A Problem Squared - 115 = Jolly Good Euphemising and Hollywood Sign Sizing

Episode Date: August 4, 2025

🍆 What’s the “female equivalent” of phallic? What’s the font size of the Hollywood sign?🦈 And we’re always open for AOBusinessThanks to our excellent experts appearing in voicenote form - Dr Ben Whittle, Chella Quint OBE, and Linus Boman.Daan’s paper in the American Journal of Archaeology which cites this very podcast: doi.org/10.1086/735650 The world’s largest enlarged letter: https://www.pleasedonotbend.co.uk/categories/world-recordIf you’re heading to the Edinburgh Fringe, you can get tickets to see Bec here: https://tickets.gildedballoon.co.uk/event/14:5884/And you can get tickets see to Matt here: https://www.pleasance.co.uk/event/getting-triggy-it-matt-parker-does-mathsHere’s how to get involved with Matt’s Moon Pi Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/profile/standupmaths And here’s how to volunteer for Calculate Pi By Hand with Matt: https://forms.gle/w44THpNJ3jWUPqHy6If 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, share the podcast with 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.

Sometimes a podcast that solves listeners' problems looks right at you, right into your eyes. And the thing about a podcaster is they've got lifeless eyes. Black eyes, like a doll's eyes. When a podcast comes at you, it doesn't even seem to be living till you hear it. And those black eyes roll over white. And then, then you hear that terrible high-pitched sound of us solving problems. Welcome to A Problem Squared. I'm Matt Parker, recording this 50 years after the release of Jaws.

There you go. What a theme. No, the theme goes, Duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, because I like niche scientific topics. That works. In my case, it's maths, similar to sharks. Maths also can't stop moving. And I'm joined by Beck Hill, who is a bit like the shark. And that's not because she has raised a sharp wit, it's because she's continually acquiring more teeth. Yay. That's so true. It is, isn't it? In both ways.

Yeah. I liked that intro very much. Oh, thank you. If your specialist subject is maths in the same way that it's sharks, then does that... So I'm not your specialist subject as the shark. No. Math says... Then does that so I'm not your special subject as the shark. No Maths is I I tell a lot of people don't be scared of maths There's that you know maths is more scared of you than you are of it. It's not gonna hurt you Respect the maths. Yeah, and if it gets close to you punch it on the nose exactly. Yes

That's the most sensitive part of the maths. You're more likely to be killed by a coconut than you are by maths. In this episode... I'll be looking at the fallacy of words. Oh, I'm gonna make a very big point about some very big letters. And I guess there'll be some, we're going to need a bigger any other boat. So, Beck, how have you been? I honestly, well, do you know what? I'm fine. I'm fine. Good. The trains, Matthew, the trains.

Oh, the trains are the worst. The trains in this country, it's so expensive. And I'm yet to have a train journey this summer that has been worth the cost that I am spending on them. Have you at any point had in consecutive days delays because of heat and then because of rain? Two things which somehow seem to catch England unaware every time. LARRAE Producer Laura and I had a conversation about this and I was saying that the optimism of industry here, of infrastructure here, is ridiculous.

Because we all know that British people like to talk about the weather. You know why? Because it's constantly changing. Like all the time. British weather is so all over the place. It's never nice. It's either too hot or too cold or too windy or too humid or too wet or all of the above. It's chaos. Just during our recording today, I opened the doors where I'm staying because I was like, it's getting a bit hot out there, get some air in. And I was like, Oh, crap, it's raining. I had to go close them.

There's no, there's no predictability. Yeah. In other countries where there's like extreme weather. So like Iceland, that the infrastructure is built to deal with cold. In Australia, the infrastructure is built to deal with heat. In many Asian countries, the infrastructure is built to deal with humidity. These are what people do. And for some reason in this country, everyone always seems surprised that the weather is slightly unpredictable. It's not even extreme. That's the thing that gets me. It's not like, oh, we're having massive hurricanes or anything like that. Or like huge, like everything freezes over all of a sudden. This is like, it's just mild inconvenience and yet the country cannot

handle it. You knew it was coming. Why did you plan it this way? Just under two weeks ago, I was hosting a panel at the Children's Media Conference in Sheffield in the morning about 11am. Now that evening I'd been asked to do a gig in Gosport. Gosport? It is at the bottom of Britain. It's near Portsmouth Harbour. Oh, down there. Okay. Down there, yep. So it's on the south coast of Britain. It's the bum of the bottom of it. If you were putting Britain on a table, it would sit along that.

Yeah. If you folded up the Isle of Wight and set it down, that's where it would go. Yeah. It's actually quite painful when England tries to sit down and accidentally sits on the Isle of Wight. I've heard. Never had that problem myself. Oh.

I normally wouldn't, I normally wouldn't take a gig that's like that far away on the same day, just because of how they could be big issues with that in terms of travel and everything. But I'd heard it was a really nice gig and it was a good audience. There was really nice line up and I was like, this will be a good gig. And right now I need the money. My rent is about to double and I'm spending a this will be a good gig. And right now I am, I need the money. I need my rent is about to double and I'm spending a lot of money on teeth. So I need to make more money. A lot of teeth related outgoings. Yeah.

