A Problem Squared - 076 = Human Pasta and Strada Romana

Episode Date: January 1, 2024

In this first episode of 2024… 🍝 How long would human spaghetti be? 🏛 Do all roads actually lead to Rome? 📜 We have new old business for a new new year. P.S episode not intentionally Italy themed. If you want to go see Matt and Bec in LA get to the Flappers Comedy Club in Burbank on Sunday January 7th at 5pm! Bec and Matt will put on An Evening of Unnecessary Detail along with a few of their friends as guest acts. Come and say hi! Matt will sign your calculator. Bec will also sign your calculator - right across the top of Matt's signature. If you want to go to that, you can get your tickets here now: https://www.flapperscomedy.com/shows/an-evening-of-unnecessary-detail/72865/ As always, send us your general problems and solutions to the website: www.aproblemsquared.com If you want more from A Problem Squared, you can find us on Twitter, Instagram, Discord and of course, on Patreon.

Heads up that Beck and I are going to LA and we are taking over the Flappers Comedy Club in Burbank 5 p.m. Sunday 7th of January for 90 detail-filled minutes. Link in the description if you're anywhere near LA. Please do come along. It's going to be amazing. I'll sign your calculator. Beck will probably also sign your calculator but write something insulting about me. Come along'll be great fun we'll see you there and here's the episode a problem squared everybody needs good a problem squared. Just a friendly problem each morning helps to make a better ding. Beck Hill. Everybody needs good Beck Hill. With just a little understanding, you can find the perfect blend.

I haven't changed any of those words, by the way. That's the actual one of the many versions of the Neighbors theme. Matt Parker. I like how you do not go to the extent of singing nope nope nope my dedication to not singing is greater than my dedication to a joke yep everybody needs good matt parker with a pretty complete lack of understanding you can find the perfect blend every word of reworded that one. Problem squared. Should be there for one another. That's when good friends become good podcast co-hosts. Oh, lovely.

See what I did there? I put it the other way around. You swapped it, yeah. Yeah, because we started out as friends, but now we're just hosts. We did, and now we're just colleagues. Yeah. Then we'll become acquaintances. Then we'll have friends in common, and then we'll forget each other. On this episode. I'm going to do some actual maths for a change. Whoa. I'm not.

I'm working out. Which roads lead to Rome? And there'll be A-O business. A or B for one another. You're doing my packaging better than I did. Oh, yeah, man, because I'm all about the bit. It's your commitment. Yeah.

My commitment. I apologize to anyone not from the UK or Australia who has absolutely no clue what the Neighbours theme is or what Neighbours is. Well, I envy you. So how are you doing? That's a good question, Matt. I didn't think to look at what's going on in my diary. You need to look up how you're doing.

Wow. I do. I need to look at my diary to see what I've been up to. What have I been doing? Well, seeing as this, when this episode goes out, I will be in LA. Oh yes, we will. That's exciting. Yeah. Hopefully, I don't know if you'll be there yet, but I will be there. I'm there from the 1st to the 13th of January. The only way to LA, sorry. I will be leaving

this country of the UK, flying to LA the day that this comes out. Wow. So everyone listening to this, Beck is in the air somewhere over the Atlantic. And Happy New Year, by the way. If you're listening as this episode comes out, Happy New Year. I'm hoping that I'm not too hungover because I do have a plus hour flight ahead of me. But yeah, I'm assuming my Christmas was wonderful.

Loved all the gifts. Loved your gifts. Thanks, Matt. Oh, you're assuming my Christmas was wonderful. Loved all the gifts. Loved your gifts. Thanks, Matt. Oh, you're very welcome. No pressure. I'm getting ready for Yoit. Oh, the Yoit.

You're joining in on the Yoit. I have a minimum of one thing to upload next week, next Monday, because I set myself the task of releasing a video on YouTube. Yoit is a year of YouTube for any new listeners. Year of YouTube. I set myself the task that I would release a video every two weeks on the alternating Mondays that this podcast doesn't come out. I thought that would make sense, but also it's taken me like three months to do one video.

