A Problem Squared - 106 = Travel ABC and Art of Karate

Episode Date: March 31, 2025

🗺️ Is there an alphabetically perfect travel route?🪵 What can be done with karate chopped wood?🤙 And we ride the crest of the Any Other Business waveYou can find the data-basis for the alphabetically perfect travel route here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_territories_by_number_of_land_bordersHere are some of Bec’s aesthetically pleasing solutions:https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=JubeLHRYl80https://www.myveryeducatedmother.com/2015/12/turn-broken-karate-boards-into-coat-rack.htmlhttps://www.ellemariehome.com/upcycle-karate-break-boards-into-wood-signs/#google_vignetteAnd you can find Brendan’s magical web app here:https://bren.app/podcasteveryday/If you’re heading to the Edinburgh Fringe, you can see Matt here:https://www.pleasance.co.uk/event/getting-triggy-it-matt-parker-does-mathsAnd Bec’s show will be onsale soon!If you’re on Patreon and have a creative Wizard offer to give Bec and Matt, please comment on our pinned post!  If you want to (we’re not forcing anyone) please do leave us a review, show the podcast to a friend or give us a rating! Please do that. It really helps. Finally, if you want even more from A Problem Squared you can connect with us and other listeners on BlueSky, Twitter, Instagram, and on Discord.

Hello and welcome to A Problem Squared, the problem solving podcast, which is a lot like surfing in that it's fun, relatively balanced, but ultimately pointless. Your hosts are comedian and YouTuber Matt Parker Parker, who like a surfer, can be found both in real life and online. And me, another comedian and less of a YouTuber, Beck Hill, who also like a surfer gets bored and enjoys waves. You do. For the listeners, Beck is waving and she's visibly enjoying the process. So I'm enjoying it so much. Do you like my, uh, my, my play on words with gets bored?

Bored I got. What was mine? Was it online? You can be found in real life and online. And surfers are online? An internet surfer, a web surfer. Oh, an internet surfer. Oh my goodness. Sorry.

I didn't realize. I'd forgotten we were on the information super highway. Is it a highway? Is it a sea? That's very, is it a web? It's very confusing. I thought you were going to do like, like a tube on a wave YouTube or something. Yeah.

Yeah. You're tubular. We're both. That's what you are. We're all tubular. That's what I should have said. On this blessed day, we are all tubular. Anyway, on this episode, I'm going to ride an alphabetically precise world tour.

I'm going to get a black belt in recycling. Ooh. And we've got any other break-ness, like a surfing break. Ooh, nice. Yeah, it's not good, but it happened. Yeah. I'm proud of you. Thank you.

Matt? I'm back. How are you? I'm good. I'm good. This episode goes out on the last day of March. So happy end of March to everyone. And all who sail within you.

Yeah. What a month. March is always a good month. Partly because halfway through is a pie day. It's full of penguins. March of the Penguins would be a great horror film where it's just a month where everything gets like, run by penguins. You open a cupboard, penguins. Yeah.

It's like Midas Touch where everything turns to penguins for a month. Yeah. You hug your kids, turns to penguins for a month. You hug your kids, they're penguins. Oh, I ruined the ending. Sorry. Sorry. But you could go to Antarctica and repopulate it with penguins, you know. But if you touch a penguin and you've got the penguin touch.

For listeners at home, we're recording remote because you're still in Australia and I'm in the UK, which means we're going to attribute any mismatch, like any awkward pauses to just the lag on the internet. In reality, it's just, I think we're both running a little slower than normal. What are you doing? I'm the, I am firing on all cylinders today. And if it doesn't come across that way, well, I blame the editor and producer of this episode, Laura Grimshaw. I know.

While Armstrong Carter's off. Yeah. Armstrong Carter's got other things to do. We had to get someone with the most similar first name we could find. Yes. We want to make it as confusing as possible. So confusing. Laura, why can't you have a normal name like Matt or Beck?

Yeah, real unique names. Actually, that would be even more confusing. Don't, don't keep Laura. I like Laura. Laura's a good name. Pi Day, we had Pi Day. I'm trying to talk about Pi Day. I don't actually care about March.

Other than the fact that it's the third month, which gives us the three in Pi. I'd filmed the Pi Day video like last July because it involved getting myself the good Steve Mould of Steve Mould fame, Grant Sanderson of 3Blue1Brown fame, and myself all to Cambridge to do an experiment to calculate pi. And I'd like to share a single fact with you. So you've got a block that can slide around on the ground. Like a block of wood. Like a block of wood, block of ice. Or a block of ice if around on the ground. Like a block of wood. Like a block of wood, block of ice.

Or a block of ice if you're a penguin. Or a penguin. Let's do it with penguins. Okay. Let's use penguins. Okay. You've got, you've got a penguin that's on the ice facing a cliff, but like the bottom of the cliff, it's not going to shoot off the top, it's at the bottom.

It's facing a wall of ice. You then- I don't know how it to shoot off the top, it's at the bottom. It's facing a wall of ice. You then- I don't know how it's going to face the cliff that's at the top, unless it's lying down on its front. Okay, it's sideways. It's orthogonal to the direction of cliff, but a cliff's a bad way. It's a wall. It's the wall of ice next to it.