So many teeth out, uh, outgoing. So I got a train. I got, the train was delayed from Sheffield by half an hour, which meant that I only had 45 minutes when I got into some pancreras to get home, drop off my things, pick up my gig stuff, and then get down to Waterloo. No, no, no, no, no. Which I managed to do. And this was on one of those 32 degree days that was really humid.

It was really sticky and so hot. So unpleasant on the underground. Oh, so unpleasant. But anyway, not even just on the underground. And I've got my flip charts with me. I carry a large portfolio bag on my back. So my entire back is like just like drenched drenched and I'm racing. I get to Waterloo. I run up like two steps at a time up the escalator.

I get to the barriers. I'm tagged my ticket. I run up like two steps at a time up the escalator. I get to the barriers, I tag my ticket, I run through, I reach the train just as they announced they're canceling it. No, no. So then I trudge back amongst the sea of people all getting off of this train. And then basically as a mass, we are shuffled from platform to platform for the next hour and 45 minutes until we finally managed to get on a train that does leave eventually it's then held in working it's then held up in Guildford.

And then it cancels in Fratton, at which point you called me to, because I was asking a question about Edinburgh Fringe. Yeah. You were in the States and I was like, Matt, I can't answer, like I can't talk right now. I'm on a train that just got canceled. This is like the fourth train I've been on today. I managed to get on a different train to Portsmouth Harbor, and then I had to get, you have to get a ferry to

Gosport, managed to get the ferry, then got a cab and I got to the gig about 20 minutes before I was due to headline. Um, and the audience were phenomenal. They were great. I had a lovely time. It was absolutely worth it. And I'm glad that I went through with it, but my goodness. And then every gig that I've had where there's been like connections, the train has been delayed.

I missed a connection in Stafford the other day on the way to Stone for a gig. And then we were supposed to record this episode in person on Saturday and producer Laura and I were at Waterloo waiting to get a train out to Surrey. And the, all of the trains, all the trains got canceled. And so we decided to record remotely. Now, obviously this has been difficult for you, but let's spare a thought for me. And the whiplash I had phoning back to hear, I don't really want to talk right now. Which is not something you hear very often. No. It wasn't that casual.

I think it was, Matt, I can't talk right now. You know what? The stress, you conveyed the entire situation to me in about one second. And I've done that train dance and I was like, right, well, I'll speak to you later. And then you sent me a message when you got to the gig and I was like, woo, I can relax now. But you've been traveling a lot too. Is that the, is that also your thing you want to talk about?

Or have you got happier news? Now I was going to say we've moved out of the office. I moved out on Monday. So trains robbed you of the final recording in the studio. We've used on and off since the inception of this podcast. We will have a new studio after the Edinburgh Festival Fringe is done. So listeners, if you notice a discernible increase in audio quality then that's us moving into a new space, which will be very exciting. Yeah, but it's not new trains. Depends if we can get them.

No, same terrible trains. Yeah, I guarantee listeners you'll still hear remote records when the British infrastructure lets us down. I was going to catch up. I've had, well, I've had a fantastic experience dealing with some printers. I don't know if the printers have had the same experience from their end, because when we were getting ready to do my show, getting Triggy with it at the Edinburgh Fringe, I was talking to the people who are producing my show, because Beck, you self produce and

do everything yourself. Yes. Which is a phenomenal and very impressive feat. Well, we say that. I have a lot of things I haven't done yet. No. Yeah. I haven't got the skills or the inclination.

Imagine the position I would be in if I was doing that myself without like multiple other people whose job it is to make sure I get stuff done at the right point in time. Yeah. I'm starting to realize that the producer doesn't do the work for you. They remind you to do the work and that's kind of worth it. Oh, 100%. And they reminded me, I had to get flyers designed that we could hand out at the Fringe. And I went back to them and this, you know, you know what, this was months out. This is back when everything felt very hypothetical. And I said, I was like, oh, how many, how many are we printing this time?

And they're like, Oh, we're going to do about 8,000 flyers. I'm like, okay. Okay. Then I said, do you mind if all 8,000 of my flyers are unique? I think you talked about this on a previous episode. I forget where I left the story. We're doing the 8,000 unique flyers, each with 102 symbols on them. Everyone had agreed to it, and then the rubber hit the road,

and the printers were like, what? Like, they'd said yes in theory, and then when they realized what it was going to entail, and I had to generate, I mean, it was easy enough to generate the 8,000 unique image files, but then they needed them in a particular PDF format. So I then had to work out how to get my code to generate PDFs such that they had to do some patching at their end. I got it as close as I could, and they were able to get it over the final hurdle.

