103 = Heaps Splad and Paul’s Pad

Hello and welcome to A Problem Squared, the problem-solving podcast which is a bit like HMRC, in that it's taxing.

I'm your host, Beck Hill, a comedian, writer, and some might say, necessity, on account of all the essential public services I provide.

And I'm joined by your co-host, Matt Parker, a YouTuber, mathematician, and some might say, should not be raised any further on account of him already being very tall.

Somebody got their tax in on time just.

I was about to say, is this because we're recording in early Feb and the deadline for personal tax returns in the United Kingdom is the end of January?

For the previous tax year, as in 2023 to 2024?

Yes, it is, Matt.

That's the one.

oh there you go good work

yep the important thing is it's done now it got done yeah i actually got it done with four days to spare this time so um yeah

sorry to sorry to make this podcast so arousing so early

uh text chat

on this episode i've worked out which word is the most shifty i'm gonna do some interior decorating but in the imagination.

And we've got some.

Any other business?

Any other.

I mean, any other business kind of works for you.

Yeah, true.

Yeah, you're right.

Should have just been in a tax sense.

Any other business tax.

Any other business deductibles?

Matt, how are you?

I'm good.

My tax was all filed on time.

And I was just over in the USA.

You were?

Partly doing some filming, a bit of filming here and there.

Went to the MIT mystery hunt.

I got to sit in a room for three days solving puzzles.

So instead of being at home, sat on my laptop doing maths, I got to sit in a room in Cambridge, Massachusetts on my laptop doing maths.

Which was kind of funny.

Don't underestimate the amount of people listening to this podcast right now doing maths alone

somewhere who wished that they were doing maths with other people.

That's my life.

That's why you guys listen to us, right?

And it was a lot of fun.

I was there, quote-unquote, undercover, as in, I didn't do anything public-facing.

I didn't tell anyone what team I'm on.

I'm just blending into the sea of people solving puzzles for a weekend.

Did you get recognized?

It was a huge amount of fun.

I mean, if I can walk around the MIT maths department without being recognized, I've done something wrong in my career.

It turns out I've done a lot wrong in my career, including not going to the maths department at MIT.

There you go.

You know, that's that famous catchphrase in Showbiz.

So the puzzles are overly complicated.

That's kind of the theme.

And my policy is if I can contribute one step to one puzzle per day, not even solve a whole puzzle, just contribute a little bit, then

I've achieved something.

And the teams who win have like 100, 150 members working on these things.

Whereas I'm in a small team of 20 people who have no ambition of winning whatsoever, but just enjoying hanging out for a weekend solving puzzles.

One puzzle started like one of those text-based adventures.

It's like you're in a room.

Oh, yeah.

Exits are south.

North and Dennis.

Yeah.

You start in a room, you start to wander around.

There's maybe like five or six of us all looking at it at once because the puzzles get unlocked gradually.

And we started kind of scribbling a map.

And then eventually we realize the maze we're in, walking around talking to people, is a Sudoku puzzle.

It's a nine by nine

series of rooms, dungeons.

And all the people you're talking to are giving you the rules for the Sudoku puzzle you're in.

But it's also got this layer of say, oh, did you know everyone in this maze lies?

Or did you know Cheryl always lies, but Dennis doesn't?

Or something like that.

So, first of all,

you've got to talk to everyone in the maze, working out who's lying, who's not.

From that, we then get the rules for the Sudoku.

So, this puzzle challenge is like Punch Drunk Theatre or Yumi Bum Bum Train, as in one of those immersive theater things.

But it's maths.

Okay.

there was a point where i was walking around mit

and if we walked through a building that was a square number you had to put on a pair of groucho marks glasses and if you were in a building whose number had a factor in common with 42 you had to put a towel over your head right and if you didn't follow the rules they would spot you it was a lot of fun they gave every team a radio and at the beginning they're like oh you can tune the radio in to like the official puzzle station and we'll give you bits of information and updates.

And it will just play smooth jazz in between.

And if you solved a puzzle correctly, the system would know and it would play a jingle that you'd solved it on the radio in the room.

That's so good.

But then after a while, we realized one of the puzzles you have to solve is the radio.

And I didn't get involved.

I was working on a different puzzle.

But behind me, there were people holding the radio and they're like, you push this button and then you hold this leg and it plays a note.

And then at one point they realized it works like a theremin.

So yeah, you had to play a tune on the radio.

And then later on they realized you had to get a torch and shine it into the headphone jack.

There was a light sensor at the bottom of the headphone jack.

So you had to

shine light in it to get it to respond.

Where can I get one of these?