You have a second penguin, which you slide towards the first penguin as if you were like curling that kind of an action. Yeah. Or I'm like one of those old saloon bartenders that I'm... You're sliding your drink down the bar. Exactly like that. Yeah. And so you're sliding...

Another penguin, please. You're sliding the penguin down the bar, right? And it hits the stationary penguin and the two penguins have the same mass. So when the moving penguin slams into the stationary penguin, it transfers all of its momentum to the other penguin and the other penguin slides off, but the first one stopped. It's a bit like that. Like a Newton's cradle of penguins like that. Like a Newton's cradle. Exactly. Like a Newton's cradle.

Now that you've now transferred the momentum from penguin one to penguin two. And that was one, one penguin collision. The other penguin that's now in motion hits the wall and bounces back. So that's now our second collision. Okay. It's now sliding back towards the first penguin slams into it and sends it coming back towards you. Okay.

And that process of an object, another object knocking at it bounces off a wall that comes back and then knocks the first one again, very straightforward bit of mechanics, three collisions. And what blows my mind is that the three in those three collisions is the same three as the beginning of pi. Like it's not just a coincidence that they're both three. It's not, you know, oh, pi is about three and that takes three collisions, which is normally the case.

Like three little pigs and pi, both three, but for totally unrelated reasons. The three collisions is the first digit of pie. If you had a much bigger penguin that you slid in towards a small one, like an emperor penguin towards a fairy penguin, it would hit the fairy penguin. But there's no way the fairy penguins big enough to stop the emperor penguin with one collision. The emperor penguins is going to just jet the fairy penguin off in front, but then continue to slide just a little slower. Okay.

Yeah. Cause it's still got some of that energy in it. Yeah. Still got most of its energy. It's only passed a little bit onto the other penguin at hand. So when the little penguin comes back, yes, it's coming quite fast, but it's not going to be able to like, sense it. And also the other penguins are still moving towards it.

So there's a bit of like, it then does a negative thing before it goes the other way. Is that right? Yep. Your intuition is spot on. So it'll take more power to get it back to its original collision spot. Yeah. And then it will continue. Yeah.

Okay. But what's going to happen now is the small penguins basically going to bounce backwards and forwards between the wall and the big penguin, gradually slowing down the big penguin and then pushing it back in the other direction. And if you count the number of collisions that would take, if the big one's 100 times heavier, it would take 31 collisions. And the 31 of the three and one from beginning of pi. Yeah.

And if the big penguin was 10,000 times heavier, it would take 314 bounces to turn it around. What? And then- Why is this? It's ridiculous. It shouldn't be. Who worked this out? Mathematicians mate.

Some evil Antarctic explorer. Yes. Now I'm not going to lie. The original version. So many penguins died to find this out. Didn't involve penguins. What? Do you know what though?

I reckon you have held my attention way more than you would have if you'd used any other thing. For some reason, the ridiculousness of it being penguins really helped me to understand this concept. Thank you, penguins. That was my Pi Day. So we used an air table, like an air hockey table. We made the, not mistake, but in the video, just everyone's on the same page.

My mate Hugh Hunt, who has this air table in his engineering lab up in Cambridge, uses it to do like kind of physics demos and stuff. So we just explained what it was. We're just like, oh, it's- And Friday night parties. And Friday night parties. You put your drink down and it just coats away. It's amazing.

Yeah. But we explained what it is. Oh, lots of holes, air things float, and we put some disks and a phone on it and button them around. And then half the comments are, I don't think people in England have air hockey tables. They seem so startled by the concept. We were just...

No, it's just fun. It's fun. And I don't care how many times you played air hockey, you put your phone down on the table and it just starts spinning and moving away from you. That's funny. So anyway. Yeah, that is. But did you make the mistake of not once mentioning air hockey

while using a large essentially air hockey table? Correct. We were moving like pucks around. I should have just shouted air hockey at the table at one point. And let me guess that video is going to do really well because so many people have got a reason to comment. Lots of engagement. Yep.

It's like I did a video about a card game that I've never played, which some people call beggar my neighbor. But it turns out everyone has a different name. They call this card game and the comments under that video, the engagements off the charts, because it's just people, they want to yell whatever their family called that game into the comment section, which is terrible content. Over good engagement. Ah, speaking of terrible content over good engagement. Uh, no, I've been well, I've been well. I've, I've finished my Adelaide fringe run. Oh, how'd it go?

First, first run of a show since 2019. Wow. Yeah. So I didn, first run of a show since 2019. Wow. Yeah. I didn't really call it a show because I was like, this is an hour of stuff. Back on a stage. Yeah. But it has legs and it ended up surprisingly finding its own sort of narrative in the process of me.

Playing with it. So it's still, it still needs a bit of work, but it's got legs and yeah, yeah. It was a big learning curve, but I'm feeling positive about taking it. I'm going to be doing it at various festivals and things back in the UK, MacFest. And, uh, I'll probably do a couple of London dates and then I'll do Edinburgh fringe if anyone wants to come along. Uh, but I had some of my Problem Squares listeners come along. Ah, that's adorable.

Yeah. So, um, yeah, thank you to, uh, those of you who, um, stuck around afterwards each night to say hello, I could always tell the problem squared listeners. And I mean this in the best possible way. Like, Wow. You better land this sentence real gently. I know.