And it's happened. They've managed to print 8,000 unique flyers. So any two flyers will have one and only one symbol in common across all the flyers at the fringe. And it took a lot of convincing and back and forth and coding, but we got there and I'm more excited about the flyers than I am the show at this point. Now I think where you left the story was pretty much here, but I'm guessing the change is

that they've actually been printed. Yes, they've occurred. So they now, they're actual flyers. I think last time I'd kind of assumed it was done, but then we had the proper chat about files and now it's actually been brought into reality. So I realized to be able to check them, I could put a number, like a little index number in the corner of every single flyer, which now has the extra benefit of I've written some code so you can put in two flyer numbers and it will tell you which symbol should be in common between them.

But right in the bottom right hand corner, yeah, tiny five digit number. So if anyone gets them, now people can't say there's nothing in common. I don't have to stare at them until I find it. I can just enter the numbers and be like, oh yeah, here it is. Also, what if you, what if two people get them and they want to find out who has the other one, and they meet, and they fall in love? That's a possibility. I imagine I haven't gone through to try and find very particular numbers, but I imagine

there'll be round numbers, multiples of pi, highly sought after. But it means now, when I get there, I can just look at different sections and flick through. And as long as I'm seeing numbers from right across the entire range that's a pretty good way to check everything was printed and they're all in there. The email I got from them and this shows you I don't know how broken they were or just they'd given up and they're prepared to do anything. The email was like do you need

them printed in numerical order? I was like, it's okay. Because as they come off in sheets, and they're being cut and stacked, they were like, oh, my goodness, when what if he's going to be like, these are in the wrong order? I was like, it's okay, they can be in any order, as long as there's one of them, one of each. And so they're like, oh, thank goodness, I don't know how they would have put them in numerical order. I mean, that's a, even I think that's above and beyond the call of duty. Yeah.

Matt, once again, what time, where, and what is the name of your show? Oh, now that you've organically happened to ask, I would say it's 6 30 PM in the Pleasance Courtyard at Pleasance Beyond. And I'm there right from the very end of July through to the end of the fringe. So at any point, come and see me. But Beck, you're doing, cause this podcast episode came out on the 4th of August. So if you're listening to this, I'm doing the show. But Beck, when do you commence?

I start on the 9th of August. So you've got five days if you're listening to this on going out day. The ninth of August to the 24th. It's at 7pm. It's called Guess Who's Back Back Again, Beck Hills, Beck, Tell a Friend. And it's at the Gilded Balloon Appleton Tower. Come see both the shows on different nights. the shows on different nights. First problem was sent in by Mr. Tumnus, apparently, who went to the problem posing page at aproblemsquared.com and they say hello. Long time listener, first time problem. And they're claiming the problem is a big ask.

Oh, but they're dangling the offer of teeth. We'll get to that in a moment. So Mr. Thomas's problem is they found an important word missing from the English language. They want to know what the feminine version of phallic is. Hmm. They say they spent 15 minutes Googling, couldn't find one, they think there should be one. So their challenge is, if you choose to accept it, Bec-Hel, to either find or create such a word and then use your pool as a social media giant. And they insultingly say that they're

laughing at the concept of that to help popularize whatever this word may be. Now here's the payment plan they're offering. They say they will send one tooth. And for new listeners, Bec collects adult teeth. And we've all agreed that's perfectly normal they will send one tooth for responding to the email a second tooth for reading the email and

prompting discussion three teeth for putting in effort to solve it and If we hit ding status, so we actually achieve a solution, they're talking all four teeth. All right. And then they sign off little goat man from Narnia. Right, Beck. Beck, what have you got for us? Well, first of all, Mr. Tumnus, if that is your real name, I cannot be bought. So this is breaking the rules of tooth care. I will happily pay for your teeth. This is the rules.

I will buy your teeth, but I'm not going to swap. I'm not swapping skills for teeth. I do realize that I am still going to have an attempt at this, but I want the listeners to know that I have not been swayed. If anything, the offer of teeth in response to me answering this problem almost made me not want to answer it. Wow. Because, because like that feels quite unfair. There's a lot of people out there who don't have teeth to offer in return for their problems. So I'm not favoring this problem purely because of the offer of teeth. Don't

give me a payment plan for teeth. You know the deal. You give me teeth. I'll give you money. That's it. That's all that could be a totally separate thing. In fact, I did acquire teeth from another listener on Sunday when I went to Bristol. And it was a fly by teeth deal in the car park of Bristol station, train station, because the car park was so full. I literally had to grab the teeth and then we were like, we will catch up about the details on email. Wow. A teeth handoff. A teeth handoff. And I appreciate that. It did look like a drug deal.

Well, you're both not prepared to compromise your tooth fairy standards, which is honorable and you know, what we expect from a tooth fairy of your caliber. But also we're not in the business of accepting payment of any form for solving people's problems. We're in it for the, the giddy thrill of solving problems. When we do, we don't need any form of remuneration for this. So, so you're also not selling a good problem solving podcast. No, exactly.

We have to be completely unbiased in this and accessible. Unless you support us on Patreon and then whatever you want. And then you can buy us. That's right. You just got a very clear buy our bias. want. Yeah. And then you can buy us. That's right. Oh, 100%. We just got a very clear mechanism. Buy our bias. Yeah. Is that why it's called bias?