The radio was incredible.

That was a big step change from previous mystery hunts, having this incredible bit of money.

where the team who wins writes the next one so can you imagine if on game shows if you won it meant that you got to host the next night you had to run the game you gotta host time i think jeopardy does that sometimes yeah i would do that simply so that then like i would get really good at general knowledge win a game show and write one where it was very very silly like all the answers are bum or versions of the word bum I can believe that.

But to close the first story, I just then wrote some terrible Python code to solve the Sudoku.

All the puzzles are publicly available now.

I will share the dungeon Sudoku puzzle.

I would love to know if anyone, because I gave up and just wrote Python code to solve it.

I would love to know if anyone can solve it.

Apparently, you could solve it without writing code.

See if you can do the Sudoku.

Did you guys actually

finish?

No, no, not the slash.

We think we might have come in the top 60 teams just based on how far through we got.

60 teams.

That's so many people.

So that's how I spent my vacation time this year.

Abec, what puzzles have you been working on?

Well firstly, one thing you did miss out, which I am desperate to hear.

Did you get your phone?

Oh,

how dare you leave us on such a cliff?

That's valid.

That's valid.

The phone did not make it in time for me to pick it up before I went to America.

Lucy went to pick it up on her way to America, but the lost and Found at Waterloo Station is not open on the weekend.

I got back on the way home last night.

I popped in.

I walked in.

The Lost and Found run by Southwest Railway is not an organized outfit.

It's chaos.

And I said, I haven't been told, but this is the day I lost it, and here's where it is.

And they went out the back, they came back, and they had it.

They had my phone.

It had survived.

I had a bit of paper on it that said Matthew Parker.

And I was like, that's amazing.

Then, however, they're like, oh, we have to plug it in and charge it up so you can unlock it and prove it's your phone.

It finally turns on, but a little screen comes up that says this phone's locked because I'd reported it as lost.

And they're like, oh, we can't give it to you unless

you can put your code.

I'm like, but I've got a new, because I got a new sim and put it in an old phone.

I've cancelled the sim.

But I've got...

ID that says Matthew Parker.

And it came with a bit of paper that said Matthew Parker.

but then they couldn't find the piece of paper, they lost

in the two minutes.

And then there was a big confusion over suddenly, there were two phones, and I'm like, no, that's my phone.

And the staff were like, well, whose phone is this?

I'm like, I don't know, it's your lost and found.

And another person comes in, and they're like, why are there two phones?

And then eventually they realize it's one of their phones.

It was their work phone.

I'm doing my best to stay calm.

I just say, oh, well, you lost it and you found it.

That's very on brand.

And eventually they find the bit of paper.

They put it in the bin.

They find the bit of paper, confirm my name, and they gave me back my phone.

And so I have

less than 24 hours ago.

That is exciting.

All the Clojure fans are happy.

How have you been back?

I've been good working on my Adelaide Fringe show.

Once again, for anyone who forgot, it's Beckhill.

Guess who's back back again Beckhill's back tell a friend it's at the Adelaide fringe from 11th of March till the 15th of March um I joined a gym and I got a personal trainer because I'm trying this new thing while I'm an adult and I was so sore after and I didn't do that much

and I was like my muscles are so sore I'm still gonna have a hot bath and my mum lent me some like menthol roll-on because I was like oh do you have any deep heat she's like no I've got this stuff from the time that she like hurt her neck.

And it's like, it's basically just pure menthol, right?

And she was like, yeah, you just roll that on.

And so I was like, cool.

So I had my bath and I came out and I just rolled it on, you know, like you would sunscreen, right?

Like I just rubbed it into my arms and my sides and my legs, my thighs.

It says it has a cooling effect.

I deeply underestimated the cooling effect.

It made me feel so cold that my entire entire body broke out in like goosebumps.

But I had to turn off the air conditioning and open up the back door, go out like in clothes.

I was clothed by this.

Let's heating.

And standing out in the sunshine trying to heat up.

It didn't work.

Like is your body like physically cold or you just have the sensation of being cold?

So the thing is, is when I was like all wrapped up, I could feel the sensation of sweating.

So my body was sweating, but because

of the way it works, it felt cool to the touch, and my body was reacting as if it was cold.

So, all my arm hairs were stood up and

I felt physically cold, but I could not hear it.

You were actually quite warm.

Yeah.

Right.

It was the most confusing.

I like I tried to wash it off.

Wow.

All that did was spread it.

So then my entire body felt this way rather than just like

the elements.

Yep.

Yep.

Would not recommend.

Anyway, that's my news.

It's no

maths puzzle.