No, I mean it like there, there is a, um, an engagement and, um, there's certain jokes in the show that only worked with specific people. And I was like, you're my people. In the show, I do my James Bond talk, the one that I wrote originally for an evening of unnecessary detail. It's great. I love it. It's found its audience, Matt. Like I was very happy with it. It was a very good bit looking for an audience. And there's a bit in it where I say that Q, the character Q is his name is short for. Q like the letter Q, letter T and then the PI symbol. Oh nice.

His name is QD PI. QD PI. I, this is all on a projector by the way. If anyone's like, what, how are you doing this? Yeah. So everyone, so whenever the QT little PI QT Pie. This is all on a projector, by the way. If anyone's like, what, how are you doing this? Yeah. So everyone, so whenever the QT little pie symbol would come up, there'd be like three people in the audience who'd be like instantly go, hey, and then I would

point it out and explain it. And then the rest of the audience would be like, oh, yeah, I see that. But in my head, I was like, yeah, they were problems squared. And I was, I was on it. So yeah, I want to thank everyone who came along and, uh, stuck around afterwards and had a chat each night. And, uh, we did, I did notice we had someone write in to our problem posing page and pick solution.

And they, just cause to give feedback, they said some very nice things. So thank you very much for coming along. They said they weren't able to stick around and say hello, but, uh, to say, I got your message and thank you for letting me know it was really kind. Cause it was a tough, it was, it was a big, as I said, big learning curve. And it was really nice to get nice feedback from folks. Do your tickets for the Edinburgh fringe already on sale? Uh, not yet.

No, they will be soon. Are yours? They are there. Ooh, they will be soon. Are yours? They are there. Ooh, what a segue. That's not why I brought it up, but now we're here. Everyone please buy tickets to see my show. And Bex, when, when there's a link, we'll put my link in the show description. I'm at 6.30 in the Pleasance courtyard.

Oh, oh, okay. Mine's at 7.30. We're like, yeah, I'm at 7.30 in Appleton tower, which is, which is still in the TV. It's a square, that little area right near the, the pleasant stone and you're in the courtyard. So no one can make both shows on the same night. You're going to have to do two separate. I would just say come for more than one night.

Come from more than one night. That's a good point. Come from more than one night. That's a good point. Our first problem is from Theo. He went to the problem posing page and chose problem in the drop down and said, is there an alphabetically perfect travel route? By that, I mean a route through 26 different countries, as in like 26 letters of the alphabet, where every letter appears at least

once in the country's names in alphabetical order. So basically the alphabet game for country names. I don't think it would be possible to limit it to starting letters, no country starting with the letter X for example, or to visit each country only once. However, I do think that the use of airplanes would make it quite trivial, so the next country always must be a direct neighbor. Ooh, I like that, that rule. Before you go into this, Matt, the alphabet game. The alphabet game. Normally the alphabet game is where it's starting with the letters of the,

you're going in alphabetical order. Is that right? Well, I, when I heard alphabet game, it was, you know, when you, a child in the car, or you might be someone who has children in a car and you have to entertain them. Or just a person in a car. Just a human in a car. And you've got to entertain people in the car. And so my parents would say, can you spot license plates? So each one's got the next letter in the alphabet. So we would all be scouring for a license plate with an A in it.

And then once we found one, we're scouring for another license plate with a B in it. And then we work our way up from there. That's fun. And so that doesn't have to be the lead letter. It just has to be in the plate somewhere. So you've got a different alphabet game. Yeah.

I think in the one that my friend, well, as a comic, I've been in a lot of cars with other comedians, which is like being in a car with children, except one of them's driving. So the, the way that I've played it is where you're just naming, like thinking of things, but mine's always like rude words. So it's like ass and then bum and so forth. Beck. Yes. And then you lap the alphabet and you carry on, but you're not allowed to repeat until

someone can't think of one. If that's the version I'm remembering. Yeah, that's right. Correct. So this one is just, you've got to travel through countries such that the first country you're in has an A somewhere in the name. So let's say you start in India. That's got an A.

Great. Okay. India. Great start. You can go to Bhutan. That's got a B. Starts with a B. Excellent. Then China. There's your C.

These are all geographically next to one another. Yes. So the rules. So yeah, I think this is what, because otherwise it feels a bit too easy, I think. Agreed. You're just naming countries that have letters in them. I know. And, and Theo correctly says you can't fly because you could just fly between the

countries that have the letters you need. Yeah. So the constraint is you have to cross a physical border to go from one country to the next. And the next one has the next letter. But they do say you're allowed repeat countries. So once you're in China and now you need a D, you can come back to India to get the D. So that's... We're not playing that game back.

So now this means a lot of countries will never be part of this game. So you're never going to use Australia because you've got to fly to get there. So it really limits it to a bunch of like countries with land borders. And once you start on one land mass, you can't get to another one. So I'm pretty sure it's got to be the kind of Eurasia Africa land mass. Yeah, I think you're right. So I went to the Wikipedia page. Can I guess what you did? Yeah, you went to Wikipedia.

You looked at list of countries. You then wrote some questionable Python code. Beck. How dare you. And then you told it to search through all the countries for, well, actually, no, you've got to think of neighboring ones. That's the one. Yeah. So you're going to need a more comprehensive list, I imagine.

