106 = Travel ABC and Art of Karate

Hello and welcome to A Problem Squared, the problem-solving podcast, which is a lot like surfing, in that it's fun, relatively balanced, but ultimately pointless.

Your hosts are comedian and YouTuber Matt Parker, who, like a surfer, can be found both in real life and online, and me, another comedian and less of a youtuber Beck Hill who also like a surfer gets bored and enjoys waves best you do for the listeners Beck is waving and she's visibly enjoying the process so I'm enjoying it so much do you like my uh my my play on words with gets bored bored I got what was mine was it online you can be found in real life and online And surfers are online?

An internet surfer.

A web surfer.

Oh, an internet surfer.

Oh, my goodness.

Sorry, I didn't realize.

I'd forgotten we were on the information super highway.

Is it a highway?

Is it a sea?

It's very.

Is it a web?

It's very confusing.

I thought you were going to do like a tube on a wave.

YouTube or something.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You tube.

Tubular.

We're both.

We're all tubular.

That's what I should have said.

On this blessed day, we are all tubular.

Anyway, on this episode, I'm going to ride an alphabetically precise world tour.

I'm going to get a black belt in recycling.

Ooh, and we've got

any other

breakness,

like a surfing break.

Oh, no.

It's not good, but it happened.

Yeah.

I'm proud of you.

Thank you.

Matt,

how are you?

I'm good.

Good.

This episode goes out on the last day of March.

So happy end of March to everyone.

And all who sail within you.

Yeah.

What a month.

March is always a good month.

Partly because halfway through is Pie Day.

Full of penguins.

March of the Penguins would be a great horror film where it's just a month where everything gets

running.

Everything's penguins.

You open a cupboard, boho, penguins.

Yeah, cut it.

Yeah, it's like Mitas touched.

Everything turns to penguins for a month.

Yeah.

You hug your kids, they're penguins.

Oh, I ruined the ending.

Sorry.

Sorry.

That's.

But you could go to Antarctica and repopulate it with penguins, you know.

Well, if you touch a penguin and you've got the penguin touch.

For listeners at home, we're recording remote because you're still in Australia and I'm in the UK.

Which means we're going to attribute any mismatch, like any awkward pauses to just the lag on the internet.

In reality, it's just, I think we're both running a little slower than normal.

What are you doing?

I am firing on all cylinders today.

And if it doesn't come across that way, well, I blame the editor and producer of this episode, Laura Grimshaw.

While Aristotle Carter's off.

Aristotle's got other things to do.

We had to get someone with the most similar first name we could find.

Yes, we want to make it as confusing as possible.

So confusing.

Laura, why can't you have a normal name like Matt or Beck?

Yeah, real unique names.

Actually, that would be even more confusing.

Don't keep Laura.

I like Laura.

Laura's a good name.

Pie Day.

We had Pi Day.

I'm trying to talk about Pi Day.

I don't actually care about March,

other than the fact it's the third month, which gives us the three in Pi.

I'd filmed the Pi Day video like last July because

it involved getting myself the good Steve Mold of Steve Mold fame, Grant Sanderson of 3Blue1Brown fame, and myself all to Cambridge to do an experiment to calculate pie.

And I'd like to share a single fact with you.

So

you've got a block that can slide around on the ground.

Like a block of wood.

Like a block of wood, block of ice.

Or a block of ice, if you're a penguin.

Or a penguin.

Let's do it with penguins.

Okay.

Let's use penguins.

Okay.

You've got a penguin that's on the ice facing a cliff.

But like the bottom of the cliff.

It's not going to shoot off the top.

It's at the bottom.

It's facing a wall of ice.

You then...

I don't know how it's going to face the cliff.

It's at the top.

Unless it's lying down on its front.

Okay, it's sideways.

It's orthogonal to the direction of cliff.

But a cliff's a bad way.

It's a wall.

It's the wall of ice next to it.

You have a second penguin, which you slide towards the first penguin as if you were like curling, that kind of an action.

Yeah.

Or I'm like one of those old saloon bartenders and I'm.

You're sliding a drink down the bar.

Exactly like that.

Yep.

So you're sliding.

You're sliding the penguin down the bar, right?

And it hits the stationary penguin.

And the two penguins have the same mass.

So when the moving penguin slams into the stationary penguin, it transfers all of its momentum to the other penguin, and the other penguin continues, slides off, but the first one stopped.

It's a bit like a Newton's cradle.

Exactly like a Newton's cradle.

Now, you've now transferred the momentum from penguin one to to penguin two.

And that was one penguin collision.

The other penguin that's now in motion hits the wall and bounces back.

So that's now our second collision.

It's now sliding back towards the first penguin, slams into it, and sends it coming back towards you.

Okay.

And that process of an object, another object knocking it, it bounces off a wall, it comes back, and then knocks the first one again.

Very straightforward bit of mechanics.

Three collisions.

And what blows my mind is that the three

in those three collisions is the same three as the beginning of pi.

Like, it's not just a coincidence that they're both three.

It's not, you know, oh, pi is about three, and that takes three collisions, which is normally the case.

Like, three little pigs and pi, both three, but for totally unrelated reasons.

