A Problem Squared - 086 = Emoji Editions and Birthday Billions

Episode Date: June 3, 2024

🙏 Is this emoji praying hands or a high five?  🍚 What's the best present for celebrating a billion seconds? 💼 For the first time we have Any Other Business WITH SPECIAL GUESTS! If you want a collectable (and mistake-ridden) copy of ‘Love Triangle’, with a special, limited edition book cover designed by print-artist Paul Catherall. You'll get one free while stocks last. Head over to MathsGear! https://mathsgear.co.uk/products/love-triangle-by-matt-parker-signed Here’s some background on the ‘Folded Hands’ emoji mentioned in Bec’s problem: https://blog.emojipedia.org/emojiology-folded-hands/ This is the pixelated 2001 Softbank version of the Folded Hands emoji: https://emojipedia.org/softbank/2001/folded-hands Here’s the KDDI emoji from 2003, where someone is literally praying: https://emojipedia.org/au-kddi/type-d-1/folded-hands You can find the ‘glowing’ folded hands emoji put out by Apple in 2008 here: https://emojipedia.org/apple/iphone-os-2.2/folded-hands You can find some more variations of the folded hand emoji (including with faces) here: https://b1681952.smushcdn.com/1681952/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Early-Versions-Folded-Hands-Emojipedia-1.jpg?lossy=0&strip=1&webp=1 There were some fascinating early issues with Unicode (which made emojis universal), where ‘yellow hearts’ sent by iOS users would show up as ‘hairy hearts’ on Android phones. You can read about that here: https://web.archive.org/web/20140502051433/http://www.tuaw.com/2014/04/30/you-may-be-accidentally-sending-friends-a-hairy-heart-emoji/ You can find the Unicode emoji design guidelines here: https://unicode.org/reports/tr51/#Design_Guidelines And if you want to find out whether you’ve already passed your 1 Billionth Second, you can do that here: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=10%5E9+seconds+in+years+and+days If you want to find out whether you’ve already passed your 1 Billionth Second, you can do that here: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=10%5E9+seconds+in+years+and+days As always, send your problems and solutions to our website: www.aproblemsquared.com. And, if you want more from A Problem Squared, you can also find us on Twitter, Instagram, Discord and on Patreon.

Welcome to A Problem Squared, the problem-solving podcast which has an incredible track record of absolutely solving every single problem anyone has ever sent in. My name is Matt Parker. I am a mathematician. We're the only ever triple Fields Medal winning mathematician and performer. I'm joined by Beck Hill, comedian, author, and the reason why they had to add the Y onto EGOT. EGOT-y. Yep. Because you also won the YouTube. Oh yeah, sure Yep There you go You may know Beck from her starring roles in three separate landmark sitcoms

I feel like you're doing something clever with all these lies No, no, no No, they're just gross exaggerations You're just lying There's nothing clever, it's just lying It's just lying Turns out you can just say You can just say stuff Whatever's nothing clever. It's just lying. It's just lying. Turns out, you can just say whatever you want.

No one stops you. Nah. Except for me. No one's burst, apart from you, no one's burst into the room. Kramer style. That's because that was the best introduction ever done for any podcast ever. And I'm sure everyone listening will agree, especially any new listeners. Welcome aboard, everyone. Who are like, oh, this sounds professional.

Yeah. On this episode, oh, this sounds professional. Yeah. On this episode. Oh, sorry. On this award-winning episode. I'm going to get to the bottom of an internet emoji debate. Oh. I've got a billion solutions to celebrating a billion seconds. And there'll be some, any other billioness.

Best ever business. Award-offered business. That's what it's called. Yeah. So, Bec, how have you been? I've been great. I've been very busy. Okay, that sounds truthful. Listeners might be able to tell.

I did get a little bit sick. You've not got all of your voice. Sounding a little bit husky, but I'm otherwise well. I did the spring Comic-Con, Brussels Comic-Con. Oh, yes. I haven't seen you since you did that. How was it? Yeah.

We had like half the cast of Lord of the Rings. Oh, wow. I got to interview Andy Serkis, Elijah Wood, Sean Astin, Dominic Monaghan, Billy Boyd. I had a very good time, but also had something that was completely unrelated that I was very excited to talk to you about. Oh, okay. After Brussels Comic Con, I went to Paris to visit some of the Emily in Paris locations. Emily in Paris, yes.