Ah, bias. Anyway, back to the problem. So the good news is, is we don't have to create a word. Oh, that's handy. There are already plenty out there. Are you telling me humans have already come up with words for their private parts? Yes. Yeah.

So for anyone listening, especially if you're listening with children, we're going to try and talk about this as carefully as possible. But I wanted to, I wanted to tackle this because no pun with tackle, but the word phallic is thrown around quite a lot. That's very true. You wouldn't normally be called out on it. But if you were to say something that were to refer to what is classed as biologically female genitalia, then that is seen as like vulgar.

And I think that there's an issue with that. I don't, I don't think we should, I don't think the word phallic should be seen as any less vulgar or I don't think what is the feminine version as Mr. Tumnus has asked. That should not be seen as more rude. If we want equality, it should not be considered more rude. We shouldn't be able to call something phallic and we're like, oh, that's a very distinguished and, you know, mature way to describe something as looking a bit like a penis when there's no equivalent way to say that looks a bit like a vagina.

Yeah. And in fact, I do want to specify even that is problematic because vagina is the term for the canal. So unless you're talking about a very specific tunnel, most of the time, what people are thinking of is like a vulva, which is more encompassing of that area. That very easily leads us to one of the words that is commonly used, which is vulvic got phallic for phallus and volvic for vulva. The other term that I came across was yonic. So I wanted to check whether these were legitimate terms. So I went to an etymologist. I went to the wonderful Dr.

Ben Whittle, who is SchnebWhittle on Instagram, and he verified this for me. Hi Bec. Thank you so much for asking this. It was actually a very fun way to spend my Friday evening looking all these things up. I've got some answers. So I think Yonic is probably your best one from the Sanskrit Yoni, which as I'm sure you saw means vulva or vagina. Sanskrit just being another Indo-European language, an ancient one, like Latin or ancient Greek, but used in kind of South Asia. And then there's other ones like from Latin, you could have vulvic from vulva. You could have vaginal, I guess, from the Latin, which the word means like a sheath

or a scabbard. Again, we start to get like, you know, around the edges of the, like the direct opposites. And you can have pudendal, the Latin pudenda, which means genitals. But actually comes from the verb pudeo, which means to be ashamed. So your pudenda are literally the things of which you should be ashamed, which is a little sad. There's a very similar Greek word, idionic. It's from the idoya which is the plural form which literally just means genitals of a man or woman like pudenda above and it's also from a verb that means to be ashamed or actually to honour as well, confusingly. You can have the word skewl which comes from skeue, which is apparently used as a synonym of eidoya, the word we had before. But it's also a word for fishing tackle, which is quite nice.

So I thought that was quite interesting. Yeah, I had no idea that Ionic was a different ancient language. I would have assumed, you know, Greek or Latin. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I did also find that there was a difference there. So I spoke to Chela Quint, OBE, who was the author of a bunch of comedy factual books for kids and grownups called Own Your Period and Be Period Positive. And I also asked her about this and she shed a little bit more light on these words. Yannick is more of a cultural or symbolic term and so is Falik. Whereas Volvik is more medically and anatomically accurate, which could go better with penile. But since Yannick also has religious and cultural meanings from a religion and culture that aren't my own, I might opt for Volvic and Falik in my own work. Vaginal and penile work for more

specific medical purposes too. But like a building may be Falik or Yannick depending on the design. The Empire State Building or the Burj Khalifa may be Falik. The Hollywood Bowl or the Sydney Opera House may be Yannick. Yeah. You know, I was just at the Hollywood Bowl. I went with some friends of mine and this is going to get less cultural real quickly to watch the Looney Tunes orchestra performance at the Hollywood bowl. And they would play Looney Tunes cartoons, but do them, do all the music live on the stage. And some of the cartoons were set at the Hollywood Bowl.

So you're watching the Hollywood Bowl in cartoon form from these classic cartoons on a screen inside the Hollywood Bowl. And at no point did the Yannick analogy come up. So, yeah. I mean, you said you were lowering the tone. Last time I went to the Hollywood Bowl, I saw the Big Mouth special where they played clips from the TV animated series Big Mouth, which is very in line with this subject to be fair.

Yeah. Well, now you know how to describe it. I also said to Chella that, you know, to say the feminine for phallic or the opposite or something like that, I think can be a little bit problematic given that it's not really a binary thing. So I asked if there are any other terms using not just those areas, like I thought it was good when Ben was mentioning pudendal, just meaning genitalia in general, but I asked if there were any other terms whether it's around that area or other

parts of the body. So, uh, Chela had said gonadal covers both testes and ovaries. Ovula also works for something that is sort of ovary shaped, but points out, don't say ovoid because that means oval shaped. Avoid ovoid. There's no need to point out the ovulus. Nice. My favorite phalangeal, meaning fingers, finger-like. So if you don't want to say phallic, if you're,

if you're finding even the fact that we're mentioning the word phallic is rude enough as it is, go for phalangeal. Oh, that building's quite phalangeal. You come across as even more mature and distinguished. And if you think that something looks like boobs, which I so often do, uh, apparently it's not boobula. It's not boobula. But I think we should popularize that. It's mammary, which makes sense.

