A Problem Squared - 067 = Line Times and Wide Words

Episode Date: August 28, 2023

In this episode… 🙏 How often do the hands of time align? 📜What is the longest one syllable word? 💼And a very large serving of AAAOOOBBBBBBBBBBBBBB After such glowing recommendations, you’ve got to go listen to Confidence Man: https://www.confidenceman.com.au/ Here’s Bec’s contribution to the Samaritvans exhibit: https://shop.sarahgraham.info/products/samarivan-bec-hill.   If you find yourself in Hitchen between the 22nd - 29th September 2023, go see the exhibit for real, at Arkley Fine Art on Hermitage Rd.  More about Arkley here: https://arkleyfineart.co.uk/. If you want to check out more of Sarah Graham’s work you can do that here: https://sarahgraham.info/.  If anyone has any information about the Time Fun jumper, please do send it to the Problem Posing Page!  And finally, please send your problems and solutions to our website: aproblemsquared.com. 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 bit like a children's TV show in that it's fun, slightly educational and has little to no budget. I'm one of your hosts, Bec Hill. That's so true. And I once hosted a children's TV show which was so controversial the entire channel got cancelled. That's true. That's a fact.

Well, it's partially. Those things happened in that order. Partially true. I like to think Makeaway Takeaway was just so good that they were like, well, let's quit while we're ahead. Children's TV is over. Yeah, let's close down all of CITV. I'm curious to know if you found the children's TV show.

I did a spot on. Is it Bite-Sized or whatever they call it, the educational one? Not BBC Bite-Sized. Oh. In fact, I couldn't say the name with absolute certainty, but let's get there and then I'll leave. Okay. And I'm joined by your other host who you could hear just then.

Thank you. Former high school math teacher, Matt Parker, whose YouTube videos are so good they're routinely used in high school to teach maths instead of the teachers. So in a way, Matt, you have franchised yourself. I have franchised myself. I think if we had a TV show, we'd need like a puppet sidekick. Oh. Yeah, I was trying to work it. I think it would had a TV show, we'd need like a puppet sidekick. Oh.

Yeah. I was trying to work it. I think it would be like a calculator. Oh, like a calculator. Yeah. Oh, I'm on board now. And then I decided that its name would have to be something you could spell. On the calculator.

In six segment digits upside down. So these are the name options for our puppet sidekick. It would be Zoe. Okay. Yep. Bob or Bobby with an IE. Shelly with an IE again. Bish, short for Bisha.

Oh, Bish. My personal favourite, Gleb. Gleb. Okay, up until then I was on Shelly, but now I'm Gleb. Team Gleb. But then I think also this would be fitting for us as the hosts, Ozzy with an IE or just Oz for short. Ozzy the calculator.

I was going to say Shelly because it's like a terminal shell where you can do calculations. But Gleb is the clear winner. Because I was like, oh, I can spell Glenn. No, wait, no, I can't. I can spell Gleb. Gleb is just the name of a calculator. Yeah. So maybe Gleb. I'll make Gleb is just the name of a calculator. Yeah. So maybe Gleb. I'll make Gleb.

On this episode. I've worked out how often the hands of time align. I've found out what the longest one syllable word is. And my goodness, have we got some aube, which is a long one syllable word it's not really long at all any other business very short not the way i say it aube it was called something like how to be epic or it might have been how to be on the kids tv show yeah i popped up and did a segment on how to tie your shoelaces because I got that stupid way of tying my shoes.

Where you tie them super fast. Yeah. Do you do it like the two bunny ears that wrap around each other? Have you not seen my shoe tie? I feel like I have, but now I want you to show me again. This can't be the immediate chat. This is not the beginning of it. This should be the immediate chat. This is not the beginning. This should be the posting chat.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But now that this is posting chat, tie up a shoe, honor your rank slippers. I'm wearing my business slippers. To be continued, guys. That's like the admin kimono that my friend wears, which is just his dressing gown. Matt, how are you?

I'm good. I'm good. I'm back after a lot of traveling. However, how are you? I'm good. I'm good. I'm back after a lot of traveling. However, I'm not here for chat today. What? I'm here for vindication. Oh, okay. Because, Bec, as you all know, I was in a car driving through the state of Illinois.

Yeah, you know. Yeah, I know. Let me tell the story and you can sit there in shame until I get to the right point. So this was on a filming trip. This is after New York, after we'd been to the rainforest. We were doing some filming in Chicago and St. Louis. We were driving up the America Highway. I was driving and Alex, my camera person,

was in the passenger seat and producer Nicole, video producer Nicole was in the back and Nicole was running the music. She was current DJ. She put on a song by a band called Confidence Man. And I said, oh, this is Confidence Man. I'm a big fan of this band. And then I forget if this was Alex or Nicole then said, oh,

Beck just posted about them. And so would you like to describe your post and the situation leading up to it uh i did latitude festival great festival shout out to people who saw me and liked me oh yeah and i was walking along after my set later that evening afternoon and heard some music and was like what is this what is this i was with gav my husband and we were like this sounds amazing and we started to we were drawn towards the main stage and it seems to be a double act but then there's like also a dj and a drummer yeah they're like this big old shoulder that's amazing things and costumes costume changes and everything it was incredible the performance

factor was amazing but the music was incredibly good gavin i just solidly danced for the entire set and every time i was like every song's a banger this is amazing yeah and i went home and i was thrilled to find that they are just as good if like if not better so i posted on instagram it's good good you should you should promote bands with a little video from that i'd recorded saying saw confidence man at. How has it taken me this long. Aussie band too. To discover them, an Aussie band. Can't believe I've gone this long without knowing about Confidence Man. With no one telling you about them.