The other podcasts we do. And two of our listeners of that show, Gilda and Mathieu, brilliant couple, turns out that they're friends with one of the French actors from the show. No. Jean-Christophe Bouvet. So Sam and I got to interview that actor. That's great. And we did it at Gilda and Matthew's apartment. On the way out, Gilda and Matthew pointed out the buttons on the lift for their apartment block.

Yep. And I had to take a photo. Do you like to see if you can find out more? Oh, that's really nice. So they've got a few things I like and one thing that I find hilarious. Yeah. So the ground floor is labeled the zeroth floor. Big fan.

Love it when they do that. Yeah. Don't use a G. Use a zero. They've gone the next level up and the basement floors are negative. Negative one, negative two, negative three. That's incredible. Where I find it particularly hilarious is that there are two zeros.

There's zero and zero positive. So, I mean, some programming languages will use a positive and a negative value of zero. They can mean different things. Often when you're doing limits, the direction from which you approach zero is meaningful. But I don't know in the context of a lift. Yeah. So zero was a ground level. It was the level we came in at.

Good, good. I believe. I feel like it's like a mezzanine on zero. No, I think zero plus is another flaw. Right. Matthew and Gilda believe that there was probably some legal thing saying they couldn't have more than 16 stories and so they had to slide one under so when they put in the plans it's a bit like roulette

tables in the u.s have a zero and a double zero right and that's why is that that makes it more likely you lose your money okay so you lose it or you double lose it yes well so if you do like simple betting systems on roulette you just play red versus black yeah because they're 50 50 and you can do some gambling systems based on that but because there's also a zero that's i believe green it means that red and black isn't 50 50 they're like both 49 and a bit 49 a bit because there's another option but if you add in two other options so two zeros you lower both the red and black even a little bit more so any systems that require on a 50 50 fair bet don't work so that oh that's very cool that's i do enjoy ridiculous

yeah if anyone else takes photos of unusual floor numbering systems. Send them in. My update, again, book related. I got two things to show you. Okay. Sadly, this is not for you to have, but I want to show it to you. I got sent the first ever copy of Love Triangle. So my book now exists. I've had like mock-ups of it.

Obviously I've had PDF files. Yep. And there it is. That's the actual. Look at that. So very pleased with this and it's the hardcover so it means there's like a dust jacket and if you take that off it's just like a blank quite you know slick looking book yep and then you get the dust jacket that goes around it

and i spoke to an artist that's right poor catharine because they do architectural like reduction blocks yes you've mentioned this. Yeah. And they tend to do them based on brutalist architecture. And then there's a shape in the book here. You've got the National Theatre one. Exactly. Yes, I've got the National Theatre one at home. I'm a huge fan of Paul's work.

This shape here, I'm just going to hand the book over to you, on the right there is the Siddler solid. And I always thought it looked a lot like brutalist architecture, maybe a bit Esher-y. It is very Esher-y. But it's just like, it's a mathematical concept shape. It was to prove you could build a polyhedron where all the internal dihedral angles are 90 degrees, except for one that's 45 degrees. Okay. So it was like, it was existence proof. This can be done. So I sent that to Paul and said hey

what if you imagine this as a building and design one of your prints based on that. And I have here the print. Oh. Okay.

That's gorgeous. Isn't that something else? This print is beautiful. Isn't that lovely? It's really nice. Yeah. That's going to be a lovely phenomenal job on these. It's going to be a gorgeous book cover.

So we haven't got any of the jackets printed yet, but we are taking- pre-order's already going. Yeah. He did it in three different color schemes, and the first two have already sold out, but we have plenty of the third, the triangle edition print, which will be the blue one of these. I love this. We will have those at some point in the near future. So there'll be multiple print runs people who want to collect the first edition that's just the first print run yeah oh i'll tell you that um we found mistakes in the book already no so i don't want to give them all away but there are two pictures in the book which were meant to be holding images

and they made it through into the final print file. And they will be fixed for any future editions. Okay. But if you get a first edition. It's going to be like stamps. There'll be extra mistakes in it and you'll have holding images for two pictures, which I'll let people try and find. They'll even be fixed for the US edition.

It's just the first run of the UK edition. So if any US listeners want to get the the mistake riddled version they'd have to pre-order your uk ones from your website i do apologize it's super expensive to post to the us but i guarantee i mean if you buy it through maskia it's definitely a first edition it's definitely signed by me but you gotta pay full price it's definitely signed by me, but you've got to pay full price. It's cheaper on Amazon. It's cheaper at Waterstones. I'm talking people out of buying it from me. Is that because you feel bad? Well, you know, I know it's expensive.