But I think I might just have to use this whenever it's like stupid degrees.

You cool down.

I think this might be the answer.

There you go.

Our first problem comes from Hugh, who says, how many English words are also words after they've been put through a Caesar cipher?

Is there a pair of words which are Caesar ciphers of each other, where there's a semantic link between the words or a common theme to them, or some other interesting relationship.

Good question.

Matt, explain the words that have just come out of my mouth.

Now, what Hugh's asking is how many catchphrases can Caesar

cipher if Caesar succinctly, yeah.

Yeah, it does sound like the beginning of a tongue twister.

It does.

Semantically.

Caesar ciphers seashells by the.

Anyway, the Rubicon.

Right, so here's the thing: you've got codes and you've got ciphers and a code is a way of transforming information like encoding it but a code traditionally is like something that can be undone like it's publicly known how it was encoded and you can decode it yourself sure so like a barcode A barcode is not a secret.

Well, everyone could know if they look up and read the specifications how to turn a number into a barcode and vice versa.

Okay.

Now a cipher...

No one can decipher.

Oh, wait, hang on.

Bingo.

Yes.

So deciphering is,

you need to be in the know.

So these are not rigorous categories, but roughly speaking, you have to know the special information to be able to use them.

Oh, okay.

So the same thing, but people who use ciphers are arrogant.

Correct.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

They're in their own special club, and no one else can read their special thoughts.

And throughout history, people have wanted to write things down in a a secretive way and not get caught, including Julius Caesar.

So, the story goes, Caesar used

what is now called the Caesar cipher to be able to encode their information.

And all you do in a Caesar cipher is you take a word and then you move all the letters forward in the alphabet.

So, for example, the word back,

B-E-C,

you could cipher that.

So back becomes CFD, and we would call that a Caesar cipher of one because you move them forward or one.

You could move them forward two, and you'd be DGE.

You could go forward three, you'd be EHF.

The good thing about a Caesar cipher is it's very easy to do.

If you know the alphabet in order, it's very easy to Caesar cipher, you just move them all forward.

It's very close to Big Latin.

In that it's not particularly secure.

No.

Because what you could do,

if someone gave you you know, DGE and you're like, oh, what could that mean?

You could just check, there's only 26, well, 25 actually, distances you can shift it in the alphabet.

So you get websites where you just type in a word or an encrypted word and it will give you all the shifts.

And you just look down to the one that makes sense.

So it's a reasonably standard way of encoding things, but it's not a particularly good way of doing it.

I'll say.

The most recent example I could find of someone genuinely using a Caesar cipher to actually try and encrypt information was 2006

when a mafia boss, a Sicilian mafia boss,

was using

a Sicilian criminal was Caesar ciphering shift of three forward, but they wouldn't turn it back into letters, they'd leave it as a number.

So A became four,

B became five.

And would you believe, the police broke it instantly and they were arrested.

Like more complicated ones get way harder to encrypt and decrypt.

So there's something to be said for if you just want to write a note down and you don't want it to be immediately obvious what you've written, Caesar cipher.

What Hugh is asking

is

what if you just by happenstance

sees a shift

a word and it becomes another valid word.

Right.

We had the we were using the word back before, and we got to a Caesar shift of three,

which makes it EHF.

If you do a shift of four on the word back, it becomes the word fig, F-I-G.

The letters are the same positions in the alphabet, just shifted by four.

And that's my lucky number.

And that's your lucky number.

There you go.

So, Hughes's question is kind of

is there a meaning between

two words that you can shift between

that one becomes the other using a Caesar cipher.

Now, I try to not do this too often.

Yes.

But obviously, I have the famous text document with all the words, and I have the ability to throw some terrible Python code together.

Now, there's going to be a lot of responses.

So, what I did was prioritize either words that become even more than two valid words if you shift them

and longer words that become other words.

And so I wrote some code yesterday.

I set it going.

It took 4.29 hours to check all the words, and then it gave me every single

word that Caesar ciphers into another word, which it thinks is a real word.

So, for example, the word bum, B-U-M,

will become the word has.

Now, as we've discussed before, when when I've done this, not every word in this set of words we would consider a will word.

Oh, well, so has bum, that's a real word.

Yeah.

It also becomes the word vog, a Hawaiian word for smog.

Vog, volganic smog.

Shun becomes perk, also becomes lang and cracks.

Papa becomes dodo.

I don't know if that's that exciting.

Oh, it is if it's a papa dodo.

Aww.

All these words came out, and a bunch of the words are not particularly interesting words.

I decided to try and limit it, because there's so many that have four letters.

Yeah.

To only look at five letters and above.

