070 = Speaking Profanities and Lettered Localities

Hello, Beck Hill here.

Before we begin this episode, just a couple of notes.

Firstly, we're aware that this is one week late.

Unfortunately, due to technical difficulties, we weren't able to bring it out last week.

However, the next episode will be coming out next Monday as scheduled, so don't worry.

Thank you for your patience.

And there are a few rude words in this one.

So please bear that in mind if listening with children.

Hello and welcome to A Problem Squared, the problem-solving podcast, which can be described as heating up, on fire, and boom shakalaka.

Were you restricted solely to expressions from the 1993 arcade video game NBA Jam?

I'm Matt Parker, comedian, mathematician, and a person who puts up a brick.

I like cuboids, and one of my most popular YouTube videos was me balancing bricks.

So there you go.

I'm joined by my co-host,

writer, comedian, performer, and from downtown, Adelaide, it's Beck Hill.

Hey, I'm not sure what theme you're using.

I think I made it pretty clear.

I was like, oh,

the 1990s video game NBA Jam.

I think

the only basketball game I remember playing was on the Sega Master System 2.

Oh, dude.

And

it was like with mummies and werewolves or something.

I have never heard of it.

I reckon it came out probably around the same time as Teen Wolf, and they were trying to like.

Ah, capitalize on

someone from horror plays basketball.

I've solved my my own problem.

What is it?

It was called Basketball Nightmare.

Nice.

With that problem solved, we can move on to in this episode.

I'll be solving the problem of what words should you avoid using in other languages in case they're a little bit rude.

I've worked out which letters go where most often.

And we've got some any other basketball isness.

You got that one in at the buzzer.

That's nothing but net.

So, Beck, how have you been?

I'm good.

I'm good.

I hosted a QED

con

the other weekend, the skeptics convention.

Had a good question.

It's a fun thing to tell people, isn't it?

I had a few friends where I was like, oh, I was hosting a skeptics conference on the weekend, and they're like, I doubt that.

Yeah, it's always like, oh, were you?

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I did.

So

they use skeptics sort of in the original meaning, the traditional sense, in that it's like applying proper science and getting experts to weigh in on stuff, as opposed to skeptics who are like, don't take vaccinations.

Yes, yes, yeah.

It's more a popular science conference.

Yes.

I did open it up by saying, welcome to the annual meeting of the Flat Earthers Society, and then pretended to check my notes and go, sorry, that's next week.

La la la la.

Laugh so hoi.

Laugh.

There you go.

Yeah.

No, it was great.

It It was so much fun.

And I learned so much.

And I met some incredible people.

Lots who listened to this podcast.

Say hello.

Hello if you're

listening.

Yeah.

I had a great time.

I hosted QEDCon years ago.

I would have to look up when it was.

I suspect it was

like eight years ago.

Yeah.

Lots of people, lots of crossovers of people that we know.

So that was very fun.

Also, I mentioned this briefly before.

I was auctioning off my artwork.

I did a piece of art

for charity and

for the Samaritans and it raised 360 quid, which is

not too shabby.

Yeah.

It was nice.

So I don't know who won it, but if you're a listener of ours, thank you.

That's a very generous amount.

It definitely wasn't me.

I did not hilariously buy your artwork.

It was a legitimate sale.

I'll have to get some artwork that's specific for you.

How about you?

How have you been?

Oh, goodness.

I went to North Carolina.

That was a lot of fun.

You did?

Oh, that's why you're going for a basketball game-themed thing.

That's why, because I was there for basketball reasons.

Yes, that's why I

took.

So in the video game NBA Jam, the announcer says dumb things.

And so all the things I was saying were the quotes from NBA Jam.

But I was in North Carolina to go to Charlotte for two key basketball reasons.

One was Davidson College has a pretty big basketball program.

If people are familiar with the NBA and current players, Steph Curry, Stephan Curry went to Davidson.

We weren't sure if I'd be able to get in, but my mate who does sports analytics has a friend at the Hornets, at the Charlotte Hornets, which is the NBA team.

He's like, hey, we might be able to get you in to have a little look at their facilities and chat about how they use stats and numbers in basketball which i also saw that their their newest sponsor is mr beast

yes i was there

and because we tried to film with

like on their practice court and their their pr people like the press people were like oh they were really cagey and like that's weird and we had a chat with people with them they're like oh we were

we're in the process of negotiating a youtuber being the new like emblem sponsor on the jerseys, which I think was announced like yesterday at the time of recording.

Yeah.

And they were like, so we didn't want to have like any YouTuber conflict of interest.

And I was like, well, who is it?

And they're like, oh, Mr.

Beast.

I'm like, I think Jimmy's going to be okay

with you having the math guy come and talk stats.

I don't think that's going to disrupt his feastables or whatever.

Snack promotion.

But he's from, Mr.

Beast is from North Carolina.

So it kind of makes sense.

It's so

what?

How do you feel about the fact that we've gone from corporations sponsoring YouTubers to YouTubers sponsoring corporations?

I think it's very funny.

I've not seen any of the details other than what I found out when I was chatting to the people at the Hornets.

I think it's hilarious.

I like the fact that through

crowdfunding and support and kind of these I know MrBeast is a whole enterprise unto themselves, but I still like the fact it's kind of grassroots support enabling ridiculous large-scale things.

Yeah.

I'm very aware there's a cynical reading where it's just a way to get good marketing and make money off his audience, but I also think it's very funny.

I like it.

Oh, I feel like Mr.

Beast is the

opposite of Elon Musk.

Oh, it's okay.

Either that or he's like early Elon Musk.

I, from my limited interactions, he's a pretty solid individual.

I can't remember if I told you this back, but I'm going to say a sentence, and everyone needs to wait until the end of the sentence before they decide how impressed they are.

Because it really,

it goes soaring up and then comes crashing down.

So I just want everyone to be ready.

