102 = Copyright Traps and Saturday Night Gaps

Hello and welcome to A Problem Squared, the problem-solving podcast, which is a lot like The Big Banana, which is a big thing

in Queensland, in Australia.

And much like the big banana, the podcast has been around for longer than people expect.

It's a long-running...

What are we like five years now?

Actually, I think the big banana is in New South Wales.

Is it in New South Wales?

It's such a Queenslandy thing, though.

Come on.

So, for new listeners who are joining in, yes, you got five years of back catalogue, over a hundred episodes waiting for you before this one.

But welcome aboard.

Thank you for starting here.

And last episode, Cloths Harbour is in New South Wales.

It's in New South Wales.

I've been live fact-checked.

That is my co-host, Beck Hill, who is a lot like the Big Banana in New South Wales.

Very colourful, very colourful character larger than life and colourful and thank you yeah i think completely covered in fiberglass covered in fiberglass was originally mainly concrete now has a fiberglass shell that works when i was i'm now at first i was six times bigger than what i am and now i'm seven times bigger than that you were enlarged twice so in the previous episode on location back went to visit the big banana which is why i'm using this as the introduction and i don't know why we started many many episodes ago doing analogy introductions.

And we've kind of just run with it ever since.

So that's what we do.

I'm Matt Parker, mathematician.

A lot like the big banana in that

involves a lot of working out in great detail on graph paper.

I feel like that's something we have in common.

This is the episode you're listening to.

That's wait, that's it?

That's it.

Well, what do you want?

Not like you're largely appealing.

What?

I don't do jokes.

We've been through this.

And on this episode.

I'm delving deep into how to make your mark.

I've had a look at what days they air Saturday Night Live.

It's a business.

Spoilers

are a lot of Saturdays.

Anyway, carry on.

And I'm assuming there'll be some other business.

Any other banana-ness?

Ah, it was right there.

It was right there.

It was right there.

Big and obvious.

I hope you excuse me for that big slip up.

Oh, well done.

Two jokes already.

Burning through our quota.

Man, we're giving the listeners false hope.

So Bec, how have you been?

I'm good.

As we talked about in the last episode, I am back in Australia.

You are?

For the next few months.

It's a long trip.

I have had such stereotypical things happen already since I got back.

So we went down to visit my family.

in Grafton, which is like halfway between Sydney and Brisbane.

Where is it relative to the Big Banana?

About an hour away.

Okay, good, good, good.

An hour north.

An hour north.

Gotcha.

They have a lovely BMB on the river there.

Really, really beautiful.

I'm very, very fortunate.

And been about

five years since I was last there.

Oh, yeah.

Sometimes when I'm away from home, I forget we are living and walking stereotypes.

Oh, yeah.

So we were having dinner.

And a kangaroo came in.

There's a wild kangaroo on the land

who my auntie calls Holly.

Holly the kangaroo.

Yeah, Holly could smell that we were having a nice meal and wanted some chips.

So she just hopped into the house

and she was fed some chips.

Oh, wow.

Now, I've never seen a kangaroo eat chips.

No, this

it turns out Holly's a really big fan of Vegemide on bread.

Oh my goodness.

Look, as a nation, we're trying to be taken seriously.

I'm surprised the kangaroo wasn't wearing a a hat with corks hanging off it.

Come on.

Well, no, she was indoors.

Oh, that's true.

It's not you know rude to leave it on, yeah.

So that happened.

She's not an animal.

Oh, no way.

That's a very stereotypical Aussie thing.

Then a very Adelaide thing happened.

I got back.

I did support for a comedian over here called Hamilton.

He was my mentor when I first started 20 years ago.

And I got to do support for him again as he was filming his special at Rhino Room.

And when I got there, they're celebrating 25 years of Adelaide comedy.

Oh, wow.

Adelaide Comedy having the brand Adelaide Comedy.

And so Channel 44, local TV station,

covering that.

And they said, could we interview you just about your experiences on the Adelaide comedy scene?

Was getting mic'd up.

And then sort of about after five minutes, just said to the production manager who was also shooting, did you say your name was Alex?

And he was like, yeah.

And I was like, did you go to Charles Campbell?

And he was like, my high school.

He was like, I was like, oh, yeah, I was in your year.

And it was like, as soon as I arrived in Adelaide, and instantly, I was working with someone.

I went to school.

Yeah.

Just when you think you're at.

That's how Adelaide works.

I know.

And then I was looking for some old bank statements yesterday in the filing cabinet and managed to find a photo from a school play that I was in with Alex.

Anyway, so those are my stereotypical Australian experiences since being back.

How about you, Matt?

Oh, I am feeling a little cut adrift at the minute because last night I lost my phone.

Oh, no.

Yeah, so I'm now running phone free, which is, you know, a very surreal experience.

You forget, obviously, you don't forget.

You are probably acutely aware how attached we are to our devices.

So I had my preview last night, which is to say it was the first ever outing of the proto version of what will become my next stand-up show.

And I don't think I've mentioned this on the podcast.

I'll be back at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2025 doing a run of a show about maths and then touring it afterwards.

Tickets Tickets are not yet available.

Oh, yeah.

What's your show called?

As yet, untitled.