And there are no solutions where you get like three words that all are the same shift, but there are quite a few, not too many, for two.

So Bec, I don't know if you have your email within reach.

I've just sent you an email.

Yes, I've got your email.

Cipher words.

So I got to the usual point in my terrible Python code where I wrote some code.

It gave me all the results.

And then I'm like, well, how do I work out which ones are the most linked?

And part of my brain's like, oh, maybe you could get a dictionary of definitions and import that and see which words have the most overlap in their definitions or which words appear in the definitions of other words.

And I'm like, you know what?

The human brain's way better at this.

I think we just stare at them and pick the two that we think are the most linked.

Oh, okay.

I've already found my favorite.

I mean, I think you can probably guess it as well.

This works very well as like choose your like burlesque name or something.

Yeah, if you had to get a band name, you could pick something off this list.

Okay, I've just found another one that's my favorite.

Porous.

Share them with us.

All right.

So my first favorite one, which only kind of works because it's not the right word, but belly rubby.

Belly rubby.

So I think it's Billy, B-E-D-L-B,

Belly.

And then I-U-B-B-Y.

Belly Rubby is very funny.

Belly Rubby is my favorite so far.

And then Thumbs Manful

is definitely a Sicilian mafia name, if ever I heard one.

Yes.

Thumbs Manful.

Thumbs Manful needs to go up there with Gleb as a character on the show.

As a character on the show.

I was looking at Beef's Adder.

I mean, Beefs and the word Adder are like semantically

that close, like linked.

Inkier and purpley.

Having a purple tinge.

Okay, inkier and purpley is my current pitch, but it sounds like you've got a better one.

I've got the perfect one, Matt.

Toffs Sneer.

Toff Sneer.

That's really good.

Toff's sneer.

There it is.

Ooh, sass mummy.

That's

sassy mummy, S-A-S-S-E.

Sassy mummy.

Sassy mummy.

That's what I'm going to call my mum from now on.

Not mother.

S-A-S-S-E.

Sluice or lock.

Actually, I mean, there's ones where my brain just can recognize a story.

So they're not actually linked.

Also, they're six-letter words.

This capped out at six letters.

I couldn't find any with more than six letters.

There's a bunch of five,

a fair number of six.

Then there are three sevens.

The bottom three are sevens, but none of them are particularly good.

Sulphur

Primero.

Cubed melon is good.

Cubed melon.

Yeah.

Cushy wombs.

Curly wolfs is fun as well.

Cushy wombs.

Yeah.

Like heaps splad.

Yeah, like that sounds like something we'd say in Adelaide.

Oh, heaps splad, mate.

Oh, it's heaps splad.

Splad is a Scottish word, apparently, that means to be long-winded.

That sounded like me.

So I'm heap splad.

You're heap splad.

There you go.

Oh, this is really fun.

A reminder, the full list will be made available if people want to search through for better ones.

Can I get a jumbo tulie, please?

Sure.

What name is that under?

Muffs Sally.

Right, thanks.

Thanks, Muffs Sally.

We'll call your name out when it's ready.

All right, I think I'm, I think I've.

I think maybe maybe inkier, purpley

are the words that are the closest in meaning.

Excuse me?

You think inkier, purpley is better than toff's sneer?

Toff's sneer

is better.

I'm only inkier, purpley, because they're close in meaning words.

It's no thumbs manful.

It's no belly rubby.

It's no belly rubby.

Look, what would thumbs manful say about this?

Hugh, we've narrowed it down to two.

Does Hugh turn into any words?

Sneer.

Oh, Hugh.

H-U-G-H.

Nothing.

Oh, sorry, Hugh.

Sorry, Hugh.

Henceforth, your nickname is Thumbs.

So, the question was: Is there a pair of words which are Caesar ciphers of each other where there's a semantic link between the words or a common theme to them or some other interesting relationship?

I think you've answered that.

I think we've both answered that.

Yes, there are.

Yes, there are.

It It does exist.

Yes.

Minor debate over which one's the best, but they definitely exist.

Yeah, I mean, to be fair, some of them, there are no themes or relationships, but they're very fun words to say.

And that is the thing.

They're linked by both being funny.

Yes.

Wait, can you find another one for Ding?

Oh, Ding, what a call.

Well, I'm just the Dings are going in the WhatsApp.

Okay.

So there's Ding.

You could have just said no.

You know, a shift of six is jottom.

Yeah, that's probably K-pun is maybe my favorite, which is, I guess, a thousand pun.

Or Korean pun.

If you do a thousand puns, you're hitting one K-pun.