Like if you want to wait for the paperback or buy the e-book, it's the same book. If anything, it'll have fewer mistakes. Yeah, exactly. It's way cheaper. But if you want to own a ridiculous object, then yeah.

Yeah. Oh, I'm excited. This has been Matt Parker talks about his book. Hey. Which will be over one day. Anyway, I'm very pleased the book is out. Well, the book will be out. The book exists as a physical object. Yay. Closure. Our first problem was sent in by someone named Cedric. They went to the problem posing page at problemsquared.com and they put in their problem, which is,

and this is a little difficult to read out, but I'm going to do my best at it. And you'll see why in a second. They say, there seems to be quite some discussion on the internet about this emoji. And I'm not going to mime the emoji or describe it. I'm going to then just read the rest of what they're saying. And then we can try and fill in the gaps.

Because I don't want to pollute what people may think. Some people say it is the praying hands emoji. So if you think you know the praying hands emoji, imagine that one. While others say it's a high five. So if you're praying hands emoji, imagine that one. While others say it's a high five. So if you're in that camp, picture that one. Could you please settle this debate once and for all and find out what this emoji is supposed to mean? Bec, you've got to the bottom of this. I have.

And interestingly, so I had not heard of this debate. Nor had I. No. And I'm in one of those two camps. But in my research, not only is it a debate that exists, it's kind of been around since 2012. What? Yeah, apparently. That's like the first emojis.

Well, no, actually, the first emojis go way back. The first emojis pretty much have been around since 1997 by Soft softbank which is the language i guess used for japanese phones okay yeah uh apple ended up heavily borrowing from softbank's emoji set got it in 2008 i think it was oh okay so early iphone yes early iphone and then not long after google made it widely accessible on unicode you start being able to type it in emails and stuff. Yeah. It's called the folded hands. Folded hands emoji. They believe that the first time it was questioned was in January 2012, Whitney Houston passed away. Someone had tweeted saying that's crazy. Just another great singer has left us. Wow. R.I.P. Whitney.

And then they've done the folded hands. At DJID4 on Twitter, quote tweeted. And I say quote tweeted. This is before you could like quote tweet properly. So it's when you literally write your thing and then in quotation marks you would have the tweet. And they've said, I believe that's a high five emoji because they're like, oh, you know, you've just high fived this news. And that's when it kind of became clear that some people interpret it as a high five, but never really talked about that. Kind of get the same thing with some people thinking LOL means lots of love.

Yeah. people thinking lol means lots of love yeah yep which then is uh feels like it might be quite horrible if you're like oh you know such and such passed away sorry sorry to hear about the sad news lol yeah exactly so then people started saying like oh i just found out that this emoji is a high five oh that's why i have trust issues those are just people who are going i just found out this because someone had said oh no that's a high five emoji and they've gone with that and then news outlets were like oh maybe this isn't so no one actually did any proper research or looked into it and the only thing that sort of keeps this debate going is the fact that people bring up the words high five when they're talking about does this mean does this mean it's referred to far more as a high five only in that context than it is actually in the wild separately because i always assumed it was the praying emoji yes i'm holding them in front of

me right now yeah but now i realize if i just lift these, now I'm doing a self high five. Yes. I get it. Now, some people say like when you look at the current version of the emoji, you'll see like a little tip of a finger before the taller fingers. Right. There's a short finger, then some tall fingers. Yes. And they're both sort of mirror image.

And some people pointed out if this was meant to be a high five, it would be the opposite because you high five with the same right to right right to right or left to left yeah you very rarely high five with the mirror image hand really no which i thought was good argument it's a good argument do people high five with their dominant hand i do and we've talked about high fives on the show before as well you're now leaning over in a way where my dominant hand is easier because there's a microphone in the way of my left hand. If we were talking. Yeah, but we're not. We're not.

I would do it, but. Yeah, there you go. But which one sounded better? The one where I did it with my left hand. Oh, I don't know if that's scientific. I think it is. I think it's to do with the angle at which you come in. Oh, really?

Yeah. Huh. Because you're right-handed, aren't you? Yeah. Now, what I want to recap is. Yeah. up my left hand you did yes so the first one you did with your right that's my left hand oh you did left first oh because you wanted to match i would if i was going to high-five someone i would go with my right because it's my dominant hand yeah but you're not in this case you want to match hands it was what you're trying to tell me it feels like

the less likely scenario yes and what i wanted to find was what it was originally called when it was with soft bank yeah like that makes sense what was the name folded folded hands which yeah i thought was an interesting term for what it is because you wouldn't describe either praying hands or a high five is folded you got to remember that um there's quite universal like yep in j, it's very common that people put their hands together and bow before they eat. They'll say, itadakimasu, let's eat. It's also seen as a way of being grateful or thankful. Obviously, in Hindu, you've got namaste. With folded hands.

