113 = Marg Ana Names and Mid Career Change

You are listening to a problem squared, the problem-solving podcast, which, if it had no repeat letters in its name, would be called a problem squid.

I'm joined by Beck Hill, comedian, writer, performer, etc., who, if she had no repeated letters in her name, would still be called Beck Hill.

It would just be a little faster to write it down.

Yeah, Beck Hill.

Beck Hill.

Yeah, yeah.

Beck Hill.

Would you pronounce Hill with one L different to Hill with two?

Hill.

Hill.

Okay, you would.

Good.

I'm Matt Parker.

If I had no repeat letters, I'd be Matt Proquet.

Do you pronounce Matt differently?

No, I don't actually.

Matt.

No, it's just Matt.

Matt Proquet.

P-R-K-E-S.

I'm going with Proquet.

Yes.

My name I get to choose.

On this episode.

I'll play Career Counselor.

I've looked into naming, baby.

And any

other

biz.

Busy.

Busy.

The USI.

Any other busy.

Any other busy.

I wrote some code so I could just type in a sentence and it takes out all the repeat letters.

Where's the fun in that?

I like doing it in my head.

The fun in that was producer Laura watching me knock the entire code together in the time it took you to go to the bathroom before the show.

I I mean, you, that sounds impressive, except for the fact that I had a reasonable window.

I take a lot of time in the bathroom.

But that said, I did write my intro for the next episode while I was in there.

I know we're all working.

Yeah, look, I did like a little interface and everything.

You type something in, and then it converts it.

That is very impressive.

Yeah, thanks.

Yeah.

So, Beck, how have you been?

Good, really good.

I just did a preview of my Edinburgh Friend show.

Yes.

Guess who's back back again?

Beckel's back, tell a friend, in Manchester.

And it went well.

I've still got stuff to memorize and learn and change stuff, but it was a really fun one.

The gig is XS Malarkey.

It's kind of like known for being a lovely gig.

And after I finished the show,

an audience member came up to me.

You're pushing your chair back.

Oh, you're reaching into your bag.

Can you describe?

what I am pulling out of my bag.

A very small black cuboid.

One at a glance would probably think it's a ring box.

Yes.

So you were worried they were proposing.

Well, I did mention in the show

that my ex

proposed to me during one of my shows in Edinburgh.

Yes.

And our divorce will come through while I'm in Edinburgh this year.

So that's this very likely.

You should get someone to bring the papers up on stage.

That's what I would like.

Yeah.

And so I did say to him, now you realize the last person who brought me a box like this during a show,

I am now divorcing.

And he laughed and said, Yes, I realized I probably should have put this in a different receptacle.

But Beck is opening it.

It's a tooth.

Several, actually.

It's fragments of teeth.

No, they're all teeth.

They're all original teeth.

Three baby teeth.

Three baby teeth.

And then extracting a wisdom tooth, I think it is.

That's had an old school filling put in it.

Wow.

You're right.

They should not have put these in the ring box.

Although now that I hold it, it is very funny.

It looks great, doesn't it?

I love it.

It looks gross.

I have photos.

Thank you so much, Gareth.

We did a deal.

And then someone else who was standing nearby waiting to chat said, are you buying his teeth?

And I said, yeah, I'm the toothpower for adults.

And he went, oh, no, I know.

I listened to a problem squared as well.

And I was like, yes.

Great.

Words getting out.

And he took a photo of Gareth and I.

We'll post it on the socials.

Yep, yep, yep, yep.

So yeah, I was well, well chuffed.

I would be uncomfortable sharing that photo until all the associated debts and financial complexities have been ironed out.

Well, I did email him yesterday.

Oh, okay, good.

To confirm the best form of payment.

I actually did say, because my rate is £2 of baby tooth, £5

for extracted or wisdom, which would be £11, but I've said I'll lop it to £12

because I like an even number.

I said, call it a fairy's Hideka.

Click Greek for £11.

Oh.

So

instead of a Becker's Dozen, which is

13.

You called it a Becker's Dozen, or was that?

Oh, I didn't.

Oh, Oh, I should have just called it that.

What Becca's doesn't is

when it is 12.

Exactly.

What's a Becca's dozen?

It's supposed to be 11.

But I'm going to give you a 10.

If you eat 11 or 13,

you get 12.

You get 12 because I like the evenness.

Yeah.

So thank you so much, Gareth.

We have heard from some other people as well.

about teeth.

So I wanted to talk about this now while I'm on it.

We heard back from Paul, who had first asked

if I was after this whole thing again.

I have now emailed Paul.

I will keep you updated with that.

We've also heard from Thecla or Tekla, T-H-E-K-L-A.

Oh, that's all different letters.

Yep.

Well done.

I'm glad you wrote that code.

I wanted to ask what the going tooth fairy rate, and this is why I'm bringing this up because this is now my, I'm opening this question up to you, Matt, to you, Laura, potentially to the listeners.

I wanted to ask what the going tooth fairy rate would be for a messiodons.

That is an extra tooth that normally develops between the front two incisors.

Oh, mine's a fully formed canine that used to live in the roof of my mouth.

I had it surgically removed 15 years ago and have kept it ever since.

Recently, I got a representation of it tattooed on me, so I think I'm ready to say farewell to the wee fella and send him to greener, beckier pastures.

Wow.

Yeah.

Now I looked it up, and

the instances of that occurring estimated that between 0.15 and 1.9% of people

have some form of this.

Oh, okay.

That's more prevalent than I would have guessed.

So I do feel like that needs to be taken into account.