So I'm not sure how this will work. Oof, you're going gonna need to speed up a little if people want me to keep putting videos out please in a week's time go over to my youtube channel becky or comedian or beat your comedian with one word um you can subscribe in advance if you want and get ready yeah there's a little bell ring the bell yeah get the bell. Yeah, get the bell ready. And if people like my first upload for 2024 and it's going well, that bodes well for the next couple that have come out. We'll see if it's something that I can keep up. I believe in you. How about you, Matt?

What have you been up to? Well, this is going to tie in nicely because I am somewhere warm, as discussed. I'm in Australia. I'm back in WA in the summer, having a great time. At the time this podcast comes out, I will have had the summer Christmas down the beach for Christmas day, all that jazz. So jealous. It's one of the many Parker family traditions. We hit the beach first thing Christmas morning. Another Parker family tradition, whenever I come over, my brother and I obviously catch up a bunch. I have other siblings and family members, but my brother and I

will get together and he always, during the year, will have collected some ridiculous potato chips or crisps, as they're called in the UK. Yes, I got to partake in some of this last year. You got to partake in some of this tradition. So again, this year, I showed up and he came around and he brought a big bag, a crinkly bag. And he's like, right. And he got them out. And they're always ridiculous.

So actually, I quickly grabbed two before the recording just to set the standard. And they're always like some stupid flavor. So this is Thins, proudly Australian made pie and sauce flavor. And if you're unfamiliar with the concept- Not even tomato sauce, just sauce. No, just sauce. And there's a picture of a pie with a bite out of it. Oh my goodness.

It tastes like a partially eaten pie with sauce on it. And then Smith's, another classic Aussie chip brand. Subway specific, I guess they're doing a crossover, meatball sub flavor. Oh, okay. So that's the whole thing. Kwe's specific, I guess they're doing a crossover, meatball sub flavor. Oh, okay. So that's the whole thing. And I haven't opened these because at some point he'll come around and we'll eat some stupid crisps. So he had like, I think maybe four or five packets in that vein. Will you update us with those on the next episode?

Oh, I will report back on those. But I realize he's always got these chips ready to go. And I never have any. Because if I was to bring food into Australia, you have to declare it. And I'm like, oh, that's a whole thing. So I figure if I'm ever going to do that, I'm going to have to go big and then go home. And so that's what I did this year. I think you might have been there for some of this.

Wherever I went in the world, I bought stupid crisps. Yes. So when we were in America, I got some dumb ones. I think I got these ones. I grabbed a few samples. This is Tacos Blue Heat. They're blue-favored. Well, blue-colored at least.

Weird-shaped. But apparently they're also extreme heat. So report back on those from the US. I got banana chips. They sound like rolled Doritos from memory turkeys. You can get them from the candy shops in London. But I haven't seen the blue ones. They're kind of cylindrical.

You can buy some versions of this in like the expensive imported junk food stores in Australia as well. What you can't buy is banana chips from South America. Actual banana. Forget potato, banana chips. But I grabbed those from, I think they were when I was out in Peru. Japan, fried egg flavored. That's pretty exciting. Oh, I love egg flavored crisps.

Yeah. So I grabbed those. And so I went all out. I had maybe like seven or eight different packs from around the world. And I was like, ah, amazing. I'm going to, you know, because I have to declare them. I may as well do it all at once. I'm going to blow my brother's crisp collection clear out of the water.