No one told, why did no one tell me? You were very excited and you're like adding them to your upcoming, now in the past at the time of broadcast, DJ set. I'll play at least one Confidence Man track, 100%. So I then, when I was no longer driving the vehicle. Who was driving? You were so mad. I hate to be stood outside for a moment. You just opened the door.

Tuck and roll. The car just drove off into the sunset without you. Off a cliff, exploded. R.I.P. Alex and Nicole. I sent you a message. Oh, I hear you just posted about confidence man the same band that i invited you to go and see with myself and lucy in 2019 when they were performing in london i would have loved that and you were like what i'm not seeing some boring band

i didn't say that i was just like i don't go to live music. Yeah. Do you know what though? I've seen more live music and booked into more live gigs, which is not much, but comparatively since the pandemic, I'm a lot more like, okay, I'm going to try and catch some stuff. Also, I didn't know you as well then. We've known each other for a while, but we were, and I'll be honest, Matt, looking at you, you don't look like you'd be into cool true. Okay, valid. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I'll be honest, Matt, looking at you, you don't look like you'd be into cool music.

No, no, no, no. Nope. In fact, I'm nervous making a big deal out of this because I feel like I'm a one-hit wonder in the music recommending business. Well, because Confidence Man is also great to dance to. And I've taken you out dancing. It's not. And you, it takes a lot to get, and you can dance. I can throw shapes.

You can throw shapes, but it takes you a while. Oh my goodness, yes. Yeah. I'm not in my comfort zone. No. It's not what I do to relax. Yeah, whereas for me, I'm like. You were right, statistically you were right to say no.

Yeah. I'm going to some weird band who's playing in a hipster gig in East London. Correct answer. But I feel like I get one unit of vindication all this time later. Yeah, no, you've earned that. And that's my final music recommendation. So I like to retire at the peak of my game. Well, look in,

in fairness to me, I have made countless playlists and being like, when you've been like, I need things to listen to when I'm writing. Very good at recommending. Or I'll be like, this is the playlist I'm listening to right now. If anyone wants anything to feel upbeat.

I'm just very bad at listening. Well, there was one where I did it specifically for you, but then eventually I was like, nah, this is for me. Yeah. You just had a new one that we can put stuff in together.

I did. And I did a real old person thing. I'm like, I don't know how to add songs to this. Yeah. There's still only three songs in there. And I said to you, if this stays at three tracks long. It won't. But honestly, I tried in the moment.

I was like, I'm going to do this on my laptop. On your laptop. It's so much easier on the app. I couldn't work it out. So you've never done a playlist for me. Correct. You've given me no other reason to trust your music tastes. I'll tell you what, once we're confident that it's a good playlist,

we can make it public to the listeners. If they want to hear music that you and I both agree is good. The intersection of our music Venn diagram. So I guess in order for it to be something we both like if we listen to something we're like not for me we can take it out of the playlist all right done you're on good how have you been i've been great i've got two things oh two two uh one of them is uh i did i did an art you did an art. You did an art. Yes.

There's an artist called Sarah Graham. She is based in Hitchin and she's raising money for the Samaritans. And she's this incredible artist. She does this really photorealistic art. And she also does these stencil artworks of Volkswagen camper vans. Oh, right. It's like a fun little thing. And so she did a basic stencil like to get you started on canvas

and then sent out a hundred of them or something to different artists and personalities and stuff. So she's got like J.D. Whittaker and Lee, Keith Lemon, Francis Lee. Including? Including this guy. And so I did one. i did a little video of how i made it as well because i'm not like a photorealistic artist and i've seen some of the other ones people have done and they're so good uh but i was like definition of good

got lovely you know grasp of color and shading and everything i've done a very typical beck one which has got like pull tabs and light switches and stuff. So it's going to go up for auction. Oh, dang. People can go see it. It's in Hitchin in late September. Can we go see it? The exhibition. And, uh, and then after that, it'll be online for auction to anyone in the world who wants to, wants to bid for it. Yep. The second thing is I went to the Children's Media Conference in Sheffield, obviously pitching our double act. Oh, yeah, you mean Gleb.

Yes, that's right. That's what it's called, you mean Gleb. I was just out there pitching myself as a writer, a presenter and whatnot. Two people who weren't related to each other in work or life said to me on two separate days, oh, Beck Hill, are you the person who did the video about trolls? Who's the legal right to trolls? And I was like, yes, that was me. Famous YouTuber Beck Hill. Yeah. And I'd just been chatting to you recently how I'd like to do more YouTube videos.

I need to be fair, I suggest that every time I see you. You do. And again, I don't believe you. This could be my two from two all right and it did feel a bit like okay i get the message so yeah i've decided i'm going to do some more youtube videos and one of them is one that i this is now a problem for the listeners oh that i'm pitching to to all of you listeners i like the way you're saying this that listeners can keep you accountable exactly oh well i'll tell you what I think I might try and do. I think starting next year, my aim is to put it out on the Mondays that a podcast doesn't come out.