I can't just say, like, oh, okay, I'll, you know, offer just a bit more than a wisdom tooth.

Yeah.

Well, how many teeth does a regular human have?

32 or 28 if you've had your wisdom teeth removed.

Okay, so 32.

Very unlikely we've had this extra one.

I mean,

we're assuming that the current going rates of five pound and two pound

are like based on market forces.

Well, I made up the one for extracted and wisdom teeth because that generally isn't something that the child tooth fairy has to worry about.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But on the upper end of the scale, I think some kids still get one pound for baby teeth, but on the upper end of the scale, it can be two.

And then you put five

for wisdom teeth, which is two and a half times bigger yeah you could just go two and a half times bigger again make it 12 pounds 50

or 12 if it's a beck stunned

which does round

to a becker's dozen

i still feel like 12 is not enough i feel like this is such a special tooth i agree i agree because originally i was working out how many people have wonder if there's a ratio then i was thinking like the prevalence like it's up to one in one in 50 was the max of the range you gave

so you could conservatively put it at 50 times

but that's now putting the price quite high quite high not a price that i don't think is fair but a price that i have trouble to justify well this here's the thing you're pricing it according to supply you're saying this is very rare there's not many out there the supply is very limited but you've not factored in that the demand is even more limited that's true yeah it's very much a buyer's market

A biter's market.

A biter's market.

Oh.

So I think you shouldn't be thinking, what would I price an equivalent rare collectible?

Sure.

You should be thinking

people want to get rid of a tooth.

Yeah, that's it.

So I think a Becca's dozen is not an unreasonable offer.

I can guarantee you, it's more than they'll get from anyone else.

offering on that tooth.

Oh, don't say that.

Then we'll get other listeners going, do you know what?

Then we'll find out the market rate.

That's true.

true okay maybe a dentist would like it as an

like a teaching model right i'm gonna say

becker's dozen but i am open to negotiation secla yeah i don't think we have enough information just between the two of us to get the the market value but i'm i think a beckless dozen is about right yeah i want you to know as is the case with all of my buying of teeth that first of all if i i i haven't done anything with them yet they're all i just have them all safe

I keep them in whatever receptacle they've been given to me, although I should look up the best way of...

It's part of the history of the tooth.

Right, yeah.

It also helps me understand whose is whose.

But if I do anything with it, if I decide to create a piece of art or something, do something out of them, I will let you know.

Nothing will happen to it without...

permission planning permission you know how there are some artworks where if they get resold there's a royalty that goes back back to the original artist.

Yes, yeah.

It's a similar situation.

That's right, yeah.

And I also do say that the offer is you can purchase it back at the equivalent.

Oh, so you change your mind down the line, you're basically free tooth storage.

Yeah, because I don't want people to then go, oh, actually,

I sort of regret doing that.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

That joke's got legs.

It's great.

It's got roots.

It's got roots.

So, yeah, I want people to know that I'm not.

If you later go, oh, no, I've made a huge mistake.

Yeah.

It's fine.

We can sort it.

So yeah,

that's my offer for now.

Let's talk.

How about you, Matt?

How are you?

Good.

Yeah.

Likewise, did a preview three nights ago.

So

how was that?

Yeah.

Fine.

Where?

That was in London.

That was the final evening of Unnecessary Detail for the run.

So we had a bunch of guests in the first half and then the second half was all Matt.

100% Matt.

Nothing but Matt.

100% of the show.

Yep.

And my peak preview was probably the Redding gig.

That was my favorite because that's when I felt like I'd hit the rhythm of kind of what I was trying to do.

Not finished, but that was the closest it had been.

London, because I've done three previous testing out bits

and it's a semi-regular audience, they were kind of ruined as a

lot of it, yeah.

So I ended up using it to try out stuff that I hadn't done in London before.

So as a show, it was less satisfying, but it was very pleasing in terms of finding out.

Like, I had some bits in the show, which is like a nice joke, and then, you know, your brain's like, but what if there's another topper just over the horizon?

Yeah.

So I explored the regions just outside some of my favorite jokes and found they were barren,

empty wastelands.

Sorry.

No further punchlines.

So I've gone back inside the original.

But at least you

had a look.

Now I know.

You opened the window, looked around

and went nope nothing out of you but you and I we did a gig together yes you did my my uh pick a mix it was fun it was it was really fun

yeah but I was doing that that was a refreshing break from previews for my actual show this was me

just practicing doing normal comedy which I did very little of these days when you do the do a festival you are invited to do guest spots on like real comedy shows so I was trying some bits out I'm hoping that we get booked for the put together in Ikea.

We got an email from them while we've been recording.

Oh, did we?

I refused to look at it.

Shall I look at it?

Yes.

Okay.

Do you want to explain what it is while I look up the email?

There's a show in Edinburgh where comedians compete to put together a piece of IKEA furniture and you can request to be on the same bill as someone else.

And I said I would like to be on the same bill as you.

They've got back to me because I also put down, put me on the same night as Beck, and they were oversubscribed.

Like, they had like way more performers want to do the show.

Oh, I see.

They sent me a real managing expectations email.

They have penciled me in for Sunday, August 10th.

Ooh.

When are you, have they got back to you?

No.

Live?

Oh, ooh.

Maybe they're working through in reverse alphabetical order.

Oh, no, they have got back to me.

August 10th.

I can't.

Yes.

They've offered me August 10th.

Well, then it's locked in.

10th of August.

Like at midnight or something.