Cause you'll go for like a mammary test, which is not a memory test, unless you forget to go. So yeah, there's a lot of, um, interesting, like body parts that we use to describe things. And I think that's very fascinating. And finally, so I'm pretty sure that that's like answered the first parts of Mr. Tumnus's question of like, what words can we use? I also wanted to use my pool to popularize it. wanted to use my pool to popularize it.

And so I did a live episode of the guilty feminist podcast on Saturday. And on that show, Debra Francis white, the host asks her guests to bring a, I'm a feminist, but kind of thing. So like, it might be like, I'm a feminist, but I won't go out without makeup or something like that, you know? And so I said, I'm a feminist, but I didn't realize that there was a feminine version of phallic until someone sent in this question and I had to research it. I've talked about that on a different, very popular podcast. Hopefully that will see more people using the term. Deborah Francis-White said she's going to use it more. So she's going to go for Yannick, but Yannick or Volvik, I think we can start popularizing. And I challenge everyone else listening to slip it into

their, to their lingo, so to speak. Now we all know that there's no objective way to rank or to measure the success and reach of different podcasts. So we just assume they're all equal. But that I will have to say is definitely using your pool as a social media giant. Obviously it's the same as doing it on this podcast, but in another sense, that's excellent, excellent use of your, of your giant pool. Thank you very much. Well, obviously we'll have to go back to Mr. Tumnus to see how many metaphorical teeth and literal dings that they wish to hand out, but I feel like between Volvik and Yannick, we've got some pretty

solid pre-existing options. So good work back. Thank you very much. And yeah, Mr. Tumnus, I'll get in touch about once I know whether I've got a ding or not, I'll get in touch about purchasing said teeth. As a whole separate thing. Our next problem comes from Casper.

And he went to the problem posing page at ourproblemsquared.com, select a problem and he wrote, I saw a video on Reese James's Instagram making a joke about the Hollywood sign being size one billion font. What is its actual font size? Is it consistent for each letter? Are there cases where bigger font sizes are used? I love this problem. This is awesome. Oh, it's so much fun. But I like the joke, the Hollywood sign, it's size 1 billion. As in like you'd be writing in, you know, word processor and you're like, oh, this

is 14 point size font or whatever. And this is 1 billion point size font. Very funny. Now I'm guessing the points are, is that like pixels? That's a very good question, Beck. And that's where I started because I could look up the Hollywood sign. I'm actually looking at a picture of the Hollywood sign right now. There is one in my bedroom because going off on a tangent, I found a bunch,

like a whole bunch of prints on the street that someone was like getting rid of as in like properly trashing. And it was the entire alphabet done as like different stylized prints. And so I got the B for Beck and I took the H for Hill and the H is the H from the Hollywood sign. I will take a photo for socials. Hollywood H. Wow. All the letters are the same size. Best I could work out. Maybe if we're ever on location, we can verify that better, but

they're all 45 feet tall. So I looked it up. So all we need to do now is know is 1 billion point font size, bigger or smaller or equivalent to 45 feet tall, were you to print out something at that size? Which does raise the question, is point sizes in a typeface, is that specific to printing it out or is it just a relative size or like so many things with fonts does it go all the way back to when you had you know movable type bits of metal in a tray

and thankfully it's more modern than that and there is a very nice definition. Like online I saw like half answers but your friend friend and mine, Linus Bowman, who's got a fantastic YouTube channel, all about typography. And Linus has helped out on now two of the videos on my channel. So people, by the time this episode's out, I should have released a video looking at images where inside the image, it tells you the number

of pixels used to make the type in the image, which I'm very proud of. And Linus helped me out with that. And I was like, Hey mate, while I've got you, would you mind checking for me or explaining to me how you go from point size to a physical size of a letter. And here's what he said. Hi, Matt and Beck. So how do point sizes relate to print size when it comes to fonts? A point size is a unit of measure that's been defined since the 1980s as one 72nd of an inch. So 72 points would be one inch tall.

However, that doesn't mean that's what any given letter in a font, the vertical height of that would be one inch in a 72 point font, because the point size is actually relative to the M box of a font. And MEM is a unit of measure that used to be the width of a capital M, but it's a bit more standardized these days. And you can think of the M box as the imaginary canvas or bounding area in which all the letters in a font

have to be drawn inside. So you have capital letters that go quite high, and you also have descenders, like a lowercase y, that go below the baseline of the font. So it obviously needs to be quite a bit taller to accommodate that. What this means in practice is, on average, most capital letters are about equal to 70% of the point size. So in a 72 point font, a capital H would be about 0.7 inches tall.