The working title is that Parker Does the Maths, but that may change between now and then.

Have you got a title for yours?

Is it a Beck pun?

Probably going to be the title I've given my Adelaide French show with.

By the way, if you're going to be at Adelaide Fringe, please come and see me.

Likewise.

And it's going to be called Guess Who's Beck, Beck Again, Beck Hill's Beck, Tell a Friend.

And everyone has to say the whole thing every time, so no skimp on that.

Every time.

I mean, there's a tiny chance I'll change the title to getting tricky with it but we'll see how we feel about that closer to the date oh please

so anyway the way this works is i've got a collection of vague ideas about what this show will be and how it's all going to clip together so i put it on its feet for the first time last night had a lot of fun but it was more just to test some stuff out and see what's happening so we'll keep refining that oh and we have um i'll be doing more preview shows in london there's one in one in fab and one in march so we'll put a link to tickets if people want to come and see me do a show.

Critics are describing as completely adequate.

Hopefully we'll be better soon.

So I finished the show, pack up, coming home, late train.

You know, it's like you've been working all night.

You're on the late train home.

Everyone else is having a great time.

I had my phone in my pocket, but I was wearing just more of my, you know, Gawp Corps casual walking trousers.

I forgot to zip the pocket up.

I was

doing a angle of lounge.

The ankle of

the angle of emptying, or whatever we called it.

I think that's what it was.

Yeah.

My pockets hit that critical angle and they emptied onto the seat in the train.

And then I alighted at Godamink station.

And normally I check my pockets when I stand up from the table.

But I had gotten real comfy.

And instead of doing the work for the podcast today, I was just watching some YouTube videos.

Yesterday, we'd done podcast recording.

I'd done a live show that I hadn't written properly.

I just kind of was taking it easy.

Was caught off guard by God's station.

Jumped up, grabbed like all my rubbish to put it in the bin, got off the train.

I'm maybe 10 meters from the station when I do the pocket check and my phone isn't there.

And by now, the train is long gone.

And I'm like, oh no.

Did I scoop it up with the rubbish and put it in the bin?

My pocket's unzipped.

Did it fall out of my pocket?

Got on my computer and brought up the Find My Phone app on my, on my desktop.

And it showed my phone.

It hadn't updated, but the phone was in Gottaming new speed.

Traveling at speed.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

And I was like, oh, that's about to start moving, isn't it?

And I was like, oh, great.

So I head home.

I get home, you know, after 12.30 in the morning, open the door, and Lucy is up.

And some extra backstory here.

This was particularly annoying phone losing because I'm flying to the US tomorrow.

So I lost my phone 36 hours before I'm flying to the States.

And I'm like, I really want.

So the whole way home, I'm thinking, right, what am I going to do?

I've probably got an old old phone somewhere I can find,

probably power it up.

I wonder if it's modern enough.

What SIM card do I have to get?

Like, I'm lost in my thoughts of how I'm going to solve this problem in the next 36 hours.

I'm like, why are you awake?

And she's like, oh, I just spoke to the train guard on the train.

What?

You were just off.

I'm like, what?

So it turns out.

The dog had decided she had to go out to Wee, had barked, woken Lucy up.

Lucy had come down.

This was like not that long before I got home.

Lucy's, that's weird.

Where's Matt?

I thought he was going to get the 11 o'clock train.

She checks where my phone is because we've both got each other's kind of find my phone setup.

And she's like, oh, he missed it.

He got the 11:32 train.

And then suddenly it updated, and my dot was in Hazelmere, which is a station or two south of Gottaming.

And she's like, oh no, Matt's fallen asleep on the train.

Yeah.

Is now in Hazelmere.

So she rings me to wake me up on the train.

And the guard answers.

This is so lucky.

The fact that I left it on the seat, I just put it somewhere else.

You know, you talk about the Swiss cheese thing where, like,

a number of mistakes all have to happen in the same place for something.

You've got like the opposite.

I had the opposite.

A number of

incidences had to line up.

Everything lined up perfectly.

Yeah.

And so the guards labeled it with my name, put it in Lost and Found.

Lucy might be able to get it back.

She's in London today.

They might send it up to Waterloo, Lost and Found, and she'll grab it.

Otherwise, I can go and get it tomorrow on the way to the airport.

So.

Yeah, so I got real, real lucky.

I'm not going to celebrate until that phone is in your hand.

Well, this is it.

Actually, shall we live look up where it is?

Before we started this chat, it was down in Portsmouth.

And it is

still in Portsmouth.

Hasn't moved.

Okay, so we'll probably, I might have to go into Portsmouth or it might make it to Waterloo.

We'll find out.

That's the kind of gripping updates people listen in for.

Our first problem was sent in by Thomas, aka Tizzle, by their own admission, who went to the problem posing page.

They also put in, because we've been curious about where people came from, like how they found this podcast.

Turns out Tizzle here used to watch my YouTube channel, heard about the podcast, but they've since dramatically cut back their YouTube watching.

And they say it's no offense to me, they just didn't like the algorithm swinging them around YouTube.

That's okay, Tizzle.

I forgive you.

You don't have to watch the videos.

Thank you for transferring over to the podcast and for sending in this problem.

So, in Tizzle's job, they have to write a lot of documents for which they will not be credited.

