designed their own sheet it's like

it's like an analog spreadsheet yeah and you get to write all the own sheet. It's like an analogue spreadsheet. Yeah. And you get to write all the players' names in. And I like it because there's little symbols, like drawing essentially that you have to... There's like little diamonds and you can draw how far the person gets around the diamond. I really enjoyed that.

And loads of codes. Mm-hmm. And pretty granular detail where, you know, if someone is struck out, they strike, you can indicate that differently if it was a strike where they tried to swing at the ball and missed. Yes. Versus a strike where they didn't swing, but it went into the strike rectangle, which I think is the official name. Yes, that's what they call it. Yes.

Well, I thought it was very interesting is we got our sheets at the beginning of the game. And the game was, what, approximately three hours? Yeah, about that. And I was curious to see how long different people would spend meticulously entering the detail into their sheets. Oh, okay. Yeah, and I was quite proud. I did the whole game.

You did? Apart from when I left to go to the bathroom or... Rightfully gave it to Truman to fill in it for you. I passed it right down the line and got Truman to look after it while I was gone. Alex, who was also there with us, Alex is my camera person and editor extraordinaire. Alex, I think, dropped out by the second innings.

Yeah. When did you go? How far did you go with your sheet? I technically got the whole sheet filled in but I think there's a couple of missing bits and at one point

I filled in the wrong inning and Truman had to put little arrows to show that I was meant to be in the next yeah yeah so

which is on brand as someone who gets very focused on doing something but ultimately will get it wrong but it achieves its goal of enriching the baseball experience.

Yeah, yeah. I think if activity sheets were handed me for all other sports, I'd be well up for going. You'd be, yeah. You know what? I've been to two baseball games now. One baseball game I did not have a stat sheet to fill in as the game went along.

And this game I did not have a stat sheet to fill in as the game went along. And this game I did. And I had, and this is no reflection on the company I had, just my own inside my head experience. I had more fun with the sheet. I paid more attention to the game. This time before, players were fungible. I didn't, like when someone's up to bat, I'm like, it's another batting person.

But now I'm like, oh, it's that person again. Yeah. And Alonso, and on the sheet I can see our last time, they hit it to the outfielder, number eight, because all the positions. Yes. And you annotate where the ball's thrown. Yeah.

And I'm like, oh, it's so good. And I'm like, oh, they hit it over there last time, or they did this. And you can see the whole game at a glance. So I felt more immersed in the game. I was paying more attention to the players and the teams. And it gave me the kind of macro view of what was going on that I didn't get last time,

where I'm just watching people throw and hit the ball. Yeah. Whereas now I'm acutely aware of who's up to bat, where we are in the innings, what's got to happen next. It was the best way for me to learn about a sport because I've been to other sporting events before and I couldn't necessarily tell you what happened in them. Yeah, yeah.

Or what the rules of the game were. And I still couldn't for this. But I feel somewhat closer. Yeah. Yeah. Do you want to know what the worst part of the baseball game was for me? The size of the hot dogs. Not the size.

The hot dogs were smaller than I expected. They were small but delicious. They were good. Yeah, they're very good. I had two hot dogs. Yeah, me too. I regret nothing. No, me either.

That was not it. The little bit of rain at the beginning? No, the rain just reminded me that it wasn't raining the rest of the time. Nice. The worst bit, there was a single home run in the entire game. Yes. And I was not there. I'd gone to get some more drinks.

Matt went to the toilet. Oh no, you went to get drinks. I went to get drinks for that one. Yeah, and then there was the one home run where it went, like, it's out of here. Two times I left my seat. Two times I even looked away from the field or the diamond or the pitch, whatever it is. Right? Yeah. And I was so efficient.

Yeah. And while I was gone, the only home run. And, yeah, and then the second time you went was when we all sang Backstreet Boys. Oh, I came running back for that. Oh, and there was fireworks afterwards. And a lightning strike. And a lightning strike to the fireworks. There was a lightning strike that happened

while we were watching the fireworks and all four of us went, oh! And it was... It was pretty incredible. I felt like a child. I was so thrilled. Delightful. All right, let's was pretty incredible. I felt like a child. I was so thrilled. Delightful. All right, let's solve a problem.