It is sort of a universal meaning of gratitude or thanks. It can be also used for begging. But the earliest description I can find is folded hands. That was in the Softbank set in Japan. Yep. Started in 2002. It's very pixely.

I'm just bringing up. Oh, is that like the original? That definitely is a high five. Right. What makes that high five for you? Oh, the impact dots. I want to say lines, but it's too low resolution. So this is interesting because those impact dots were actually intended to be,

if you want to describe the next version, which is Apple's one in 2008. Yeah. Now you've got like a holy glow emanating from the hands. Yes. So that swings us back to prayer. Is what it was meant to be, is some sort of like holy glow. And then there was a version by KDDI in 2003, which if you put in that code, you would actually get someone with closed eyes. There's a full on face. Bowing and praying.

We're just high-fiving so hard. Yeah, yeah. We're just high-fiving so hard. Yeah, yeah. And there's a really interesting article about it all by John M. Kelly, which came out in 2019 on the Emojipedia.org website. Definitely worth a look. We'll chuck a link in the show notes. What a time to be alive.

Yeah. But ultimately, it does seem to point out that, yes, it is intended as praying hands. Folded hands. Yes, folded hands. Is there a separate emoji for a high five? Not currently. There should be.

That would clear things up. I tend to use, there's like a single hand. Like the hand, yeah. Or I'll use like the clapping emoji. And weirdly, doing this problem, I was like, I'm sure there's a high five emoji and then i realized i think that i've just occasionally used the praying hands one huh without realizing like i've just been in such the zone that i'm like oh yeah there it is and not really thought about it you can get like there's like a hand facing one direction that's up another yep like face palm out and then one of them we can do it

sort of sideways all right yep and you do one the other way but even then that could also look like someone's about to clap um the other one i like there's yes there's the clapping emoji i tend to use that and then there's one that this is the one that i got there's one with like two hands raised and like a little i would say say like shout lines. Oh, yeah. To me, that was like, hi, 10. Oh, okay. So I would use that. I was like, yeah. But apparently that could also mean like praise.

Oh. Which is another way of showing it with different religious contexts. Is it? I mean, in normal language, we have homonyms. Like we have words, sound the same, we use them for different meanings. Whereas we have words that sound the same, we use them for different meanings. Whereas if they're spelt the same, we use them for different meanings. Yeah. Surely, why doesn't that extend to emojis?

I think, yeah. The emoji can be both. Exactly. I think as long as the context makes it clear what you're using it for, you've got to be careful that you're not offending someone by making them think that you're high-fiving over something really sad. Yeah, but that's the nature of language, right? Well, that's it, yeah.

But I guess context clues are big, hey? Yeah. Yeah. I like to vote for both. Look, no one's going to come at you. Well, no, people might come at you, but no one's going to arrest you for using it as a high five. It just depends on how people are going to perceive it. I'm going to use it to mean just squashed a mosquito.

I think what they need is one that genuinely is undeniably a high five. Undeniably a high five. Yeah, you're right. Yeah. I'm going to give you a ding. Thank you. I know I'm going out on a limb, but I feel like you've done the research. You've given us a good answer.

And you've given us a lot to think about. Yeah. Thank you very much. So, Bec, to you I say high five. See, I'm like leaning over my laptop. Yeah, you are. Sounds better. Yeah, okay.

This next problem comes from nick and says a friend has their one billionth second coming up i'm guessing birthday yeah i want to give them a gift that contains exactly one billion of something if exactly one billion is not possible how close could i get great plan. Did you celebrate your one billionth second? I don't know. It's already happened. Yeah, cool. Then no. Then no. Oh, I did. Maybe I did by accident. Maybe. So a billion seconds is just over 31 years. Okay. Well, actually just shy of 32 years. It's 31 years, 259 days. Okay. Ish. Depends on leap years. Give or take. You'd have to know what second someone was born though. Okay. Ish. Depends on leap years. Give or take. You'd have to know what second someone was born though.

Yeah. If you want to get real precise, I did have one day I had a phone call with my mum. I was like, exactly what time was I born? Which sounds like you're about to do one of those numerology. It does, doesn't it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. What's my rising sign? Exactly, exactly.