The three collisions is the first digit of pi.

Okay.

If you had a much bigger penguin that you slid in towards a small one.

Emperor.

Like an Emperor penguin.

Towards a fairy penguin.

Into a fairy penguin.

Yep.

It would hit the fairy penguin, but there's no way the fairy penguin's big enough to stop the emperor penguin with one collision.

The emperor penguin's gonna just jet the fairy penguin off in front, but then continue to slide just a little slower.

Okay, yeah, because it's still got some of that energy in it.

Yeah, still got most of its energy.

It's only passed a little bit on to the other penguin it hits.

So when the little penguin comes back, yes, it's coming quite fast, but it's not going to be able to like certain.

And also the other penguin's still moving towards it.

So there's a bit of like, it then does a negative thing before it goes the other way.

Is that right?

Yep.

Your intuition is still.

So it'll take more power to get it back to its original collision spot.

And then it will continue.

Yeah.

Okay.

But what's going to happen now is the small penguin is basically going to bounce backwards and forwards between the wall and the big penguin, gradually slowing down the big penguin and then pushing it back in the other direction.

Sure, okay.

And if you count the number of collisions that would take, if the penguin's mass, if the big one's 100 times heavier, it would take 31 collisions.

And the 31 are the three and one from the beginning of pie.

Yeah.

And if the big penguin was 10,000 times heavier, it would take 314 bounces to turn it around.

What?

And then

It's ridiculous.

It shouldn't

be.

Mathematicians, mate.

Some evil Antarctic explorer.

Yes.

Now, I'm not going to lie.

The original.

So many penguins died to find this earth.

Didn't involve penguins.

What?

Do you know what, though?

I reckon you have held my attention way more than you would have if you'd used any other thing.

For some reason, the ridiculousness of it being penguins really helped me to understand this concept.

Thank you, Penguins.

That was my pie day.

So, we used an air table, like an air hockey table.

We made the not the mistake, but in the video, just so everyone's on the same page,

my mate Hugh Hunt, who has this air table in his engineering lab up in Cambridge, uses it to do like kind of physics demos and stuff.

So, we just explained what it was.

We're just like, oh, it's and Friday night parties.

And Friday night parties, you put your drink down, it just coasts away.

It's amazing.

Yeah.

But we explained what it is.

Oh, lots of holes, air, things float, and we put some discs and a phone on it and butt them around.

And then half the comments are, I don't think people in England have air hockey tables.

They seem so startled by the concept.

And I'm like, we were just.

No, it's just fun.

It's fun.

And

I don't care how many times you played air hockey, you put your phone down on the table and it just starts spinning and moving away from you.

That's funny.

So anyway.

Yeah, that is.

But did you make the mistake of not once mentioning air hockey while using a large, essentially air hockey table?

Correct.

We were moving.

Right, yeah, that is a bit of an error.

Like Puck Sorrell.

I should have just shouted air hockey at the table at one point.

And let me guess, that video is going to do really well because so many people have got a reason to comment.

Lots of engagement.

Yep.

Yep.

It's like I did a video about a card game that I've never played, which some people call Beggar My Neighbor.

But it turns out everyone has a different name they call this card game.

And the comments under that video, the engagement's off the charts because it's just people they want to yell whatever their family called that game

into the comments section, which is terrible content over good engagement.

Ah, speaking of terrible content over good engagement.

No, I've been well.

I've been well.

I've finished my Adelaide fringe run.

Oh, how did it go?

It's my first

run of a show since 2019.

Wow.

Yeah.

It's not, I didn't really call it a show

because I was like, this is

an hour of stuff.

Back on a stage.

Yeah, but it has legs and it ended up surprisingly finding its own sort of narrative in the process of me

playing with it.

So

it still needs a bit of work, but it's got legs.

And

yeah, yeah, it was a big learning curve, but but I'm feeling positive about taking it.

I'm going to be doing it at various festivals and things back in the UK, MACFest, and

I'll probably do a couple of London dates and then I'll do Edinburgh Fringe.

If anyone wants to come along, but I had some A Problem Squares listeners come along.

Oh, that's adorable.

Yeah, so

yeah, thank you to those of you who stuck around afterwards each night to say hello.

I could always tell the April Square listeners, and I mean this in the best possible way.

Like, well, you better land this sentence real gently.

I know, no, I mean it.

Like,

there is

an engagement, and there's certain jokes in the show

that

only worked with specific people.

And I was like, you're my people.

In the show, I do my James Bond talk, the one that I wrote originally for An Evening of Under Sari Detail.

It's great.

I love it.

It's found its audience, Matt.

Like, I'm just very happy with it.

It was a very good bit looking for an audience.

And there's a bit in it where I say that Q, the character Q,

is his name is short for

Q, like the letter Q, the letter T, and then the pie symbol.

Oh, no.

His name is QD Pie.

This is all on a projector, by the way.

If anyone's like, what?

How are you doing this?

Yeah.

So whenever the QT, little pie symbol would come up, there'd be like three people in the audience who'd be like instantly go way and then i would you know point it out and explain it and then the rest of the audience would be like oh yeah i see that but in my head i was like yeah there are problems squared and i i was i was on it so yeah i want to thank everyone who came along and uh stuck around afterwards and had a chat each night and uh i we did I did notice we had someone right in to our problem posing page and pick solution and they

just just because to give PIP feedback, they said some very nice things.