Our problem for this episode is from Jeff. Jeff asks, is Central Park really in the center of Manhattan? How central is Central Park? What a great question. Yeah. So we decided to do a one problem, two solution approach. Yes. This time. Although we did not go to Central Park. We did not. No. We thought about it and then we didn't have time. Yeah. We're a little bit worse for

worse. Yeah. But we can look at maps. Yes, we can. We're both taking a map-based approach. Yeah. Yes, we can. So we're both taking a map-based approach. Yeah. What better thing to do while in New York than to spend an afternoon in a B&B without much direction. Without much light or air. Yeah. Or sleep.

And look at some Google Maps. Now, you know, I had going to Central Park quite hot my list this time because when they originally put the grid system into Manhattan, when they were surveying it, so it's called something like the Grid Commission of 1811. In the early 1800s, because before that, it was just like organically developed roads at the very bottom of Manhattan.

So everything below like Wall Street is just chaos. Okay. Because Wall Street was the original wall of manhattan so everything below like wall street is just chaos okay because wall street was the original wall of the city right everything down there was just building up okay and after a while i mean the dutch had it for a while when it was new amsterdam british took it i mean the dutch took it as well like it's yeah it's been handed around everyone's taken it from someone else and then for the early 1800s like we've got to sort out this road system and so they survey the whole thing and work out where they're going to put in this grid which was you know not everyone was a big fan people whose communities were going to be moved or removed because of the grid

not not as on board yeah fair enough as the people who wanted to own the new land. So anyway, so it's a bit controversial and it wasn't fair to everyone, but they sent a surveyor out and over several years, they marked out the complete grid. And in the original plan, they weren't going to put in Central Park. Streets the whole way. Yeah. They put in not nearly enough public spaces.

And then they later came in and put in some public spaces ironically i think central park as a public space is on top of one of the communities were forcefully removed oh no yeah so it's a bit terrible but because it was decided on after the fact they'd already done the surveying and somewhere in central Park is at least one of the original surveying bolts that were put in to the ground to mark where the corners of the streets and avenues are going to go. Huh. And a lot of them are gone obviously.

All the ones that then became streets and avenues are gone and people aren't familiar the streets are the horizontal lines. Yeah. And the avenues are the vertical. But because Central Park was a change of plan late in the game, a lot of them were still there. And there's two rumoured ones elsewhere on Manhattan. And there's one confirmed one.

There's this 200-year-old metal spike in a rock. And I've previously gone and found it. Oh. Lucy and I, a few trips've previously gone and found it oh lucy and i a few trips ago went and found it and what i think is very funny is there's a tradition online of never confirming where it is yeah part of the challenge is finding it yeah and which i enjoyed immensely yeah and so i spent a long time traipsing around because it's going to be one of the phantom junctions that line up with the streets and avenues. Yeah, yeah. Around it. It's like when you find a really cool bar and you're like, I'm not going to tell people

to go to this bar. I'm going to take them to it one day. That's it. So that they go, oh my gosh, how did you find this bar? And the bar doesn't get too busy and popular. Exactly. So there's nothing. The spike's just there.

And so it's not protected or anything. It's only protected by its obscurity. Oh. Yeah, it's crazy. That is interesting. And that's why there have been a bunch of rumors of other ones that have been found on Manhattan. And from my vague research,

there are two that plausibly could be the original and a bunch that aren't. They're just other bits of metal or old things or whatever the case may be but i love the grid and so i thought i would solve jess problem by looking at the grid and working out where's the middle of the grid okay now here's here's our issue first street starts part way up the island oh yeah you've already got all the other roads underneath it and directly below first is a street that looks like it's called Houston. Okay. It's not.

Oh, yes. We had this last year. We did. Because we were walking up there. Houston. Houston. Houston. And I remember being like, isn't it Houston?

You were like, no. Houston. Yeah. Yeah. Because I said Houston in a video and got corrected. Right. That's how we learn. Yeah. Yeah, because I said Houston in a video and got corrected. Right. That's how we learn. Yeah.

I calculated the linear equation of Broadway because that's the diagonal road that cuts through all the other ones. So I found the equation where you can plug in the avenue and it will tell you which streets it crosses between. Brilliant. Because it's a straight line on a grid. It's a linear equation. Yeah. I have a lot of fun. So separate trip to the one where I found the spike in Central Park. Brilliant. Because it's a straight line on a grid. It's a linear equation. Yeah. I have a lot of fun. So separate trip to the one where I found the spike in Central Park.