Countries that are next to each other. You're going to need wikipedia.org slash wiki slash list of countries and territories by number of land borders. Great. Yep. And each one in the list tells you all the countries they share a land border with. So you're 100% correct. Right out of the gates, found the list on Wikipedia. And then as always, took me a little while

to copy the data out of the Wikipedia table and convert it into a form that I could put into Python. So I just had to massage the data for a little bit to get it looking nice and tidy. and I converted it all into links. So I have an ordered pair. They don't need to be ordered. I've kind of double counted them all, but I've got every country and then paired up with every other country you can go to.

So there's a big list of 669 pairs where there's a border between them. 69 pairs where there's a border between them. If it was me, I would basically draw a map where it's like, but not a map. Like I would, where all the borders were the names of the countries. And then, and then go do the computer fix this. Yep. And then go do the computer fix this. Okay. I was with you until then.

And I found 163 countries by my account that share a land border with another country. And then put them all, yep. Put them all into some terrible Python code, set it going and it can't be done. So, real short, short one this time. Here's your problem. You can't do Q. Oh, okay. So apparently there are six countries that contain the letter Q. Oh, okay.

What are they? Equatorial Guinea. Oh, nice. Yep. Q. Oh, okay. What are they? Equatorial Guinea. Oh, nice. Yeah. Iraq. Oh, yep. Iraq is a good one. That came up a lot when I was trying to find a way around the Q problem.

Martinique, Mozambique, Qatar, Saint-Pierre and Miquelon. It's not useful for many reasons, one of which it's a territory. Secondly, it's an archipelago. It's a bunch of islands, which is not useful for driving. So it's out. So what I've just quickly done is I've just knocked a little bit of extra code together to give us all the countries that have a Q in them and then check if they're bordered by any countries that have a P in them, because you have to get

into that country from a P in them, because you have to get into that country from a P move and there are none. So according to my code, there are no Q countries that you can get to from a P country. So that kind of game over. Sorry P countries. I then just thought, well, what if you just ignore Q because I put all the code together, discovered it can't be done. You want to use it.

I was like, fine, fine, fine. Ignore Q. We'll deal with that later. And then you get all the way to V and then you stop. So you can't get from a V country to a W country is the moral of that story. Right. So, so what you're telling me, Matt, now this is a thing, Matthew, this is a thing, Matthew Parker, is that quite often I will look through

the problems that we get sent and I will try and answer several of them. And I'll see how far I get and I'll think, would this make for an interesting answer? Uh, is this a problem that lots of people have or have asked? Right? Yes. Yes. Okay.

You know, these are interesting criteria. Is good content versus, uh, uh, engagement. I don't understand how any of this is relevant to what I'm doing. And then if, and then if I hit a dead end real quickly, I'd move on and I'd try a different one. Oh, okay. Huh. Curious.

Are you saying there's a, there's a moral to your story that I should be drawing? I looked at the questions that we had been sent in and I remember seeing this one and look, no offense, Theo, I'm sure you're a perfectly lovely person, but I remember thinking. Two things. One, I do not care for this question. It is not a question I've ever asked. It is not a problem that I have. It is not a problem I would potentially have, but that is also as someone who has,

who finds no, you know, he doesn't know how to write Python code. Right. So it's also because trying to answer it is a bit annoying. I'm happy to answer problems that I don't have. If I feel like I have the wits and the ability to solve them. I understand. The second thing I thought was, Oh, I bet Matt chooses this. And you, thank you.

Thank you. I'm not going to lie. The problem you're solving next. I looked at that on the list and I was like, Beck's going to choose that. I'm not even going to bother. First of all, want to just deal with a message that producer Laura has put in the chat. Ooh. She's pointed out if instead of Iran, you've

got Islamic Republic of Iran, that would get you your P next to Iraq. So here's what I'm going to very quickly do is I'm going to take that and I'm going to edit my code to swap Iran for Islamic Republic of Iran. Give me one second. Replace all. I regret that already. Okay. All right.

I hate replace all. It makes me so nervous. Okay. You ready? We're going in. Nah, it still, it still stops at P. So you probably can't get to Iran from, is there a country that's got an O in it to get you there?

I mean, what's hilarious about this is I just never actually look at a map. I'm just running it on the code. Whereas if I just looked at a map, I'll be like, oh yeah, that's not why it doesn't work. Yeah. I wonder if I just looked at a map now, if I could just find a path. Oh, if you'd started looking at a map when I started knocking the code together, you definitely would have finished first. Yeah.

A hundred percent. You're right. I, I saw this problem come in from Theo and I was like, you know what? If the data is easily available for borders, I reckon it wouldn't take much to write the code for that. And I was right. So I found the list of all the borders, didn't take that long to get it in the right form, wrote the code, found it couldn't be done. But then I was taking it personally.

I was like, well, how close can you get? Like how many constraints do you have to relax to be able to achieve the journey? So first of all, Q is so annoying. So I was like, you know what? I'm going to take Q out. Q is gone. Forget Q for now. We're moving on.

You can then get past the end of the alphabet if you change the order of the end of the alphabet. Okay. of the end of the alphabet. Okay. So if instead of going, uh, T, so you, uh, you, you get always like, uh, P. Forget Q RST instead of going to UVW, X, Y, Z, you go T W U VZ Y X. A minor shuffle. Yeah. You can, you, VZ Y X a minor shuffle.