I think 11 p.m.

shows.

a team putting together the same IKEA furniture or are we competing I don't know I kind of hope competing but

but but a team would also be very effective to bring my own hex keys oh gosh but this is the thing I think you'd be really good but I'm highly competitive oh yeah yeah yeah yeah I think I think you'll win

we'll see okay we'll run a betting market on the side

yeah yeah come watch us put together some IKEA furniture

Our first problem is from James, who went to the problem posing page at a problemsquare.com.

And I mean, they're being honest, they open with, I don't want to say this one's for Beck,

but this one's probably for Beck.

James here is approaching 40.

I assume James means the age.

And it, not the height.

That's a very different problem.

Depending on the units, I guess.

Yeah, good point.

He's approaching 40.

Or pigs.

And I don't want to to scare them.

Yeah, they look twitchy.

So he's approaching 40, I assume, miles per hour, and he wants mechanical advice,

which means a midlife crisis.

He's not sure if that's going to happen, but he does want a career change.

They are currently a professional in the health sector.

But the question really comes down to, how do I decide what to retrain as?

They don't want to spend the time and money to go and retrain into a career they end up disliking as much as their current job.

Okay, so James is not happy in the health sector, but they want to know how do they decide what's worth retraining as if they don't know if they'll enjoy it back.

Yes.

This one's probably for you.

Apparently, so, which I think is interesting as someone who famously career-motivated,

really went up through.

You want advice on climbing the corporate ladder.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

And like, I feel like if anyone has any understanding of of what it's like to have a stable job and then change into something else,

that would be you.

Now, Beck, I say this with all the love and respect imaginable because I think you're a highly skilled, highly capable person.

But to retrain as a concept, you'd have to first have been trained.

Exactly, right.

Yeah, I did not go to uni.

And I'm assuming working as a professional in the health sector.

That involves a bit of study, a bit of training.

Yeah, right.

Your extensive experience of being trained and indeed retrained.

Yes.

But I did recently host a webinar for the Children's Media Conference.

There you go.

And that was for people who are wanting to get into the children's media industry, whether it's as producers, writers, animators, etc.

And one of the questions was people asking for advice on how to change into a job

that is, you know, later in life, what opportunities are there.

And quite a few of the speakers that we had had done that, had come across from completely different industries, different sectors, but wanted to work in this role.

So

their advice was they thought it was something that interested them, but they found the, they looked at the ways in which their skills in their job up until that point would

help in in a different way.

So one of them had worked in like finance and advertising or something

and now works as a producer at an animation company.

Not scared of a spreadsheet.

Exactly.

Yeah.

And so I guess

the advice to take away from that is what parts of your current job do you not hate?

which you think would be very useful in a different area.

I'm very tempted to say, you know, do what you enjoy, but I'm also aware that if you do what you enjoy, as soon as it becomes your job,

it becomes something that is a little less enjoyable.

Yeah.

Because there is an element of needing it to go well, as opposed to being able to focus on

obligation and deadlines and bills to pay.

Yeah, I feel like I'm in a constant struggle between

doing things because it feels artistically

like something that I want to do credit for me.

Yep.

And doing something because it would benefit me by helping me pay my rent.

Yes, yes, indeed.

Yeah.

I mean, you I made fun of training earlier, but you have got extensive on-the-job training experience.

Yes, yeah.

And you've had many different aspects to your career, all of which you had to pick up as you were going.

And so I guess that's not a bad way to go about it because then you're both finding out if you would enjoy doing it while you're learning it.

Yeah.

Yeah, exactly.

I guess one question would be,

has there been anything in your life where you've gone, I think I could see myself doing that?

Feels like an obvious question, but like, Matt, is there anything if you, like, if all of your

at the moment, current sources of income, if that all came to a halt for whatever reasons.

I was just enjoying you trying to list how on earth I make money.

If, um, oh, God, the stuff you do.

Yeah, all those things.

I mean, the same applies to me.

Yeah.

The things things I make money on and the things I lose money on are indistinguishable to the human eye.

If

you had to

retrain.

Yeah, agreed.

Yeah.

Take a different job, what would you do?

Well, I did.

So I originally trained as a maths teacher, but I knew once you, because it was a one-year like graduate diploma.

And your first placement in a school is quite early in that for this specific reason.

And so I knew by the end of my first placement, I would know if I was going to enjoy teaching or not and whether or not to persist with that.

But I really enjoyed my first placement and I enjoyed the second placement and then I enjoyed teaching.

So I went into that thinking

same as what James is thinking.

I've got a whole year of cost and time and everything.

But I knew there'll be a point early on where I would, that would be my

do I want to stick with this or have I made a terrible mistake moment.

And I love teaching.

But then when I decided to leave teaching and do other things,

it was a combination of

just not having a Brownian motion path being bounced around into other things.

I needed to make money because it was still soon enough after university that I was still living a student-esque life.

And so the prospect of finishing my current teaching position with nothing lined up was fine because I had no

dependence, no debts.

I just had me

in a shareholder living in London.

Yeah.

That is that's why my divorce has been so smooth.

Let's just divide our assets up.

There we go.

Yep.

Yep.

Oh, that was easy.

So I was able to like quit, not quit, but like one job was naturally ending and I didn't book anything else.

But then I started to fit in little bits to make enough money to survive.

And the little bits grew into what I do now.

Yeah.

So that's, you know, I didn't have a real real strategy as such.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Same actually.

Like I did, I said this, I did have a series of day jobs though for quite some time.

When I moved to the UK, I worked in day jobs for at least eight years, I think.

Lots of customer service-based things and stuff like that.