Oh my goodness. Off Mondays. Yeah. Which is very regular. It's fortnightly. It's fortnightly. Anyway, I need their help. I need your help, listeners. You're my only hope. I have a jumper, a knitted jumper. Yeah, this is great. That I found in a cupboard in a charity shop. The cupboard was for sale.

The jumper was not. The jumper was just at the bottom of the cupboard, an empty, otherwise empty cupboard. It came with the cupboard. And I picked up the jumper and it didn't have a tag or anything on it. It did have a big hole in it, which I've fixed somewhat. And so so i took it to the counter and i said this jumper is in the bottom of that cupboard and they went oh and they looked at it and i said is it for sale and they said oh yeah 10 bucks or something and i was like yeah sold because it's this massive knitted jumper it's all lots of colors geometric shapes it's very 80s and it says time fun on it. Time Fun. Time Fun. Not Time For Fun.

No. Not Fun Time. Not Fun Time. Time Fun. So I've worn that for, I mean, I think I've owned it for about 10 years now. And, I mean, years later. Also months. A friend of a friend sent me a link to a video for a presenter here

that went by the name of Mad Lizzie right a 90s children's tv presenter it was a different time in the uk it was a different time and she would do aerobics for kids yeah so quite often with like a big teddy like someone in a big teddy bear costume yeah and they sent me a link to some footage of one of the episodes and she's wearing the time fun jumper that's wow and i've never seen this jumper ever before i need the audience's help because i need to know a has has anyone seen this jumper out in the wild that's not on me or this mad lizzie woman has anyone else time? Has anyone or has anyone own time fun? When did you get it? Where did you get it?

How did you time fun? How did you time fun? Or if anyone has any links or connections to someone who made this TV show or Mad Lizzy herself. What was the name of the TV show? It's called Lizzy Webb. I'm guessing it's Mad Lizzy. That's time fun. And Joggy Bear.

Joggy Bear. Yeah, who's Gleb? Who's the bear that's jogging yeah like joggy as in joggy yeah do you know who joggy bear who was it always the same person any any information you have that i could then put into a big investigative video what's very funny for me is this is not the first time you've talked to me about this jumper oh no show me the jumper we've talked about this like this is something that's been on your mind for a while yeah and i think our listeners our problem solving listeners are the ones who can bring us some closure yeah our first problem is for you, Matt. Excellent. From Recorder Player. All one word. Real name. And they said, what times do the hands on a clock line up so as to make a straight line?

So good. So I'm guessing like six o'clock. Six o'clock. Yeah. Yeah. Let's call them line minutes. I like that. We could find them all by grabbing a clock and messing with it.

But isn't there another way that would be more fun? Oh. As someone who likes to do things practically, I would say no. No, get the clock. Yeah, get the clock. I meant to bring a clock in. As I said, I totally forgot to grab a clock from home. Oh, no.

But this is an audio format, so we're going to make it work without. That's true. And actually, I assume everyone's familiar with the notions of hands on a clock. I assume kids these days still use analog rotational hand clocks. The sorts of kids that listen to this podcast absolutely understand. That said, I thought this was very simple. Oh, okay. Yep.

Good. But recorder player also pointed out that it's not. What's your instinct? How many line minutes? Well, like like because instinctively you'd think well there's got to be like one an hour yeah i want to go like oh 12 30 12 30 would be one but recorder player said no no 12 30 wouldn't be because like six o'clock works because the the hour hand is pointing straight down at six.

This is exactly on the hour. And the minute hand is pointing straight up at 12 or zero. Yeah. Because it's exactly on the hour. Now you think, well, the thing's going to happen later on at 12.30. But 12.30, the hour hand will be halfway between the 12 and the one. Yeah. Because it's half past, which means straight down is not the opposite direction.

So between the 12 and the 1 means it would have to be between the 30 and the 35. Yeah. And so then it would have to be like 12, 30, two and a half. And a bit, yeah. Well, every time you move it around a bit more, the minute hand's going to move. But there will be a point more, the minute hand's going to move. Yeah. But there will be a point because, well, importantly, the minute hand. Oh, yeah, because once it reaches 1230, then it's not going to be between the 12 and the 1.

It'll be slightly past that. Which means, oh, and it's like you're having to halve it again and again and again. But because you know it starts too far on one side, and at some point in the future it must be too far the other way. Yeah. Because when you watch a time lapse of a clock. Oh, yeah, yeah. Like time passing.

Is this time fun? It is time fun. Wait. This is time fun. Okay. Is it going to be the same amount of times that the two hands are on top of each other? Yes. When I saw this.

Did I do a smart you did a smart yes well i saw this and went oh i know there's a famous puzzle which is the same situation but how often do the hands cross and i was like this is going to get to an optimal amount and then come back around again isn't it no no i've done i've undone my smart no you get to keep that smart no one can take it away. So because, well, let's go back to your idea of one an hour. So if you think about it, the minute hand has to constantly lap the hour hand. And every time the minute hand does a lap, the hour hand's moved a bit, but at some point it's going to pass it again. So at some point,

it must've been directly opposite because it's got to get from one side to the other side. Yeah. If you want to get technical, there's a thing called the intermediate value theorem, which means if you start in one position and you end up in another position and you do it continuously, so no teleporting, no messing around, you must have gone through every point in between. Oh, this is, is this like talking about finding the way to cut down the middle of a sandwich? The ham sandwich theorem uses the intermediate value theorem. Yes. You're on it.