And you don't get it to the second, but you can know, like, you know the day on which your billionth second occurs. Yeah. And it's a couple months out from your 32nd birthday. Okay. And I very much enjoyed my billionth second birthday. Uh-huh. I'm looking forward to one day two billion.

Yeah. Three billion, who knows? That's, you know. You might do. You'll be in your 90s. It's possible. I'm not ruling it out. Yeah. I want to get to pi billion seconds, but, you know, up in the air. You might do. You'd be in your 90s. It's possible. I'm not ruling it out. Yeah.

I want to get to pi billion seconds, but, you know, we can all dream. That would be an achievement. Yeah. A billion seconds is a good birthday to celebrate. Hologram by then. Yeah. And so I never thought to celebrate it with a billion or something, though. Well, now I know that we've talked about how the um a billion and a million are

very very different correct but it reminds me of i want to say it's a mitch hedberg joke where he says i'm hungry i want rice i really want rice it's great when you want something that you want to eat you're hungry you want like a million or something oh i actually know it's a thousand i think a thousand of something yeah i feel like we told it as well as he did yeah yeah so i think we did him justice so um yes yeah but i know like a lot of something. Yeah. I feel like we told it as well as he did. Yeah. Yeah. So I think we did him justice. So, yes. Yeah. But I know like a lot of YouTubers, when you get to a million subscribers, you'll often

do something involving a million. So when you turn a billion seconds, you can do something involving a billion. Yeah. Now, there's two issues here. One is a billion is a big number. Yeah. A second problem is the use of the word exactly. Now, so, okay, here of the word exactly. Mmm.

Now, so, okay, here's the problem in a nutshell, combining both of those together. If you want to give someone a billion or something, and you've got to count it, or you've got to arrange it, or you've got to check it, or you've got to do anything, like, individually, and it takes you a second per thing. Yeah. That's going to take you almost 32 years well yeah because we know that a billion exactly so to celebrate it because it is such a big milestone to do a billion of something is going to take you that long you need a ready-packed billion something exactly yeah so anything you're going to do already know is that and you can't do like, you know, weighing something to approximate a billion because we want exactly a billion. So whatever you do, it's either going to come pre-packaged in a multiple that you're confident is correct.

Yeah. Or you got to do something kind of algorithmic or automated. Didn't you say you've done a billion millimeters before or something like that? We did a million digits of pi printed out on a continuous piece of paper. Oh, yeah, that was it. For a million Numberphile subscribers. Because I feel like the metric system is our friend here. Yes.

Because then you could just, you could choose something that is like, let's say a kilo of ham. Yeah, okay. You want to give your friend a kilo of ham. Yep. And then you just work out like that thousand kilos divide well just go a kilo divided by a million is going to be like whatever micrograms or something right and then you just go oh it's a billion whatever the tiniest version of grams are no so you're telling me right i'm going to give you, I'm just going to use my book as an example, this book. It's a billion of whatever a billionth of this book is.

Yeah, exactly. But you don't know what it is. I don't think you could weigh this book accurately enough to precisely know what one billionth of it, or ham, or whatever the gift may be. Then I did also think, well, hang on What if you just gave someone a drink That's like a billion molecules Right But it would be very small It would be a negligible amount of The thing is, once you go to atoms

Because I was talking to my wife Lucy about this And she's like, oh, like, how much gas would that be? And then we're like, well, Avogadro's number Of course she thought how much gas How much gas, yeah, exactly An astrophysicist Yeah, exactly But gas on Earth And then we're like, well, Avogadro's number. Of course she thought how much gas. How much gas. She's an astrophysicist. Yes, exactly.

But gas on Earth, Avogadro's number is like 10 to the 23. So 23 zeros. And that amount of gas at normal temperature and pressure that we would experience right now is about 22 liters. Give or take. And 10 to the 23, like a billion is only 10 to the 9. So that's like multiple billions more. So you'd have like a fraction of a fraction. It'd be so, like molecules are too small, atoms are tiny.

And how do you count them? You wouldn't be exact. I'm thinking more in terms of if you took something like 100, go back, a kilo of ham. Okay. Isn't necessarily going to be exactly one kilogram. However, we've universally decided that rounding up or rounding down, it is pretty much a kilo.

So I feel, yeah. Can I direct you to a gift that contains exactly one billion of something? I feel like you need to know what that something is. Like a kilo of ham. We don't know what it's a billion lots of. We know it's roughly such that it's roughly a kilo. You can't. I think you need a billion discrete things the way you know what they are. For the true sense of what Nick here wants.