And even after that,

even when I sort of technically, and I use quotation marks, went full-time comedy, that still meant taking casual jobs, retail stuff or running workshops, that kind of thing, just to make ends meet.

So in conclusion, we are terrible examples.

We are terrible examples.

But what job would you take?

Oh, yeah, I'd be an actuary.

Oh, now an actuary is someone who

works out how much something is worth.

Is that right?

Pretty much to do with a will.

Stuart's industry.

It's more working out probabilities

of things going wrong and what the costs would be.

But then there's also a decent element of

partly how would you

plan so when that happens at the frequency we expect, the investments or whatever we've done on the side is enough to cover it.

At the same time, you're hedging multiple risks across an insurance company and so on.

So the calculations are interesting.

I did actually look into the exams back when I was leaving teaching and I kind of realized I'd be good at it.

I'd enjoy learning it.

I'd find the doing a bit boring,

which is true of, I think, almost any job.

In fact, it i'd be lucky the fact that i'd enjoy the learning yeah and then find the doing a bit tedious yeah yeah because you don't have to derive your own meaning from your job the job can be money and then you have your fun and excitement elsewhere but i then i thought you know what i'll try some other stuff before i go actuarial work but i really did like that and

it's very well paid it's difficult to hire for because you need people who are very mathsy and attention to detail but also

it's really handy if you've got some communication skills as well to be able to communicate

these things.

And so that would be a good fit for me.

So I think, I suspect that's what I would do

if I had to go and get a quote-unquote regular job.

What would you be doing?

Something real boring.

You've got actuary to compete with here.

Yeah, yeah, that's true.

There's two things that I would do.

One thing is I've got a certificate in

massage.

Because I'm a fidgety person.

Like, I'm always, I'm always like moving my hands.

And so I actually the word massage could then make the word certificate look better than I initially thought

I'm good at giving shoulder rubs.

I'm good at like head massages and things like that.

And then for a while I was like, oh, this could be a nice way to make some like extra money if things get tough.

I could do those like, you know, walk-in massage places where you just sit in the chair and

so I think I'd be quite good at that, except famously, those people are very quiet.

I think I've mentioned this before.

I'm very tempted to become an ASM artist because I like ASMR.

And

I have created the channel on YouTube.

I haven't put anything on there yet.

Be chill ASMR.

Yep.

So I still want to do that at some point.

I feel like you're straight away from the what would be the normal boring job you would do.

I didn't say normal boring job.

I said what different job would you do?

Yeah, different job.

And I don't do the ASMR stuff because I don't have time around all my comedy things.

Okay, yeah, yeah.

I feel like that still sits a lot closer to the current menagerie of Beck jobs.

Yeah.

So you might like the other one, which is Train Driver.

There you go.

That's what we're here for.

I think I'd really like to drive a train.

And I say this is someone who does not have a driver's license, but I figure like they're on tracks.

Yeah.

Like, I just,

I, I love trains.

I love like.

But the thing is, is I don't love them as much

as most of the people who are listening to this one.

Yeah.

Like, I couldn't.

We got some train people in there.

I couldn't tell you all the stuff to do with the

net the train

network or the way they work or anything.

But I like moving and pressing buttons.

Do you know what they call the assemblies of axles and wheels and kind of the thing that holds them together that goes under the carriages?

Is it a butt?

It's a bogey.

A bogey, great.

I knew it was going to be a great word.

Yeah, I would.

I was on the DLR recently and the Cutty Sark station is closed for the next year.

And as it was going through Cutty Sark, just beforehand, a conductor came on and

are they a conductor when they drive them or are they just a driver?

Anyway, the person who came on, I should know this if I want to do it.

But I always sit in the front of the DLR.

It's the best thing about going on the DLR.

Oh, 100%.

That's the district light rail for

outside of Londoners.

You sit in the front because it's driverless most of the time.

So you can sit in the front, but...

Every now and then someone will come on and they put a key in the panel and they open it up and they'll physically drive it but because i was already sitting in the front the the lady didn't move me she just stood to the side but still opened up the panel and i was like oh i could just press like there's a big red button that said stop and i was like i won't but i want to and then she pressed another button as we went through cuddy sark um because obviously she had to override it to make sure it didn't stop yep yep and then she pressed a button and it sounded a horn i guess to make sure no one's on the tracks or whatever And I was like, I wish she'd said that I could do that.

I wish she'd said, do you want to press the horn?

I love the best about your story about wanting to press the horn on the DLR.

Yeah.

That James specifically requested you answer his problem.

And this is why I made it a main problem because I knew I was going to go off track.

Which is why I should not be a train driver.

Yeah, what I'm saying is become a train driver or do ASMR?

Great.

How do you decide what to retrain as?

I don't know, James.

How do you find out about jobs?

i mean you get one window which is work experience yes and maybe internships if you can afford to do that james you're talking to people who

worked out how to create a job from the things from like we went from our skills and worked out how to create work out of those skills rather than going to a thing

and then learning the skills to do the thing.

We're the exception.

That's nice.

I don't know, but I'm curious now.

I want to know what James does.

I don't know what level of professional and what type of health sector and therefore what kind of savings James is sitting on.

I'd say just take six months if you've got the money and you're prepared to live like a student for a while.

Yeah.

And you'll get bored and then see what you do.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

I know you might have bills to pay and that's not possible, but it sounds like that's an option for James.

I will say, and this won't appeal to everyone, so I'm not saying it's like a hard and fast answer, but I may have brought it up before.

Artist's Way, which is quite a dated book now.

It's one of those 12-week like self-improvement type books.