But he came out of the gates. He did outdo the best of my global chip trotting. Okay. With twisties. He did it. Donut flavored. Yes. Donut King. What? trotting okay with twisties he did it donut flavored yes and king what twisties twisted raspberry i asked so many people to keep an eye out for those when they're out in australia and now i'm very much hoping that you're able to bring back some unopened packets. Well, he went above and beyond. Not only did he get these for us to enjoy,

he got both of these in doubles. So I have, these are the two packets I'm going to bring back for you. These donut and twisted raspberry, like confectionery flavoured twisties will be going in my suitcase. I'll bring these back and we can have these. I might even keep them in the office in England

until we're both in the UK for a UK-based record to enjoy the weird twisties. Now, good news, the donut-flavoured ones, best before 28th of January next year. Okay. The raspberry ones, best before the 19th of November. Oh, so not even... 2023.

Not even in date now. I think you can still get these in the shops at the moment, but the raspberry ones are no longer around, so that's why it's a little more mature. If anyone else knows of any other weird twisty flavours, let me know before I go back to the UK. Our first problem is sent in by Daniel, who went to the problem posing page at problemsquared.com and said,

while in a plane on their way to a vacation with their girlfriend, they noticed a small hole in the plane window. They think it might be for like air pressure equalisation or something. It was approximately the size of a spaghetti. I guess single, single piece of spaghetti. They hint that's going to be foreshadowing. They then made the obvious joke that everyone will get sucked out of the hole. His girlfriend pointed out that they wouldn't fit through the tiny hole. And he said that if the air pressure was sufficiently powerful enough, you would fit and you'd come out as one long spaghetti. So Daniel's problem is, and this is for you, Beck, if you were spaghettified through that tiny hole, how long would the spaghetti be?

Spaghettification, I think, is the technical word. I thought this would be a great problem to solve on this episode because I will be boarding a flight on this day and I have noticed that little hole on many an occasion. Sometimes you even get little like bits that you can sort of see because

the, it's not condensation but you sort of get an inside frost of the outside window that you can see where the hole is. Yeah. I wondered if it was for like moisture, like the humidity control between the inside bit and the outside. It doesn't condense up.

So that we don't have to like wipe down the window as we're flying to see out the side. So the window stays clear. Otherwise it might condense up inside the void. And then the pilot won't be able to see through the rear view mirror. People will just complain they can't look out the window stays clear. Otherwise, it might condense up inside the void. And then the pilot won't be able to see through the rearview mirror. No. People will just complain they can't look out the window. Me too. I love looking out the window.

That's why I go on planes. Even though I'm trapped, I do like the window seat. Even though I'm also terrified of flying. I think I just like knowing that I'm not trapped, even if the outside is terrifying. So Daniel's right. Daniel's right. It is for air pressure. I looked this up. The

hole is actually called a bleed hole and it serves or a breather hole as well. It serves as a safety function. So make sure that the outer pane bears all of the air pressure so that you're not building up so much air pressure on the inside pane. That's good because then you can engineer it knowing where the forces are going to be as opposed to there being some uncertainty pressure on the inside pain. That's good because then you can engineer it knowing where the forces are going to be as opposed to there being some uncertainty based on the pressure. If the pressure difference becomes too high, the outer pain will be the first one to break. So then you'll not be like immediately sucked out by the inner, then immediately outer pain. You'll have like a little bit of a moment between the outer pain and the inner pain.

I did want to say, I did find out another interesting fact while sort while sort of researching this and again people are more than welcome to correct me but i was not aware of this the oxygen that you get if a if the masks fall down the oxygen masks they don't come from an oxygen tank or anything like that because that would be too heavy to have on the plane and large so what it's just you're breathing outside. It's created by a chemical reaction. That's great. So it's sodium chlorate, barium peroxide, and potassium perchlorate. I think I'm, or perchlorate.

Perchlorate, probably. They combine to create oxygen. There's a lot of inates. And you pull down the mask. And when the chemical reaction starts, it can't be stopped. And you get between 10 and 12 minutes of oxygen. So that's what you're provided with. But that gives the pilot enough time to bring the plane down below 10,000 feet where you'd be able to breathe normally.