Okay.

So while I was over there doing my basketball filming, I met

Michael Jordan's brother.

Is that the name?

That's the end of the sentence.

I wasn't sure if it was.

Because that's still quite impressive.

Larry Jordan.

And then I was like, you could go further.

You could say

his brother's hairdresser.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Nope, just straight up Larry Jordan.

Yeah.

So Michael Jordan was a large owner of the Charlotte Hornets and is now a much smaller minority owner.

But his brother is still involved in

some of the behind the scenes running in terms of like, you know, training and recruitment and stuff.

And so he was around the offices when we were in.

So we popped popped in and said, hi.

That was that.

That's amazing.

Yeah, it was very cool.

I had a huge amount of fun wandering around the Hornets facilities.

Isn't it funny how you were trying to get hold of like professional football players, like soccer players?

Yeah, yep.

For stuff.

And that's been tricky, but you live in this country,

whereas you could go to the States and meet Michael Jordan's brother.

Yeah.

So, so what Beck's referring to is I will be filming at Liverpool Football Club, but they have stipulated stipulated I can only be there to meet their sports analytics people when it's guaranteed there will be no players around.

So we had to pick a date.

It's coming up.

We're doing it in like about another week and a half from now.

When I forget why, but there's like an international game or something's happening and it's guaranteed there will be no players anywhere near the facility.

So we're allowed in.

Whereas for the NBA, they're like, ah, come on in.

And then...

The person there that we were chatting to, showing us around, would be like, oh, just poke my head in the locker room to make sure none of the players are getting changed before you you come in.

And he goes, Oh, no, we're clear.

Come on in.

Amazing.

He's like, Oh, we can't go in the weights room because there's some players in there doing their thing.

It's totally different.

It's just like, come on in.

I mean, people might say

that's because of the different places in the leagues for Liverpool Football Club versus the Charlotte Hornets, but I can just say the Charlotte Hornets were very welcoming and friendly and very happy to show me around.

They sound awesome.

Also, while you were over there, I went to the Hachette Publishers annual party

at Dan Treiber, no such thing as a fish fame, friend of the show now, slash enemy.

I think I've heard of him.

He and I ended up making the most of their free sparkling wine.

And then I was walking home quite late at night.

So I started texting you guys because I knew you and Trent from Cosmic Shambles Network were over there at the same time.

And I knew that you would be awake.

And so I was like, well, I'll speak to them

while I go home.

And I'm like, we're the only people in a time zone that are still awake.

It's like, oh, yeah.

And if something happens to me, you'll be like, it's not like Bechta suddenly stopped talking.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

But Trent was telling me that he was very disappointed that there was a really good Indian restaurant just over the road from the stadium or court, whatever you call it.

And they didn't have a special called the Stefan Curry.

He was

very disappointing.

This is in Davidson.

He's like, there's got to be a Stefan Curry curry.

You'd think so.

You'd think so.

Missed opportunity.

The best thing that happened on that trip, though, was

the second day working with the basketball program at Davidson.

The assistant coach was like, oh, hey,

what shoe size are you?

I'm like,

12.

I was like, oh, wait here.

And he comes back with a pair of shoes for me.

He's like, I'm sorry.

The small

ones we had was 30.

What a weird question to ask.

What a weird question.

He's like, oh, bye.

And then I like, we could.

He came back with a pair of rollerblades.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Here you go.

Yeah, yeah, he just updated your wiki.

I love that.

What?

Ah, for free.

I am,

yeah, they give me a pair of Steph Curry shoes, but because Stefan was born on Pi Day on March 14, they were limited edition Pi Day versions of Steph's shoes.

And so if you look very closely, there are the digits of Pi

run down the heel pull on the back of the shoe.

Like it's real subtle.

Did they get them made for you?

No, no, they exist as a thing.

They already have a pie day

Jordan.

They had a pie, the number pie themed basketball shoe.

And they were not.

It took them until day two to realize maybe they should hook me up with a pair because I am the other middle of that Venn diagram.

You're the only one in the middle of that Venn diagram.

I'm it.

I'm like, who are these made for?

Yeah.

Math-themed basketball shoes.

He's like, that'll be £12,000, thanks.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So, I mean, it's a good investment because I'm already thinking, oh, what are they going to do next Pi Day?

Like, they've now got a customer for life.

So, I mean, well played.

Our first problem comes from someone who has declared their name as David.

And so-called David went to the problem posing page at a problemsquared.com and they typed in their problem.

Went straight into our database and Becca's going to try and solve it.

They said there is a story about a product named Mist Stick.

Mist,

like the suspension of water droplets in the air, M-I-S-T, and stick, spelt like a stick.

And they say there's a story with that Miststick did not sell well in Germany because Mist is a German word for excretement, a swear word specifically.

Wow.

I can see why that didn't sell.

So they want to know what other words are common words in one language, but are rude or profane in a different language.

I guess they're doing some market research before they misname a product that becomes offensive in a foreign market.

So, Beck, you've looked into this.

Yeah, and it's not the only product that's been offensive in other markets.

I can think of one.

What's the one that you know?

I don't know if it's real or it's made up.

Go on.

I heard that when they translated Coca-Cola into uh mandarin or just i guess maybe it was just chinese script they they they went phonetic and they translated coca-cola into bite the wax tadpole which is not necessarily offensive but it is a weird sentence it does it sounds a little bit like a euphemism doesn't it bite the wax tadpole i don't think that's real i don't i don't know that didn't come in my research but i guess that's because it's not specifically rude and i was very much looking for rude things yeah

i mean this is really playing to your skill set yes yeah

So

in terms of products, you know, the website Wix, it's a like electronics and stuff.

You build websites on it.

It's like Squarespace.

Yes, no, I don't know.

Neither of whom sponsor this podcast.

Nope.

Wix in Germany, apparently, is slang for pleasuring oneself.