It gets you back to being creative and it gives you a lot of prompts for creativity,

but it actively says it's better for people who aren't in creative jobs because a lot of people who do, who don't do creative jobs, they're lacking that outlet.

When you're a kid, you have an outlet for your creativity.

You're encouraged to use your creativity.

And quite often that then gets dampened as you get older and in your jobs.

And so even even if you don't do the artist way, the thing that really helped me was morning pages.

It's the stream of consciousness writing.

First thing when you wake up, before you look at your phone, write three pages of whatever.

It could be a diary, it could be a to-do list.

It could be just, I'm tired repeatedly for three pages.

But what it does is it sort of, you get bored about a page and a half in.

If you're like writing the same thing, and then you start to talk about the things that are bothering you or the things that are in the back of your mind that you've been trying to ignore and that's when you'll realize what you're interested in and the reason that i'm here today is because many years ago i had a bit of a what am i doing moment started doing morning pages sort of daydreamed about oh if i oh one day i'd love to be on a panel talking about my own sitcom at comic-con and I was like and it would be a sci-fi sitcom what would that be about so I started to daydream about what my sci-fi sitcom would be and then got into a ton of research ended up going to a bunch of lectures at the science museum then chance encounter helenani put me on an evening vanissary detail i talked to you about lucy then you and i started hanging out and now we do a podcast and i didn't realize i had an interest in science until I was doing that thing because I didn't do science in high school.

I didn't do it my final year of high school.

I didn't enjoy it.

I didn't do maths in my final, or I did, but it was a very basic version.

All of this interest came out daydreaming in my, in my notes, in my pages.

So that would be my advice, James, is to maybe give morning pages a try.

First thing in the morning when you wake up before you check your phone, and I stress before you check your phone, get a A4

workbook, write three pages, you'll hate it, your hand will hurt, but stuff will come out that you weren't expecting.

Good advice.

And my advice, James, is when you do quit, don't do it mid-surgery.

You don't want to do a scalpel drop.

No, you think you're a drop-down

drop.

I'm out of here.

I'm out of here.

This next problem comes from Elizabeth Martin, who say, loving the pod and listening since the first episode.

Blah, blah, blah.

Great work.

Blah, blah, blah.

Keep it up.

How dare you skip over their heartfelt.

I know.

People were saying it in person.

Like after we did that joint gig in London, they're like, oh, love the podcast, blah, blah, blah.

And I'm like, good, good, good, carry on.

I love that this is becoming a catchphrase.

But for our audience, our audience have more catchphrases than we do.

Yeah, good, good.

They should.

There's more of them.

They said we are brainstorming children names, and there's a chance we need names for twins or even triplets.

What would be good names for twins or triplets?

Are there two or three names that are anagrams of each other or the other two?

Good question.

Now, Beck, neither you nor I have kids.

No.

We have talked about what we would call our kids.

Oh, we have kids separate, just for the record.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Years ago, I did a show called Ellipsis.

I called the show Ellipsis because I'm not having kids, but I think Ellipsis would be a good name for a girl because then you could give her the nickname Dot, which is short for Dot, Dot, Dot.

It's great.

I mean, it doesn't have to be a girl.

I'm just going traditionally by dots.

And I always said, it was a running joke with me and a mate of mine that one of us would name one of our kids Amphisand

because then they're Andy for short.

Yeah.

So with Dot and Andy are yeah, and we realized this like years later we were chatting.

I mean, that made sense.

We were like, oh my gosh.

And then I've since then told that to another friend who said that they would call their kid Tilda.

Tilda.

T-I-L-D-E, I think is how you spell it.

It's the little wibbly-wobbly.

Half and approximately equals.

Yes.

So

putting it right out there, Ambersand, Ellipsis, and Tilda.

They're free for the taking.

Yeah.

But

not if you're writing.

I always wanted to write Ellipsis as a character or something.

Yeah.

However,

if you call your kid Ellipsis because you're listening to this podcast, whether this is you, Elizabeth, and Martin, or anyone else listening.

Yep.

I mean, I want full credit.

What?

Oh, fair enough.

Yeah.

Anytime someone says, oh, that's really cool, how it's dot short, you say, Beckhill.

Because you're going to get a lot of credit.

Calypsis has to have the middle name Beckhill.

That's fair enough.

Andy has to have the middle name.

Matt and Cy thought they were hilarious when they were at school.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Perfect.

Yeah.

Whole thing.

So that's one option.

You pick a theme and all the names are subtly in that theme.

Yeah.

Such that if you met any one child on their own, you wouldn't think, oh, your parents got a little too excited when they got to name their kids.

But you meet two or more and you're like, ah,

well done.

Yeah, yeah.

It'd be very clever.

I

saw the rest of what they said.

They were thinking anagrams.

And this is a bit convenient because

I mentioned, I did my preview at Evening of Necessary Detail.

My friend Zoe Griffiths was doing a talk in the first half and her talk was about

naming her kids.

Ah.

And having a mathematical approach to the letters in the names of her kids.

Okay.

I was like, great.

Zoe has already done the work.

Yeah.

So Zoe's first child, Douglas.

Great name, Douglas.

Particularly pleasing in that Douglas, no repeat letters.

Yep.

So if you've got a set of toy blocks, the whole alphabet,

you can spell Douglas.

Nice.

You don't need another set.

So they were so pleased when they're expecting their second child.

They thought, oh, you know what?

What if we can get a name for our second child?

It has no letters familiar with similar with douglas yes so they can use the same set of blocks and no repeat letters so they can continue to use yeah the same set of blocks great so zoe then downloaded all the names this this may sound like a familiar story yeah all the names from the office of national statistics and set about finding all the names that don't have repeat letters and don't share any letters in common with Douglas.