Yeah. You can, you can achieve that. So now it is possible to do all the letters of the alphabet almost in order, but you've just got to shuffle the last couple to make it possible. And it's the one that I started before. You start in either China or India to get your A. From either one, you go to Bhutan. From Bhutan, you're China. Then you're India, Nepal, back in people's Republic of China for F.

Then you're, you can either go to Afghanistan and then where can you go next? Back to China. You go to China a lot because people's really good. China just means you get a lot of letters. Yeah. And you've got a few choices along the way. There's not one strict path. You can kind of bounce in and out. Maybe I'll draw a diagram.

You basically bounce around the, the India China region for a while. the India China region for a while. Then you come through Russia, Turkey, Romania way. Then you bounce around Ukraine, Slovakia for a bit. And then you end up coming through Germany, Austria, Italy, Switzerland towards the very end. And then you close it out through Austria, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Germany, Luxembourg. And that's, that's Z Y X at the very end there. And so it's one path, but just with a few choices along the way of exactly how you get from each bit to the next bit. It does go through Turkey and Turkey borders Iraq. So if you don't mind shuffling around the end of the alphabet a tad, and you accept

to get the queue totally out of order when you're in Turkey, you just step into Iraq briefly, which I appreciate from a geopolitical point of view, that sentence is probably a lot harder to achieve than I've made it sound. Then you get the whole alphabet. So I think what I tried to answer for Theo is you can't do the whole alphabet, but those are the minimum concessions you'll have to make as far as I can work out to be able to do the whole alphabet traveling around the

world. Well, while you may have noticed I'm in very quiet while you were talking and yes, I was taking in every detail. You know how much I enjoy. Oh, I know. I know. You're famously good at listening to one thing while doing something else. I also know that you can tell as soon as I get that look in my eyes that I am,

it's the same look I get when I'm trying to think of a pun. Oh, a hundred percent. It's the same look I get when I'm trying to come up with alphabetical letters for rude words. So I'm looking at a map of the continent of Africa and having quite a lot of fun trying to find And having quite a lot of fun trying to find countries next to each other. And like you get like to, you know, I or J or whatever, and then like, ah, bum, I've got to go backwards again. It's really fun.

I recommend this, especially for anyone like me who can get very hyperfixated on certain things. This is a great time waster. If you are looking for an, a potentially impossible challenge, provably impossible challenge. Yes. Provably impossible challenge. Well, look, we, if you're going to get creative and move around the alphabet and certain countries and stuff. Okay, no comment. I'm going to, I'm going to say like, Oh, my, my car is like a James Bond one.

It can drive slightly underwater for a little bit, but only this far. It's a good point. Maybe we add in that you can get multiple letters from the same visit. That would be an option. Yeah. So, I mean, I don't, I don't think I can give you a ding for that, Matt. That's fair enough. Yeah.

But, and do you know what I'm actually, I'm actively, I'm taking away dings. I'm removing a ding from you and Theo, I'm taking away a ding from you. What a previous ding. This looks like a previous ding. A small penguin crashing into a large penguin moving towards it. I didn't know we could lose dings. Please put your ding on the desk. And the other one, there's one of my sock holster.

Yeah. Um, because not only did you pose a problem that I didn't want, but now you've done that thing where I'm, I want to find an answer and I know I can't. I'm, I mean, this is an even bigger problem for one that I didn't even know I had. Sorry. I'm sorry. You both suck. Okay. I don't speak on behalf of Theo, but we were both hand back one ding.

Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. Now I've got double dings baby. Our next problem was sent in by first name Eve, second name emoticon for smiling. Maybe it's just a smiley face Eve's put after their name. They start with the normal formalities, hi Beck and Matt, love the podcast, blah, blah,

blah, listen to it while driving around Scotland. Can I just stop and say this is a lovely formality. They're saying they love the podcast, blah, blah, blah. Listen to it while driving around Scotland. Can I just stop and say, this is a lovely formality. They're saying they love the podcast. We appreciate that. They've been re-listening from the beginning. This is a real customer. And while driving around Scotland for work and we've been keeping them company for a whole week of what would have otherwise been lonely hours on the road.

That is not a blah, blah, blah. So that is a, well, it has been a pleasure keeping you company. Very true. I only hope he was driving through Scottish towns in alphabetical order. E's problem. A few years ago, they were at an event where they were chosen as a volunteer. Oh, I'm sorry to hear that. And taught how to break a plank of wood in half in that cool karate chop way. Wow! And as a prize for successfully doing that, Eve got to

keep the piece of wood. Now, Eve loved the process of learning how to do that and because they got to keep the piece of broken wood, they think it's very cool, nice memento, and they want to hang on to it. However, they really want to turn it into something they can display in their flat and Eve does not know what to do with it and at the moment it just looks like a broken bit of wood which is not aesthetically anything special. So their problem for you Beck is what can they do to create something beautiful to display the broken bit of wood which also lets them see it every day to remind them that Eve is a total badass who can smash through wood with their bare hands.