Huh.

So, they specify it's like internal documents for students, kind of like lab protocol things, stuff where you wouldn't really put who who wrote the document.

Tizzle, however, in a desperate search for affirmation, my words, not theirs, they want to know how they can leave their mark on a document so someone

who knows the way they marked the document is able to find the evidence that this was a Tizzle crafted document.

They got a few suggestions, things like writing it in such a way that the first letter of each row reads out their name, but they're a bit worried, not only will that be too obvious, it won't be very robust.

So if someone edits the document later, oh, we're going to put in some more text or a graphic, they might break that.

So they want a robust Easter egg, or breadcrumbs rather, that lead back to them.

And Beck, you've got some ideas.

My first one is make it a PDF so it's harder for someone to change it.

Yeah, that's like

straight out the bat.

Like, just don't give them the option.

No, I feel like.

it can't be detrimental to the work that Tizzle's doing.

If it's just internal documents, if it's just going to be printed out and stuck on a wall.

Nah, I feel like these are living documents that will be changed and altered over the years.

I know, I know.

Yeah, you're right.

You're right.

Yeah, yeah.

But do you know what?

I think if they have to be changed, then someone should have to write it out from scratch.

No, you're right.

So your solution could be write the document, print out a a single copy, delete the original file,

and write your name on it in invisible ink.

Take a photo.

Bum bum bum.

Yes.

Now, invisible ink is a very fun option.

But obviously, as this sounds like it will be mostly a digital file,

I looked into ways that people have done this because I was looking into watermarks.

Obviously, that is more referring to hard copy things when a watermark was created by to create a logo by thinning the paper in certain areas so that you could see it if you held it up to the light.

And so I was like, oh, there's got to be some interesting ways that people have to make a mark as such, which is how I came across fictitious entries.

Fictitious.

Oh, wait, you.

Oh, okay.

I see where you've gone.

Like, fake towns.

Yeah.

This is where someone's worried someone else is going to rip off their map.

So they hide

a fake street or something in there.

So if anyone copies it, as opposed to going out and looking at the streets for scratch.

Yeah.

And they'll be like, hey, you wouldn't have

fake von fake town if you hadn't copied my map because I made that up and put it in there.

Yes, exactly that.

So loads of different terms for this.

Trap street or paper town.

Yep.

Phantom settlement.

These are all the sort of cartography ones that you're thinking of.

Also, Cartographers' Follies, I think is another nice name.

Now, before I continue, I do need to say do not confuse paper towns, the term, with paper streets.

Paper streets are the term given to streets that are planned, but at the time that the map is printed, they haven't been built yet.

So the street appears in the map, but it's not actually built.

It's only on paper, Ghana understood.

Correct.

There's some interesting instances of these maps happening.

Mount Richard is a fictitious peak on the continental divide in the United States.

It appeared on county maps in the early 1970s, and it's believed to be the work of a draftsman called Richard Chaochi, I believe.

Classic practitioners.

That's rich.

The non-existence of the mountain was undiscovered for two years.

Very funny.

In New York, the state of New York, in Aglo.

Aglo originally, was a fictional town.

Originally.

Created.

Yes,

invented by the map makers.

Then a general store opened in that area and called themselves Aglo General Store.

They looked at the map, they're like, Where are we?

Oh, Aglo, okay.

So, yeah, and then it's town and quotation marks.

Yeah,

they sort of became a real place just because of that.

That's very funny.

There is a legal instance in the UK, somewhat recently in 2001, there was a settlement in court in the UK.

Ordnance Survey.

Oh, yeah.

The OS.

Old OS maps.

Yep.

Love them.

They obtained a £20 million out-of-court settlement from the Automobile Association.

That's the AA.

Those folks.

After content from their maps was reproduced on AA maps.

Hilarious.

Now, Ordnance Survey said that they hadn't created any fake towns or anything like that.

They're very proud of the fact that everything on their maps is totally legit.

Yep.

But

they said they left sort of fingerprints.

Yep.

There were stylistic features such as the width of the roads.

Oh, that's interesting.

AA ended up settling out of court.

And the OS, for the record, are constantly updating their maps.

Like they own a plane that they fly around the UK every day to check for changes.

Yeah, you brought this up in a previous episode.

They're putting the work in.

It's not like they just sat on their maps.

It's a bit like these lab documents.

It's constantly being updated and maintained.

Like there's effort.

One thing that really caught my eye when I was looking into copyright traps was

at a mission of this.

I thought, now, because Matt, you've had mistakes in your books pointed out, haven't you?

Oh, so many.

Yep.

Now, you've been known to put in a couple of mistakes on purpose.

Correct.

Yes.

There are deliberate mistakes, particularly in Humble Pie, my book about mistakes.

For fun, zoom?

That's because I think it's hilarious.

Yeah, no, just because it's because I think it's funny.

Yeah, just because I think it's funny.

I've seen you, you've talked about it before that sometimes you also put deliberate ones in there so that if people pick out ones that aren't deliberate, you can pretend they were.

Yeah, yeah, I refused.

No,

I've specified how many deliberate mistakes are in Humble Pie,

but with the caveat that the number of mistakes I've indicated could itself be one of the mistakes.