A shift of 12 from Ding is puzz, which is what users.

Puzzle heads.

Say if we can't be bothered saying the whole word puzzles.

Are you doing some puzz?

Yeah, mate.

No, is the answer.

So, ding, I'll give you a Mr.

WP.

I'll change my name to Wathew Parker.

There we go.

Our next problem was sent in by Paul, who

say, oh, okay, now, this is a great start.

They're pointing out it's the stupidest problem they've ever had.

but they're actually losing sleep over it.

Now, there's a lot of text here, so bear with me.

What Paul would like to say is basically they're going to redo their room soon, and their bed is currently in the closet, but Paul doesn't fit there, so he's going to move it, which requires rearranging everything.

I mean, I'm with you, Paul.

Get that bed out of the closet.

The desk is currently straight across from the bed space and under a window.

However, that's where the bed has to go, or else Paul won't have enough space in the room.

It's pretty small.

So, Paul doesn't know if they want their desk to go in the closet or if they just want to get rid of the desk altogether.

Their other issue with the room redesign is they might not have any more space for their dresser, which is they're keen to point out not in the closet.

Paul adds that their bed is, well, they say una piazza, which we believe means queen bed, which means it's not huge, but again, neither is their room.

So, Nanny, this all reads a lot like a puzzle at the mystery hunt.

Bec, I believe you're way ahead of us.

I wouldn't use those words exactly.

Oh.

But I would say that as someone who has lived in a very small flat in London, in a very small room, and has had to work with small spaces a lot of the time, this is something I really enjoy.

thinking about you're a space optimizer so for instance have you considered getting rid of your bed and replacing it with an airbed?

Now, yes, it will both give you more space and some hilarious stories in the future about living with an airbed.

Genuinely, it will allow you to roll it up and get it out of the way to give you more space during the day if necessary.

But if that doesn't tickle your fancy, I would suggest looking into combining your dresser and desk.

Oh, if there is a way that you can store whatever you keep in your dresser, I'm imagining by dresser, you mean like the stack of drawers that you would normally have undies and things in, and then the top is where you'd have, I don't know, a hairbrush and if you're me, various tissues and things you've emptied from your pockets when you get home.

Coins,

some rocks, particularly shiny bottle caps.

I would say that those are two services that you don't tend to use at the same time and can very easily become a workspace.

So it's very much about combining uses.

One thing that can do two jobs, half the furniture.

Oh man, I am such a fan of that.

I did genuinely look into those bunk beds that have desks under them.

Oh, yeah.

And I think that might actually be a solution to your problem, depending on whether you are in a position to change your bed.

I had a loft bed when I first moved into a tiny flat in London, which is basically what you're describing.

It's a bed that's elevated, and then under it, I installed

like a very thick bit of dowel wood from a hardware store and suspended that underneath to double up as my wardrobe because then I could hang all my clothes on that.

Nice.

And there was a bit more storage space on the street.

And then you could turn your wardrobe into a recording studio.

Exactly.

So there's your bed, wardrobe, recording, studio, and one.

The other benefit was,

I'm not particularly good at waking up in the morning and getting going quickly.

I'm very good at like snoozing my alarm and not getting out of bed.

But I used to keep my alarm, my phone with the alarm on it, at the bottom of the ladder to get up to the bed.

In the morning, nothing wakes you up like descending a ladder quickly when your muscles aren't quite responding properly yet.

I'd end up in a crumpled heap at the bottom and then snooze the alarm, but now I'm out of bed.

You know, off and racing.

Yeah.

If you're sitting there, Paul, and you're like, hey, I'm an eligible bachelor.

This is going to ruin my style.

Matt is married.

Yeah.

And I'm doing all right.

Len, look, I'm just going to tell you some things that happened in my life.

I owned a loft bed.

I got rid of the loft bed and got a normal bed.

I met Lucy.

No, she was married.

Now, hush, I don't know.

You guys would have got married way sooner if you hadn't.

It could have happened in any other order.

That's the order in which it happened.

But in order to get rid of a loft bed and get married, you need to get a loft bed first.

Yes.

Loft bed.

The loft bed.

Also, loft bed.

There's a skew instability with a loft bed where it can very easily move around.

So you also want to pin it to the wall.

Otherwise, it's terrifying.

Good note.

Speaking of screwing screwing things into the wall, a Murphy bed is another option, one that will fold down from the wall.

Yeah.

If you don't like these ideas of being the thing you sleep on, then how about you go one step smaller?

If you're like, Bec, I can't get rid of my dresser and I do need a separate desk to sit at.

There are some really simple ways to create fold-down desks where essentially it's just hinged to the wall.