Microgram. Microgram. Microgram. That is a billionth of a kilo because it's a millionth of a gram. Yes. So you're going to say, here's one billion micrograms of ham. Yeah.

That means your kilo is going to be accurate to the nearest microgram. Yeah, just get a good set of scales. Microham, we call it. Microham. Yeah, I got you a billion microh scales. Microham, we call it. Microham. Yeah, I got you a billion microhams. There we go. Solved.

Solved. Done. I hate to undercut your scientifically accurate answer, Matt, but nothing is going to beat one billion microhams. A billion microhams is in the mix. I will give another suggestion and Nick can decide. So I thought, here's what you do. Get yourself a piece of paper.

A4 paper. Mm-hmm. A4 paper is 210 millimeters by 297 millimeters. Mm-hmm. Which means, if you were to imagine it as square millimeters, which is an imaginable size thing. Yep. 62,370 of them.

Okay. I would say that's enough space to print 50,000 very small letters. Yep. You've got margins and all that jazz, but you're printing a letter per square millimetre. That's within... That's a good printer. It's doable, though. Is it?

You could definitely... Are printers that good? Oh, yeah. I don't know if they are. One per millimeter, sure. Yeah, yeah. Let's go ahead with yes. How much is a dot of ink?

Let's say you're printing at 600 dpi dots per inch. Yeah. 23 dots per millimeter. So you've got a 23 by 23 grid. You can print a letter. You could do the whole alphabet. It was like, you know like when we were doing the seven segment displays. Yes, I was thinking that. Yeah. Okay. If you had a grid

of 20 by 20 dots, I'm rounding down, you could display every character. So, you're now printing 50,000 tiny, tiny characters per page. Yeah. But that means you know exactly how many you've got. Yeah. And if you want to have a billion characters in total, that's a mere 20,000 pages. Okay.

Or if you print double-sided, 20 reams of paper at 500 sheets of ream. You want them to write them a book with tiny tiny letters. I want to say it's a birthday card. That's a fat birthday card. It's a fat birthday

card. It's a book. You just say happy birthday over and over again. Oh my gosh. And you. I hate everything about

this. No it's great. Here's your birthday present. Boom. 20 reams of paper uh-huh and you go this just says happy birthday and it uses precisely a billion characters i feel like going into the if you did happy birthday with a hyphen instead of a space and two exclamation marks it would fit

perfectly you wouldn't have like half a happy birthday at the end that would match. Oh, yeah. Mm-hmm. I still think it would be easy to go into a butcher and get a kilo of ham. Okay. So I did, I printed. Or like a vegan substitute. I, in 2016, when a prime number was discovered with just over 22 million digits, I got it printed out. Double-sided paper, A4 bound three volumes and i was printing that at 15 000 digits a page and it was easily readable yeah i think you could absolutely get

down to how long did it take you to sort all that did you have to lay it all out and i had to write some terrible python code okay generate the pdf file to print oh yeah yeah absolutely because then i wanted on each page there's a reference so you know which digits you're looking at on the page yeah and that took a bit of faffing have you written terrible python code of how they would do this happy birthday oh i could absolutely generate the file for this no worries that's easy terrible And they could choose between that or a kilo of billion micro shams, I'm going to say. In case they don't want ham. Is that sham ham?

Yeah, that's sham ham. Gotcha. Micro shams. Yeah. Okay, fine. There's your options. So I pitch birthday card that contains a billion characters. And by card, I mean a massive stack of reams of paper.

Yep. But it's achievable. You're pitching a billion microhams. Non-meat substitutes are available. Yep. Okay. Nick, you can decide which one. You can do both.

Which one? Which one are you going to give your friend? Report back. Yeah. Or did you decide on your own? Or let us know if you did something different. Yeah. That's also acceptable.

And now it's time for any other best business in the world, which unusually we have guests. Yes. So do you want to recap the problem that you solved? Yes. So do you want to recap the problem that you solved? Yes. In episode 084, we had a problem about what cake should be... Yes, a birthday cake. Yes, what birthday cake should be designed for a forest themed birthday party. Turning nine. That's right. And I did not know. You can confirm. No, yes. Well, we had two mysteries. Because when you referred to Nina who sent the problem in, I was semi-confident that was my neighbor Nina.

Or rather my neighbor's child Nina. Yeah. Who lives around the corner from where I am. Nina is still your neighbor. She doesn't live in a different house. That's true. She lives with her parents. That is correct.