Hope that helps. It turns out that's the complete size of the bottom of a descending y up to the top of a capital H, which is quite convenient in this case. Obviously, you could, in Photoshop or something, make text of a size, a certain point size, and then resize it or print it at different scales. This is just if you go straight from a point size defined font straight to print,

this is the accepted conversion. But obviously you can change that and mess around with that a lot. Okay. So this is not a simple case of going, how many inches are in, was it 45 feet did you say? Yes, and it's 540 inches. Right, it's not a simple case of doing that because the actual font would be a bit smaller than that. Yes. So I'd need to take the capital H at its 45 feet height, and then assume that if you were to include the descender, the total range that the typeface which makes up the Hollywood sign,

of which we can only see the all caps bit, if we could see the lowercase descenders, it would actually be about 64 and a bit feet high. So if you were to use like a bold, there are some like bolder typefaces that size 12 will be bigger than a size 12 aerial because it's from what Linus is saying, the size 12 is more to do with the square that you can write the letter in. But you can write the letter smaller than you would a different letter. So the font size doesn't mean it's going to be the same height across the board for all

the fonts. It just means it's going to be written within the same space Well, no, the box would be defined by the the highest letter in that font So they can't always be within the box. One of them is defined. That's the top of the box So you can obviously get hilariously small subscript characters within a typeface, etc, but subscript characters within a typeface, et cetera. But the actual font size, that's how you do the hilarious like tiny writing on social media and things like that. But the normal capital letters will go

to the top of the box. Unless I've completely misunderstood typefaces. So I'm assuming when we look at the Hollywood sign, they're the normal capital letters from whatever this typefaceaces. So I'm assuming when we look at the Hollywood sign, they're the normal capital letters from whatever this typeface is. And given they were put up a long time ago, as I believe advertising for like housing development, then they're just whatever someone building the letters wanted to make the letters look like. So I suspect and listeners please do correct me if I'm wrong,

they're just the characters someone made to make a big sign that said Hollywood. Yeah, because I've found things that say that they're the Hollywood sign font, but I think that's been copied from the sign. Yeah, I think it's reverse engineered. Yeah. SF Hollywood Hills font is coming up a lot. Uh, also apparently ITC machine is a similar one. Okay.

Yeah. I think they all post-date the original sign being put up. So I'm just kind of taking them as, as if they're the capital letters from some bigger typeface so I can get an accurate point size that they would represent were it a real pre-existing font. And I'm flipping between font and typeface. There are technical distinctions, but I think in normal language they mean the same thing. So if people are upset when I say font, when I should say typeface, I'm very sorry.

That's how humans talk, I'm afraid. Do you want to hear a little interesting fact from the Wikipedia page? when I say font, when I should say typeface, I'm very sorry. That's how humans talk, I'm afraid. Do you want to hear a little interesting fact from the Wikipedia page? I would love to hear an interesting fact from the Wikipedia page. Signs of similar style, but spelling different words, are frequently seen as parodies. The Hollywood Chamber of Commerce holds for certain uses

trademark rights to a word mark of staggered typeface that mimics the physical Hollywood sign, but it does not hold rights to the actual sign. That's interesting. They don't own the sign, but they own the aesthetic of the sign. Yeah, the staggered, the way that it sits on the hills. Well, I took the letters at their height, assumed that was 70% of the total M box that would go around the characters in that font.

And I then reverse that back, assuming that there are 72 points per inch at print, and you end up with a font size of 55,543. So it's not size one billion. It's a lot smaller than a billion. Yeah. It's 18,000 times smaller than a billion. So the joke is wrong by a factor of 18,000. How tall would it be if it was a billion? That's a great question back. And exactly what I did next.

Yay. I spent a little bit of time trying to find bigger letters than the Hollywood sign. And there aren't any that would mean nothing I could find that gets even close to what would consider a billion size font or even anything that big. If people can find bigger letters in the Hollywood sign that are permanent, I'd love to hear about it. I didn't come across any. I did come across a website keeping track of the world's largest enlarged letter.

This is a competition where people take the printout of a letter and use a photocopier or something to scale it up as big as possible. And they have to end up scaling it up across multiple bits of paper. In fact, let me just share, I'll share it with you back so you can have a look. Oh, it's very funny because the website for this is Please Do Not Bend, which is usually what you get on like a letter. On a big letter. Where you can't fold it up to put it through the...

That's so good. That's so funny. Now there's no updated records since someone did a capital R at their saying 32,000 point font in 2016. Yeah. It's pretty big. Yeah. I mean, I'm not saying it's a record that could be beaten, but there's definitely a

record that could be beaten. Or maybe, I don't know how they do the record. Is it, oh, it is point size. They're keeping track of it in point size. That's incredible. I guess what they do is they print it to the R, they printed it at 500, and then they just keep track of the multiple by which it's enlarged on the photocopier.

Oh, we could totally break that record. I'd still want to like get a proper office photocopier and then just do multiple rounds of running it through the photocopier, but you've got to do it tiny fragments at a time. Oh, that would be fun. So we'll link to that in the show notes if've got to do it tiny fragments at a time. Well, that would be fun. So we'll link to that in the show notes if people want to check it out. So the question now, as you raised, what would we need to have a 1 billion point font? Well, I ran the numbers in the spreadsheet and the full M-box around the billion point font would be 352.8 km, which

is about 220 miles in each direction. If we only care about the capital letters, that's a mere 247 kilometers high capital letters. That's about 153 miles high. That's a very big letter. It's a very big letter. And I thought what canvas could we possibly have on which we could draw that? And then I realized the state of Kansas is roughly that size. Yeah.