I love that.

This is, yeah, fantastic.

Well, I think you would appreciate it.

Are you aware of the Chambers 1964 mathematical tables?

I bought the specific edition you're about to mention for the reason you're about to mention it.

Oh, really?

Yeah, yeah.

Excellent stuff.

I won't spoil your thunder.

This is such a, such a fun thing.

Chambers mentioned while talking about errors in the book, in the preface of the book, said the errors that are known to exist form an uncomfortable trap for any would-be plagiarist.

And what they did, because this is a log book, and there's a lot of work.

to get all these values to put in the book and very easy to copy They would deliberately have some that are incorrect for the reasons we've discussed.

And they would look for ones where,

because they're only six figure, sometimes you've got to round it.

And they would look for ones that would end in a four.

And instead of rounding it down, that'd round it up.

So the actual

difference is minute in terms of the accuracy of the book.

So you're not going to introduce any accuracy problems because you had to round it anyway.

And they've just rounded it technically the wrong way, but it's the same thing for all actual practical applications.

So it's very, very clever.

Have you put a fake fact in this podcast so you can tell if anyone ever listens to it and then tries to write it up as their own work, they'll be exposed?

I would argue that every fact I put in this podcast is a fake fact.

It's on the spectrum of real to fake somewhere.

Yeah, yeah.

Now, another term for fictitious entries is Mount Weasel.

Mount Weasel.

That is because in the 1975 New Columbia Encyclopedia, there was a fictitious entry on Lillian Virginia Mount Weasel that said that she was a fountain designer and photographer, best known for photographs of rural American mailboxes.

Love it.

Supposedly, she was born in Bangs, Ohio, and died in an explosion

while on assignment for Combustibles magazine.

Great.

Great.

David Pogue wrote several books offering tips and tricks for computer users and deliberately placed a bogus tip, you could make a rabbit appear on the computer screen when certain keys were pressed.

That did go on to appear in several subsequent works.

Got him.

The editors also created another fictitious entry for an American artist called Robert Dayton, who was

blind by their fictitious accounts.

The article claims Dayton experimented with odour-emitting gases that resembled pungent body odours.

His supposed aroma art is presented in a sealed chamber where an audience inhales scented air.

See, I feel like they've gone too far.

You can't make the fake fingerprinting too interesting to draw attention to itself.

Do you know what, though?

That is something that I'd be like, oh, maybe.

That sounds like something.

No, I know, but I get, but now people are going to look into that.

That's something that's going to draw attention.

Someone might be researching types of immersive art or something, and this will come up.

You know how good I am at going down rabbit holes.

Correct.

It took all of my effort not to then go see if anyone has created this as an actual art thing.

See, that's my exact point.

And I get the temptation.

It's a creative writing challenge, but you've got to keep it boring.

So, with all of those in mind, maybe Thomas needs to create something fake.

Yep.

But something realistic and fake so that when when people go to edit the document later, they don't want to touch that thing because it sounds like it might be important and need to be included.

Yeah, make sure you do the his what the wizzle.

Yeah, yeah, you know, now it's not my job to come up with it.

This is done.

It's not, that's a real fill-in-the-blanks, but the structure's there.

So, as someone who did a science degree and had to follow lab instructions instructions, I've used these resources.

They're often quite bespoke for the lab, but you could easily put something in which is like, oh, if you happen to be using such and such optic table, make sure you do whatever.

The TISL optic table.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Oh, if the optic table has a TISL sticker on it, make sure you've recalibrated the blocks or whatever.

I don't know.

Yeah, I like your suggestion because I was thinking a bit like the logbook.

TISL could like round values slightly the wrong way, but I feel like future versions might have that corrected.

If people spotted it, they would fix it.

So you're right.

I think your suggestion is more robust.

Yeah.

As long as it's not causing students to tear their hair out because they can't work out why something's there or it doesn't match up with what they're seeing in the lab.

But I think you're right.

There's definitely ways you could write it where everyone's going to ignore it, but no one's going to remove it.

Because I was thinking things like

put all the vowels in a very similar but different font

Because unless the whole document's completely rewritten some of that other font will still be there somewhere So that's a way of and if it's completely rewritten then sorry Tizzle you're no longer gonna get credit for it so stuff like that messing with the formatting in a very clever way I mean encoding is particularly smart

is definitely smart well you're getting ahead of yourself there Matt because

writing a message in Morse code on yarn worn by a courier was something that was used in the past.

Obviously, a more digital version is the Morse code apostrophes kind of works as that as well.

When I was a oh, I just finished high school, I wrote some code that would hide messages by using either a space or a double space, and it would hide it in binary into text.

Well, interesting.

You should say that because I also looked into invisible zero-width non-symptom characters.

And I've got to say, this has worked with me copying and and pasting into various different documents, into WhatsApp.

I was unaware of this.

Yeah, it's very clever.

So, Matt, can you very quickly explain how it works?

There are a bunch of characters which are non-print characters or zero-width characters in that you can't see them, but there's reasons why you might want to do it.

So, for example, you might want to have a character that indicates in the middle of a word, if you're going to have to cut this word in half to wrap it, where to do that.

So it's a way of putting meta information into text that most people won't see, but is only available for things like, you know, text justification or other bits and pieces.