And none of them were names she wanted to name the kid.

Okay.

There's some good ones in there.

Most of the acceptable ones are male presenting.

Like, Ben is in there.

Eric is in there.

Rick's in there.

A little insultingly, I don't think you should take this personally.

Beck with a K.

Oh, yes.

Like the same thing.

Correspondingly, Beck without the K, because you're just not using the K

would have worked after Douglas.

Yeah.

But they didn't go for that.

Rebecca would not have worked.

So you know, that's.

Yes.

Maybe more to to the point.

Lots of doubles.

So, in the end, they decided not to do that.

As funny as it would have been.

Apparently, there are other constraints or considerations when naming your child other than mathematical hilarity.

But it did get Zoe thinking: wait a minute, what would be the optimal names?

Like, if you want to start naming your child to maximize the potential for naming future children with no overlap,

what should you do?

This is not a name I can probably pronounce correctly.

It's Gurjot.

G-U-R-J-O-T.

Okay.

No repeat letters.

And you can cheat because they're like, they're like C-J is a name.

It's two letters.

So there's loads of other names that work after that.

So Zoe was trying to balance length of name so as long as possible while still maximizing the other names that can come after it.

Gurjot gives you the maximum possibilities.

And then she hit exactly the same problem I did when I was doing our famous five words, 25 letters problem.

her code was going to take 18 days to run.

Right.

So just a bit faster than yours.

A bit faster than the

twice the speed of mine.

Let's not get into the details here.

And so she got a mutual mate of ours, Colin Beveridge, that knocked together some really nice code that did it way quicker.

It's got it all up on GitHub, so I can link to that in the show notes.

Really nice.

It takes all the names and it spits out.

So for the record, the most

recognized names that you can have with no overlapping letters is nine.

Ooh.

And they're not good.

Hey, now there are people out there who have those names.

Do you want to have a little scroll through the list that Colin found?

Are they all Elon Musk's kids?

No, no.

But I've been scrolling for a while now, and the first a thousand sets all have one child named just the letter A

and one child named just the the letter c

and there's an lj so to get nine you got real short yeah names and they're all terrible it turns out if you want to name three kids no offense any siege oh sorry yeah no collectively terrible anyone individually great sorry siege colin did also find sets of names that use as many letters as possible couldn't find a set of names that covers all 26 letters it's very similar to what i did yeah he found a whole bunch of sets that use 25 letters.

And this is a more human-readable list.

There's only 196 of them.

I don't know if you want to eyeball these back.

There's still a lot of CJs in there.

CJ, Gus,

a child just named MD.

A child named

Child MD.

Child, MD.

They want a career change.

Yeah, yeah.

Path, P-A-R-T-H, valid name.

Another child just called V-Y.

One called Wilf, and then a Zeb.

Z-E-B.

Zeb.

I want to say Z-E-B, but Z-E-B was way more fun to say.

Yeah.

So I don't know if you want to eyeball this is the 196 sets.

So if Elizabeth and Martin want to pick from one of these, they don't have to use all of them, but they can then gradually work their way through the list from any one set, and they know they're not going to have any clashes.

And they can name the kids in order of how much they like their names.

All the kids.

Oh, gosh.

Do you know what i feel like most of these are welsh

welsh names are very highly represented and probably you want to get a y in there you need a w

yeah in terms of i see what you mean now yeah they're not like no name is a bad name right whatever your name is great name good for you

But these are bad collections.

They're bad collections.

Thank you.

I think I just, I think I need space when I'm hearing new names.

Like, I think if I meet a group of like six people and maybe one or two have names that I've not come across before, I'd be like, fine.

Yep.

But I'm not going to remember six new names.

No.

If people come up to you and you're like, what are your names?

One of them's like, Wolf.

Okay.

Yeah.

Sure.

Locked it in.

Next one, King.

Okay.

Brax.

Yeah, then I'm like,

Zeph.

Yeah.

Just the letter C.

Yeah,

if a group of people introduced themselves to me like this.

Our friend MD's back.

Uh-huh.

S-U.

Well, Sue, I can take Sue.

Sue?

Yeah.

Oh, that's true.

Sue.

Yeah.

Noee.

T-J.

Yeah.

V-Y.

Or Vi.

Yeah.

That's 25 letters between them.

I can see what they hang out together.

Yeah.

It's singular letter names when I'm like.

You're making decisions for the kid they may not appreciate.

Well, what I also wonder is how many of these names were given to them as kids and how many of these are names that people chose, yeah,

changed, and

now they're in the you know, in the census.

Not all, but most of the people I know with less common names, sure, cultural ones, yeah, sure.

But most of the people I know that have less common names have chosen those names, they've opted in, yeah, yeah,

not all, but most.

One here, Bugsy.

Well, I mean, Bugsy Malone, that's a real name.

Bugsy, Fox, Nick, RJ, RJ,

TWM.

That must be Welsh.

Vlad, Zeph.

That's a good set.

That's, yeah.

I've never heard of TWM.

Not to say it's not valid.

No.

Spoils for Tom.

Producer Laura.

Okay.

Corner.

That is the best set.

That's the best set.

Should I grab that one out and put it in the show notes?

Yeah.

Is that our official recommendation?

Well, no, but we've done anagrams.

No, I was going to say, you haven't.

We do anagrams, one thing at a time.

But for the, you only want to buy one set of blocks.

Yeah, that's what, yeah.

Great, yeah, okay.