Two smarts in one episode. You're about to announce your retirement, but there's more to do. It doesn't happen 12 times in 12 hours. It actually happens 11 times. Is it a fence post thing? It's a fence post thing yeah three smarts and i'm out of here post thing because the beginning and the end of the fence is the same post because it's a circle so it should be 12 but the end one yeah is six o'clock

again the beginning one i've actually made a new flip chart yep called this page is the first and also the last oh that's great because as you know my flip charts are spiral yeah spiral flip charts and it's rhyming so it's like a poem so it's like you know this page is the first and also the last this page is slow this page is fast but it means that it's actually got an odd number of rhymes because the penultimate line has to then rhyme with the first one again. Has to get you back to where you started. Yeah. That's very nice.

Which is, it both feels great at the time, but if you were to look at it, you'd be like, oh, but it's not even. Well, that's exactly what's happening here. It should be 12, but it's not. But also, if you think about it, it can't be 12. So here's the thing. Time moves forward at a very standard rate. It doesn't speed up doesn't slow

down if you ignore relativity and blah blah yeah i was gonna say regular if you live in my brain moving at not a large percentage of the speed of light time on a standard clock moves at a set rate which means the crossing points because both hands are moving at fixed rates that don't change the crossing points should be equally spaced because everything's moving at a nice constant rate and so they should be happening at regular intervals okay the cross points of the hands yeah when they're when they're line minutes when they become line minutes when they become line minutes yeah because it's always going to be this from get from one to the next one is always the same movement and the speed never changes so it's the same amount of time so it's going to be but it's but it's got to be more than it's going to be more than something so that it's moving

forward correct so if it was 12 more than a limit if there was 12 of them in 12 hours yeah there'd be one every hour they'd always be in the same position yes whereas they it's got a that kind of rolls through the hour yeah and so it can't be 12 in an hour because if they were equally spaced it would never move which is why there's another reason using completely different logic where you can deduce there must be 11 in an hour in a 12 hour period because you need to be slightly bigger than an hour for it to roll through. And that actually answers the question for us.

It's 12 hours divided by 11. 12 elevenths of an hour is the time between crossing points. So it's every one hour and what's 60 divided by 11? Hang on. Wait. You'll be faster but I'll get it.

Yeah. And then 6.66. No, it's not it. 5.45. I was trying to go the other way. That's why we have Gleb. That's why we have Gleb. You know the other name I came up with for a character,

but it felt too cool for a kid's. No, for a kid's TV calculator. And it wouldn't work on the calculator is that max threshold max threshold yeah you're right you're that's the superhero cartoon that plays in between yeah yeah you know it's funny we never see max threshold and gleb in the same room at the same time twist so five minutes and 27 seconds and that kind of makes sense because if you think about the six o'clock one by the time you get to seven o'clock the hour hands moved around to seven and so to

line up the minute hand has to go another five minutes but oh it's moved slightly yeah like oh it is five minutes in a bit yeah and all those bits eventually it lines up five minutes and the same reason that i find things like 60 divided by 11 or whatever difficult because let's say you wanted to do, well, 11 is actually- 60 and 11 is the worst. Yeah, yeah. But let's do like, I don't know, if you were saying, what's 7 times 13? The way that my brain goes is like, well, that's close to 10. So 7 times 10 is 70.

And then I'm like 7 times 3 is 21. And then I'm like, okay, 91. Yeah, that's how I do it. But my first instinct, if I'm like under 91 yeah that's how i do it but my first instinct if i'm like under pressure i'll be like 70 um and it like doing that second part of the thing in my head without forgetting the first part yeah so then i'm like so uh it's gonna be more than 70 because it's it's more than 10 so it's three more each time it's taking me further and further away so it feels very similar to that i'm not putting it into words there's some listeners out there

who are wired like me who are like i get it oh yeah they get it i had the same thought i was like oh it's 12 11th and i was like what's 11th of an hour and i was like well 60 divided by 10 is 6 yeah and 11's bigger so if you're buying something bigger the answer has to be smaller so i'm like it's something a bit under six and i like, that makes sense because from my previous logic, it's something a bit bigger than five by looking at the minutes. And I was like, ah, it's in there somewhere. Turns out roughly halfway in between. So yeah, so that's the answer to the question, 11 times.

And it's interesting because I think you can deduce that answer more than one way, which is a great part of maths. Is 6.6 11% of 60? Is 6.6? Yes, it is a great part of maths. Is 6.6 11% of 60? Is 6.6, yes it is. That's what I did. I worked out the percentage. Well done.

Well done for providing your own answer. This whole time I was like, I don't understand why it didn't work. There you go. Two things to add to this though. What's weird about the fence post problem in this circular nature is because you get 11 every 12 hours it means in a 24 hour period there'd be 22 of them hang on say that again if you waited for 24 hours you would have 22 of them is that correct oh right instead of yeah you'd have no you'd have 21 because there's another fence post in the middle, isn't there? Oh, triple fence post.

Yeah. But if you had a 24 hour clock, you'd have 23 of them. Yeah. Well, we're not talking about 24 hour clocks. No, but you lose two of them just by changing how you're measuring time. Yeah. This is time fun. I'm just excited to have grasped what you're explaining.

I think, yeah, you were all over it. Well, I'm going to give that a ding, ding, ding, ding. Hey, nice. Ding, ding, ding, ding. I was going to say ding and time both have I as a vowel in the second spot of a four-letter word. Yeah, I think mine's better. Also, I only did half past.