So I thought that was a very interesting fact. That's very clever. Yeah. But back to the spaghettification. I loved this problem because at first I – I've talked about this before. Sometimes I scan problems and I think, too mathsy, Matt will do it. And I thought that this was going in the direction of like, what would the air pressure have to be in order for the spaghettification to happen? And how strong would the pain need to be? Because, you know, the pain would obviously break before that happens.

No, it's definitely my sort of problem, which is just how long would a piece of spaghetti, if you were a spaghettifier, how long would that piece of spaghetti be? How long would you be? And I love that. So Matt, I'm going to tell you how I solved it. I did it in two, well, the same way in two slightly different things, but I suspect that you might have a different take on it. So I figured in order to work it out, I would work out the volume of spaghetti.

Okay. Yeah. And the volume of an average human and sort of divide really. Yeah. That'll work. So I know that I could have just looked up how to look up the volume of a cylinder. Yeah. But instead I was, I went to our old friend Wolfram Alpha. Good old Wolfram Alpha. I did put in what is the volume of a piece of spaghetti, and it did not know.

It had a lot of information, but no one had specifically answered that question. So I did the volume of a cylinder. And look, I will come back to this in a moment because you'll notice a mistake. Not a mistake, but an interesting choice that I made. But I was like, okay, so let's look at an average spaghetti piece. So the average piece of spaghetti is about two millimeters wide and about 30 centimeters long. There can be differences.

So I did the volume of a cylinder, which as I now recall, thanks to Rufram Alpha, and I was like, oh, yeah, I did learn that in school. I should know that, was the radius by pi and then the height. Radius squared. Radius squared. Radius squared. Times pi. There we go.

You're just working out. Pi comes into it. You're working out the area of the circle at one end and then multiplying it by how long the cylinder is. Yes. So I did that. So I did it for one millimeter radius and 300 millimeters height. Great.

And that came to 0.478 cubic millimeters. Oh, yeah, that's about right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then I converted that to milliliters, which is thankfully very simple. Yeah. Divide by a thousand. You just move the decimal point a couple of spots. So it's 0.9425 milliliters, basically.

Okay. Yep. And then I worked out the volume of a human. Okay. Now I'm curious. Which I could ask. I was able to ask this on Wolfram Alpha. I just said, what's the volume of a human?

And it told me. And I was like, this is great. What is the volume of a human? It told me the average human was 66,400 milliliters. And then in brackets, it says average volume of human body as measured by water displacement, data based on sample of 521 people, age range 17 to 51 years. With citations. Very good citation.

So we've got the volume of a human, 66,400 divided it by 0.9425. And that came up with 70,450.92. Sounds about right. Goes on for a bit. And so I times that by 30 because there's 30 centimeters in the spaghetti in the spaghetti to work out how many centimeters this piece of spaghetti would need to be and got 2,113,528 centimeters yep or better known as 21,135.28 meters or just over 21 kilometers. Yep.

It was when I got to this point that I went, I'm such an idiot. Why did I do the extra step of making a 30 centimeter piece of spaghetti? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then divide it. You could have skipped that bit. So then I did it again with just, I just did the radius times by one. So that was much easier. And I mean, the result was slightly different

but um not by a huge amount we're still just over 21 kilometers yep it's rounding but it's the difference is fairly i mean just a couple of the difference will be because you've made your unit volume smaller and so when you've rounded you've taken more off in the rounding process at one point. And that's made a difference to the final answer. Because it should be identical if using, you know, like proper precision. But because you're just kind of ballparking and rounding as you go, then it's rounded slightly differently, which has made a difference to the final answer. Yeah, it's made a two meter difference.

Yeah, see? Yeah, that's because you've changed order of magnitude and so you're rounded off slightly differently yeah so i wanted to i wanted to point out that i did do that i did a dexter i i got for any new listeners uh dexter is a young listener who always shows full working out and has proven that things can change if you round off too early but i am going to say that this piece of spaghetti, if your girlfriend was spaghettified, would be just over 21 kilometers long. That's good. Which I think checks out because the human intestine on its own is like six meters.