Yeah. So I knew already from doing that the zeroth street is Houston. And you've got, you go into like the alphabet avenues. So you're a zeroth one there, which is to the right, because the annoyingly the avenues are numbered right to left. Okay. Which is a perfectly valid direction, but it just is the opposite to what I'd normally do on a plot. Yeah. But you can work out this one over here is this. And so what I did was I took the map of Manhattan, in fact I'll show it to you here, I took the map of Manhattan and you can see I've then extended the street system and the Avenue system out to fill the

bits where it doesn't exist. So here the bottom of the island is exactly on negative 40th Street. Oh my gosh that's so cool. It's not deliberate as best I know but it's exactly a negative 40th. I would be amazed if that was deliberate. I mean it's got to be deliberate that that lines up with what would be a road. So if you extend the grid system the island goes from negative 40 to positive 222. Okay. So that means the exact middle street of Manhattan is 91st Street. Okay. That's the middle.

Yep. Did the same thing with the avenues. They're a bit weird because the distance between them isn't as consistent. But I extended the local distances on either side out to the extremities and worked out that it goes from negative 6 Avenue on over in the east to positive 15 Avenue in the West and in both cases it falls about the same amount short of hitting where those would have been so the midpoint is it's exactly between 4th and 5th Avenue. Okay.

So now we need to know, is 91st and 4 1⁄2 in Central Park? All right. Well, I worked out the middle of Central Park. Central Park runs from 59th to 110th Street. So the exact middle point is 84 and a half street. So it's close. It's like six and a half streets away. That is close.

The exact middle is real close. And side to side, instead of being between 4th and 5th Avenue, the exact middle of the park is between 6th and 7th. Okay. It's close. So, you know, I'll drop a pin in Google Maps here. So there's 91st. And I said between 4th and 5th. Where's 3rd, 4th and 5th?

It's there. Oh, there's an actual intersection there. That point there, corner of Madison Avenue and 91st Street is the exact middle of Manhattan. Hey, there was a diner there. What's it called? A gluten-free one called Noglu and a French restaurant. If you want to dine near the centre of Manhattan. Yeah.

So it's close. It's not in the park, though. So it's very, very close. It lines up with the massive lake reservoir-y thing in the centre of Central Park. And Central Park is an outrageously big park for people who have not seen it. What I thought was particularly interesting

is there is an area of Manhattan called Midtown. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And you think that should be the middle. Yeah, but it's not. No, it's defined as, I forget the street, it's a certain street up to Central Park. Yeah.

It's Midtown, but that's not the middle of town. No. So Central Park starts in Uptown. Yeah. But it is Midtown. Yeah. But anyway, my grand conclusion is vertically it's very close. Yes.

And horizontally, and to be fair, it is a long, skinny park, so it was way more likely that it would be, you've got a lot of freedom up and down. You're still inside the park, whereas side to side is much more narrow, so I'm not surprised it's slightly off. Matt, my only question is that Manhattan is not a rectangle. No. And it's not perfectly straight either.

It sort of has a little bit of a kink to it. Yeah. Which means that... It's about 30 degrees off the grid lining up with latitude, like longitude. Right. Okay. It's on a bit of a jaunty angle. Huh.

Yeah. long like longitude right okay it's on a bit of a jaunty angle huh yeah so that means that there are streets that you've got where there's no landmass but you're like the negative they barely clip the land yeah so you couldn't technically count that yeah i've it could make a difference now you know what a lot people argue, and there's so many people with vested interests, in where the center of a country is. If you go visit a country, I know the U.S. has a couple of towns that all claim to be in the middle of because they use definitions, and they're all different.

And so I've used the definition of the extreme points. I've gone extreme left and right relative to the grid and extreme top and bottom compared to the grid and extreme top and bottom compared to the grid which is not the same as the most east or the most west or north or south because I've compensated for the orientation but you're right for my narrow definition yeah it ignores landmass which is why this is a two-pronged solution yeah Yeah, here comes the other time. I'd love to take credit for this, but you did give me... I mentioned it. You mentioned it.

And you ran with it. You mentioned that to find the centre of a country, they would take the map of the country and then basically make a cardboard shape. Cut it out. Cut it out and then try and balance it. Yep, center of mass. Yeah, and then find out where.