Oh, dang.

It's very similar to a similar W word that we have in English.

Got it.

So, yeah, so they actually capitalized on that by doing an ad campaign where they were asking people when was the last time they wixed?

They wixed.

Much to the amusement

of the public.

There's also one that Peter McGlattery sent me.

The film Barbie.

Oh yeah.

Do you remember the advertising?

Do you remember any of the advertising around it?

I do not.

I dodge advertising like that scene in the Matrix where Neo is dodging bullets.

I mean, I refuse to watch trailers, which has served me well.

Okay.

But it's hard for me to dodge advertising.

They had the catchphrase on all the posters that says, she can do everything, he's just Ken.

But in French, Ken is slang for intercourse.

Oh.

So

can do everything.

The way when it was translated, it sounds like saying she knows how to do everything.

He just knows how to do sex.

Wow.

Very different film.

I'm trying to say this in like the most PG way.

Oh, that's why

I started doing it and I was like, oh, this is terrible.

You've taken a real challenge on

to do a family-friendly, hilarious tour of inappropriately named products slash advertising tokens.

So, but that made me laugh a lot.

There's some arguments going on about whether anyone would have known, you know, knowingly made that choice and lent into the buzz or whether it was a genuine mistake.

Because you've got, you're, you're at the moment having some of your videos translated into Mandarin, aren't you?

Have you had any interesting translation issues, Matt?

Yeah, so stand up messes on Billy Billy.

I don't think we've not had translation issues with Billy Billy.

We have had the show I do with Helenani, who people may know as the headline act at this year's QEDCon, and Steve Mould, who I believe also dabbles in some YouTube work now these days.

We do a thing called Festival of the Spoken Nerds, which, because we're lazy, we often use the

acronym Fotzen or initialism F-O-T-S-N for Festival of the Spoken Nerd.

But apparently, Fotzen is very close to a German swear word.

And so, some Germans very early on found that very funny.

And we're like, why is that so funny?

And they're like, it's not, it's a very rude word in German.

So we now are careful to not ever like read the acronym out as Fotzen.

We always, a spoken nerd is like the short version to avoid, to avoid offending foreign audiences.

Interesting.

Well, yeah, my, my mum

used to, because my husband's Scottish, Gav's Scottish, as some, some folks know.

So he has a Scottish accent.

And my mum likes to sometimes try and affect a Scottish accent because that's what people do.

Culturally sensitive.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean,

we've had a fair share of it over here.

Oh, God.

It happened to me like two days ago.

Yeah.

It happened to me at immigration when I first moved over here that's so weird the guy was like what did he say he said to me you come from the land down under like he sang it as i was going through and i was like yep that's me no i said and it's not like he must have loads of aussies go through yeah he must sing that all the time no i often have people just shouting like neighbors quotes that's how they get what's a neighbors quote give me a quote from neighbors Flame and Galah.

I don't know.

They wash right over me.

No, that's Home and Away.

Is that Home and Away?

Yeah, Home and Away has all the quotes.

I'm sure there were some neighbors ones.

But Lucy was there, so she could translate for me from neighbors back to regular English.

Yeah.

Well, my mum likes to affect a Scottish accent.

And so she'll say, so she'll say fud instead of food.

Oh, I have some delicious fud.

But in Scotland, if you're going to do a Scottish accent, it's more like fid.

Like it's almost F-I-D rather than F-U-D.

FID.

You sort of don't even mention the vowel.

Do you want some FID?

But

my my husband found this very funny when he met her because in scotland fud f-u-d is slang for uh vagina basically all right yes so uh and we told my mum this and said um don't say fud just so you know because she'll write it out as well in text form oh really because she thinks she's being all funny

yeah

yeah and uh he was like tell your mum to stop to stop saying fudge and then she listens to the show she's going to be mortified that i've added her on this and then we said to her you should you should stop using that, it's slang.

And she was like, Oh, that I don't have a dirty mind, it's everyone else.

I don't mind, I'm gonna keep using it.

So we're like, Well, you've been warned.

Well, okay,

we're good.

Mildly related, my mum's full name is Judith, but she goes by Judy.

And we um were in Indonesia for a while when I was younger.

And the word, uh, Judy in,

I think it was Indonesian, I don't think it was Javanese, I think it was the Indonesian language, was like slang or meant gambler.

And so she had to, when we're in Indonesia, had to go by Judith as opposed to her preferred Judy, just because Judy meant gambler, like in not in a positive way.

Not like, what a gambler, but like, you know, problem gambler.

And what was she one?

If she was, she was keeping it, you know, under control.

Oh, well, it's not really problem gambler, is it?

That's not a problem gambler.

It's an efficient gambler.

Efficient gambler.

That's an oxymoron, isn't it?

Yeah.

We did have some other people responding.

Julie, not Judy, I should say, said that their mother is Finnish and their father's Polish.

So the word pronounced pasca refers to Easter in Polish, but in Finnish means excrement.

Oh.

In the same way that like German mist

probably does.

You know what I'm learning from this?

I'm learning that

there are a lot of words that mean poo.

I think that's the takeaway here.

I feel like you could turn any word into poo.

My theory is any word you think of, there's a language in which it means poo.

That's my conjecture.

Oh, yeah.

Got a couple of other products that had to change their names.

Yep.

But buttery biscuit baz on Twitter.

No kidding.

Yeah.

Said

Foden Trucks, F-O-D-E-N, had to change their name in Portugal because Foden is Portuguese for...

for intercourse again of course for a swear word for intercourse and the vauxhall nova didn't sell in spain because in Spanish, no va means doesn't go.

Oh, that's just a bad slogan.

Yeah.

Apparently, chat GPT in French sounds a little bit like ja petit, which in French means I farted.

Or cat, I farted.

Fuba on Twitter said they told their French girlfriend's mum that they don't like processed food as it has too many preservatives.