That's great. Yep, yep. And that's pretty big. If I was going to estimate it. Like round. You've correctly noticed that you don't need the length of the spaghetti. The spaghetti's got a much smaller cross section than a human. And so if you were to squeeze a human down to that cross section, it's going to get a lot longer.

And the multiple of how much you've got to squeeze down is how much longer you're going to get. So I would say a human is like quarter of a meter. That's pretty too much, actually. Cross-section, maybe 30. Matt is currently measuring himself. I'm eyeballing myself. He's looking down. Yeah.

Yeah. I'm like, what's that? I'm probably like 10 centimeters or more thick, maybe 30, 40 across. That feels like a lot. Maybe I'm 20 thick by 40 wide. Stop it. I mean i mean depends where your cross yeah yeah on average on average so 20 centimeters by 40 centimeters is 800 centimeters which is if actually we switch that to millimeters so instead of 800 centimeters it would be 80 000

millimeters so i would be roughly 80 000 times assuming spaghetti is like a one millimeter square which i know is less than your assumption but i would just go it's vaguely a mil by a mil i would be 80 000 times longer ish if i was reduced to that area and so i'm you know on the order of one to two meters so i would say it'll be about a hundred thousand meters which is about 100 kilometers ballpark and would you have like 21 kilometers yeah i believe that yeah yeah not really that's pretty similar just for rounding yeah yeah it's only five times off like it's not didn't you say a hundred kilometers yeah but it's not that's true they are very different distances but'm like, when I'm ballparking something, like

if it's a thousand times, that's a big difference. If it's within 10 times difference, I'm like, yeah, it's about right then. Cause that's, you know, to an order of magnitude, it's pretty much the same thing. Yeah. Thanks. I'm not sure. I feel like your version verified whether mine's correct or not oh mine i appreciate you absolutely worse but it means i believe yours

because it's roughly similar to me doing a horrible approximation yeah now what i will say is i know that there will be people going ah but beck surely it's about density as well. You know, because I've just gone for volume. But when you take pressure into account, you know, it's like putting sausage through a sausage thingy. It depends how much you pack the sausage skin with the... That's true, but I don't think humans are that... Are we that compressible? I mean, we're mostly water and that's pretty incompressible. Yeah.

Like, would we lose a bunch of water? I mean, spaghetti, when it's cooked, like holds on to the water. Oh, okay. Okay. Okay. So I will be honest. I did stop at the volume thing because once we started to get to densities and the difference between cooked spaghetti and uncooked spaghetti and what that would mean if a human was a

piece of spaghetti. It was too much, you guys. And I have a habit of doing too much. So I thought I would stop it there. So you're saying it's a 20 kilometer piece of spaghetti? Just over. That's a big bit of spaghetti. That's a long bit of spaghetti. In fact, if your girlfriend was sucked out of the window daniel and and turned into a piece of spaghetti like much like a fish poo you know being dragged under the plane okay okay what a visual then assuming that the sort of average cruising altitude of a plane is about

35 000 feet yeah which is just over 10, half of your girlfriend will be on the ground. Just dragging along. The length of spaghetti a human is, is twice a cruising altitude of an aircraft. Yeah. That's amazing. So if you get sucked out, you'd land. You wouldn't. You'd stop halfway, right? You'd hit the ground.

The first half of you that's gone out would be on the ground. Realistically, they'd get dragged behind the plane. That's true. But like, you know, like a banner. Well, Beck i don't know what daniel was after when asking this question but you know in very simple terms as as they say how long would that spaghetti be i feel like you you've answered that thoroughly and you've given us some context for what that would mean in the plane situation. So I'm going to give you a very long ding. Ding! I didn't do the full 21 kilometers of ding, but you get the idea. Wow. Yeah. Going to need more eyes.