So, thank you very much for coming along.

They said they weren't able to stick around and say hello, but to say, I got your message, and thank you for letting me know.

It was really kind because it was a tough,

it was a big, yeah, as I said, big learning curve, and it was really nice to get nice feedback from folks.

Oh, lovely.

Are your tickets for the Edinburgh Fringe already on sale?

Not yet.

No, they will be soon.

Are yours?

They are.

They're.

Oh, what a segue.

That's not why I brought it up, but now we're here.

Everyone, please buy tickets to see my show.

And Becks

when there's a link.

We'll put my link in the show description.

I'm at 6.30 in the Pleasants courtyard.

Oh, oh, okay.

Mine's at 7.30.

No.

Yeah.

I'm at 7.30 in Appleton Tower,

which is still in the TV square, that little area, right near the Pleasants Dome.

And you're in the courtyard, so no one can make both shows on the same night.

You're going to have to do two separate nights.

I would just say, come for more than one night.

Come for more than one night.

That's a good point.

Our first problem is from Theo who went to the problem posing page and chose problem in the dropdown and said

is there an alphabetically perfect travel route?

By that I mean a route through 26 different countries as in like 26 letters of the alphabet, where every letter appears at least once in the country's names in alphabetical order.

So basically the alphabet game for country names.

I don't think it would be possible to limit it to starting letters, no country starting with the letter X for example, or to visit each country only once.

However, I do think that the use of airplanes would make it quite trivial.

So the next country always must be a direct neighbor.

Ooh, I like that rule.

Before you go into this, Matt,

the

alphabet game.

The alphabet game.

Normally the alphabet game is words starting with the letters of the you're going in alphabetical order.

Is that right?

Well, I, when I heard alphabetic game, it was, you know, when you're a child in the car, or you might be someone who has children in a car, and you have to entertain them.

Or just a person in a car.

Or just a human in a car.

And you've got to entertain people in the car.

And so my parents would say, can you spot license plates?

So each one's got the next letter in the alphabet.

So we would all be scouring for a license plate with an A in it.

And then once we found one, we're all scouring for another license plate with a B in it.

And then we work our way up from there.

That's fun.

And so that doesn't have to be the lead letter.

It just has to be in the plate somewhere.

So, but you've got a different alphabet game.

Yeah, I think in the one that my friend, well, as a comic, I've been in a lot of cars with other comedians.

Yep.

Which is like being in a car with children.

Identical.

Except one of them's driving.

So

the way that I've played it is where you're just naming, like thinking of things,

but mine's always like rude words.

So it's like

rough and then bum and so forth.

Beck.

Yes.

And then you lap the alphabet and you carry on, but you're not allowed to repeat until someone can't think of one, if that's the version I'm remembering.

That's right.

Yeah, correct.

So this one is just you've got to travel through countries.

such that the first country you're in has an A somewhere in the name.

So let's say you start in India.

That's got an an A.

Great.

Okay.

India.

Great start.

You can go to Bhutan.

That's got a B.

Stars with a B.

Excellent.

Then China, there's your C.

These are all geographically next to one another.

Yes.

So the rules.

So, yeah, I think this is what, because otherwise it feels a bit too easy, I think.

You're just naming countries that have letters in them.

I know.

And Theo correctly says you can't fly because you could just fly between the countries that have the letters you need.

Yeah.

So the constraint is

you have to cross a physical border to go from one country to the next, and the next one has the next letter.

But they do say you're allowed repeat countries.

So once you're in China and now you need a D, you can come back to India to get the D.

So that's.

We're not playing that game back.

Okay.

So now this means a lot of countries will never be part of this game.

So you're never going to use Australia because you've got to fly to get there.

So it really limits it to a bunch of like countries with land borders.

And

once you start on one land mass, you can't get to another one.

So I'm pretty sure it's got to be the kind of Eurasia Africa landmass.

Yeah, I think you're right.

So I went to the Wikipedia page.

Can I guess what you did

yeah you went to wikipedia you looked at list of countries you then wrote

some

uh questionable python code

and then you told it to search through all the countries for well actually no you've got to think of neighboring ones that's the one yeah so you're going to need a more comprehensive list i imagine countries that are next to each other you're going to need

wikipedia.org slash wiki slash list of countries and territories by number of land borders.

Great.

Yep.

And each one in the list tells you all the countries they share a land border with.

So

you're 100% correct.

Rather gates, found the list on Wikipedia.

And then, as always, took me a little while to copy the data out of the Wikipedia table and convert it into a form that I could put into Python.

So I just had to massage the data for a little bit to get it looking nice and tidy.

And I converted it all into links.

So I have an ordered pair.

They don't need to be ordered.

I've kind of double-counted them all.

But I've got every country and then paired up with every other country you can go to.

So there's a big list of 669 pairs where there's a border between them.

If it was me,

I would

basically

draw a map

where that's like, but not a map, like I would, where all the borders were the names of the countries.

And then

go do

the computer, fix this.