It's like there's a character that's invisible and doesn't take up any space.

And so it means you can copy and paste it and it stays there.

You can change the typeface and it stays there.

It's like there's just an extra letter people can't see.

And then because of that, it kind of travels travels with the text.

Unless someone retypes the text, you can't really shake these things, or if you know they're there, you can check for them, obviously.

Yes.

Final option to Thomas Tizzle.

So there are ways to also hide images within images.

So the hidden image is revealed by removing all but the two least significant bits of each color component and a subsequent normalization, which to me means kind of the same as the other thing, but with pictures.

Yeah, so what you're doing is you've got your colour specified,

but, and this is a very crude analogy, you can imagine.

Like, if I said the population of the UK is 60 million and whatever, you actually don't care about the small digits, they barely change the value.

But if you choose them very specifically, and then later on you remove everything but the last two,

you've now got information that you didn't notice before because it was too insignificant, but because you got rid of the big values, that's all you're left with, and you can see it.

And normalize just means you then scale that up to the full color range.

So, because they're so small, you've got very slight fluctuations, and you want to scale that up to get a proper range of different colors in the image.

It's very clever.

And you can do that other ways.

Thank you, Matt.

Like, you could get all the lowest values, like all the blacks, and fluctuate them slightly as if you were reading left to right, top to bottom, and you could hide text that way by having not pure black

but slightly above black values, and each one corresponds to a letter or something like that.

So, yeah, those are my answers.

I could have gone on forever about this, you're aware of that.

It's great, I love it.

If I know anything about formatting documents and how lazy people are in these situations, because you can try and get very clever with this tenography or the metadata or all these fancy ways of doing it.

I suspect at the end of the day,

the irrelevant information that no one will notice but no one will remove is probably the winner.

Put your name in the footer, you know, arrow in front of the page numbers or something, and people will never bother removing it.

But that's not as robust, yeah, and it's less fun to talk about.

Oh, that too.

That too.

Visit with you and fun.

Our next problem comes from Jack C,

who says, how many episodes of Saturday Night Live would need to occur in order for it to have aired on every single day of the year?

Is this even possible?

Now, Matt, when I saw this question,

I assumed the answer is 365.

That's the minimum.

That's the minimum, yes.

So what are they asking?

What is this question?

What is this question?

So the question's saying, what's the problem?

Here's the problem.

Let me tell you you what jaxie's problem is when

you watch an episode of saturday night live you and it's live you know that it's going to be on a saturday yeah and it's probably at night now the date within the year is a different question so the first saturday this year was the fourth of january but next year It won't be.

It'll be the 3rd of January.

So the dates move around.

And so what Jaxy's asking is: given the way that the days of the week interact with the dates within a month or the year, has there been a Sunday night live?

Because there's been over 365 episodes.

So I went and got the data.

I feel like in a birthday episode, you pointed out that your birthday sort of only falls on four days.

Yes.

Have I made up a fact?

No, that's

sort of.

Yes.

No, your birthday will rotate through every day of the week in terms of like weekdays.

And that's because the number of days in the year is not a multiple of seven.

So there are 365 days in a year.

We're ignoring leap years for now.

And 365 is not a multiple of seven.

364 is a multiple of seven.

That's 52 times seven, which is why everyone thinks there's 52 weeks in the year, but there's not 52 weeks in the year.

There's 52 weeks and one day.

There's an extra one one-seventh of a week left over.

And if the number of days in the year had been a multiple of the number of days in the week, and days in the year is determined.

Yeah, every day would be the same.

Yes.

And we can't control how many days are in the year because that's the rotation rate of the Earth and the orbit around the Sun.

We can choose how many days are in the week, but that's kind of locked in.

I don't think we're changing that anytime soon.

Now, next is leap years.

So because the days in the year is one more than a multiple of seven,

the days of the week move by one every year.

Oh, until a leap year where it goes two.

Until a leap year, then it goes two.

So

if you look at it.

So you've got to do like a whole cycle.

Yeah.

God.

The cycle will work.

So if you look at a single day, like your birthday, and this year it's Monday, depending on where the leap years are, but we just had a leap year and depends if it's before or after.

the end of Feb.

It'll go forward one at a time.

It'll be a Monday, it's a Tuesday, it's a Wednesday.

You're thinking, this is nice and straightforward.

Here comes Thursday, it'll jump Thursday and be Friday.

And then go

Saturday, Sunday, and then skip again.

Because every time you go through a leap year, it skips one.

But thankfully, in a similar thing to what we just did, but different,

four, which is how many years per leap year, is not a factor of seven, the number of days in the week.

So it doesn't line up.

It keeps drifting around.

So you'll later on, you'll lap around.

You'll get your Thursday.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So we wouldn't get that cycle if leap years were every seven years.

Yeah.

We would instead end up

missing the same day.

You'd always miss the same day.

Or if weeks were eight days, you'd miss the same two every time.

So it's kind of nice.

It's fleasing in a way that everything doesn't line up.

So

we get this constant kind of drift and it means we fill in all the gaps as we go along.

And there's a very similar problem, which is doing park runs.

Your friend and mine.

mine.

You really love bringing up a park run?

I don't like park running.

In fact, I never have.