Bring that baby down.

I hate to keep instant desks.

Talk about the same flat, but we did the same thing in the kitchen because we've never dining space.

You can use it as an ironing board.

And we then installed quite chunky hooks on the wall.

So when we weren't using the dining room chairs, we could hang them on the wall.

Like three ducks as ornaments hung on the wall, like a flight of ducks or something.

We had a flight of chairs.

Were they foldable chairs?

No, no, no.

Full

proper IKEA dining room chairs.

I quite like that.

It was a flat with more headroom than we needed and not a lot of floor space.

So if things could go up, they did.

Well, on that note, there have been instances where people have made sort of a ceiling Murphy bed.

Like on a winch?

Oh.

Oh, it's like permanently.

It's a loft bed, but the supports go up instead of down.

And yeah, it just lowers a bed down from the ceiling.

I would be worried about it falling.

Yes.

I hope it fails safe.

It doesn't just plunk out of the sky one day because

something's finally released.

I also have my own personal recommendation, which is you can get quite a lot of really good hanging storage things as well to go on the back of doors.

So I've got a wardrobe, but on the inside of the wardrobe door, I have like a hanging thing.

That one's for shoes, but you can get them where they're like shelves and stuff.

So if you do need to choose between a desk or a dresser and you'd prefer a desk, then most of my undies and socks and everything are organized in like a plastic pocket shoe thing on the inside of my wardrobe which also means that i can see the choices of all my socks and undies and stuff more easily i um also really enjoyed some suggestions that other people made where someone had laid down cabinets like cabinet wardrobes and sort of built them on the floor so it became like a platform floor with trapdoors in it.

Oh, that doesn't sound like the wardrobe would have been

walking on the top of a wardrobe.

In that way, but well, I suppose it depends how heavy you are.

Yeah.

It reminds me a lot of the van life videos.

And putting in a fake floor or something to put storage in underneath that, that sort of stuff.

Yeah, you gotta love a fake floor.

I think the simple solution is don't worry about the wardrobe anymore or the dresser.

Just make sure you've put like a metal plate over the entire ceiling or inside the roof if you've got access to that and then sew a single magnet into every item of clothing you own.

Then when you want to put it away, you just throw it

and it just sticks to the ceiling.

Yeah,

that's a great idea.

Or just really powerful reverse air conditioning.

Exactly.

Now, you're going to need a lot of velcro, but.

It'd be so fast to get undressed.

That then solves two problems.

space

and

how annoying it is to get undressed.

I hate having to get dressed and undressed.

It's my, I hate it.

So you go.

Yeah, just get

invented machine.

One of those Velcro walls, but just the hooks half, and then you just throw your clothes at it and they'll stick.

Done.

Oh.

And you don't need a bed.

You could just walk up it and you'll get it.

You could put on really fluffy pajamas at night and then you just run and step on the wall and that's it.

Sleep like an astronaut.

Just get your mini tramp.

That's all you need in that room.

And someone with a broom to kind of come like get you down in the middle.

You just very slowly peel off during the night.

and that's what wakes you up in the morning when you're thumf.

Yeah.

Now,

why stop there?

Why not just cover everything in glue?

I mean, who needs things anyway?

That's yeah, yeah, that's the other solution: is approach a Zen-like detachment to material possessions.

I say, get rid of everything

that you own.

Just be naked in your room on your

own.

Paul sat on a single chair

in the middle of an empty room.

I'm cold.

I wish I owned things.

Gets up.

Better go to work.

Hangs the chair on the wall.

Walks out.

You don't need clothes if you're not going to leave.

True.

Glues is clothes on for the day.

Why is he glue them on?

You're the one who's done it covering everything in glue.

Peels them off the glue wall.

Yep, here we go.

Yeah, that's it.

Just pats them on.

If you get an airbed, then you can get everything to stick to you with static.

So

I feel like we're pretty much answered.

Now,

I don't know if I can get the ding out of...

the back of the door stories just yet.

We've given Paul a lot to think about.

We've given him.

Look, Paul did start up with this is the stupidest problem I've ever had.

I don't think that's true.

I think comfortably living in the space you have available is very important.

So we're on your side, Paul.

We're just trying to get your bed out of the closet.

That's all we're doing here.

And I feel like, Beck, you've got a lot of very good suggestions.

Well, I did notice that Paul said that the

desk is opposite the bed, like across there, under the window, where Paul loves to have the desk, but really needs the bed there so that there's enough space for everything else.

What if you just make the desk a bit taller so that your bed can slide under it and then you can sit up in your bed at your desk?