I'll make a note of that.

I'm putting it in the notes right now.

Can't believe this is your dinglet.

It's such a good dinglet.

Producer Lois just informed us that that word, Tom, Tom,

means twin.

T-W-L.

That's a double meaning.

That's pretty cool.

Very appropriate.

I'll also link to Colin's GitHub so you can check this out.

It's called Zoe Names, code to support Zoe's Evening of Verse 3 Detail Talk.

But then I realized that's not actually what we were asked to do.

Yeah.

It is within the remit, but specifically they had one example, which was anagrams.

Because I saw you chucking suggestions into our group WhatsApp.

Yeah.

I found a few.

You found a few.

And then I was like, Matt, I'm sure that you could do a scrape all of the names from somewhere.

Write some code, see what names have the same letters in common.

So I was, I stopped after three.

Well, in the spirit, okay, they're good.

I've just seen them.

In the spirit of today's theme, I realized Colin had done half the hard work.

He had the names in a list.

Yeah.

So I quickly knocked together some code to find all the anagrams.

Hang on, that's not the catchphrase.

I wrote some terrible Python code.

Yay!

Everybody drink!

And it is.

And it's found all the sets of anagrams from the set of all the names.

Yes.

So

dance.

What do you got?

Okay, so I just came up with three lots.

I know there's more, but these were the three that actually felt like, again, names names that I've heard of.

Yep.

I've got Aiden, Diana, and Nadia.

That's great.

I recognize those names.

Aiden, Diana, Nadia.

Yep.

Real names.

Alice and Celia.

Oh.

And Arnold and Ronald.

Arnold and Ronald.

Well, I can give you a little something extra here because Arnold and Ronald are indeed anagrams.

So is Roland.

So you have a third one.

I used to know a Roland.

Yeah.

There you go.

So that's a really nice.

I think we've now got two good sets of threes.

I do feel like Ronald and Roland will get confused.

Ronald and Roland will get confused, but that's the price you pay.

Yeah.

That's such wonderful names.

I actually think, yeah, you're out in front.

I think Aiden, Diana, and Nadia.

And

there's a mix of the classic gendered names in there.

Yes.

So you've got your options covered.

My code ran through.

The one when I scanned through that had three names I liked the most was Liam,

Emil, and Marley.

And you're missing the fourth male male, like

the males here.

Yeah, yeah, that's what you named the unexpected fourth kid.

Oh, yeah, the mail's just been delivered.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

That's nice.

Emil and Liam.

Marley.

Nice.

And then male.

And then male.

Just on the end, or whatever they may be.

Okay, are you ready for a set of 12 names?

Hit me.

They've only got five letters.

Great.

Aran.

Spell that for me.

A-A-R-I-N.

A-Nira.

Orion.

Arena.

Inara.

Naira.

Naira.

Rani.

Raina.

Rania.

Rihan.

Rihanna.

Twelve different names.

All legit names people have used.

And any one of those names wouldn't stand out yeah i'll take it i think that's a good option and it means that elizabeth and martin can go on and have nine more children and they can have as many kids as they want without having to name any of them male

is a knock knock

males here so

i will link to colin's code as advertised if people it's already got the names and everything if you want to have a play look at his code adapt it for yourself if you've got to name kids you can do that if you've got other suggestions i do yep about beck yep matt great name and if there's a third laura laura people would know they'd be like ah they're all from that famous podcast yes

and people go i love your kid blah blah blah

this one's called any

this one's called other

one's called blarness

You have to meet them in age order or the joke doesn't work.

Well, I would name my fourth kid Ding, but I'm going to leave that up to Elizabeth and Martin.

Find out.

Let us know what names you end up with, if any of those were of any use.

And if anyone else listening decides to call their kids any of the names we've mentioned, let us know.

Yep.

I feel like both the problems, like the career and the kid naming problems, are ones that we're going to have to wait a couple years

to get the full closure on.

Yeah, but.

But we're in this for the long haul.

Yeah, we like doing this show.

We'll probably still be here.

And now it's time for any other busy, if you hear laughter, it's Beck and Laura coming down from me pronouncing that a different way that we decided would be foolish.

So,

Beck.

Yep.

A couple episodes ago, episode 111, very pleasing number.

An angel number.

Ryan wrote in.

Yep.

And said, hey,

I do engineering things.

I don't like calling the motors master and slave because there's a lot of baggage going on there.

Are there better names?

Yes.

We spent a long time suggesting other names.

They've gotten back.

And first of all, they're giving us a ding, which is very nice.

Good.

A big ding or caps.

Oh, yeah.

I do like

they thank me for being interested in their job and taking it seriously and trying to solve a problem.

And they thank you for finding their style of writing so robotic that you lost interest before reading the whole problem.

Ryan, I wouldn't take that personally.

Now, Ryan's favorites were Cox and Crew.

Very nice.

And Boss and Worker.

I feel like Ryan gets the final say in the, because we had a lot of options.

Yeah, I believe the issue was that it couldn't start with the same letter, which is why we discounted Cox.

But we discounted Cox and Crew.

You're absolutely right.

That was Ryan's own constraint.

I know.

Ryan.

So boss and worker is the current winner.

Which

most boring of all.

Sometimes it's going to be boring.

But you know, go by Ryan's writing style.

I'm not surprised.

Exactly.

You didn't even bother reading to the end of it.

You're like, yeah, it's Boston something.

We also heard from NMK.

Good name.

Could be initials, could be a name.

Yep.

I've been listening since episode one when I was in high school.

Oh,

wow.

Yeah.