So sometime, I think it was the middle of the 20th century-ish, they did make a giant cutout of the contiguous United States and balance it on a point. And if you go to that point, and I've never visited it, I would love to one day. I think it's to the left of Nebraska-ish, is the centre of Mass Centre. Yeah. And I think it's such a delightfully physical way of calculating.

It's brilliant. I love it. Now, I love playing with cards. Yep. I'm a big craft head. A lot of better making and doing. I do. So I saw this as a bit of making and doing. I do. So I saw this as a great opportunity to try and do this.

Now, I will say that, like the recording of this podcast, it's a bit higgledy-piggledy. It's things we had lying around. Yeah, yeah. Whereas back home, you know, I've got access to my nice Stanley knives. Stationery. Yeah. I could project the map onto a nice big piece of card You know, I've got access to my nice Stanley knives. Stationery. Yeah.

I could project the map onto a nice big piece of card and then do that. But I don't have those things with me here. What did you have, Bec? I had my laptop and some baking paper. Was that? Actually, it's not baking paper. It's wax paper. Was that in the kitchen here? It was in the kitchen here.

Oh, that's handy. Now, I should say baking paper is better because you can use that as tracing paper. Yep. Wax paper, famously, very hard to draw on it. But we did have a permanent marker. So I had to get a map of Manhattan on my laptop and then sort of scroll i've just seen that listeners that's what's going on here yeah yeah i had to scroll up and along the map because you wanted you wanted your cutout to be bigger than the screen yeah so you had to keep scrolling the screen and dragging the paper with

it yeah exactly so look it's i'm pretty sure it's fairly accurate. Right. And then we used a giant pizza box left over from dinner on the first night here. Made from a New York pizza box. Yeah. Which, if anyone's not American, is bigger than you're thinking. Yeah. It was kind of like the width of the doorway coming into the building. And I took a wild stab at whether the map that I'd zoomed out of the version, or zoom in, because I couldn't, I'd have to then put it into a thing and look at what that,

and I didn't have time. And I managed to get it diagonally on the box perfectly. I've never been more happy. Then I had to use a stunty little pair of scissors from a first aid kit to cut it out. To cut it out. It took you so long. If you've ever tried to cut corrugated cardboard with a tiny pair of scissors. But I managed to do it. So it's as accurate as I could with this scenario. I then marked out where Central Park is in there. I can see you've drawn a rectangle on it. Yep.

And then I proceeded to spend quite some time trying to balance it. Yeah. Yeah. I was trying to not look at what you were doing partly because I had to finish working out where my phantom streets went. Yes. And partly I didn't want to ruin the big reveal. Well this is why I enjoyed you showing me your grid so much because I will pop a photo of this on socials but Matt you can see I've once I found the point that it seemed to be do the best balancing yep I perforated a little hole there yep and if I show that to you no that yeah no I'm balancing Manhattan on a point inside Central Park which is not a million miles away.

It's not a million miles away from it. From my dot. It's more east. Could I try and work out where that is? Well that was what I wanted to do with you. Okay here we go. So what I'm doing everyone. So it is, oh we haven't got a ruler do we? So I'm going to estimate it is one, ruler do we so i'm going to estimate it is one it's about a penalty from the bottom isn't it and a half it's um 40 of the way up yeah roughly and i would say it's maybe a third of the way in yeah which is quite convenient because there are three avenues so you're you're almost exactly on 6th Ave and your centre point let's zoom

what I would like to know is it anywhere near your cornerstone oh that's very interesting I think it is it's on the correct avenue the one I found is on 6th I need to triple check the street It is. It's very close. It's on the correct avenue. The one I found is on 6th. Ooh. Yeah. I need to triple check the street. So Central Park is 51 streets high. So it's approximately

20 up and it starts at 59th. So 79th or 80th. That's very close to the center of the park. So the center of the park is 84th and a half street. So on the order of, let's call it 84th street. Your dot, me eyeballing it, is about 80th. So that's close. And you've put it on 6th Avenue, and the centre of the park is between 6th and 7th. It's the middle. Wow.

That's on your third end. I want to respect the tradition of not saying where the spike is. No, the spike is, I will say the spike is further south, further downtown than yours. But it is one of the non-existent intersections that would have been on 6th. There you go. There you go. Wow. So what do we think?