You know that about the clock chimes, right? Yeah. I'm okay with a half past dig think mine's better also i only did half half past you know that about the the clock chimes right yeah i'm okay with a half past dig that's fine half past ding ding fun yeah you wouldn't believe what happened on the problem posing page. What? Cody. Cody of all people. Not coding, Cody. Cody. Unless we get the answer right, in which case it's coding. Yeah, great.

Cody said, problem, what is the longest one syllable word? In addition, they'd like to know, is there a limit to how long a oneable word can be and still be plausibly pronounceable. And then as a bonus, like we were going to not do this, they give us permission to try and create the longest one-syllable made-up word. Great. Well, duh. There you go. Done.

Done. So you've had a go at this? Yes. And by had a go, I Googled. Well done. Excellent. This podcast is basically skipping the step of people having to look stuff up themselves. Oh, yeah.

I think we should call the show, I Googled it for you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There you go. Which there's nothing wrong with. Nothing wrong. It's handy.

The amount of times I've wondered something, but not quite bothered. Bothered to look it up. To look it up. But we look up a lot of stuff and we only wandered something, but not quite bothered. Bothered to look it up. To look it up. But we look up a lot of stuff and we only report back on the interesting ones. Yes. So I feel like we're also, you know, curating. Yeah, exactly. What people could have Googled.

Yeah. And according to guinnessworldrecords.com. Here we go. Those people. The longest one syllable word, English word, I should say. I haven't looked it up in other languages. Is it the number of letters? Number of letters yeah i feel like oh that would depend on yeah exactly scrunched scrunched great word what does that mean you know like scrunched like you scrunch

something up yeah is it not no no this is, I always doubt myself. Ever since you were right about confidence, man. You've lost all confidence. I've lost all confidence in myself. Man. The definition is literally one word. Yeah. Crunch.

Can you use it in a sentence? I scrunched the leaves under my feet. Oh, nice. Oh, I didn't say a poetic sentence but well done mate you've got a writer and so no wonder you went to the children's literature festival make a crushing noise so it was the children's media media uh so scrunched scrunched 10 letters on scrunched the other word but it is an archaic word, is strengthed. Strengthed.

Is it a version of strengthened? Yeah, but we don't use it now. Wow. You wouldn't have been able to scrunch that if I'd strengthed it. Scrunched. Scrunched. It feels too short to be the longest word, but it just takes a lot of letters. Also, I'm just wondering how we define that's definitely one syllable.

Because the ch-t is a little bit. Scraunched. Duh. Like if you were doing it in charades, you wouldn't go two syllables. Scraunched. Duh. No, you're right. You say one syllable.

Yeah. Because how would you break it up into two? Scraunched. Now I'm questioning. It's like midst. What is language? You wouldn't say midst is two syllables. What is a syllable?

There must be a definition of a syllable. I was in terms of making up a word. Oh, yeah. Was to quote Laura Davies, which is a, she's a fantastic comedian. She's amazing. If you didn't have a chance to catch her at Edinburgh Fringe, she's probably still in the UK at the moment. Yeah, she has a great joke where she says that the way that Australians say shark, you can tell how big the shark is

by how many A's they put in it. So if you're like, oh, I saw a shark, you'd be like, oh, yeah. But if you go, oh, I saw a shark. Oh, a shark. Yeah, you know, it's a really big shark. So I feel like the longest one-syllable word should be shark. It's the biggest shark in the world, right? Yeah, yeah.

It's a megalodon word. Yeah. And that would just be as many A's as you think is right for that massive shark. Right for that specific shark. Yeah. But maybe we should come up with a different one. I think it would be something that's got, like, you know, like trough. Oh, yes.

Something that's got, like, a G-H that doesn't feel like it's necessary. Is there another bit in the English language? Because like off is a famous, very long way of spelling something the Americans have shortened to just an F. Yeah. Donut. Well, just to give us some ideas, nine letter monosyllabic words are scratched, screeched, scrounged, all starting with an S. Actually, they all start with S. Scratched, screeched, scrounged, squel s actually they all start with s huh scratch screech scrounged

squelched straights and strengths is it because s just blends into whatever's next i guess s lends itself more to uh yeah going into one syllable i think an sh is always good yeah maybe there's something like but i guess because a lot of them also with C and R or a T and an R. What if we spelled scruff with O-U-G-H instead of the Fs? Scruff. Yeah. As in by the scruff of the neck. Yeah.

S-C, how would you spell it? S-C-R-U-O-U-G-H. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Yeah. Well, drafts, which is a real word, has eight. Oh, dang. So if we did. Strafts.

There's a silent P on the front. Did I mention that? Strafts. It's spelled P-S. What about strawbs? Strawbs. But it's S. From the previous episode.

Yeah. How are you spelling strawbs? S-T-R-O-U-R-G-H-B-E-S. Straubs. Yeah, mate. You're having it. I'm on board. One, two, three, four, five, six two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven letters

i declare that i mean we have to decide what it is do you know what i think it's it's uh a strawb on its own yeah is a ton of strawberries that's one metric wimbledon of strawberries. Yeah, so 33 strawbs. Strawbs is 33 tons of strawberries. Yeah. That's good, a metric strawb. I thought maybe it's like the worst case scenario of clutching at straws. Clutching at strawbs. Not straws, no. Worse.