And I was like, I'm pretty sure that's the Nina I know. But we didn't know 100% because you didn't pick the problem based on nepotism. No. No, I didn't realize. It was a genuine good problem. I was accidentally choosing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I just went, this is a great problem and I want to solve it.

Yeah. So we can solve that mystery because I messaged the parents afterwards and they confirmed it. They said it sounds a lot like their child. Yes. So we took that off. And the other thing is we didn't know, because you pitched a cake solution. Yep. And we didn't know what the cake was going to end up being. And we can actually answer that as well. Yeah, we can answer that right now because we have Nina in the room with us. And her sister Carrie.

Yes. Who have brought you cake. They've brought us both cake. That's true. We've both got cake. Now we're going to have to take photos of these because they're stunning. They are spectacular. Yes. So to describe it, it looks like a wooden log with some leaves. It's wood themed. Yes.

It's lovely. And yours is as well. We've both got little Lego figures. Lego figurines. Of ourselves. little Lego figures. Lego figurines. Of ourselves.

Now, when these cakes came in, you realize that they're figurines of us because the one I was given didn't have any Lego hair on it, which I find mildly insulting, but it works. And you've got a little figurine of you. And they even put together a figurine of substitute producer Laura.

Yeah. Does it match? You're happy with it? And they all look like us. And you've got little headphones on. We're wearing the right color. Yeah. Does it match? You're happy with it? Yeah. And they all look like us. And you've got little headphones on. I'm wearing the right color. Yeah. That's great.

This is why earlier today, I didn't say what, but I got a message saying, can you just send us a photo of everyone in the room? Yeah. And I was like, yeah, I can do a quick photo.

Yeah. And that's because they were Lego matching us. Yeah. I like how yours is sleeveless because your muscles are so big. I'm famous for wearing tank tops. I think it was because you went, oh, and your t-shirt sleeves popped off.

It explodes off my arms. That's exactly what happens. And I'm drinking a cup of coffee. Yep. And my dog is next to me. So there's a tiny sky. Yeah. We'll take photos.

And you appear to have a very small peanut. Oh, my God. Do you know what? Oh, my goodness. Oh, my gosh. I didn't realize it's a little hamster. It's a little peanut. Oh, my God. Do you know what? Oh, my goodness. Oh, my gosh. I didn't realize it's a little hamster. It's a little peanut. Oh, my gosh.

It's so cute. That's a choking hazard, though. I will eat that. You will. And it will come out looking... So what cake did you have for your actual birthday? I had a giant tree cake. It looked like a giant tree.

And that was a picture of me sitting on one of the branches. So what we have is like the trunk aspect of a much bigger cake. Oh, wow. Oh, it's beautiful. Yeah, look at that. Yeah, that's great. I'm glad we caked you into a corner. Yes, iced you into a corner.

Iced you into a corner. Now the real question remains is what type of cake is it? We've seen the outside. We had chocolate fingers for like the brunch. We put icing on them. And then we had chocolate Swiss rolls, which we put more icing on as well. Oh, perfect. We can't go wrong there.

I think everyone gets a ding all around for a successful birthday. I mean, it wasn't my suggestion. Well, hey, look. The fact that we brought it up you enabled it i think decoration was one i think we said just anything you like and you decorate it woodland so i think that counts do we can we have an official ding is it a ding that we get from you yes we're gonna have to eat i want to i want to eat some of this cake yeah i'm gonna get we have to pause to do it because we've had listeners tell us off for eating on the microphone very very true we're gonna eat some of this cake. Yeah. We have to pause to do it because we've had listeners tell us off for eating on the microphone. Very, very true.

We're going to eat some cake and then we will conclude this episode. That was delicious cake. I can say with no exaggeration, best cake. Yeah. And it was genius. Maybe ever. That was, you know, not to do it, not to pass any judgment or whatever, but it was, what do they call this?

Chocolate Swiss rolls. Yep. That you can just buy off the shelf. It was incredibly decorated. It's what you do with it. It looked great. It tasted great. I ate all of it.

I wasn't going to eat all of it. But it was very Moorish, wasn't it? I ate the whole thing. But there's so much sugar. And you don't have much of a sweet tooth. I do not. My body is not equipped nor experienced to deal with this much sugar. I think I'm having a nap right now.