Hi, NMK.

Gosh.

And now, what are they doing now, Beck?

Now I have a degree in aerospace engineering and design avionics systems for satellites.

Yeah.

Now you know how I feel.

Old.

Now I feel like I need a career change.

I've had years of that.

I get people now saying, oh, I watched your videos in primary school.

I'm like, oh, my goodness.

Yeah.

Now you're a real adult, too.

I gigged with a woman semi-recently who said,

you came and did a gig at my school.

And I was like,

you can get lost.

Anyway, NMK,

we love you.

Thank you.

You know, that's for so long.

I genuinely think this is so exciting that someone listened in high school to this and then went on to achieve great things.

I know.

I'm taking credit.

There's a correlation.

Yeah, exactly.

The problem in episode 111 of Master Slave terminology comes up a lot in my field since many common electrical communication buses use it.

For example, SPI serial peripheral interface.

Many alternative terminologies have been proposed, like controller slash peripheral transmitter receiver which actually causes more confusion.

Primary, secondary, controller node and host client.

Host client's not bad.

Yeah, that sounds like, and it fits within the parameters.

Actually, it doesn't because the first one had to come first in the alphabet.

But none have been widely adopted yet.

I don't have quite as strict requirements as the original problem.

Oh, there you go.

But I'll try to put boss lackey into my next design anyway.

Okay.

Yeah.

We did boss lackey.

A few people weren't super keen on lackey because it does come from a type of servant yes so i am

happy with boss worker if if that's if that's where the wind's taking us now all of that is what i would say if we hadn't also heard from a matt two t's

oh who not you not me different mat

believe me i'd take credit if this was me

They've come up with the nautical terminology of captain and mate.

Ooh, fun.

And then

it generalizes

because you've got captain as the main one, but then you can number them: first mate, second mate, third mate,

all they're under nth mate.

Now, captain, do we have a length constraint on the words?

Because that's running us at like seven letters.

It was six.

So, Captain, Cap, Captain, how do you short Captain?

You can short cap.

Yeah, cap.

Cap,

cap and mate.

Done.

I like that.

I will not enter into any any further discussion.

I do like cap and mate.

I think that's nicer.

I think it's more fun than boss and worker.

Yep.

I did realize now I know that we don't like the word master.

However, that's in relation to what the original terms were.

But we use master and tupper.

I think master is a valid word.

To master a skill.

Yeah, 100%.

Master degree.

Yeah.

So I did think as well, master and puppet.

Master and puppet.

Oh, it's just alphabetical.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay, master and puppet.

Okay, I am prepared to enter into more discussion.

Go to the problem posing page at a problemsquared.com.

Cap and mate is still my favourite.

And mate.

That's really hard to beat.

And we have controversially some real-world AOB.

Okay.

Someone actually knocked on my door.

What?

Now, okay, more context here.

A neighbor who I know.

Oh, okay.

So

as a normal mechanism for giving us feedback, male.

This is not to be encouraged.

Yeah.

But someone who lives on my street wanted to feed back that they, because we asked people who listen to the podcast, but don't like consume kind of anything else.

We do.

And they said they were a listener of no such thing as a fish.

And that's how they came across both of us.

And then that looking for other podcasts.

Your episode or mine were problem.

Oh, you know, this is neighbor Steve.

Next time, neighbor Steve, next time we're talking over a fence.

Yeah.

I'm just addressing Steve direct now.

Yeah.

Let me know.

I can't remember what you're saying.

Don't go to Steve's door, please.

I'll go back on.

Hey, Steve.

I demand answers.

Steve has to start his own podcast.

Anyway, this is the only ever ever exception for delivering any other business by hand to one of our home addresses.

But anyway, the point was we asked people if they listen to the podcast but don't follow anything else we do, we can add one more to the list, which is neighbor Steve.

Yeah.

Just follow me, but just down the road.

Literally.

Yeah, literally.

Well, thank you so much for listening to this episode of A Problem Squid.

We like to call out some of our Patreon supporters.

Obviously, everyone who listens to this podcast, it doesn't matter what your name is, you're all special to us.

Yes.

However, some of those names enter a giant spreadsheet because they actually fund this entire enterprise, which is why it makes up a tiny part of our ridiculous careers.

Three of those fine Patreon supporters from patreon.com/slash a problem squared

get their names mispronounced.

And, well, this time I've put their names in our internal running order, but I've also done the versions with the repeat letters removed.

Yes.

I don't know which versions you want to use for this.

Well, I mean, the first name has no repeat letters.

Okay, let's get that one other way.

I would be pronouncing it correctly.

Right.

Which feels against the rules now.

Yeah.

So, thank you,

Mayor Kavan Scrossby,

and

Martin Wood

Thank you so much again to everyone who shares this podcast, reviews it, gives us five stars, etc.

And that is it for this episode.

I've been Matt Perket.

You've also been listening to Beck Hilt

and our producer, La Ra Gimshu.

Gim

Gimshwa.

Gimshwa.

Law.

Yeah, it'd just be Law, wouldn't it?

Law Gimshwa.

I like it.

I would order that at a restaurant.

So I got a hit last time.

So I'm going to continue in that vein.

I'm going to go for F7.

You're going to go for F7.

You are moving in the correct direction because that's another hit.

Another hit.

Now I'm just working out that could be.

I've sunk a three.

You've got another three somewhere.

That's a two.

Oof.

I gotta do two more checks before I know I've cleared your cluster.

Can I have an H6?

H6?

H6.

Miss.

Oh,

that might, actually, that might have confirmed it for me.