Perfectly normal sentence.

They thought they were saying preservatives.

Preservatives.

Sort of pre preservatives.

I don't know if I'm pronouncing that correct.

It was the meaning of that.

But it's spelt very similarly.

Right.

And it means condom.

I mean, that's a valid reason to dislike processed food.

Yeah, yeah.

If I found them in that, I wouldn't want it either.

Yeah.

Oh, we did have a couple of reminders that obviously the word fanny has a double meaning.

There's one, the meaning you have in the UK and Australia is very different to as it is in the States.

Hence, bum bag versus fanny pack.

Yes.

Yeah.

And which is funny because you you tend to wear a bum bag on your front now i guess in the in the past you would wear it so it sat just above your bum but i guess so or or your fanny if you're american but you tend to wear them on the front there you go not sure why it's called i guess because you can't really say it's a fud bag

it's not really on the front either

hugo ballmer said a classic anecdote from the 1960s about Dutch PM Joseph Lunds meeting John F.

Kennedy.

John F.

Kennedy said, so what do you do in your spare time?

And the Dutch Prime Minister said, I fock horses, F-O-K,

which means to breed.

Oh, to breed horses.

Yeah.

JFK said, pardon.

And they said, yes, parden.

Parden means horses.

Ah, that's everything aligned perfectly in that conversation.

Yes.

Here's some others.

Siri sounds a bit like shiri in Japanese, which means but.

Hey, but.

What's the weather today?

Also, cool, how we say like cool, sounds sounds a bit like cool, c-u-l, which means butt in French and Catalan.

That's great.

Cookie sounds like kuki, that's k-u-k-i in hungarian, which means um, small penis.

It's uh, it comes from the word kukak, which means worm.

Oh, okay.

Checks out.

Uh, pay payday, as in, you know, waiting for payday when you'll get paid for your job, sounds like payday, which is

yes, it is, yeah.

It sounds like payday, p-e-i-d-e-i in Portuguese, which means farted.

The farted.

The confectionery.

Yeah.

I got some money when I farted.

Oh, I can't pay you back now.

I have to wait until I farted.

Yeah.

Do you want some foreign words that sound rude in English?

I don't know if we can use them in the podcast, but give it a go.

Clatter fart.

Clatter fart.

Yeah.

Actually, this is a little bit of a cheat because it's not from a foreign language, just from a Tudor dictionary from the 1500s, defines a clatter fart as someone who is a gossip or blabber mouth what a clatter fart you know what i love when i'm having scones or scones what do you like when you're having scones or scones i like to cover it with jam and a ton of slag room

what's a what

it's a dutch word for whipped cream so first of all you put on an old man and then sorry what uh grub grube yeah gruber

so if you had strawberries and cream, it's old man and slag room.

Nice.

Have you got any?

There are loads of others out there.

They're very good, but probably not safe for...

I feel like you've skirted the ball.

Anyone listening in public?

Yes.

I've tried very hard to

tread that line.

Well, my theory is that any word or expression in some language means poo.

I have had a look at all the phrases from NBA Jam.

to find the ones that sound the most like they could be talking about poo.

We got up, puts up up a brick.

Puts up a brick, nice.

He's on fire.

Monster jam.

Does that count?

Yeah.

Oh, I did a monster jam.

Monster jam.

Yeah, there you go.

Boom shakalaka.

I don't know why that doesn't work.

It just made me laugh.

I mean, you said all these in the intro.

I know.

There aren't that many.

I think basketball terms are very, just general basketball terms are very good for it.

I had a friend once refer to

the moments where you do a poo, but when you wipe,

it's clean.

You know, you're clean.

You don't have to, you know, every now and then you'll be like, what?

They refer to that as nothing but net.

Nothing but net.

What on?

Yeah.

You don't want one off the backboard is what I'm saying.

I do like to play a game sometimes.

I'll finish this if anyone's trying to keep themselves busy in the future on car journeys.

What you do is you try and think of words for like poo or but or something, but starting with each letter of the alphabet and you sort of go around in a circle.

So for A, you might say like ass, and B, you've got butt or but,

but then you have to start getting like,

I think cool was but was cool, but this game gets easier with foreign languages, yeah, yeah.

So there you go, everyone can play that game.

And look, I'm sure there's loads of people who are like, you didn't say these words, or you've missed this out.

Yeah, how about that?

And

do you know what?

That's when our Discord/slash Reddit will come in handy.

We'll talk about more that more in any other business.

Any other buttons?

In any other buttonness.

Oh my goodness.

Well, I feel like you have found some other common words in one language that are rude.

R.C.

Orifice buttoness.

This is a serious podcast back.

We solve serious problems.

So I'm going to give you a ding-dong for achieving

finding words

can sound a bit rude if you're not careful.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

This next problem is for Matt, and it hasn't come through the problem posing page and there is no name.

It has not, no.

Matt.

It says, do more words start with the letter K or have it as the fourth letter?

There you go.

Big problem.

That's a good question.

Now, I'll provide context in a moment, but I thought we'd just start with the question.

So what do you think?

Do more letters start with K or have it as the fourth letter?

I mean, my immediate thought is to is to say the fourth letter because you think of all the CK

words.

But actually, there can't be that many CK words.

I mean, there will be a lot, because I guess, I mean, we get into that

wordal territory like we've gone to in the past.

I can't think of any words that, English words, that have K as a fourth letter that don't have C prior to it.

Not off the top of my head.

So I,

I'm going to say start with.

Okay, yeah, yeah.

And that's a very common response.

So this question came up.

I was watching a talk by someone named Arthur about how our experiences as a human can mean that we don't always make the correct decision because we're quite, you know, subjective and we're influenced by context and we don't always perceive things as being completely accurate.

And so it was a very interesting talk about how humans make decisions and what influences those decisions for the rational or for irrational.