Okay, I was up.

I was with you until there.

And I found...

163 countries by my count that share a land border with another country.

I then put them all

yep, put them all into some terrible Python code,

set it going, and it can't be done.

So.

Oh.

Real short.

Real short one this time.

Here's your problem.

You can't do Q.

Oh.

Okay, so apparently there are six countries that contain the letter Q.

Oh, okay.

What are they?

Equatorial Guinea.

Oh, nice.

Yep.

Iraq.

Oh, yep.

Iraq is a a good one.

That came up a lot when I was trying to find a way around the Q problem.

Martinique, Mozambique, Qatar, Saint-Pierre, and Miquelon.

It's not useful for many reasons.

One of which it's a territory.

Secondly, it's an archipelago.

It's a bunch of islands, which is not useful for driving.

So it's out.

So.

What I've just quickly done is I've just knocked a little bit of extra code together to give us all the countries that have a Q in them and then check if they're bordered by any countries that have a P in them.

Because you have to get into that country from a P move, and there are none.

So, according to my code, there are no Q countries that you can get to from a P country.

So,

that kind of thing.

I can't go to any P country folks in.

Sorry, P countries.

I then just thought, well, what if you just ignore Q?

Because I put all the code together, discovered it can't be done.

You want to use use it.

I was like, fine, fine, fine.

Ignore Q.

We'll deal with that later.

And then you get all the way to V and then you stop.

So you can't get from a V country to a W country is the moral of that story.

Right.

So what you're telling me, Matt, now, this is the thing, Matthew.

This is the thing, Matthew Parker.

Tell me, Rebel.

Is that quite often

I will look through the problems that we get sent.

And I will try and answer several of them.

And I'll see how far I get.

And I'll think, would this make for an interesting answer?

Is this a problem that lots of people have or have asked?

Right, yes, yes, okay.

These are interesting criteria.

Here's good content

versus

engagement.

I don't understand how any of this is relevant to what I'm doing.

And then if I hit a dead end real quickly, I'd move on and I'd try a different

curious.

Are you saying there's a moral to your story that I should be

drawing?

I looked at the questions that we had been sent in, and I remember seeing this one.

And look, no offense, Theo.

I'm sure you're a perfectly lovely person.

But I remember thinking two things.

One,

I do not care for this question.

It is not a question I have ever asked.

It is not a problem that I have.

It is not a problem I would potentially have.

But that is is also as someone who has, who finds

no, you know, he doesn't know how to write Python code, right?

So it's also because trying to answer it is a bit annoying.

I'm happy to answer problems that I don't have if I feel like I have the wits and the ability to solve them.

Understood.

The second thing I thought was, I bet Matt chooses this.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I'm not going to lie.

The problem you're solving next, I looked at that on the list and I was like, Beck's going to choose that i'm not even gonna bother

first of all

want to just deal with a message that producer laura has put in the chat oh

she's pointed out if instead of iran you got islamic republic of iran that would get you your pee next to iraq so

Here's what I'm going to very quickly do is I'm going to take that and I'm going to edit my code to swap Iran for Islamic Republic of Iran.

Give me one second.

Replace all.

I regret that already.

Okay.

All right.

I hate replace all.

It makes me so nervous.

Okay.

You ready?

We're going in.

Still stops at P.

So you probably can't get to Iran from, is there a country that's got an O in it to get you there?

I mean, what's hilarious about this is I just never actually look at a map.

I'm just running it on the code.

Whereas I bet if I just looked at a map, I'd be like, oh yeah, that's not why it doesn't work.

Yeah, I wonder if I just looked at a map now, if I could just find a path.

Oh, if you'd started looking at a map when I started knocking the code together, you definitely would have finished first.

Yeah.

100%.

You're right.

I saw this problem come in from Theo and I was like, you know what?

If the data is easily available for borders, I reckon it wouldn't take much to write the code for that.

And I was right.

So I found the list of all the borders.

Didn't take that long to get it in the right form, wrote the code, found it couldn't be done.

But then I was taking it personally.

I was like, well, how close can you get?

Like, how many constraints do you have to relax to be able to achieve the journey?

So, first of all, Q

is

so annoying.

So, I was like, you know what?

I'm going to take Q out.

Q is gone.

Forget Q for now.

We're moving on.

You can then get past the end of the alphabet if you change the order of the end of the alphabet.

So if instead of going

T,

so you could get all the way to like

P

forget Q, R S T

instead of going T U V W X Y Z, you go T W U V Z Y X

a minor shuffle.

Yeah.

You can achieve that.

So now it is possible to do all the letters of the alphabet almost in order, but you've just got to shuffle the last couple to make it possible.

And it's the one that I started before.

You start in either China or India to get your A.

From either one you go to Bhutan.

From Bhutan, you're China.

Then you're India, Nepal, back in People's Republic of China for F.

Then you're, you can either go to Afghanistan and then, where can you go next?

Back to China.

You go to China a lot because People's Republic of China just means you get a lot of letters.

Yeah.

And you've got a few choices along the way.

There's not one strict path.

You can kind of bounce in and out.

Maybe I'll draw a diagram.

You basically bounce around

the India-China region for a while, then you come through

Russia, Turkey, Romania, way.