Beck, what do you got? I've got several answers for you Eve, so strap in. Great. Can I just say before we start, you're right. It's about time we tackled the problems that face sweeping percentages of the populace. So for everyone out there looking at a broken bit of wood that you cleft in twain with your own bare hands at last. Bekah has the answer you need.

Oh, I could not move for websites that cover this topic. What to do with broken karate boards, upcycle my karate boards. Oh, there's so many of them. That's how common this problem is. Make sure you put them in the broken karate board bin and not in with the general rubbish. Yeah, that's right. Now I'm going to give these in order of probably most amount of work or

investment to like actually doable. So I'm going to start by saying, have you considered Kintsugi? You want now? That is the Japanese art of repairing broken ceramics with gold. Ah, yeah. I've seen these pictures. Yeah. Cause it's quite a lovely sort of poetic thing.

Uh, it's to point out the cracks in things and highlight them, show that how broken, brokenness is what makes us beautiful. You know, it's the flaws that make it. show that how broken, brokenness is what makes us beautiful. You know, it's the flaws that make it. So I'm just saying maybe you repair that board with pure molten gold. Which famously plays well with wood. Yeah. And is very affordable.

Yes. But I know I like that. I like the fact objects embracing their journey. Like something was broken. That's now part of that object. Yeah. I like it. Yeah.

Yeah, exactly. It's a bit like my, this is not a show that I did in Adelaide French. I was embracing the chaos. That's it. Okay. My next suggestion is actually, it's a little bit more doable. So I was thinking, what about a karate chopping board in your kitchen? That's excellent.

So I've actually got links. I tried to find some like most helpful tutorial links for you. So we'll pop these in the show notes. But I did find a tutorial on how to make an epoxy cutting board, which is using like bits of, they're not broken wood, but bits of wood and resin to create like a really beautiful charcuterie board. So I reckon if you could get the two bits of wood and then that way if you want to make it bigger, you can just fill in the gaps with more resin, I guess. But I thought maybe that would make a really nice talking piece. I like. But I thought maybe that would make a really

nice talking piece. I like that. I like the chopping board idea. That's very funny. I've got another tutorial as well. And not to go harsh on this person, they've done a great tutorial. I think this is a basic guide. I think you could probably do it a bit differently if you wanted, but they've got two kids who do karate. They've got several broken karate boards. So they have arranged them and some of them have painted. I think it'll better unpainted, but they've arranged them with hooks on them and put them into the walls as a coat rack.

Ah, nice. Got it. I think you could call it your right coat hook. Oh wow. Nice. Like a right hook, but the word coat in the middle. Yeah. Okay.

My next suggestion, turn it into one of those inspirational signs that you get as like home decor, right? And I've already, I've already thought of the sayings you could have on them. Oh, great. Yep. Okay. What are we going to talk to me until I've had my morning karate? Love it.

I'm inspired. It's five a chop somewhere. Yep. Yep. Live, laugh, hiya! I was going to do live, laugh, kick to the face, but I prefer yours. Home is where the haito is. Haito is Japanese for the, it's the inner part of your, palm of your hand that goes like sort of along the side of your thumb.

Yep. There is a word for the side that goes like sort of along the side of your thumb. Yep. There is a word for the side that goes along your pinky finger, which is actually like, that's the part like towards the base of the palm where you, that's the part you would use to hit, but it doesn't sound like the word heart. So I'm going with the opposite side. You've gone pun first. Yep.

Home is where the high thought is. And finally, the real treasure is the Boardsby Karate Chop barehanded as a volunteer at an event along the way. Love it. So normally when we record in the same room, that's more fun. That gets always fun to hang out. But this is the first time I'm glad we're recording remotely because Beck has been acting all these out.

And I feel like it's been very dangerous to be in the same room. I've been waving my arms around a lot. This is true. You're losing yourself in the character. And I would worry for my own safety. Okay. I've got one final answer for Eve. So if you don't want an inspirational sign or anything like that, I reckon just

get a sort of a more of a box frame, get a box frame and frame it. Yep. Just frame, frame your two bits of wood. Don't sort of mount them onto, onto some board, put them in a sort of deep, deep set frame and it will be a really nice talking piece. And I say this because I'm going to send you Matt an image, we'll pop this on social as well, of a piece of art at my friend's place in Berlin. Okay. Oh, so it's a box frame.

Which for anyone who's not sure a box frame is just, it's like a picture frame, but you've just got a bit more space to put something slightly more three dimensional in it. Yeah. And it looks like it's got like a normal mat you would have kind of around a regular picture frame and inside it kind of nailed to the backboard is a large black mass. It looks like if you burnt a cookie and then mistakenly took a bite thinking how bad could it be? And you're like, oh, awful. And what's left is, is what it looks like at the back of the, of the board.

Hmm. You're very close Matt. Really? No. Yeah. This is much bigger than a cookie. Oh, okay. I know that there's no, there's no banana for scale.

There's no scale. You can't tell. Yeah. That was a pizza. It is a burnt object from an oven. Great. Yeah. And this artwork is in my friend's flat.