Yeah, reaching out. Strawbs. When all you've won is a spoon and you keep grabbing tons of strawbs. You keep grabbing reaching out. Strawbs. When all you want is a spoon and you keep grabbing tons of strawbs. You keep grabbing strawbs. Strawbs. Isn't it ironic? Lemon lettuce, current best. Wow.

That's a lot of strawberries. Yeah, it is. So I'm going to ding. Thank you. Spelled D-I-N-O-U-G-E-D. Maybe we could just go with ding. Ding. It's like dang.

Ding, girlfriend. That's the widest you've ever sounded. Thank you. Strops. It's a-o-u-b. B. B. Spelt. Great. G-o-r-borg a-o-u-g-h was that homestar runner reference it was thank you well done you for getting it thank you and for the one percent of people listening any other business first bit of business People have responded to our request for suggestions for

where new listeners should start listening. Yes. So, I mean, I'm going to recap this with a bit of information. Earlier this year, we hit our first million downloads. Very exciting. You did predict that we would hit 2 million by November. Yep. It's in my diary. Hang on. Let me get the exact date. I want to say it was like the 12th or 16th the 7th 7th 7th that's real soon yeah september october three months three months yeah we are not on course to hit that currently you say i love your optimism but as long as you keep not pushing us on your YouTube channel. I literally mentioned us in the most recent video. You're welcome.

Thanks. Their correct response. You did bring this up the other day and I had a look at the stats to see if we sustained our current rate when we hit 2 million and it is the 15th of January. Yes, next year. Between the 7th and the 15th, depending over what kind of timescale you take the current rate from.

Now, ideally, it would be nice to get it back to that November one, which means… Well, I think we're in with a chance. I think if you factor in the acceleration of the rate, the next derivative up. We're in with a – we're only going to shave two months off that to get to November. But if people want to help us hit that goal.

I'm sure they do. They're going to have to recommend the show to others. And if you're not a Patreon supporter, which totally no shame. It's fine. Absolutely fine. Absolutely fine. But it would really help us if any of you have a youtube channel or just friends mention it any friends just friends family yeah yeah so

we thought let's ask you guys what you think is the best episode to start on these people should start yes yeah so we had some great great recommendations so hugh said uh the first ah wow yep i mean i think we attract an audience who like to do things properly and in order yeah i'm one of those people exactly i tend to go from the beginning of the thing yeah i tend to dive in in the middle somewhere catch up and then then fill in the back catalog that's true. I think when I first listened to This American Life, I listened to like one or two recent ones and went, oh, this is good. Oh, I like this. And then you went back to the beginning.

And then I went back to the beginning. And that was when there were only like 500 or so episodes. And since then there's now like we've just passed 800 episodes. Not a million. So the first episode is a great suggestion. The downside to that suggestion is I think the podcast has changed a lot since the very first episode. Not dramatically. We've got more of a format now. Yeah. Yeah. Not in tone. No. Or attitude.

No. Maybe we've honed the format. On the flip side, we did say hello to all the future listeners who are coming back to start from the first episode yeah so i think there's a certain certain you know niceness yeah poetic alignment circular it's a circular clock this is the first page and also the last that's it uh steve just said i nominate the one where matt went to antarctica and discussed penguins that's it no reason no no i think i would have said that was that was in the middle somewhere yeah oh excellent penguins are pretty cool i mean yeah literally tristan has explained their logic in great detail they even start with hi back and matt very kind of you to say hello tristan They've been listening for almost a year now

Because they got a 20 minute commute And so they had the same problem Because we've been going for longer than a year We had to decide where to start They do have some favourite problems They enjoy the five wordle words Well don't we all Tristan They like the sparkling wine spoon experiment

I mean that was a game changer That was a whole thing. We still want to do something with that. We are going to do the follow on. Yeah. I'm just trying to find a big enough fridge and enough free sparkling white wine. So they don't know if they have a specific episode they would recommend starting with. Oh, they've got a technique they would recommend.

Because they've been listening to them in reverse order from the most recent one when they started, but they will interrupt going through the back catalogue whenever a new one comes out. Oh, yeah. And then skip back to the reverse order. Okay, yeah. That's nice. And they've got some pros for doing it in reverse order.

The Any Other Business segment now becomes a teaser for the next episode. True, that's good. That's nice. They can try and reverse engineer the solutions other business segment now becomes a teaser for the next episode. True. That's good. That's nice. They can try and reverse engineer the solutions from what we mention when we give the ding updates. Oh, nice. That's kind of fun.

Oh, it's got the bonus effect of pudding coming back to life. Just really lovely. That's nice. It's like that Red Dwarf episode where they go to the rivers. Yeah, not null. Yeah. That's true because they have no idea. There's no mention of Pudding.

And then suddenly Pudding's alive. Yeah. That's great. Pudding, by the way, Bex Hamster that this podcast is now dedicated to. Oh, and they, this is a nice bit of data because we changed music because we had holding music for a while early on. Until we got our theme tune. And then we switched to the theme tune.