Then you bounce around Ukraine, Slovakia for a bit, and then you end up coming through Germany, Austria, Italy, Switzerland towards the very end.

And then you close it out through Austria, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Germany, Luxembourg.

And

that's ZYX at the very end there.

And so it's one path, but just with a few choices along the way of exactly how you get from each bit to the next bit.

It does go through Turkey.

And Turkey borders Iraq.

So

if you don't mind

shuffling around the end of the alphabet of TAD

and you accept to get the Q, totally out of order when you're in Turkey.

You just step into Iraq briefly, which I appreciate from a geopolitical point of view, that sentence is probably a lot harder to achieve than I've made it sound.

Then you get the whole alphabet.

So I think what I tried to answer for Theo

is you can't do the whole alphabet, but those are the the minimum concessions you'll have to make, as far as I can work out, to be able to do the whole alphabet traveling around the world.

Well,

you may have noticed I went very quiet while you were talking.

And yes, I was taking in every detail.

You know how much I enjoy.

Oh, I know, I know.

You're famously good at listening to one thing while doing something else.

I also know that you can tell as soon as I get that look in my eyes that I am...

It's the same look I get when I'm trying to think of a pun.

It's the same look I get when I'm trying to come up with alphabetical letters for rude words.

So I'm looking at a map of the continent of Africa and having quite a lot of fun trying to find

countries next to each other.

And like, you get to, you know,

I or J or whatever.

And then you're like, ah, bum, I've got to go backwards again.

It's really fun.

I recommend this, especially for anyone

like me who can get very hyper-fixated on certain things.

This is a great time waster.

If you are looking for

a potentially impossible challenge

provably impossible challenge yes provably impossible challenge well look we if you're gonna get creative and move around the alphabet and certain countries and stuff no no comment i'm gonna i'm gonna say like oh my my car is like um james bond one it can drive slightly underwater for a little bit but only this far

it's a good point maybe we add in that you can get multiple letters from the same visit.

That would be an option.

Yeah.

So, I mean, I don't, I can't, I don't think I can give you a ding for that, Matt.

That's fair enough.

Yeah.

But, and do you know what?

I'm actually, I'm actively, I'm taking away dings.

I'm removing a ding from you.

And Theo, I'm taking away a ding from you.

What, a previous ding?

This

is like a small penguin crashing into a large penguin moving towards it.

I didn't know we could lose dings.

Remove, please put your ding on the desk.

Oh, and the other one.

There's one on my sock holster.

Yeah.

Because not only did you pose a problem that I didn't want, but now you've done that thing where I want to find an answer.

And I know I can't.

Yeah.

This is an even bigger problem for one that I didn't even know I had.

So I'm sorry.

You both suck.

Okay, I don't want to speak on behalf of Theo, but we will both hand back one ding.

Yeah, thank you.

Thank you.

Yeah, now I've got double dings, baby.

Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.

Our next problem was sent in by first name, Eve, second name,

a motor con for smiling.

Maybe it's just a smiley face Eve's put after their name.

They start with the normal formalities.

Hi, Beck and Matt.

Love the podcast.

Blah, blah, blah.

Listen to it while driving around Scotland.

Can I just stop and say this is a lovely formality?

They're saying they love the podcast.

We appreciate that.

They've been re-listening from the beginning.

This is a repeated customer.

And while driving around Scotland for work, and we've been keeping them company for a whole week of what would have otherwise been lonely hours on the road.

That is not a blah, blah, blah, sir.

That is a,

well, it has been a pleasure keeping you company.

Very true.

I only hope Eve was driving through Scottish towns in alphabetical order.

Eve's problem.

A few years ago, they were at an event where they were chosen as a volunteer.

Oh, I'm sorry to hear that.

And taught how to break a plank of wood in half in that cool karate chop way.

Wow.

And as a prize for successfully doing that, Eve got got to keep the piece of wood.

Now, Eve loved the process of learning how to do that.

And because they got to keep the piece of broken wood, they think it's a very cool, nice memento, and they want to hang on to it.

However, they really want to turn it into something they can display in their flat.

And Eve does not know what to do with it.

And at the moment, it just looks like a broken bit of wood.

which is not aesthetically anything special.

So their problem for you, Beck, is what can they do to create something beautiful to to display the broken bit of wood, which also lets them see it every day to remind them that Eve is a total badass who can smash through wood with their bare hands.

Beck, what do you got?

I've got several answers for you, Eve, so strap in.

Great.

Can I just say before we start,

you're right.

It's about time we tackled the problems that face

sweeping percentages of the populace.

So, for everyone out there looking at a broken bit of wood that you cleft in twain with your own bare hands

at last,

Bec has the answer you need.

Oh, I could not move for websites that cover this topic.

What to do with broken karate boards, upcycle my karate boards.

Oh, there's so many of them.

That's how common this problem is.

Make sure you put them in the broken karate board bin and not in with the general rubbish.

Yeah, that's right.

Now, I'm going to give these in order of probably

most amount of work or investment to

actually doable.

So I'm going to start by saying, have you considered kintsugi?

Yeah, what now?

That is the Japanese art of repairing broken ceramics with gold.