I've never run.

Maybe I'll enjoy it.

You've done it, though.

I've run.

Oh, no, I've not done a park run.

I did have my phase of being a runner, which is why to this day I'll be talking to Lucy, and occasionally I'll lean back in my chair and be like, well, when I was a runner, mate, that was like 18 months.

Yeah.

And you maxed out at a third of a marathon.

So come on.

Can I guess who you're going to bring up, though?

Absolutely.

I heard you say your friend of mine.

Your friend of mine.

Are you about to say Jeff Marshall of the Railway Network Enthusiast?

Yeah, exactly.

Yes, yes.

Transport and Infrastructure Enthusiast Jeff Marshall.

So, Jeff got really into park runs.

People collect ridiculous bits of data

about park runs.

You've talked about this.

That's what it is.

And that's why I assumed you liked park runs.

Also, because I think my brain went, but his surname's Parker.

It's basically park run.

I do a parker run.

Yeah, no, good point.

So, and I have been to a park run.

So when Jeff was doing a park run in Guildford, which is not far from where I live, I went along, except I didn't run it.

I set up a table and did some maths next to everyone running because.

And it was pretty much this.

It's people want to, well, in that case, it was, can you get every possible value in the seconds part of your time?

By doing lots of runs and that's effectively random.

You've brought this up.

I have.

But what people also try and do with park runs is do a park run i don't know jeff was doing this i think he might have completed it they want to do a park run on every day of the year

however park runs are only officially on saturdays so it's the same problem can will saturdays be on every single day of the year and the answer is yes and so park run enthusiasts it takes a while you've got to wait until there's like a christmas that's on a saturday so you can get the 25th of december You've got to wait until there's a new year that's a Saturday so you can get the 1st of January and so on.

But if you wait long enough, the days of the year and the days of the week will all cycle around.

And if you can do enough Saturdays, you can tick them all off.

So I guess the first answer to Jaxi is hypothetically possible.

And

in one sense, yeah.

SNL could end up on every single day of the year.

So I thought I'd check.

And there's been, including the two episodes that haven't aired at the time of recording, there have been 908, well, there are 980

episodes that have a date attached to them.

978 are in the past, and the two future ones, we have the dates for them.

So I took all 980 of them, which in theory is enough.

Can I guess what the maths is?

Yeah.

Tell me if I'm wrong.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Let's say you're starting like after a leap year.

It's not seven times, it's like nine times 365.

Is that right?

You know what?

I'm going to leave that as a puzzle because that's not what's happened.

And it's true.

You're thinking, well, how many, how many years do you have to go through before you get back to where you started?

Yeah.

And

there are only 14 different years, if that helps.

So, yes, you could work out how many years it would take to cycle through every matching of the days of the week to the days of the year and then assume you're doing 52 episodes every Saturday a year and multiply it up.

But I didn't get to that point because I just went and downloaded all 980 episode titles and details and dates and then analyzed the dates on which SNL had broadcast.

Oh,

and then worked out which ones were unique to see if all 366 were covered.

And SNL has been broadcast on 226 different dates.

So

a long way short of all 366.

So if you look at it as a calendar, beginning of the year,

there has never been an episode of SNL before the 7th of January.

Because they have a kind of Christmas New Year break.

And so every year, that's always a gap.

And the first one that was on the 7th of Jan, so there have been 50 seasons.

It wasn't until season 37 before the 7th of Jan was filled in.

So for a long time, they hadn't even gone that early.

And then they finally got it in season 37.

After the 7th of Jan, it's non-stop.

Like, every single date is done.

Except

there's never been an episode on the 31st of March.

I don't know what's going on there.

There's a gap.

April 26th through 30, there's never been an episode.

And then complete coverage then until the 24th of May.

There's never been an episode on the 25th of May.

Season 4 did the 26th of May.

And then season 1 did the 29th of May.

And then there's a gap.

There's never been an episode between the 30th of May and the,

well,

it should be the 12th of September.

Because seasons run

September to May.

And so the gap from May to September, there's nothing.

Except season one, this is 50 years ago, were doing all sorts of of crazy stuff.

And for some reason, they came back and did two episodes on the 24th and the 31st of July.

So that's a whole

Northern Hemisphere summer region.

There's never been an episode, except season one just did these two one-off episodes in the middle of July.

I imagine it was just like a scheduling thing.

They had to fill a gap and this was this new show that hadn't really worked out what it was yet.

And so they put two episodes in there.

And then there's a bit of a you know, it's a bit hit and miss because it depends which season started early.

So, season 34 started particularly early on the 13th of September, but there's never been an episode on the 14th of September.

By the 24th of September, we have complete coverage again.

There's a gap in November, apart from there's a week where there's never been an episode apart from one from season two, which is when they were still a bit more flexible.

And then the latest is the 22nd of

September, which is my birthday.

And so

that's the latest they've gone before they've gone for the Christmas break.

So because even though SNL's been going for, this is their 50th season, they're fairly consistent now, a little bit different season one, they're fairly consistent when they have breaks.

And even within a season, they have constant gaps because they'll do a couple episodes.

It's quite taxing.

They'll take a week off.

So there's never really ever that many in a row.