It actually belongs to her landlord. So when she moved in, she was like, oh, that's really interesting. What is it? Because on first glance, you're kind of like, is it like, because when you think it's two-dimensional, you're like, oh, is it like the, is it the moon or something like is it a negative image or something? Kind of a lunar-y feel. What is it? And her landlord explained that when he first lived there, uh, he got home very

late one night and was very, very drunk. And he put on a pizza in that, like an oven pizza in the oven and then went to bed and woke up with the flat filled with smoke, the fire alarms going off, the fire service, fire department were called because neighbors had noticed smoke and the smell and the things had gone off. Obviously he was fine. The flat did not burn down. No one was injured.

But to remind himself to never try cooking anything when he's had a few drinks, he puts this up on the wall. So whenever he gets home and he thinks, Oh, maybe I'll do something, he remembers, no, that is a bad idea. Go to bed. That's brilliant. Or order in at least. So I think you could do a similar thing like this, except it would be far more motivational and inspirational.

Yeah. People come in, they'd be like, Oh, what's that? And like, Oh, what have you done there? And then you can explain that as a piece of wood that I karate chop with my bare hand, because I'm a bad mother flipper. Total badass who can smash through wood with their bare hands. Yeah, exactly. That's what the piece is unofficially called, I think. Yeah, I think that's the artist's name.

Bec, those are some great suggestions. I think you've nailed them all. Mine was turning into a very small shelf. Get some brackets. Shelf is fun. It's already broken though. I don't know how strong it's going to be. Yeah, I guess if you got two bits, I was imagining you'd have them like separated

slightly with like where it's broken is like a little void in the middle of the shelf. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, and then you could make pastor of Paris of your own hand. Get those kids. And then you have that like as a code hook in the center. Yeah.

Perfect. There it is. I'd have the shelves and a slight angle so everything just slides off towards the hand. A slight angle, yeah. Anytime you put something on it, it slides towards the hand. Or it's just a piece of art again. Yeah. No, I really like it. I mean, I've been meaning, like I also hang onto mementos from things. And I've been meaning to get better at actually displaying or having these things

out because there's no point keeping them if they're going to be in a box somewhere. So I've been likewise, you know, the box frames your friend, you can put anything in a box frame looks great. So I really like that was a great suggestion. So I'm going to, I'm going to also going to take a leaf out of your book back and I'm going to box frame some stuff and put it up. Oh, nice. Either that or put some magnets in them. Get rid of all your clothes.

It's just you and the boards now. Whoa, gnarly dude. It's time for any other bro-ness. I'm doing that. Wow. That surfer hand gesture. Brigidage? What would you call that?

Like you're on a telephone. A little finger in... Yeah, it's like an old school telephone, but then you wave it a little bit. It's called a shaka sign by the way. Ah. Yeah. Also known as hang loose. Associated with Hawaiian, uh, Hawaiian and surf culture. According to the Honolulu style bulletin prevailing a local, prevailing local law

credits the gesture to Hamana Kalili of la lei lei. I think I'm pronouncing that right. L A I E who lost the three middle fingers on his right hand while working at the Kahuku sugar mill. Kaleeli was then shifted to guarding the sugar train and his all clear wave of thumb and pinky is said to have evolved into the shaka as children imitated the gesture. Oh, there you go. There's several other suggestions. I won't go into it because this was a problem that no one asked.

to it because this was a problem that no one asked. I'm going to do some AO Venus from Psyking. Really? Oh, Venus. Um, blue sky, who noticed that our previous episode, the one directly before this episode one zero five featured a problem from someone named Patrick. And we released that episode on St. Patrick's day. And they want to know, did we plan that or was it a happy accident?

And, um, there's a note here from producer Laura to say it was deliberate. I think that's our official answer. It was bad. I don't think we, um, we don't put that much, we don't put that much planning into it, but we do take the credit of everything that lines up by accident. I don't think we, we don't put that much, we don't put that much planning into it, but we do take the credit of everything that lines up by accident. And now, Listener Patrick is St. Patrick. That's how it works. So they're St. Patrick for a year.

Yeah. I like to think that this means that every time we're released on a Saint's Day, we have to solve a problem from someone of the same name. Can, um, Valentine, Patrick, next time some Patrick says on a Monday, send us some questions. We'll try and try and solve them. Or if your name's Val and the next Valentine's day is on a, on a Monday and we only do every second Monday as well.

So there's a 50 50 chance we hit it. But one person we did hear from was Brendan who wrote into the problem posing page and selected the solution dropdown. And they said in episode one, zero two, Matt shared their research showcasing which days of the year Saturday night live has aired on throughout its history. They wanted to see what days of the year problem square has aired throughout its history. I figured it would be the year Problem Squared has aired throughout its history. I figured it would be easiest just to do this

generically for any RSS feed. It turns out a Problem Squared has released episodes on a total of 88 out of 366 days of the year, or around 24%. That's pretty good. Seems like you have a pretty even distribution between the months with the most populous Feb, December and August having eight days while the least

populous March has only six days. You can see the working out here with a little web application I made to visualize this concept. Holy bumhole. That's amazing, Brendan. So you put an RSS feed in and it will then generate it for you. That's really nice. Oh, they've used us and lateral as the two examples on the page.

Oh, that's a really nice visualization, Brandon. That's excellent. Wow. Do you want a job, Brandon? Because neither Matt or I are good at this. We've done one more day since they sent this in. Yeah, St. Patrick's day. We got a new one.