Ah, yeah, I've seen these pictures.

Yeah.

Because it's quite a lovely sort of poetic thing.

It's to point out the cracks in things and highlight them, show that how

brokenness is what makes us beautiful.

You know, it's the flaws that make it.

So I'm just saying, maybe

you repair that board with pure molten gold.

Which famously plays well with wood.

Yeah, yes, yeah.

And is very affordable.

Yes.

But no, I like that.

I like the fact objects embracing their journey.

Like, something was broken, that's now part of that object.

Yeah.

I like that.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

It's a bit like my This Is Not a Show that I did in Adelaide French.

I was embracing the chaos.

That's it.

Okay, my next suggestion is actually, it's a little bit more doable.

So I was thinking, what about a karate chopping board in your kitchen?

That's excellent.

So I've actually got links.

I tried to find some like most helpful tutorial links for you.

So we'll pop these in the show notes.

But I did find a tutorial on how to make an epoxy cutting board, which is using like bits of, they're not broken wood, but bits of wood and resin to create like a really beautiful sharkutree board.

So

I reckon if you could get the two bits of wood, and then that way, if you want to make it bigger, you can just fill in the gaps with more resin, I guess.

But I thought maybe that would make a really nice talking piece.

I like that.

I like the chopping board idea.

That's very funny.

I've got another tutorial as well.

And not to go harsh on this person, they've done a great tutorial.

I think this is a basic guide.

I think you could probably

do it a bit differently if you wanted.

But they've got two kids who do karate.

They've got several broken karate boards.

So they have arranged them, and some of them have painted.

I think a little bit are unpainted, but they've arranged them with hooks on them and put them into the walls as a coat rack.

Ah, nice.

Got it.

I think you could call it your right coat hook.

Oh, wow.

Nice.

Like a right hook, but the word coat in the middle.

Yeah.

Okay.

My next suggestion:

turn it into one of those inspirational signs that you get as like home decor, right?

And

I've already thought of

the sayings you could have on them.

Oh, great.

Yep.

Okay.

You're going to talk to me until I've had my morning karate.

Love it.

I'm inspired.

It's fiverch somewhere.

Yep.

Yep.

Live, laugh.

Hi-yah!

I was going to do live-laugh kick to the face, but I prefer yours.

Home is where the haito is.

Haito is Japanese for the, it's the inner part of your palm of your hand that goes like sort of along the side of your thumb.

Yeah.

There is a word for the side that goes along your pinky finger, which is actually like that's the part like towards the base of the palm where you that's the part you would use to hit, but it doesn't sound like the word heart.

So I'm calling you the opposite side.

Because high thought sounds home's where the high thought is.

And finally,

the real treasure is the boards we karate chop barehanded as a volunteer at an event along the way.

Love it.

So normally, when we record in the same room, that's more fun.

Like it's always fun to hang out.

Yeah.

But this is the first time I'm glad we're recording remotely because Becca's been acting all these out.

And I feel like it would have been very dangerous to be in the same room.

I've been waving my hands around a lot.

This is true.

You're losing yourself in the character, and

I would worry for my own safety.

Okay, I've got one final answer for Eve.

So if you don't want an inspirational sign or anything like that,

I reckon just get a sort of more of a box frame, get a box frame and frame it.

Just frame your two bits of wood.

Don't

sort of mount them onto some board, put them in a sort of deep, deep set frame, and it will be a really nice talking piece.

And I say this because I'm going to send you, Matt, an image.

We'll pop this on social as well.

My home.

Of a piece of art at my friend's place in Berlin, okay?

Oh, so it's a box frame.

Which, for anyone who's not sure, a box frame is just, it's like a picture frame, but you've just got a bit more space to put something slightly more three-dimensional in it.

Yeah.

And it looks like it's got like a normal mat you would have kind of around a regular picture frame.

And inside it

kind of nailed to the backboard is a large black mass it looks like if you

burnt a cookie and then mistakenly took a bite thinking how bad could it be and you're like oh awful what's left is it is what it looks like at the back of the of the board

you're very close that

really no yeah this is much bigger than a cookie

oh okay.

I know that there's no banana for scales.

There's scales.

You can't tell.

Yeah.

That

was a pizza.

Yeah.

So it is a burnt object from an oven.

Great.

Yeah.

And

this artwork is in my friend's flat.

It actually belongs to her landlord.

So when she moved in, she was like, oh, that's really interesting.

What is it?

Because on first glance, you're kind of like, is it like because when you think it's two-dimensional you're like oh is it like the is it a the moon or something like is it a negative image or something like that

and her landlord explained that when he first lived there

uh he got home very late one night and was very very drunk and he put on a pizza in the like an oven pizza in the oven and then went to bed and woke up with the flat filled with smoke the the fire alarms going off the uh fire service fire fire department were cold because neighbors had noticed smoke and the smell and the sirens and the things had gone off

obviously he was fine the flat did not burn down no one was injured

But to remind himself to never try cooking anything when he's had a few drinks

He put this up on the wall so whenever he gets home and he thinks, oh, maybe I'll do something, he remembers, no, that is a bad idea.

Go to bed.

That's brilliant.