And this was an example of which do you, just from your experience, think is the most common position for the letter K and it turns out it appears in the fourth position of a word 32% more than when it appears in the first position whoa

yeah so for every three words that start with a K there are four which have it in the fourth position so if you give me a letter I'll give you a word that has K in the fourth position what would you like uh Q oh it's gonna be difficult don't you

know P

what I've actually done is I've just printed I've got them all in a spreadsheet I've got to scroll down to Q a quake.

Quake.

Oh, so we're...

Right.

Do you know what?

Because I'm...

See, now I feel like this is cheating.

What?

Quake has Q as.

No, no, you're right.

Quake has K in the fourth position.

Okay, and I see what's happened here is because I've made the assumption that K is the fourth letter.

We were talking about four-letter words.

Ah,

no.

I have as many letters as the words.

That's all on me.

At no point does it say

as the fourth letter.

I guess I just assumed that it was meant to be as the last letter in a four-letter word.

But I just made that assumption myself.

There is nothing that suggested that.

I wonder if any listeners made that assumption or if they like

specifically fourth letter.

Kwoka.

Yeah.

I would have definitely said as the fourth letter if I

if I had remembered that the words could be longer than four letters.

Would you like another one then?

Sure.

Is the letter G

more likely to be the first letter or the third letter in a word?

The first letter or the third letter.

Yeah, I'm mixing it up.

Ooh,

English.

I'm struggling to think of many, I guess, like, mmm, egg.

Egg.

So while Beck is thinking of G words, the point here is we tend to notice the first letter more.

Out.

And words are kind of categorized by their first letter.

So we tend to

find the first letters letters of words more memorable.

And it's hard for humans to subjectively remember just off the top of your head or to think about how often letters appear in other positions.

And we tend to say first is the most likely.

Yeah, I think with this one, I'm going to say words starting with G, because I feel like G as a third letter is less common.

You are correct.

It appears in the third position 81.6% as often as it does in the first position.

That's still a lot more than I thought.

It's still a lot.

I picked one that was close.

So Arthur gave this talk and afterwards I was chatting to Arthur and I was like, oh, how much more likely is it to find K in the fourth position?

And he's like, actually, I don't know.

I just know it's more

frequent.

And then we're like silent for a second.

And I'm like, well, I wonder which letter has the most dominant position where it is in a word compared to, let's say, the starting position.

And then Arthur said, I reckon I could write some terrible Python code to work that out.

And I was like, That's exactly what I would do.

And so you guys are speaking the same language, which is bad.

Guess what I did, Beck?

Yeah, we wrote some bad.

So we had, we're both, I'm like, well, you know, I can't do that for a while because I'm writing a book.

I'm very busy at the moment.

And then later.

Have you ever made the joke that you that you speak Python?

And then go,

you know, I never have.

Feels like if you're not.

If I ever do, I'll give you a call and let you.

I'm like, Beck, you won't believe it.

It finally happened.

I said that joke you said.

Yeah.

And I've been fired.

But it's terrible, Python.

Yeah.

So it has to be a bad impression of the snake.

There it is.

That's.

It'd be great at playing the trumpet.

Ah, see, now that that's some content that I have to make, isn't it?

Just got to dub over some stock footage of snakes.

With rasping noises.

I'm going to do it.

I'm going to post it.

We'll link to it in socials afterwards.

Wow, you're committed.

Yeah.

Now I have to do it.

It's holding myself accountable.

Yoit.

Go yoit.

So later that night, I, because I was in London, saw the talk, spent a bunch of time working on the book, had another meeting.

I was on the train on the way home.

I got sick of working on my book, and I was like,

I've still got that file with 370,000 words.

Because we did the word all five words with 25 letters.

I was like, oh, I've still got all that stuff on my laptop.

And so I just quickly adjusted the code.

And so it goes through all 370,000 words and analyzes which letters are in which positions and then spits it all back out again.

So I can now tell you that there are 12 letters which are more common to be the first letter of a word and the other 14 are more likely to be in the word, overwhelmingly likely to be the second letter in the word.

Wow.

So yeah.

So

I then.

Can I can I guess some of the words that's yeah?

Yeah.

Do you have do do you have any questions?

Because basically, I've just got a lot of data now and I've just been looking at it, just answering my own curious questions.

If you've got any questions about letters and a word, let me know.

No.

Good.

No, I just...

No, no, no.

Well,

what I want to know is I'm going to guess what the...

I want to guess what the 12 letters are.

I want to see if I can guess it.

Okay.

Right?

So I'm going to go with S.

See how many in a row you can get.

If there's anything I learned from our trying to find a long word, a lot of them started with S.

Yeah.

Turns out S is the most common starting letter in a word in English.

I was surprised.

Wow.

S is it.

Like, if you're going to start an English word, S.

In fact, do you want to hear the word?

Do you want to hear the word where each letter is just the most common letter to be in that position?

Yeah.

The word.

The most average word in English, if every letter is just the most common letter to be in that position, is C.

S E.

Wait, hang on.

C

C

C.

Now, those end ones are all Ys.

Right.

Then it gets a bit funky at the end.

Hours.

How long is this word?

How many letters does it have?

It's like 20.

Is it 29?

Is it Strong's?

It's out there with the best of them.

29.

29 letters.

Strong's letters!

There you go.

The word

in the wild.

What are the chances?

C.

Oh, no, it is multiple syllables.

I think you'd struggle.

It starts with one syllable and then it ends with Alan, yeah.

In your findings, did you find that there is a position that letters tend to be in the most?

Yeah, so overwhelmingly, like 12 letters really want to be the first letter in a word.

So they're all fighting for that.

There are then one, two, three, four, five.

There are then nine letters that really want to be the second letter.

There's three that love being the third letter.

A single letter wants to be fourth, and that's K, as previously established.

Are you saying that K is the most common fourth letter?

No, K is

the letter with the highest preference for being the fourth letter in a word.