And obviously people like what they're familiar with. And so some people were like, oh, why did you change? I prefer the old music. But they've said it was very jarring going back to the old intro music and they prefer the current one more. That might just be because people will like what they're familiar with. Yeah, yeah. But for people listening in reverse order, you would get the old music, which was a discontinued

theme from a YouTube segment that I abandoned in the year 2015. Yeah. And then we reused it for the podcast in 2019. Wow. So there you go tristan that is a comprehensive and fun strategy yeah i do like that that's very nice we also heard from jess who also agrees episode one another vote for first yeah they said as a new listener who discovered a problem squared through my appearance on no such thing as a fish i'm getting real mixed emotions about that which was quite quite recent. It was recent.

Welcome aboard, Jess. Relatively recent. They've started from episode one and literally just caught up to episode 65. Oh, smashed them. The day it landed. I love that because that's how I do podcasts. Like when I find a new one, I just slam through them. Yeah.

That must be surreal. I relate to Jess highly. And so they said, what a coincidence that the first live problem you need help with is the very problem i've recently solved starting from the very beginning has to be the best way to understand all the callbacks to previous episodes i wouldn't fully appreciate doing a dexter or have casually started using the term blounge if i listen to the podcast in any other order i think we try and make sure people can join at any point we try but i mean we can't never gonna cross every i and dot every t yeah and they said uh for your information while i'm a long time listener of fish

i'm a newly converted supporter of a problem squared in the rivalry one of us i remember when i was on No Such Thing As A Fish. Are you trying to reverse engineer this? Yeah, I'm trying to Mandela effect my way into fish. You say this now because then when you are on it in the future, people who are listening in reverse will be very confused. That'd be great. Time is a circle. It all comes back to fun time time fun time fun we also heard from xavier and rupert fluffy duck yep who both had these are actually problems these

are problems but i'm putting them in any other business because they've already been solved uh so rupert was asking about the game Spot It, which is the same as Double, which is what Xavier was asking about. They wanted to know how is there one matching symbol on any two cards? And I know that you already have a video about this. This is a great game where you pick two cards out of a deck of 55 cards. You flip them both over and there's always one and only one symbol in common.

And it was the single most requested video for a while on my YouTube channel. Currently in the UK, as of this record, you can get a little pack in your Happy Meal.

You can. At McDonald's. This isn't an ad. No, but you can. Which it was. But I got one and I was thrilled. How many cards are there in that? I haven't actually opened it yet.

I was meant to bring it here and I forgot next time yeah because i want to see because i've got two versions of double and they conform to a weird pattern based on the mass behind them so i'm curious to know what's happened with the happy meal one but the point is uh it was super requested so i did a video about it it's on my stand up mass youtube channel at youtube.com. And I'm not surprised. Put a link in there. Show notes just in case. Put that in the links. Not the letter U, the word U.

Oh, gosh. Okay. That's why you've got to spell it out. And I'm not surprised we've still got two inquiries because I got so many requests to do the video until I did the video. So I'm totally unsurprised there are people who listen to the podcast who don't watch my videos who, of course, are going to ask the same thing because it's such a common problem that people want solved.

Yeah. It's a simple solution. Check out YouTube. Yeah. We now have some ding confirmations. So we've got a big old ding from Jack who had the Tetris question. Oh, yeah. How to get good at Tetris.

And Beck, you had the Tetris question. Oh, yeah. How to get good at Tetris. And Beck, you had some pointers. And they've come back to thank you for answering their question. And their friend loved Jarl's solution so much, he has now programmed Tetris into his TI-84 calculator. That's great. Awesome. Good calculator. Lots of weird games for that.

You did extra research after that. Well, then afterwards, I started thinking, well, hang on. How is the competitive Tetris scene these days? Because it's been a long time since I've checked in on it. And specifically, it tends to be the standard version everyone plays is the NES, the Nintendo Entertainment System version. It's like the canonical one for competitions. And I didn't realize there are still ongoing discoveries in the world of competitive Tetris on the NES, specifically in how fast you can push the side-to-side buttons because there's a thing called a kill screen,

which is where the pieces come down too fast to be able to play anymore. But now people have found ways to move the blocks fast enough that they can survive and keep playing on the quote unquote kill screen. I think that's covered in the documentary that I watched as well. I believe it sounds familiar. Did they talk about rolling? Oh, I can't remember. Because there was a phase of hyper tapping was the way to do it.

Yes. The tapping is what I remember. And then they realized instead of tapping the side to side buttonside button, what you can do is hold, like gently press but not quite connect the side-to-side button. And then you roll your fingers like you're doing. A bit of ASMR there. So you can roll your fingers like you're tapping them in succession, but you do that under the pad.

And by tapping the controller in a very rapid rolling motion, each time you tap it because you're holding down the sideways button, it registers as individual presses. Wow. So you can press side at an incredibly fast rate for a specific number of times because you just roll different numbers of fingers. And so now you can very precisely and rapidly move pieces side to side.

And thanks to this breakthrough, someone for the first time ever was able to play through the 256 level, which doesn't crash like it does on Pac-Man. But what it does do is it crashes the system that chooses the colors for the bricks because they change color each level. And you get a bunch of crashed level weird color palettes because it's taking random data from the memory where it shouldn't be looking for colors, interpreting them as hex colors and displaying them on the screen. And so you're getting colors you wouldn't normally get.