On the balance of things, is Central Park the Central Park? I mean, it's close, isn't it? Yeah. It's really close. I'm prepared to say, given the centre of mass of Manhattan is in Central Park. Yeah. It's Central Park. Now, with the limited time that we had, I did try and do some research to see if there had been any sort of information about why they specifically chose.

Oh, put it there. Like, did they do it based on that and then you know they're like oh central park let's make it a central let's work out what the center is and work or do they put it there first in the name yeah now in the time that we had i wasn't able to find that information yep if we'd had more time it'll be it'll be interesting because the history of why central park came about it's complex but i suspect it was just far enough north that it wasn't on any important rich person's land yeah it was kind of it was on a poor and marginalized communities that could be moved out of the way yeah that's my sad and cynical guess

no i think that's fair. It's probably true. Yeah. But the fact that the centre of mass is in Central Park is really pleasing. It's very pleasing. I'm prepared to say that is the superior central point of Manhattan than my street and avenue malarkey.

I would like to say if there are any listeners who know more about this subject than we do. Any of the above. Anyone who may have done this test before with not a pizza box cut out. You're not going to get more New York than this. I mean, it's very New York. Pizza butter slice. You cut around the little.

Oh, I would have done more. Parks and everything. I would have done more. That's great. But I think this is another giveaway. You want to give away our Manhattan? To a lucky listener. Okay. So we will. We still still gotta draw at the time of recording we still gotta draw the

parker square winner yep and that's july how about at the end of august we'll draw the map of manhattan winner yeah done deal this is work of art it just means in the meantime we don't know if we take it back to the uk with us or we leave it here. I'll work out the centre of mass of all of our Patreon supporters and if it's closer to the UK, we'll take it back. If it's closer to the US, we'll leave it with a buddy here. Yeah, nice. Speaking of Patreon supporters, I just wanted you to know that song is just for you guys.

I don't know if it got picked up on the microphone. A very loud car drove by. Yes, yeah. So we like to thank three of our Patreon supporters at random at the end of each episode. Specifically. Chuck White. Chook. Chook Witty.

This one's going to be hard for me. Yeah, good luck. Time. Tim. I can't get this. How do you get Tim wrong? I feel like Tim. I feel like you just don't.

John. Yeah. Completely wrong name. It's a silent I. Yeah. They're all silent. It's trademark. Good old trademark.

Good old TM. And Aeronaut. Aereo. Aereon out. Thank you. Thank you, supporters. We couldn't do it without you. Thank you for new listeners yes what

a weird episode to start on yes i don't know why you would start here but we appreciate it maybe you came to the show you came to an evening on azura dita you enjoyed it so much you're like i will listen to the next episode yeah and you wrongfully decided to work your way backwards which uh i wonder if that means you get spoilers for previous episodes because we normally have any other business at the end of that's true and we do have a policy of making sure new listeners don't feel left out so we do a lot of casual recapping yes i think is the best way to describe it yeah so everyone's enjoying the ride some people did ask what episode is the best one to start on yeah what do you think yeah so we didn't know what to say i

said go back 10 okay and then because because then you can listen to them faster than we made them early on when it's new and exciting that's true and by the time they're starting to wear off then you will have caught up to the new ones coming out that's true you can always fill in the prequels uh i think if you have a favourite, go to the Problem Posing page at problemsquared.com, click Solution in the drop-down, and let us know what's your favourite episode. What episode do you tell people to start with? Because it's not just the best single episode to listen to first.

That's when you're going to pick up all the stories and carry forward. Yeah. So let us know. that's when you're going to pick up all the stories and carry forward yeah so there's no and this podcast wouldn't be possible without my brilliant co-host matt parker that's me i think we knocked it out of the park hey that's why they call me matt knocked it out of the parker yeah i can't believe i didn't make that i didn't make it very tired back very, I can't believe I didn't make that. You're very tired, Bec, very tired. I can't believe I didn't make a ball parka gag last night. You know what? There are so many cliches and sayings and expressions that come out of baseball and we've used roughly zero of them.

We, in that regard, struck out. Nice. Thank you. Baseball. I'm done, guys. I'm done. I'm so sorry. This is not my usual standard of banter. It's real.

It's real, man. Strap in. So on that note, thank me. Thank you, me, for being the other host. And thank you, as always, to our wonderful producer, Lauren Armstrong Carter. There's going to be a sting now. Who's listening to this afterwards and making it work. Doing her best to make it sound good. Bye.

Bye. All right. Done.