Or order in at least.

So, I think you could do a similar thing like this, except it would be far more motivational and inspirational.

You have people come in, they'd be like, oh, what's that?

Like, oh, what have you done there?

And then you can explain, that is a piece of wood that I karate chop with my bare hand because I'm a bad mother flipper.

Total badass who can smash through wood with their bare hands.

Yeah, exactly.

That's what the piece is unofficially called, I think.

Yeah, I think that's the artist's name.

Beck, those are some great suggestions.

I think you've nailed them all.

Mine was turn it into a very small shelf.

Get some brackets.

Shelf is found.

It's already broken, though.

I don't know how strong it's going to be.

Yeah.

I guess if you've got two bits, I was imagining you'd have them separated slightly with like where it's broken is like a little void in the middle of the shelf.

Yeah, yeah.

Oh, and then you could make a pastor of Paris of your own hand, get those kicks, and then you have that like as a coat hook in the center, yeah.

Perfect, there it is.

Uh, and have the shelves in slight slight angle, so everything just slightly cool, yeah.

Anytime you put something on it, slides toward the house,

or it's just a piece of art again,

yeah.

No, I really like it.

I mean, I've been meaning, like, I also hang on to mementos from things,

and

I've been meaning to get better at actually displaying or

having these things out because there's no point keeping them if they're going to be in a box somewhere.

So, I've been likewise, you know, the box frames are your friend.

You can put anything in a box frame, it looks great.

So, I really like that.

It was a great suggestion.

So, I'm going to, I'm also going to take a leaf out of your book back and I'm going to box frame some stuff and put it up.

Oh, nice.

Either that or

put some magnets in them.

Get rid of all your clothes.

It's just you and the boards now, Eve.

Whoa, gnarly, dude.

It's time for any other bonus.

I'm doing that.

I'm doing that.

That surface hand dress.

What would you call that?

Like you're on a telephone.

Yeah, it's like an old school telephone, but then you wave it a little bit.

It's called a shaka sign, by the way.

Ah.

Yeah, also known as hang-loose.

Hang loose.

Associated with

Hawaiian and surf culture.

According to the Honolulu Star Bulletin, prevailing a local...

Prevailing local law credits the gesture to Hamana Kalili of

Lei, I think I'm pronouncing that right, L-A-I-E, who lost the three middle fingers on his right hand while working at the Kahuku sugar mill.

Kalili was then shifted to guarding the sugar train, and his all-clear wave of thumb and pinky is said to have evolved into the shaka as children imitated the gesture.

Oh, there you go.

There's several other suggestions.

I won't go into it because this was a problem that no one asked.

I'm going to do some AO Benus from Psy King.

Oh, Benis.

Baloose Guy,

who noticed that our previous episode, the one directly before this, episode 105,

featured a problem from someone named Patrick, and we released that episode on St.

Patrick's Day.

And they want to know, did we plan that or was it a happy accident?

And

there's a note here from producer Laura to say it was deliberate.

I think that's our official answer.

It was by accident.

But I don't think we

don't put that much.

We don't put that much planning into it, but we do take the credit of everything that lines up by accident.

And now,

listen to Patrick is St.

Patrick.

That's how it works.

So, yeah, that is St.

Patrick for a year.

Yeah.

I like to think that this means that every time we're released on a Saints Day, we have to solve a problem from someone of the same name.

Can

Valentine's Day?

If your name's Patrick,

next time St.

Patrick stays on a Monday, send in some questions.

We'll try and solve them.

Or if your name's Val,

and the next Valentine's Day is

on a Monday.

And we only do every second Monday as well, so there's a 50-50 chance we hit it.

But one person we did hear from was Brendan, who wrote into the problem posing page and selected the solution drop-down.

And they said, in episode 102, Matt shared their research showcasing which days of the year Saturday Night Live has aired on throughout its history.

They wanted to see what days of the year a problem squared has aired throughout its history.

I figured it would be easiest just to do this generically for any RSS feed.

It turns out a problem squared has released episodes on a total of 88 out of 366 days of the year, or around 24%.

That's pretty good.

Seems like you have a pretty even distribution between the months with the most populous, Feb, December, and August, having eight days, while the least populous, March, has only six days.

You can see the working out here with a little web application I made to visualize this concept.

Holy bum hole.

That's amazing, Brendan.

So you put an RSS feed in and it will then generate it for you.

That's really nice.

Oh, they've used us and lateral as the two examples on the page.

Oh, that's a really nice visualization, Brendan.

That's excellent.

Wow.

Do you want a job, Brendan?

Because neither Matt or I are good at this.

We've done one more day since they sent this in.

Yeah, St.

Patrick's Day, we got a new one.

Yeah.

Oh, this one coming out as a repeat.

Yeah.

Any other Brendan, I should have called this section.

That's what you should have called it.

In an ongoing category of any other business, there's any other big thingness.

People are still sending us in big things that they have gone to seen.

Rocco

wanted to jump in on the big thing discussion because Rocco and their partner Andy went to the big chair.

It's the world's biggest chair in southern Spain.

Wow.

They say it was incredible and they would love to see more big things in the future.

That's the great thing about big things.

You can see them coming.