So, oh my gosh, that's perfect. And Kansas, there's America, right? So there's lots of long straight roads covering the state. So I've got, let me just share this with you, Burke. OK, so Matt, you've just brought up like a map, a street view on Photoshop. Yeah. And I've labeled there, can you see

I've got the 247 kilometer high indicator of how high the letters have to be? Oh yes. Yep. And if I wanted to start drawing, I'm going to start right up here. Where are we? This is like almost at the top of Kansas. I'm on the 283 highway near Hill City.

So we're going to start at Hill City, head south, cross the 70, all the way down Nest City. Now we're gonna have to take a little bit of a dog's leg through Dodge City before we get right to the bottom of the state. I'm using the state as the border of the state with, I think that's Oklahoma down there, is like the bottom of what we're writing on. And then I'm going to need, I'm going to do high, so I need the other half of an H. Would you accept, Beck, if we came tearing down the 135 like this, but then we just have a little bit of a jaunty detour through Newton and then down to the line. Then I can link it all up here through Lyons.

Great bend is where the road bends and then back like that. How's that for a capital H? Yeah. You've gone to Wichita. Then over here, I'm going to do a slightly jointy I. How would you pronounce this town? Top Topeka. They very nicely got what looks like a ring road. So I'm going to go all the way around that as the circle on the dot of the I.

Dot on the I. There you are. High! So if you drive... That's very cute. Those roads, or just ignore the rest, the roads on the canvas of Kansas spell high in a billion point font. I have things to say. Firstly, I love this.

And I think that everyone in Kansas should petition their government to paint those roads so that they stick out more clearly. Cover them in chalk or whatever it is to get them to reflect. So it's nice and obvious. It's the opposite of what the color roads are normally. So I think they should do that. And I also think that that should become the official Kansas canvas font. Oh, which should be that like typeface that style where it's just a little bit hand

drawn because it's focusing on the roads. If you can write out all the letters of the alphabet using the roads of Kansas, not all in a row, that's not going to be big enough. Overlapping. It's fine. And then that becomes the Kansas canvas typeface. The descenders have to go down into Oklahoma. That's my only rule.

There you go. So for any typeface nerds out there, that's your great. Get onto it. Go, go and create that, that typeface. We'll stick a Matt's high up on socials. Yeah, we're willing to that. It was, it's pretty, it's pretty, pretty artistic. I like it.

I like a one billion font. So there you are Casper. I hope, I hope that counts. So it's not a billion point font and that is what a billion point font would look like. It's like the size of a state. I will message Reese and tell him off. I mean, tell him obviously good joke, but inaccurate.

I'm going to say we tore your joke to shreds. Your credibility is gone. He's such a nice man. Just tell him we've offended his joke to a level of mathematical precision. Now it's time for any other bigger boat mess. Yes, we heard from Fred Rosenberger who started with credentials. I submitted the paperwork problem in episode 110. So that was when we were trying to work out what term to use for paperwork that's done

on the computer. They've said solution. Ding. And then added, loved the episode. My wife, daughter, and I all agree that click work is our favorite. Thanks so much. I can cross get Beck and Matt to solve a problem for me off my bucket list. Ah, there you go. I like the fact we've been reduced to just taking care of some click work.

Taking care of click work. We also heard from Dan, who went to the problem-posing page. And now this is an update on an update. They start with Hi Beck and Matt. They say that a few years ago, they mentioned to us they were in the process of writing an archaeology paper that cited episode 042 of our podcast. That was Plato, Bolgessas and Faster Processes and they've given us a link to the paper which I haven't looked at yet and we'll put this in the show notes. I'm just opening

it up now so we can see it. And here it is in the University of Chicago Press journals, an approach to quantifying ceramic vessels among diverse data sets. So there we are. We are officially cited in a piece of archaeological research and as Dan here says, and they are a hundred percent correct, they say they thought we might get a chuckle out of knowing that the two of you are cited in the American Journal of Archaeology. A hundred percent, Dan. That's hilarious. That makes me so happy. I'm so unqualified to be cited in any type of journal other than a child's. Today I met Beck Hill kind of a journal entry.

Yeah. Wow. The American Journal of Archaeology. That's very cool. It's like I said back when we were first wondering if we were going to do a podcast. I was like, yeah, we should do a podcast. You never know. We might end up cited in the American Journal of Archaeology.

And I said to you, Matt, that will never happen. Yeah, I think we had a bet. Yeah, I said, if it does happen, I will start buying teeth. So actually, it's worked out pretty good. Don't bet your teeth on it. That's, you know, we should have listened to that famous saying. So many famous saying. Another thing they say. So many famous sayings. Ah, it's just wall to wall cliches in here.