So, first ever guests for any other business. That's pretty special. Yeah. My favorite thing is that Nina sent in that problem without her parents realizing. It wasn't until you messaged that they had to check. They're like, wait, that sounds like our daughter. Thank you so much to everyone for listening to this episode. Even though no one else brought us cake, we like to thank

all our listeners, but specifically, we like to extra thank our Patreon listeners. And within them, we extra, extra thank three Patreon listeners whose names have been picked

at random. And we will mispronounce. And we will mispronounce them. That's a guarantee. If you can somehow spell your name in a way that we pronounce it correctly, you win a prize. Patreon names this episode include... Nathan is the name that Beck is saying.

Muray. I put the R's together. Oh, you did, yes. Instead of Mr. Ray. One's a little R, one's a capital R, because it's Mr. Ray. Yeah. Mur. Or is it a mystery?

Mr. Ray. And Jo. Jo. How am I going to? and Joe Joe Joe Joe The name is John. Uh Lou

is Louise. I think he goes by Joe Lou. Joe Joe Yeah, Joe Lou. Jolly. Jolu.

Jolu. Thank you to those people for supporting us. Thank you to everyone else who supports us on Patreon. And thank you to everyone else who listens to us. You don't have to fund this. People who do, we appreciate that. But everyone else, you get it for free. Thank you so much for listening.

This has been the best podcast episode ever recorded. I'm Matt Parkerer joined by beck hill and our substitute producer laura grimshaw old legree you can't mispronounce everyone's name i can and i will challenge accepted Challenge accepted. Too late. Okay, Beck. We're back in the room with a jar of dice, which is behind you. Actually, if you have a look at it, you may have noticed it's changed slightly. I don't know if you can spot what's different. I mean, some of them look more jumbled.

Well, the colors have separated out. There's now all the yellow ones are at the bottom with black dots and all the Witcher reject grime dice. And the ones at the top are all mixed up because I had to borrow a bunch to take with me. I was in Norway filming a video about probability and I had to bring a bunch of dice with me. I was in Norway filming a video about probability, and I had to bring a bunch of dice with me. So I had to go through and filter out all the real dice. Real dice.

Dice that are one to six. Oh, yeah, because the ones at the bottom are... But I put them back, and I checked it's the correct number. A number you were yet to guess. Yes. Which, by the way, I have been telling so many people about how the dots are called pips. Really?

Yeah. That's a new fact. It's been really fun. Like, did you know? They're pips. Yeah. Because that's the sort of thing that comes up in a pub quiz. That's a nice quick fact.

That's a good quick fact. Yeah. I want more quick facts, actually. If anyone has any quick facts, tweet them to us. This is becoming part of the episode now. You're meant to guess a number and then people will stop listening. No, that's true. Okay.

We've done the theme song. So we worked out last episode that I'd been- You misunderstood the game of higher, lower. I'd just forgotten and I'd just been looking at the last two numbers and think it was between those. Yes. lower i'd just forgotten and i'd just be looking at the last two numbers and think it was between those yes in my defense we'd not be making note of whether you'd said higher or lower correct i don't want to blame usual producer lauren armstrong oh that's true i was gonna say it's not my fault but that does feel like a producer job she's been she'd been writing down what the guesses were but not saying whether it's higher or lower correct correct which i i agree i think

i feel like it's vital I think is a producer. I feel like it's vital information. That is a producer issue. And that's why we have a substitute today. I know, yes. Okay, so I believe from last episode, we ascertained that it's between 457 and 461. For safety purposes, I messaged it to producer Laura.

Yes, because you remember the first time we did this. I know. She said it out loud. And then you had to. I had to change the number of dies. Yes, yes, yes. And I dropped her. That's why.

You weren't here when she read it aloud. She read it aloud while I was in the room with her. You could have pretended and I wouldn't have realized. But I would have. There's no way I would have forgotten. And that's why we have a substitute producer now okay okay so lauren's still gonna edit this episode she's still gonna hear this uh sorry um right i feel sorry for anyone who stops when they reach the the music this is the gold yeah this is the real podcast remember when on when you listen to cds there'd

be a bonus hidden track yeah, the hidden track, yeah. And it wasn't until we had CD players that would display how long a track was. Oh, yeah. You'd be like, why is this track 40 minutes? Yeah, yeah. Okay. Right. So I'm going to go right in between.

I'm going to guess 459. Lower. Oh! Guess what? We've got one other episode to record. All right. Well, let's wrap up this one and record the next one. Let's see how wrong I can get this.

Oh, boy. I'm going to forget between now and... If you listen to these episodes in order, you'll hear how excited we are at the beginning of the next one. Yeah. Because it's about to happen in about five minutes from now.