This next problem comes from NotATrinmo. I think I've pronounced that right. NotATrinmo from the Problem Posing page, which is a problemsquared.com. And they say, do all roads in fact lead to Rome? Short and simple. That's the whole thing. Yep. That's all I typed.

I'm guessing that comes from the saying, all roads lead to Rome. Yep. And, I mean, Bec, you're currently in the UK. I am. On Great Britain, which is an island, and none of the roads lead to Rome. You'd have to get a ship or a flight or something. Or the Eurostar. Or the Eurostar, or a train.

And I'm on an island that's even further away in Australia and none of the roads here lead to Rome. So in a very simple sense, the answer is no. Yeah, exactly. So the answer, like, if you want to be absolute about it, is no, not all roads lead to Rome. But that feels a little unsatisfactory. And I guess, I mean, the phrase originally, it's an old phrase, I looked it up, it's like medieval.

It's been around for almost a thousand years. Well, I feel like it would have come about very close to when roads were being built to Rome. It feels like that's when the saying would have occurred, when it was correct. No, I think it was a, well, compared to Rome, it was a much later invention. But compared to a lot of phrases, it's relatively old. Not as old as the Romans. It generally means all different journeys end up in the same place. So there's lots of ways to the same place.

And that kind of made sense, particularly if you're looking back, you're right. Back in the Roman era, roads all going back to Rome. Whereas now, there's lots of countries with roads that aren't connected to Rome. And so I thought, if I want to answer this question in a more nuanced way, as opposed to just, do all roads lead to Rome, I should answer, how many roads lead to Rome? Or rather, what percentage of roads lead to Rome? Oh, yes, like that Bob Dylan song. Yeah, that famous Bob Dylan song.

How many roads must someone trying to get to Rome walk down? must someone trying to get to rome walk down so i decided to add that the problem is not just do all roads lead to rome because that's very easy to prove false is what percentage of roads could you be on and then journey to rome purely on roads that's my interpretation of this problem and it's a lot because r is connected to, you know, the road network extends into Europe and that extends through Africa, Asia, Russia. Like it's a big contiguous road network that has Rome on it. So I need to work out what percentage of all countries' road systems link to Rome. So here's what I did. I first of all looked up a list of countries by road network size. So it gives you every country and it gives you the number of kilometers of road

in that country. I then had to work out which of those countries are connected to Rome and which are not. And I realized that all the countries connected to Rome could be summed up in two lists, both on Wikipedia. I found one list, which was titled list of sovereign states and dependent territories in Eurasia. So that's all of Asia, all of Europe, Russia, Indian subcontinent, the works, and a separate list, which is list of African countries by population. Now the by population is not relevant. That's just the first list I found that gave me every single country in Africa. So I now have all the countries in Eurasia and Africa. However, some of them are islands. So like the UK is in there, you know, Madagascar is in there. I need only the ones

that are connected to the road network. So then I found another list. This is our fourth list. List of island countries. So that's every country that's an island. Worldwide. So I put all of these into a spreadsheet and I got the spreadsheet of all the countries

and their road networks. And for each one, I then looked to see if it was in the list of countries in Eurasia. And for each one, I then looked to see if it was in the list of countries in Eurasia. And if it was, I put a one for in Eurasia or a zero if it wasn't. I then compared it to the list of countries in Africa and put a one if it was in Africa and a zero if it wasn't. I then looked up if it's not an island. So this is the opposite of being in the list. If it wasn't in the list, I gave it a one for not an island. And if is the opposite of being in the list. If it wasn't in the list,

I gave it a one for not an island. And if it was in the list, I gave it a zero for being an island or not being an island. And then I said to combine those logically. So what I did was I added together the value for if it was in Eurasia or Africa, and then I multiplied it by the value for if it's not an island, which is to say, is it either in Eurasia or in Africa and not in an island? And that gave me all the non-island countries in Africa and Eurasia. And so I was able to do that with a sum and multiply. And then I just worked out the total length of roads for countries that aren't islands and are in Africa and Eurasia and then multiplied them all up, added them all together. And so I've got the total roads in the world. I got the total which link to Rome.