How is that different from what I said?

That's different from what you said because the if you okay, so if you took all the words and looked at what the most common fourth letter is it's the letter e because there are just a lot of e's there are more e's than k's e's are everywhere if you only look at words with the letter k in them and say where is the k likely to be the k is most likely to be in the fourth position i see k is the only letter which its most common position is the fourth position So what you

is never happier than being the fourth letter.

Yeah.

Would you like to hear a word where where every letter is as happy as it can be?

Sure.

Dark.

So D.

D loves being the first letter in a word.

That's its happiest place.

A loves being the second letter in a word.

Doesn't get happier than when it's the second letter.

R loves being the third letter in a word.

And K, as established, loves being the fourth letter in a word.

So dark.

Every letter is happy with

its location.

They're all in their most common place to be in a word.

Huh?

Milk.

Every letter in milk is where it wants to be.

That's cute.

So to clarify,

you're saying that it's the preference for that individual letter for where it likes to be in a word.

Yes.

Not the letter that appears most in that position.

Because the letter that appears most in that position is S for the first letter and then E for the second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth positions.

I guess we're all boring.

You know, if Wordle did take words that aren't real, you could start with

and you're more likely to get some green,

got them in the right place marks.

Yes.

Okay.

So in the chat, I've just given you every letter in terms of its favorite place to be.

So at the beginning are all the letters that want to be the first letter in the word.

And then you've got all the letters that want to be the second letter in the word.

And then there's only three that want to be the third letter.

L, R, and T, if people are playing along the home.

So hence middle.

In alphabetical order, it spells balgs.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

If you just take the lowest rank one of each one, balgs.

Oh, the z's an exception.

That wants to be the eighth letter in the word.

Yeah, I was going to say that's interesting.

I think that's because Americans use it like between an I and an E to mean I's.

Okay, give me a starting letter of a word, Beck.

B for Beck.

B for Beck.

So the following words start with B and have Z in the eighth position.

Belconize,

Beladize,

Belsamize,

Barbarize,

Baromerts.

Oh, that's a bit different.

Basha Bazook.

What?

Bashabazook?

Huh.

Bedlamise.

Berlinize.

Besqueeze.

Oh, that's the best word.

Besqueze.

That's amazing.

Besqueze.

Yeah, the squeeze.

I besqueeze unto you.

I besqueeze unto you

the letter Z.

Yeah.

So my code, I can tell it a letter and a position position and it will kick out every word that has that letter in that position.

There are 1776 words that have Z in the eighth position.

Incredible.

Well, I have one more question, Matt.

Yeah.

What what was the talk about again?

Yeah, this is totally unrelated to the talk.

It's how easily I can get distracted solving a problem that's not a problem when I'm meant to be writing a book.

I mean, the actual answer is K is 30%

over 30%.

Let me get the exact number in front of you.

I meant what was the talk about that you originally got the problem from.

That beats me.

Well, Matt,

I'm impressed.

It's a problem literally no one posed, not even the person who said it, because they were like

two of us contemplated the problem, and it was a race to whoever had free time first to write some terrible Python code.

Yeah, well, I'm sure that our thousands of entries on the database waiting to be solved

are thrilled by that.

Look, I'm teasing you.

I'm teasing you, but that's the same thing.

They're squeezed.

That's still very impressive.

And

I know it is, because I wonder things like that, but they stop at me wondering them.

And then I don't really go any further.

Yeah.

And you've proved that you are very clever.

That's not true.

I'm able to write

I've got a new problem.

I want to find out if there is any real-life applications for this

piece of code that you've written.

Nope.

Deliberately so.

Well, I'm gonna look, I would give it a ding.

You did say that K wants to be the fourth letter, but I think a dink.

I'm gonna give you a dinky.

That's pretty close to everything being in the right place.

D's happy, I's happy, and

N's a little off.

Because in Australia, dink, to give someone a dink or a dinky is a bit like, what do they call it here?

You sit on the handlebars or you

carry them on

like handlebarring.

So, yeah, N's pretty close.

N

is also a big fan of the third position.

It just does prefer the second, but it's pretty happy.

The third position is its second favorite place to be.

So I think dink thinks a good word.

Dink, dink.

Dink, dink.

Now it is time for AOB, which normally stands for any other business, but now it stands for Autobahn, because

that seems to be the theme in our any other business this time.

Beck, people have autobahn-related opinions.

Yes.

Not just opinions, but I would argue corrections.

Oh, on this show.

What have they got to say?

Look, I am not above admitting when I have failed the listener.

Right.

So in episode 0, 6, 9, our previous episode, someone asked whether it would be possible to fly a plane along the Autobahn.

And I very,

very confidently said no.

And some of the things that I've seen.

What was the basis of your argument, just for people who missed?

I found, well, I found that it was the Autobahn is limited to certain types of vehicles.

And

I also looked up the takeoff speed of various planes.

If they hit certain speeds on the autobahn, then they would just take off.

So they wouldn't be driving along it.

they'd just be flying above it.

Right, there are various corrections for what I said.

So, uh, Johans wrote in and said, Great episode once again.

Thank you,

however, I have something to add about the flying on the Autobahn thing.

While I don't doubt that, under normal circumstances, it is not allowed to take your plane for a spin on the Autobahn in Germany.

I also know there are quite a number of sections where it could be legal.

These sections are prepared for transformation into emergency landing strips during wartime.

Right, so if war breaks out,

land your plane on the autobahn.

Yeah, so actually, a listener called David went into this a bit further and said it is possible technically

and legally to take off and land airplanes on certain parts of German autobahns if you are a military pilot and the circumstances require it.

Right.

So-called author.

Now, I'm going to definitely say this again.

Oh, wow.

I've just seen that word.

I can't wait.

There are so-called autobahn beheld slanderplatz.

I've definitely mispronounced that.