Thank you so much, Dan. We heard from Chris who said, hey, love the pod, blah, blah, blah. Oh, Beck, you can't just be so dismissive of Chris saying how much he likes the podcast, honestly. Show some respect. That is what Chris has written for any new listeners. That's my favorite running joke now, if I can say. It's such a great gag.

Chris said, I am a curator at the National Railway Museum and a qualified steam locomotive fireman. Whoa, that's awesome. It's great that Beck would like to retrain as a train driver, as mentioned in episode 113. There's a national shortage of drivers and it pays really well too. However, it is a surprisingly challenging job. I'm going to say I'm not surprised.

That's not because driving a train is hard to do, which is actually pretty easy, in fact, that's actually part of what makes being a driver so difficult. Drivers must be really good at handling cognitive underload. Oh, that's my new favorite expression. Handle. If someone says, are you bored? I'm like, I'm just, I'm just handling some cognitive underload right now. Well, Chris goes on to say they need to do an easy and very repetitive task

day in, day out without losing concentration and sticking to a complex set of rules whilst also being able to respond lightning fast to an emergency. The consequences of making a mistake could cost hundreds of people's lives. This is why the training process, pun intended, to become a driver takes so long and many people don't succeed. Keep up the good work, blah, blah, blah. Bec, just when I thought you were showing Chris some respect. Yeah, thank you so much, Chris. And that is, yeah, you're right. That is something,

you've hit the nail on the head there is something I would not be good at, which is doing something repetitive day in, day out. I would definitely start doing other things, day in, day out, I would definitely start doing other things. Looking at my phone, writing. Yeah. It's not good for that. Dang. Unless I find the repetitiveness of it just so fun.

There is a, um, an arcade near me in Camden that has a tiny roller coaster in it. It's a subterranean arcade and they have a tiny roller coaster in it. And since it opened several years ago, I have taken friends there many a time. I went last week because I had my brother and his wife in town and I've ridden that tiny roller coaster, which basically just does a loop. I've written it so many times now and I never tire of it. So maybe I'd be okay. Yeah, let's not find out. And finally, Alexander has another possible solution to the child naming problem. Also from episode 113, they say one option might be to stick with the best naming system that currently exists. SI units. Oh, well done, Alexander. Okay. They're saying there's a ton of good options there. Pascal,

Calvin. What is SI units? So SI units that you like your standard metric units, but these are the agreed units that we use to measure things. So distance is always in meters. That's the SI unit. Mass is always in kilograms. That's the SI unit. Pascal. I think a Pascal is a unit of attractive actor. Who's Pascal? Pedro Pascal. Oh, oh, oh, there you go. That guy's in everything. He's even in my units. So Pascal is both the name of the scientist and it's a unit of pressure. Calvin, that's a name. And that's the unit for temperature.

Dalton. What's that? Oh, there you go. Producer Laura beat me to it is the unit for atomic masses. I didn't know that. There you go. You live, you learn. And then a Farad, which I'm pretty sure is electrical capacitance. That'd be after Faraday, surely. My brother was named after Michael Faraday.

Oh, really? Oh, there you go. See, the system works. Yeah, but his name is Michael, not Farad. Oh, right. OK. Well, you can call him Faraday. Oh really? Oh, there you go. See the system works. Yeah. But his name is Michael, not Farad. Oh right. Okay. Oh, well you can call him Farad. Maybe I will.

Thank you for saying that in Alexander, they do point out their wife has vetoed every SI suggestion they've made to name their children, but they're hoping someone else can take that route. Take the route for many meters. Thank you, Alexander. Anyone else can take that route. Take the route for many meters. Thank you, Alexander. Or as I like to call Alexander, Fleming.

That's a unit of mold. Yeah. Well, that is our podcast. As always, we like to thank you, the listeners. Thank you for listening. We very much appreciate. We specifically like to thank a randomly selected strict subset of our Patreon supporters. We get all their names, we put them in a spreadsheet.

I pick three of them at random and their reward, other than obviously the podcast they're listening to, is to have their names mispronounced, which this episode is going to include. Benj, Amens, Tapphenson. Silicon, Monum, or New. Did you just put in an element from the periodic table? I did. I did. I saw SI and just said silicon. That's how I pronounce it. Char D. Sraidy one four. Oh, nice. I don't think I've ever heard someone mispronounce digits before. Well, I can mispronounce anything. Well, that's it for the podcast. Thank you everyone again for listening. You've been listening to me, Matt

Parker, of course, Beck Hill and with much support from our producer, Laura Grimshaw, who is a bit like the mayor Vaughn from the film Jaws in that she always keeps the podcast open. Nice. Bite. Bite. The film Jaws in that she always keeps the podcast open. Nice. A bite. Bite. So I'm going to go for C7. C7 hit.

Yes. Unbelievable. She's catching up. Yeah. Okay. Now, last time I was doing some exploratory shots, but I feel like I can carry on with my original plan, so I'm going to pick up what I was doing with an H8. Miss. Oh, miss!