And I can confirm that 61% of all roads lead to Rome. So 61%, well, 60.98. So I'm calling that 61 within the errors. I will say that includes, because I could have done it just for paved, like surfaced roads, but that's all roads. Because it occurred to me that Roman roads weren't sealed either. And I feel like if there was like an extant Roman road, it would feel wrong to discount that from the network of roads. And there might have been like an important unpaved road somewhere

that links together other sections that are paved. So for safety's sake, I just went for anything that Wikipedia or wherever the data came from had classified as a road as in. And so, yeah, 61% of roads lead to Rome. So I guess if you round up, yes. Yes, all roads lead to Rome on average. Hey, it's still true. On average, all roads lead to Rome on average. Hey, it's still true. On average, all roads lead to Rome. Is there a city that is better connected than Rome? Oh, I didn't factor in how far you would have to travel. So, Rome is probably not the best in terms of total distance traveled.

Because if you're just sort of- You want something probably a bit more central calculating all the roads in africa so so you're saying that you can drive between africa and eurasia so yep if they're if there's roads all over there you're saying you know they eventually they're going to link to rome but i guess you could also say that all roads lead to Tallinn. Yeah, all roads lead to anywhere that's on the road network in Eurasia. All roads lead to Cape Town. Yeah, all roads lead to Bonn. I am very impressed, Matt. That is, roughly

that is what I would have done, except I wouldn't have written the code and stuff. I would have done except I wouldn't have written the code and stuff I would have just I would have just looked at oh no code this time all spreadsheets oh I used x lookups it was all lookup I wouldn't have done lookup tables and then a little bit of formula probably I don't know being like how big are the road networks and then just compared the get a map yeah get a ruler yeah um but that's impressive that's that's impressive i would like to know how many roads point in the direction of rome you know i had the same thought and i was like how would i work that out and then i decided that road orientation is on average random so So it would just be whatever fraction. It'd be like, then I was like, well, hang on, roads further away

would have to be more accurate in terms of tolerances for aiming at Rome. And that's when I realized I was probably getting off the track, if you will. And so I didn't go any further in that direction. Because then I'd realized you'd have to, it's not like you start on the road and go straight towards Rome. You then have to. Well, the next problem is to work out. Zip off somewhere else.

What logistics would you need in order to make Rome in a day? Yes. I feel like we confirmed that all roads do lead to Rome. So there you are. I'm very impressed. I'm going to give you a standard ding. I don't feel like we've just done a normal ding for a while, so I'm going to ding this one with no pun.

I agree. It's definitely, I've not excelled my, I put the numbers in Excel, but I've not gone above and beyond. I've not found anything new or exciting. I've just literally looked up the answer. I think you did a great job. I'm saying that I think the listeners deserve a break from all of the wordplay tomfoolery.

Let's get back to what it was. Just a normal ding. Wow. Yeah. Keep it real. Just a ding. We just said ding. We moved on.

You know how people don't realize that the save sign on Word or Excel or whatever is a disk because they've never had to use a disk. Yeah, it used to be like a floppy disk. I feel like it's going to be a bit like that where people won't realize that when we make fun of the word ding, it originally comes from us going ding. It's because just ding, done. Yep. So there you go.

One standard ding, please. Thanks, Matt. Love it. Thanks. Business. Any other needs good business. It's time for extra details, corrections, additions to previous episodes. And Beck, you've got something from episode 073.

That's right. I heard from Christian. I think that's how you pronounce it on the Problem Posing page, problemsquared.com. They said, in the beginning of the last episode, episode 073, it was mentioned if there's anywhere in the world where the house numbers are put after the street name, but the months are put before the days in dates.