Z is definitely way further than eighth in that word, but it does start with B.

Behelfslanderpats, which are basically stretches of the highway that are built in a way they can easily be converted into an airfield if required, i.e., during war.

You can find a list of those in the German Wikipedia.

Provide a link which will pop in the show notes.

DE.wikipedia.org.

Yes.

Unfortunately, the English version.org.

Yeah.

Unfortunately, the English version of said article does not feature the list, but simply says they exist.

When I was a child, my dad showed one to me when we were driving on it.

However, that memory resonated with your latest episode.

When I now read up on it, I found some...

When I read up on it, I found some facts worth mentioning.

The famous, so at least in Germany, the famous US Ramstein Air Base, which I guess is where the band

Ramstein Air Base seems to have been built upon one such airstrip.

Also, there was a NATO exercise called Highway 84, which took place on one of those German highway strips in, obviously, 1984.

They said, thanks for your great podcast and work.

Not sure if I should now continue watching footage of planes starting and landing on highways.

They have provided a YouTube link if anyone would like to watch this.

A link.

It's a link in the show notes as well.

David, absolutely phenomenal work there and your hands as well.

Thank you very much.

We did also hear from Mike, who pulled me up on the other point that I made.

Oh, my goodness.

Who said, I'm sorry to do this, but I have a slight correction for you regarding the latest episode.

I fly a Cessna 152, very similar to the 152.

Oh, Mike's brought receipts.

Yeah.

And I wanted to clarify something.

The takeoff speed of an aircraft is not the speed at which the aircraft will take off on its own.

What?

It's the speed at which the pilot should pull back on the control column, rotating the aircraft in order to take off.

If the pilot keeps the potential.

That take off is optional.

Yeah, if the pilot keeps their hands off the control column, the aircraft won't take off until it is going at approximately the normal cruising speed of the aircraft.

Around 150 kilometers an hour for a Cessna 150.

And by pushing forward on the control column, they'll be able to get the aircraft all the way to its top speed without it leaving the ground.

As a side note, note, if either of you two.

Oh, sorry, I won't put that in.

Yeah, no, no, no.

Yeah, yeah.

I'll do that last sentence one more time for you, Lauren.

And by pushing forward on the control column, they'll be able to get the aircraft all the way to its top speed without it leaving the ground.

Because you were just flying down into the ground as you fly.

You're just driving it.

You're driving it.

You're using the plane like a spoiler.

Yeah.

Yeah, so you're not like tilting it for it to physically catch the air, I guess.

Egg on my face.

That's what it is.

You got corrected.

I did.

And do you know what?

I love it.

I love it.

This is so useful.

And this is also why people should keep tuning back to the show.

Because if you were to listen to one episode, you might be walking around telling people that you can't take a plane on the Autobahn, saying, Beck Hill told me you can't.

She didn't mention any exceptions for military pilots in...

circumstances that require it.

Yeah.

So, you know, as a continued listener, you only learn more and more.

Well, you you know what I love about

it very funny that you're any other business was three people telling you about a technical mistake in what you said last time.

And mine is Tony here.

Tony's saying they've made some printable platonic solid doorknobs.

So for the maths related decor.

Yeah.

So I was so having a problem about making your house more mathsy from a decor sense.

And I mentioned how I'd always wanted like number doorknobs on a cupboard.

And we mentioned other shapes.

And so, Tony's made platonic solid doorknobs.

I'm just going to open them up now, have a little look.

Yep, yeah,

they've um

they've got a certain vibe about them, but we'll uh oh, yeah, they do have a vibe, they do, the certain adult toy vibe, if I may.

I mean, I think it would be very uncomfortable.

I'm not, I'm not one to judge.

All I'm saying is, very cool.

Could you explain what platonic solid...

I mean, I'm looking at them, but I guess it's to do with plates because, you know, all I could think originally was this is ones you would give to your friends and not a lover.

Exactly.

Although,

despite what they look like.

So platonic solid is a shape where all the faces on the 3D shape are identical and they're all regular shapes as in they've all got the same length edges and the same angles inside them.

So batonic solids are shapes which are very consistent.

All the edges are the same length, all the corners are the same number of degrees, all the vertices, which is like the 3D corners, are all identical.

So these are super,

super regular shapes.

And now you can print them out as handles for a cupboard.

3D print, I should say.

You wouldn't have to do it.

Tried to put this onto.

There is a link to it as well.

We'll pop it in the show notes and you can make a little donation to

put them up on his Ko-fi.

Is that how you pronounce that this book?

You can donate from zero or more Euros, and you can get the STL file to print out these doorknobs.

You know, I have a friend who has a 3D printer.

And as you know,

because I'm very busy right now, I've decided it's the perfect time to redecorate my bedroom.

Well, I say bedroom.

My room, my study.

And I just bought a bunch of plain wooden doorknobs from online so I could just paint them.

But now

I'm kind of tempted to get some platonic solid doorknobs.

I think you should do it.

I'm going to hold out for the Archimedean solid doorknobs.

I feel like that's a very funny joke.

It's not.

It's not.

I'm just, I'm literally naming the next type of shape along after platonic solids.

It's the Archimedean solids.

So you've got Plato and Archimedes.

Plato is arguably funnier because, like you said, it sounds like plate.

So if you did it on the cupboard in the kitchen, it'd be very funny.

Whereas.

Oh, that is fun.

Yeah.

Archimede meades.

Maybe if you've got like mead glasses or something, I don't know.

Yeah, yeah, that common.

Yes, we all have mead cups.

Actually, you say that.

I literally do.

See?

See?

It was given to me when I did that Animator Z podcast and

we did a Vikings anime show and when we finished up they gave us customized Viking mugs to drink meat out of.

You should put them in the Archimedean door handled cupboard.

Yeah, I should.

So I mentioned at the top of the episode that I hosted at QEDCon

and met a

lot of listeners there and quite a few of them listen with their kids.