There's just been so many that they've kind of filled in most of those gaps, apart from where there's a couple cases where they consistently have

the same gap.

So I would say.

And

you're hosting this episode, and you didn't think to start it with

live from both hemispheres.

I did not.

Although, maybe I was thinking ahead instead of being live from the big apple, it's live from the big banana.

So, you know, let's keep our mind open.

was I planning ahead?

Was it serendipitous?

Who knows?

So

this episode's a lot like the Big Banana.

Oh, you're right.

That was your analogy for this episode.

I forgot.

Yeah, it's almost like it's been a long time since the

beginning of the episode.

It really has.

So in conclusion, it could,

but given in 50 seasons, they've stuck fairly consistently to their scheduling dates and having the same time off, definitely having summer off, I think the answer is no.

I reckon you could have infinitely many.

I mean, maybe one day, if the Earth's rotation changes or we flip upside down and summer moves in the northern hemisphere, conceivably in season 1000 and something, the dates have drifted so much we get the rest of the year filled in.

But I would say not in our lifetimes.

Huh.

Well, that was a very, very thorough look into it.

I feel like everyone wanted mathematical ones, and you were like, no, I'm going to be even more correct.

And it had, I guess, arguably less maths, but much, I found it much more impressive.

Okay.

Would you want two?

I can give you two last maths.

I was still involved you having to do a lot of research.

Oh, my goodness.

The first ever repeated date was season six.

They did November 15, which had been done before.

And the most recent time when there was a brand new date that it landed on was season 45.

Season 45 was the first time there was an episode.

Actually, season 45 was the first time we got the 29th of February.

Oh.

That was in the year 2020.

And that's up until then?

Wow.

We'd never gotten that.

Who was on that episode?

That episode was

Daniel Craig.

I love how you just have this catalogue now.

Of course.

It's in a spreadsheet.

I skipped all the normal conversation about

how I had to tidy the data.

Oh, fine.

Daniel Craig was hosting, and the weekend was the musical act.

There you go.

Oh, the number one streamed.

The number one stream.

Yeah, there you go.

Yeah, yeah.

Maybe that's what's done.

We're all tying together now.

So, anyway, I had a lot of fun.

I mean, I just had to find the data, convert it into a form I could put in a spreadsheet and then analyze it.

So, I was pretty happy with this one.

Thank you very much, Jaxi.

Thanks.

Thanks, Jaxie.

I'm going to step, I'm going to give you a ding, Matt.

I don't think anyone can argue with that.

I feel like it was comprehensive.

If you've got quibbles, go to the problem posing page at a problemsquared.com, pick solution, and let me know.

A sad ding live.

Hey, that's pretty good.

Well, I am, you know, I am tired.

And now it's time for any other big banana-ness.

So,

you know what?

Speaking of big things, that seems to be most of what we've got.

So, Bec, people have sent us some maps.

Yes, someone has sent us a link to a Google map

of Australian big things.

Pop it in the show notes.

Which is the 335 listed there.

Oh, because this was sent in by

our Dean from Busso, from Busselton in WA.

They got the big camera up in there.

They got the giant ram in Wagen.

They've got your tractor.

They're like, oh, that's up to date.

That's the newest one.

Big tractor.

There it is.

Not far from the big lobster.

I can't help but notice, no big cricket bat.

It's not like everything hangs on the big cricket bat.

I'm not saying that's the most important one, but I think it's a good litmus test.

So no big cricket bat.

A little upsetting.

Yeah, that is quite sad.

This one does include, though, the big olive.

Oh.

which is in South Australia.

You go past on the way to my dad's place.

I'm happy to see the big olive is there.

Here's a little

insider knowledge.

The big olive is disappointingly

not that big.

Not like it's big compared to an olive.

That's one of the rules.

It's no macadamia now.

It can't just be the scale.

It's also going to be big, just in absolute terms.

Yeah, in my opinion.

I feel like a big thing needs to be something you look up at it.

Yes, if you don't have to crane, forget it.

Also,

this Google map that someone's put together also lists the little mango, which

actually when you click on it, is very big.

So cute.

Maybe it's ALS.

Well done.

They've called it the Little Mango.

It's a pretty extensive map.

It's just Australia, though, so I don't know if we can use this against, unless anyone has any links to big things in Canada, which appears to be our

rival.

Surprisingly, it seems to be our rival.

None of these seem to be like officials.

Which I realise there is no

official authority.

There should be.

Matt, maybe we should start an official authority Yeah.

That can be our business.

Yeah, like

and if you want to qualify as an official big thing, you have to pay us.

Oh, my goodness.

Now you're talking.

It'll be like

getting the fair trade thing on a product.

Book of records.

Can we give them like a stamp or something and they get entered in the official database?

Yeah, they'd get like a sticker that they get to put on their thing saying like official big thing.

Official big thing.

And then they would get entered into the official directory.

Oh, now you're talking.

And then

you don't have access to the directory.

Yeah.

Loads of tourists would be like, oh, this is the official big thing.

We're like the Michelin stars of big things.

That would be like rating the big things.

Well, Michelin.

I would say it's a lot more like Guinness Bridge Records because there's a lot of like world records out there, but people don't see that they're official unless like Guinness have sent someone to go and be like, yes, this is an official one.