All these crazy colors. Wow. I think it's only been done in the PAL version because the frame rate's slightly slower. But because of this rolling method that was only discovered in 2021 people have now managed to play past where the color palette crashes oh my goodness it's so cool that's very cool the tetris what a game we also got a ton of people send in information about um different ways you can play depending on what system you're playing or what year the game came out yeah different random number generators for which piece you get next and all sorts of stuff yeah and some like a lot of you sent links and stuff was really useful very

very interesting also very hard to discuss at length on the podcast which is why and i think we mentioned this in the last one at some point we're considering we'll set up some kind of online like a discord or let us know if you have a preference. And that way you can share those links with our listeners. If it exists, it'll be linked below. If not, we'll set it up soon. Yeah, because it was really, really cool and interesting. The other ding was someone asking about words that you can spell phonetically with individual letters. Yes.

Like TDS. TDS can just be a T, a D, and an S. That's right. And they have said that it was their partner's question, and they played the episode while they were driving together, and we then solved the problem they sent in. Yay. What a magical moment.

The partner was astounded and absolutely convinced that she and some stranger out there had the exact same fascination with letterals specifically the two odious and tedious still a joke between them even after explaining that they had sent in the question she just thought someone else had asked the same question amazing because this person was anonymous and they're still remaining anonymous so i love that yeah i mean who knows anonymous's partner i know because it didn't come up twice in the database and it's one person i've read all the questions so in the problem so yeah so they say thanks for the investigation ding yes it's been dinged it's been

dinged i also wanted to give a shout out to Ian, Ian Flower, who posted to say on the cheese twisties and visiting American notes. Oh, wow. Yep. A friend from Adelaide. Hello. Good old Adelaide. Recently told me that the Trader Joe's baked cheese crunchies are better than the current

version of cheese twisties. What? Now, when we were in New York, we didn't mention this. I don't think. But we got the Wegmans, and I'm pretty sure they're called baked cheese crunchies. I think so. But they were the white cheddar flavor.

They don't look like twisties in terms of color, but we all yummed them up. Oh, yeah. They were real, real tasty. And I've looked it up. Apparently Trader Joe's and Wegmans are very similar. Oh. There's a bit of like a rivalry type thing.

Oh, so it's a knockoff version of a knockoff. Yeah. Something like that. From our point of view. From our point of view, yeah, as outsiders. So I'm wondering if Trader Joe's baked cheese crunchies are very similar to the Wegmans ones. Next time we're in the States.

Well, I mean, someone asked you guys to pick up a pack while you were there. Oh, yeah, and we didn't. And you have it. I was hoping at that point you'd be like, well, I mean, someone asked you guys to pick up a pack while you were there. Oh, yeah, and we didn't. And you haven't. I was hoping at that point you'd be like, well, Beck, because you know what I brought today on the off chance that you brought them. Oh, what did you? I have some twisties. And I was like, we can compare them.

No, I didn't. No, none. No. I mean, they're every year old, so they definitely stay old. You can eat the twisties right in front of me. I'd do that anyway Well anyway thanks Ian At some point we'll compare them in person And for fans of Closure

The children's TV show I did a few segments on Was called How to be Epic at Everything There you are over 10 years ago Can people watch it still? Nah long gone if anyone finds a link to it let me know i'm pretty sure it doesn't exist anywhere online i i did a bit on how to solve a rubik's cube how to tie your shoelaces i think maybe a third bit i can't remember what it was it was very early in my career you want to see a real young matt doing tv how to be epic and

everything i would love to see that The at is like an at symbol Right Oh yeah Yeah When I was cool It really dates the show Yeah The use of the word epic That's true

As an at symbol It really does doesn't it And for anyone who wants closure from the last episode I looked it up Yep And Goob Goob

Goober Yeah I'm definitely mispronouncing that The Swedish word for old man I think it's like gub Because Someone also likened it to gubben. But basically that means old man in Swedish. But apparently originally it meant little lump. Oh, your little lump.

So it's like a little lump, like a dirt lump. Oh, so the strawberry is a dirt lump. Yeah. Oh, little lump. they no longer use it to mean little lump it now refers to sort of like man and in every episode of a problem squared i say every actually we only started doing this at some point depends which order you're listening to the episodes yeah every so far if you're in reverse. We'd like to thank three of our Patreon supporters at random who are the real reason we can do this.

And continue to do this. And continue to do this. So we're going to thank three of you at random. Frederick Orville. Frederick Orville. It's one syllable. John Doe. Or Jehonday.

Wow. Athensius. Athanasius? Athan. As I. Us. I think we can all agree with that. And finally, I'm going to thank

Our producer Forgot the word producer then That's why we have a producer Looked at Matt with fear in my eyes Lauren Armstrong Carter Who is the Like the stage manager of our children's TV show Oh yeah yeah yeah that works

Yeah the one that stands on the floor And like with the little headset on yep and it's like a clipboard thing yeah and then like oh going live in three two one and then we've got to suddenly stop swe dice are in this jar okay and i've mixed it up. I've added some more. I've moved them around to make it interesting. How many dice do you think are in this jar? Twelve.

I can say you are incorrect. You just want me to take a wild guess. Well, what's the other option? To start with. Well, because I want to sort of count how many forms a line. Let's start with a guess. Okay. And then next time you can do an informed guess.

Okay. Okay. Okay. Add a guess. 500. Incorrect. I mean, if it was bang on 500, I'd be surprised. 500, that'd be real suspicious.

Yeah. It is not 500. Okay. We'll put a photo out by the way people want to guess guess along guess along with beck are we allowed to have a higher or lower limit oh i think yes not straight away but i think i'll start doing highs or lowers let's let's give everyone else a chance to have a go first okay