So I think we were talking about whether you would have the street and then the number, but also have it so that the date is similar to how the Americans do it with a month and then a day. And they said this is exactly the case in Hungary, where I come from. We put the year first. So not quite the same as the States. They put the year first. Oh, that's good. Then the month and finally the day.

And we do put the house numbers after the street name. By the way, we also have streets named after dates. So, for example, October 23 or Utka 2 would be a possible address. But Utka means street in Hungarian and the house number is 2. Oh, that's good. You get the word street like separating the date number from the house number. Yeah. So, October 23, Utka 2.

Interesting. We also did hear from someone who said that in China, they do dates similarly with the year, month, day, where they have the largest context. And then they also put addresses with like big little, so it's like country, county, street, number. Oh, it's the descending order and the address. Oh, that's kind of pleasing.

So that might be the answer for both of us, Matt, because I like the idea of having the context of a thing, but you liked the order of it being all smooth. You didn't like the American way of having a month, day, and then year. Correct. Smooth is a good way to put it. But maybe we could compromise. Yeah, it's too, it's a good whiplash. Something where you get the largest context down to the tiny detail.

Yep, down to the smallest. We had someone send in a correction going back to episode 070. We were talking, that was episode speaking profanities and letter localities. Speaking profanities and letter localities. Yeah. So someone on the Reddit pointed out that I mentioned the Vauxhall Nova didn't sell well in Spain because Nova means don't go or doesn't go in Spanish. And they pointed out, unfortunately, it's an urban legend. There is a Snopes article that describes it.

So, you know, it's been properly checked and the person who wrote this said i majored in international business and every single textbook i read inevitably mentioned the nova story as an example of a company not doing its research thus ironically proving that none of the authors had done their research so uh the story is almost always told as the chevy nova didn't sell in mexico so it's fun to hear it rebranded for europe as the voxel they said especially because voxel is a brand owned until a few years ago by gm and used exclusively in the uk and the rest of europe gm uses the opal brand so in spain the voxel nova was sold as the opal corsa they said while chevy did sell a car called nova in mexico providing the basis for this legend the voxelhall Nova didn't sell in Spain because it was never offered for

sale there in the first place. Which is just stunning correction work. I apologize. That's good. Good correction work. I definitely did not source check my sources for that one. And I've learnt a lesson. We also have an

official listener ding. So David, who asked us about the best way to make hot chocolate without it clumping up. And Beck, you came through with the paste method. David has reported back to say they tried the paste method of making hot chocolate and it worked a treat. Big ding from me and my daughter Zoe, who is the main consumer of hot chocolate in their household. So there you are, an official mix-ding-ding from David and Zoe. Oh, you're welcome, David and Zoe. Finally, a huge thanks to all our Patreon supporters

who fund this entire operation so that you don't have to unless you're one of them, in which case, thank you. Thank you for making this possible. We pick three Patreon names at random every episode to thank and this time the spreadsheet of randomness would like us to thank phil just phil or pahill that's just phil tom jasper did you say tom jasper or Tom Jasper? I mean, it says Jasper. This is Jasper, but I pronounced it Jasper. I assume that's incorrect. One Jasper.

And Mojo's Big Stick. That's just... What up, Mojos? Mojos. Mojos. Mojos. Big sticks. Big stick.

Mojos. Mojos. Big stick. Well done. Thank you so much to them and our many other patreon supporters if you want to help support us as well and get a bonus episode every month head over to patreon.com slash a problem squared thank you for listening to our problem squared i'm matt parker you've also been listening to beck hill and the greatest neighbor of them all, our producer, Lauren Armstrong Carter. See you all next time and a happy 2024.

All right, Bec, how many dice are in the jar? Let's see. We know it's more than 404, and I think I've previously guessed 486. That's what you guessed last time. I said greater. It was under that. Let's go for Elon Musk's favorite number, 420. Oh, my goodness. Higher.

Lowers. Higher. Lowers.