Someone did write in to say, and this was our previous big things discussion, that we are a bit like the Michelin stars in that that was started by the tire company to recommend places you might want to drive to and have something to eat.

Yes.

Their original system of it's worth stopping if you're driving by, it's worth doing a minor detour, it's worth doing a whole trip, that's very similar to how we've been discussing big things.

It's like the cricket bat, I said, it's not worth a whole trip, but if you're driving by, it's definitely worth stopping for.

Whereas they're like the big banana might be worth a trip.

So I feel like we've accidentally stumbled into a kind of Michelin star system.

One square, if they're worth stopping by, two squares means it's worth a small detour.

And a three square big thing.

Three squares means that they've paid for us to come out there and look at it.

Correct.

But we recommend people do a whole trip for a three square big thing.

Yeah, a cube.

Yeah, exactly.

You get a line, a square, or a cube based on

how good a big thing, well, how much of a, how far out of your way you should go to visit the big thing.

Yeah, cool.

I mean, I'm not

volunteering to do this, but I feel like it's a fun system.

I would do it if the places paid for us to get there.

If we could, if we either send anonymous secret big thingers,

or we just, you know, have a good look at the photos, make a call.

I feel like

that's the level of anything.

I want a trip.

I want a road trip, I want to be sent to foreign exotic places like Gamaraka.

There you go.

I also have an evening of unnecessary business, which for some reason is how my brain decided to say that.

Oh, wow.

A little behind the scenes for the listeners here, we are recording

the second half of this podcast was recorded a day later because we ran out of time due to the time differences.

I know, but I'm telling them this because

at the beginning of this episode, you talked about having left your phone on the train and said you would update us on the next episode, but it because you were going to pick it up today.

Yep.

But that has now changed.

And I feel like

I love that by the end of the episode, there's already an update.

Oh, you want the update now?

Okay, okay.

Let me.

It's not quite 24 hours later, but it is indeed the next day.

And it's like 10 a.m.

where I am.

And I can see my phone is still sitting in Portsmouth.

So and Portsmouth does not have we looked into this Lucy did some research a lost and found so we can't go to Portsmouth and get it we have to wait for it to get to the Waterloo lost and found and it hasn't budged and I need to be on a plane pushing back from a terminal at 5 p.m.

today.

So the window

is that you could just go to Portsmouth and go up to the counter and say my phone's here.

I don't think it's worth for the amount of time it will take me to get there and back with my precious few hours before I have to be at Heathrow to go down there and bang on doors, as much fun as that would be.

Instead, I'm investing an extra

30, 60 minutes of travel time to the airport to go via my phone provider's physical store and get a new sim that I can put into an iPhone 8.

I lost an iPhone 15, so I've basically halved

my iPhone model number.

I love it.

It's got like curved bevel edges.

It genuinely feels retro already.

So I'm going to take this antique with me to the States, and

Lucy is joining me in the States, but not for another 10 days.

So in theory, she'll be able to get my phone from Waterloo in the meantime and then deliver it when she comes over to the US.

It's like an opposite heist.

Fair.

Well, thank you so much to everyone for listening to our problem squared.

We appreciate all our listeners.

Pretty much an equal amount.

Don't read into this too much, but we like to specifically thank our Patreon supporters.

They, as well as listening, I assume they listen.

They also provide the funds that keep this whole machine ticking over.

And every single episode, we pick three Patreon supporters to thank via the medium of mispronouncing their names, which this episode includes Matt

Hugh.

That's pretty close to correct.

Matt Hute

Omps et

oh wow, this has actually got an A wearing a hat.

I wouldn't even know how to pronounce this correctly.

Thank goodness.

Okay, what a great system.

Pang, pang

sir is how you address that.

It's not formal A.

Pang your

pang yaban.

Pang

PA

Nye Nyu.

Pang Urban.

Pang Urban.

Pang Umbus.

Pang Urban.

Pang Urban.

Pang Urban.

And Matt Hugh.

Why we got two Matthews.

By the way, the order is random as well, so I have no control over this.

Matt Hughes.

Hughes.

Wow.

So if anyone recognized or thought they maybe spotted their names in any of those syllables, thank you so much for your support and everyone else who listens.

And of course, people who review and share and the like.

We really appreciate that.

So, you've been listening to A Problem Squared.

I'm Matt Parker.

You've also been hearing Beck Hill, and a huge thanks to our producer, Lauren Armstrong Carter, who, okay, I'm always aware what I think might be a compliment in my head doesn't always work.

Who, much like the big banana, is structurally sound.

I think that works.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And does

sound structure.

And does sound structure.

There you are.

Being a podcast producer.

Nailed it.

Okay,

all right.

Any other battleships?

Now, oh, the picture's not in this one.

I'll have to find the previous one.

Give me a finger.

If they're within reach, otherwise, I'm just.

I'm enjoying drawing on my little picture here.

Okay, I'm ready.

Oh, I sunk your battleship.

You sunk my battleship, yes.

Okay,

I'm gonna go for J10.

J10, right in the corner.

Miss.

Now,

I'd had three hits in a row, getting me to F4, so I'm gonna continue that barrage with F3

hit

and you've sunk my battleship.

There it goes.

One ship all.