Oh, this one coming out as a repeat. Yeah. Any other Brendan I should have called this section. That's what you should have called it. In an ongoing category of any other business, is any other big thingness? People are still sending us in big things that they've gone to seen. Rocco wanted to jump in on the big thing discussion because Rocco and their partner, Andy went to the big chair.

It's the world's biggest chair in Southern Spain. Wow. They say it was incredible and they would love to see more big things in the future. That's a great thing about big things. You can see them coming. My favorite thing that Rocco says is that when they did the detour to see the biggest chair, it was way bigger than I expected. I think that's my favorite thing.

That's what you want when you go to see a big thing. You don't want to see a big thing and go, oh, is that it? You won't like, oh, this is much bigger than I anticipated. Yeah. And Colin correctly points out, we both have discussed big things on this podcast. And we discussed the pencil museum without pointing out the pencil museum has a big pencil, which it does. It's a big pencil.

How big? Like I from memory, let's say five meters. That's a big pencil. And they made it like the way you make a normal pencil. I'm remembering this correctly. They used a chainsaw to sharpen it, to give it the point on the end that finished making it. Yeah.

So anyway, Colin would like, um, on location back to make a visit to Cumbria soon. So one of our on location reporters has to get to Cumbria at some point. I'll have a word with her. I'll see if she's anywhere near it this year. We also had from Xander, who was the problem poser on episode one, zero four. This is when we're talking about Hannah Fry and wrapping the earth. And Xander said, ding. Hey, thanks for looking into the paper wrapping the earth problem.

You are now officially my zero favorite online mathematician. I'll take it. And Xander said, ding. Hey, thanks for looking into the paper wrapping the earth problem. You are now officially my zero favorite online mathematician. Oh, take it. Yeah. You just did a real triumphant. Hands in the air. Yeah. Well, I was down a ding on this episode, so now I'm breaking even.

Okay. Yeah, sure. So listeners and Matt, you're both even, even see Stevens again. Woo. Hugh, on the theme of what size A series paper would wrap the earth, I said, I hadn't gone in a minute detail to work out if you could get a smaller piece to wrap the earth. And I went up. Hugh has done that working out. They've worked out you could wrap the earth in an A negative 50 sheet.

And the reason I wasn't prepared to commit to that, and I went one bigger, was because the long edge of a A negative 50 is just shorter than the circumference of the earth. So you can't quite get it all the way around. They've worked out if you, instead of using that long edge. So you've got an A4 piece of paper. Yep.

And there's the long edge from there to there. You can get a slightly longer line if instead of going all the way along the edge, you come in slightly and start in the corner and then do a diagonal. Just like a tiny angle, almost following the edge, but in slightly slightly that line's ever so slightly longer than the edge Okay, but now you've got less of the short edge to use and you worked out If you come in on enough of an angle like point one radians You get a long enough line to go around the earth and you've still got enough of the other edge to cover the rest of the earth so

You did did the clever lining up and working it out and has confirmed an A negative 50 sheet would be sufficient to wrap the earth. Another practical problem solved. Yeah. And in fact, I'm going to read out the rest of what Hugh said, because this was the part I understood. Oh. Which was to make a cylinder the regular way by putting the two short sides together.

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

Good work, Hugh. Yeah. Thanks Hugh. That problem. I mean, that's a wrap. Nice. Hey, thank you. Speaking of thank yous.

Slick. I want to thank all of you for listening. First of all, if you, if you don't, then this is an awkward hassle. I mean, then we basically just paid a producer to sit there and listen to us talk. That's it. But then have the audacity to make them edit it for no one. We should do that one time. And there was like, where are the microphones?

And we're like, I just remember it. Yeah. Yeah. If you could just dictate this, just write it up later. Yeah. Dictated, but not read. So that's the podcast. Thank you for listening.

We really appreciate it. Uh, and if you enjoyed it, please tell anyone else you think might enjoy it. We, we want to take over the world, but in a nice way, not like, um, Musk. So we would also like to thank people who give us money that allow us to pay a producer to listen to this and then edit it later so that it's a more enjoyable experience for you listening now. And we'd like to thank our Patreon supporters by reading out three of them at random and mispronouncing their names. On this episode, those three Patreon supporters are...

Chrisk, Eepsum, Oving. Fred, Eric, Ver-E-T. Edbang. Thank you. We really mean it. We love you. Uh, Matt, I thank you as well for being my, um, surf buddy. That's a word, isn't it? Your rip current to your sandbar.

You're the Patrick Swayze to my Keanu Reeves. Okay. Yeah. You're like the original one who actually knows about the stuff and I'm undercover. That explains a lot. Yeah, it does. It really does. I also want to thank producer Laura Grimshaw, who is the wax that stops the boards

the boards from, uh, from, from rotting and it makes, makes them smooth on the water. Uh, it keeps us afloat. There you go. That I came up with. It's a float. There it is. Yeah. And I think that's it. Is that what I normally think?

I think it's everyone. And that's that my mum, my dad, my brother, in alphabetical order. D9. D9 miss. G5. Hit. Oh, do I hear the sound of sinking? Five. Hit. Oh. Do I hear the sound of sinking? Nope.

Oh. Really have some regrets here. If I'm hitting like one end of like multiple parallel ships. That's what you've done, haven't you? Great. Great, great, great, great.