So their kids are big fans.

Please forgive us for some of the words that we said in foreign animals.

So I thought perhaps, seeing as we don't specifically cater for a younger audience, but maybe it'd be nice to

do a one-off episode where we do.

Oh.

So

I was chatting to Miles at the conference.

Shout out to Miles, who was saying that his son has a problem he wants to pose.

And I thought, I wonder if there's anyone else with kids who want to pose a problem to us.

Yeah.

We can do our best to solve it in an understandable way.

Oh my goodness.

Yeah.

So are they going to submit these via the problem posing page at a problemsquared.com?

Yeah.

So if there's, if anyone's kids have a problem they want to pose to us, they can send it on there.

If you if they want to record themselves asking us the problem,

then you might need to upload it

exception for children only.

To something and then

you know copy and paste the link when you're entering it into the problem posing page.

Can you get a chance to have any people respond?

Yes, child's age, child's name, pronouns.

There might be quite a lot.

So I'm not sure if we'll be able to answer all of them

in one episode, but we'll give it a go.

Give it a go.

And don't be a hilarious adult and put in like

so-and-so, age 43.

Like the genuine kids, kids' questions only.

Maybe mention kids' episodes somewhere in there so that we can differentiate from the other problems people are sending us.

Another bit of business.

We have a Discord servant.

Another bit of business.

We have a Discord server up and running.

And

already there's a vote that it should be called a problem

Disquired.

Disquared?

A Disquared server.

Hmm.

Anyway, we will link to the subreddit and the Discord server in the show notes.

Yeah, it's a good place to put YouTube links for planes taking off and landing on highways.

And there was a final bit of Any Other Business from Libby.

who was responding to something we talked about in episode 054

where we were talking about rulers.

We sort of had a

argument about whether you could do a ruler that only had one or two marks on there.

And then I was saying, well, you could just get one that you fold on every centimeter line and not make a mark on any of them.

And then you've got a very complicated Constantina ruler.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And Libby said, when I was in primary school, I had a ruler that was like a chain with each inch being a separate block that you could fold.

They said,

it was horrifically

horrifically impractical as when you draw a line, there was a dip every time you got to the next inch, which I would argue just makes counting the inches easier.

Yeah, that's true.

I kind of love that.

It's always baked in.

Yeah.

Well, I, I, since uh, since that episode, yeah, we haven't been in person.

Uh,

but I, well, no, sorry, we have been in person since we haven't, yeah.

So it's been a while since we've recorded in person.

The next episode, we will be recording in person again.

Yep.

Um, so I haven't had a chance to show you something that I managed to find in Sainsbury's, my local supermarket.

Oh.

Show you this little.

Oh, it's a ruler.

Yep.

Showing you a little ruler, a little 15-centimeter ruler.

Oh, my.

Oh, what?

It folds out into a full 30 centimeters.

Yeah.

But now, look at all those notches.

So many notches.

Oh, yeah, it's not solving your problem.

But it solves my problem.

It's going to have your problem.

It's nice.

It's a hinged ruler.

And it means if you want to draw an angle in between

0 and 180.

I've legitimately used it as a set square.

What I do is I line it up on the corner of my table to make sure it's right angled.

Right.

And then I

transfer that angle over.

Yeah.

Yep.

Wow.

I feel like it could have, if it had a locking mechanism, that would have been better.

But it's missing.

It's missing.

It should have numbers and angles on the inside of it.

You need to protract something so you can line that up.

But I'm well chucked.

It's a very cool ruler.

Yeah.

Cooler.

The button.

Thank you so much to everyone for listening to this episode of A Problem Squared.

And particularly, thank you, thank you to our Patreon supporters who make them who make this whole operation possible.

Without them, we wouldn't be able to buy a bucket.

Another NBA Jam line there.

Oh, I thought you were talking about pooping.

No, can't buy a bucket.

I considered using that in the poop section, but I saved it for the Patreon section.

Now, if you go to patreon.com slash a problem squared, you can also help support us.

And you get the bonus episode of I'm a Wizard and a reminder to our Patreon supporters.

If you wish to be a wizard and sending us in

and send us in a wizard offer, you can record that as a voice note and you can email it in, and we will do our best.

And we will then decide if we wish to accept or return your kind wizard offer.

More details on our Patreon page.

And every episode, we thank three people at random.

So I put all the Patreons in the spreadsheet, gave it a good shuffle.

And this time, we'd like to thank Neil Fraser or Neil Fraser.

Philip Padoff.

Philip Pa.

Philip.

The spare P.

Philip Padoff.

Giovanni Faccio.

Faco?

Faccio.

Giovanni

Faco.

And if you are a Patreon supporter,

You can now link your Patreon account with your Spotify account and listen to the bonus I'm a wizard episodes on Spotify.

Hooray!

More frictionless than ever.

Thank you for your patience.

Yeah, we've now got that.

There is a how-to on how to connect those so you can get started.

Thank you so much for listening to a problem squared.

I'm Matt Parker.

The other voice was Beck Hill.

And finally, to put a nail in the coffin, our producer, Lauren Armstrong Carter.

Beck.

If you want to guess how many dice are in the jar, I'll give you a higher or lower this time.

Ooh.

All right.

Yep.

I can't even remember what I said last time.

I'm going to say 273.

Higher.

All right.

Thank you.

Well, next time I'll be in person and

I can actually try and do some working out.

You can look at the jar, yeah.

I can look at the jar.

Also, Matt, I was meant to mention this last episode, but I heard what you said about Cheesels being better than twisties.

What?

I got to go.

I was going to say, I think I agree.

Controversial.

There's just not enough Cheesels brand stuff out there.

That's true.

I don't know.

Every time I have them, I think I've twistied myself out.

Yeah.

Well,

if anyone was going to achieve a state of being twistied out, it was going going to be you Beck.

A cheese.