My favorite thing that Rocco says is that when they did the detour to see the biggest chair, it was way bigger than I expected.

I think that's my favorite thing.

That's what you want when you're going to see a big thing.

You don't want to see a big thing and go, oh, is that it?

You want, like, oh, this is much bigger than I anticipated.

Yeah.

And Colin

correctly points out we both have discussed big things on this podcast, and we discussed the pencil museum.

Without pointing out, the pencil museum has a big pencil,

which it does.

It's a big pencil.

How big?

Like, I, from memory, let's say five meters.

That's a big pencil.

And they made it like the way you make a normal pencil.

If I'm remembering this correctly, they used a chainsaw to sharpen it, to give it the point on the end once they finished making it.

Yeah.

So, anyway, Colin would like on location back to make a visit to Cumbria soon.

So one of our on location reporters has to get to Cumbria at some point.

I'll have a word with her.

I'll see if she's anywhere near it this year.

We also heard from Xander, who was the problem poser on episode 104.

This is when we were talking about Hannah Fry and wrapping the Earth.

And Xander said, Ding.

Thanks for looking into the paper Wrapping the Earth problem.

You are now officially my zeroth favorite online mathematician.

Oh, take it.

Yeah, you just just did a real triumphant

hands in the air.

Yeah.

Well, I was down a ding on this episode, so now I'm breaking even.

Okay, yeah, sure.

So, listeners and Matt, you're both even see Stevens again.

Woo!

Hugh,

on the theme of what size A series paper would wrap the earth, I said I hadn't gone in

a minute detail to work out if you could get a smaller piece to wrap the earth.

And I went up.

Hugh has done that working out.

They've worked out you could wrap the earth in an A negative 50 sheet.

And the reason I wasn't prepared to commit to that, and I went one bigger, was because the long edge of a A negative 50 is just shorter than the circumference of the earth.

So you can't quite get it all the way around.

They've worked out if you, instead of using that long edge.

So you've got an A4 piece of paper.

Yep.

And there's the long edge from there to there.

You can get a slightly longer line if instead of going all the way along the edge, you come in slightly and start in the corner and then do a diagonal at just

like a tiny angle almost following the edge, but in slightly, that line's ever so slightly longer than the edge.

Okay.

But now you've got less of the short edge to use.

And Hugh worked out.

If you come in on enough of an angle, like 0.1 radians, you get a long enough line to go around the Earth, and you've still got enough of the other edge to cover the rest of the earth.

So Hugh did did the clever lining up and working it out and has confirmed an A negative 50 sheet would be sufficient to wrap the earth.

Another practical problem solved.

Yeah, and in fact, I'm going to read out the rest of what Hugh said because this was the part I understood.

Oh.

Which was to make a cylinder the regular way by putting the two short sides together.

So you're making a cylinder out of paper.

Then you slide the short sides against each other so the ends of the line like if you were to fold roll up a poster but then slightly shift out the middle part so that it's not a perfect roll it's now sort of a you're getting a sort of um it's it's a cylinder that's at a jaunty angle that's the one and then now that means that you can fold the other ends to get around the earth good work you

yeah thanks you

That problem, I mean, that's a wrap.

Nice.

Thank you.

Speaking of thank yous, Slick.

I want to thank all of you for listening.

First of all, if you don't, then this is an awkward hassle.

I mean, then we've basically just paid a producer to sit there and listen to us talk.

That's it.

But then have the audacity to make them edit it for no one.

We should do that one time.

And they were just like, where are the microphones?

And we're like, yeah, just remember it.

Yeah, yeah.

If you could just dictate this just write it up later yeah dictated but not read

so that's

thank you

thank you for listening we really appreciate it uh and if you enjoyed it please tell anyone else you think might enjoy it we we

want to take over the world but in a nice way not like um mask

so We would also like to thank people who give us money that allow us to pay a producer to listen to this and then edit it later, so that it's a more enjoyable experience for you listening now.

And we'd like to thank our Patreon supporters by reading out three of them at random and mispronouncing their names.

On this episode, those three Patreon supporters are Chris

Epsom

O Ving,

Fred Eric, Ver E T

Ed Bang.

Thank you.

We really mean it.

We love you.

Matt,

thank you as well for being my

surf buddy.

That's a word, isn't it?

Your rip current

to your sandbar.

You're the Patrick Swayze to my Keanu Reeves.

Okay, yeah.

You're like the original one who actually actually knows about the stuff, and I'm undercover.

That explains a lot.

Yeah, it does.

It really does.

I also want to thank producer Laura Grimshaw,

who is the

wax

that

stops the boards from

rotting

and

makes them smooth on the water.

It keeps us afloat.

There you go.

I came up with a float.

Keeps afloat.

There it is.

Yeah.

And I think that's it.

Is that everyone I normally think?

I think it's everyone.

That's the same.

My mum, my dad,

my brother,

in alphabetical order.

D nine

D

nine

miss

G five

hit.

Oh

Do I hear the sound of sinking?

Nope.

Oh, really?

Have some regrets here.

If I'm hitting like

one end of like multiple parallel park ships, that's what you've done, haven't you?

Great, great, great, great, great, great.