Yep, it'll be like I'm googling bed desk now.

That scene in a film where, in a fit of passion, they have to sweep everything off a desk, except it's just going to bed normally at night

and then nap.

yeah

that is kind of how i live to be honest and i do kind of do have a bed desk in that i just sleep with things on the bed with me

yeah i can't do that i need to clear the bed before i sleep i couldn't sleep on a bed desk the besk a man can get i think i've found the solution you guys so

it's the it's like a desk you can put over your lap in bed but if you lie down, the desk also tilts up so it's basically vertical.

I assume in this scenario, the laptop is glued to the desk.

And then you can

strapped it.

It's not like Velcro.

And you can continue working with the laptop suspended above you.

That's something from a dystopian nightmare film.

Get back in your work pod.

But it's an option.

It's an option.

It's better than a whole bunch of elastic bands along the walls so you can tuck everything in.

I don't know.

Anyway, Paul,

Velcro wall, they're opposite magnet ceiling.

Yeah, we've given you a lot to think about.

Yeah, if you get magnet wall, sorry, I know you keep trying to land this one, Matt.

That's fine.

We're back on magnet cells.

If you had the opposite, like two positives or two negative walls, magnet walls, right, opposite each other, you wall, like something metal, could you then be just suspended in mid-air, like those desktop toys?

Yes, yes.

Why not?

You wouldn't necessarily need the other magnet.

You just need magnet ceiling and gravity.

And if you got it just right, you've got to hover.

So levitate.

No, more likely, depends how strong the magnets are.

You jump in the air, your clothes will get ripped off and stuck to the ceiling, and you'd land naked.

Ready for the glue bed.

I don't think Paul was expecting us to have so many answers that required Paul to be naked.

But,

you know, people don't come to a problem squared because they want to keep the key.

Look, people don't come to a problem.

Because they want to keep their clothes on.

This is not a serious problem.

I'm giving that a dink.

So, in conclusion, I don't know.

Paul, let us know what you do.

Just in general.

Just in general.

Why do you even need a roommate?

I'm quite invested in Paul's journey now.

So do I.

Paul, just report back to you.

Do you need a roommate, Paul?

Check in.

Say hi.

Let us know how you're doing.

And if you happen to use anything we've said, let us know and we'll celebrate with a ding.

Yeah.

And just sleep well, knowing that no matter what position you end up in, it's better than mine.

Just don't buy an airbed.

And now on to any other business income.

It works.

It works.

Yes.

So we'll start with Joe, who said, hey both.

I was listening to episode 101.

Sorry, 101.

And had a strange sense of deja vu towards the end.

I went back.

to episode 084.

The theme was dice.

And Matt refers to producer Lauren Armstrong Carter as having snake eyes, just like Beck did in 101 at the end, where the theme was board games.

I don't know if this backs up some conspiracy that she actually does have snake eyes, but it's suspicious that it's happened twice.

Keep up the great work.

Is it suspicious that it happened?

Blood of Joe.

Or

are snake eyes are one thing that happens twice.

Snake eyes.

We snake-eyed snake eyes.

Yeah.

I mean, producer Lauren does have snake eyes.

well, she's a snake, yeah, exactly.

Sheds her skin every

quarter.

You should watch her eat like a brownie.

Her entire jaw unhinges.

I thought it was her professionalism where she was just trying to eat it as fast as possible so we can get to the recording.

Quietly, yeah, yeah.

I thought all producers did that.

You heard it here first, folks.

So, why does she bask in the sun to regulate her body temperature?

Is that related?

No, no, just uh

just likes getting a tan.

The British, you know, you you learn more every day.

Yep.

Blake's written in because in episode 102,

Beck was solving the problem where someone wanted to take credit for a paper they were writing, but they weren't allowed to put their name on it.

And Beck has some great suggestions for how to, you know, fingerprint your work.

Blake says that decades ago, their dad was working on writing an international standard document.

but wasn't allowed to take the credit.

So what he did, here we go, he

ended up doing one of the graphs, he replaced some of the dots with his name.

It looked normal, but if you were to search for his name, it would pop up.

So I guess if you make text small enough, it looks like a dot.

That tracks.

So instead of just doing a dot on a, I assume a scatter plot where you've just got lots of dots,

one of the dots was Blake's dad's name, very small.

And if they're

if it's not an image, if it's like actual text, if you search for the name, it'll still come up as being in the document.

There you go.

We also heard from Zach, who said, we actually heard quite a few people write in about this.

So

thank you for representing all those people, Zach.

I know that they didn't choose you as a leader.

You're kind of like a dictator in that sense.

But

you have pointed out that you enjoyed all of the recent exciting reports on big things, and you just came across a place in Kansas

called the World's Largest Collection of the World's Smallest Versions of the World's Largest Things.

Great.

Yeah, this looks fantastic.

We had several of you point out that arguably that could mean that it's the most dense amount of large things in a single area.

Yep.

Yes, in a sense.

I guess what you would need is the largest, smallest,

largest

thing

in order for because we did specify they need to be big things, not small things of big things.

Yeah, it's a model of the big things.

I feel like you're just turning it back into the thing.

It's

like you just have a banana.

You're like, what's that?

That's a scale model of the world's biggest banana.

If we go to the world's biggest collection of the world's smallest versions of the largest things, and in the gift shop they don't sell a scale model of the museum, I'm going to be very upset.

Oh, that would be fantastic.

I have noticed on their website they list all of the big things from all of the states.

I'm not seeing any list

of big things from elsewhere around the world.

That would solve our other problem with finding a canonical list.

Okay, so next time,

either on location Beck or on location Matt or anywhere near Kansas,

we will endeavor to drop by.

I'm going.

I'm going this place.

We also heard back from a random problem poser who had a problem that they were trying to catch up through the back catalogue of a problem squared, listening to one episode a day.

And we released an episode a month.

I mean, as we pointed out at the time, we since switched to releasing one every two weeks, but they wanted to know how long until they caught up.

We did the maths because we don't hold back for our fine listeners, old and new.

However, they ended up not listening to one a day.

They got out of the habit, but they have finally caught up now.

And they give us a ding they're just satisfied we solve their problem but then they didn't stick to their half of the deal yeah you gotta stick to your half of the deal guys paul's sitting naked in a room somewhere yeah exactly paul commits unbelievable

and our last bit of any other business we heard from herbie who said that uh matt's chat about the year 2000 in episode 101 had me wondering when the first New Year's glasses were made in the shape of the numbers.

Ooh, great question.

Because I think we suggested that was when it started.

But actually, Herbie points out that they were first made in 1990.

1990?

Yep.

They've given us a link to an article about it,

which is fantastic.

The untold story of New Year's novelty glasses.

There's a whole article.

It's brilliant.

That's amazing.

Loads of photos.

Patents.

This is the patent for the 2001.

No.

And in fact, from from the years 1992 to 1999, it's great.

It's great.

This is fantastic.

This is the sort of...

This is the stuff we're after, guys.

Be more Herbie, right?

This is great.

They've also sent us a link to a few people wearing them in some news footage.

They said, I don't know when they became popular.

I wasn't forming permanent memories in 2000.

Okay, all right.

Well,

sure.

How young you are.

But I thought it was interesting and not what I would have assumed.

Yeah, you're right.

Thank you, Herbie.

That's really interesting.

What Herbie's done?

Had a thought, had a problem, and not just made it our problem, solved it, and then reported it back.

Well, well ding, Herbie.

Well ding.

Well ding indeed.

Can we make some ding glasses?

We should.

Yeah, the D and the G.

G, and then the I and the N are really close.

The N has to be over your nose.

The N hooks on your nose.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

And speaking of people who listen and go out of their way to help us out, we want to give a special shout out to our lovely Patreon supporters who make this show possible by financially supporting us so that we can justify doing it, so that we can pay our wonderful team to make it happen.

And we'd like to thank you, amongst other things, by giving you some bonus episodes and

Christmas cards and whatnot, by reading out three of our Patreon supporters at random and mispronouncing their names.

And on this episode, those Patreon supporters are

Yo Mapai.

I think I've actually used that sentence before.

Yeah, you definitely have.

At Hannah Sears.

Lackrash.

I just really like lack rash.

Lunderscore crash.

Oh, you pronounced the underscore.

Oh, there you go.

I thought it was a silent underscore.

Thank you so much for supporting us.

We really appreciate it.

And we thank everybody for listening.

I can't believe people listen to this.

It still blows my mind.

Thank you for joining us on these strange and wonderful days.

Wow.

Landed it.

And like an auditor coming in to correct me just then,

is my fabulous co-host, Matt Parker.

I want to thank him,

and especially the accountant, Lauren Armstrong Carter.

Not literally an accountant, but is someone who holds us accountable.

Thank you.

Old snake eyes.

Old snake eyes.

Oh, no, now we've done it three times.

That doesn't work.

Oh,

quick.

Is that good luck or bad luck?

That's battleship.

All right, shall I go?

B six

B

six

miss

G

Seven

G seven

G seven

Hit

Oh,

that's a stunning revelation.

A cluster.