A Problem Squared - 124 = Dangerous Angling and Harmonious Wrangling

Episode Date: December 22, 2025

👼 What is the Angle of Death?🎼 What is the best filing system for sheet music?🎄And there’ll be some A-ho-ho-ho-BIf you have any maths-studio-based-names for the Newdio, go to the Problem Posing Page at aproblemsquared.com and select ‘Solution’ and be as funny and punny as possible!If you’d like to ask Matt and Bec anything for our special 2^7 episode in February go to the Problem Posing Page at aproblemsquared.com - select ‘Problem’ and start your message with AMA!See Matt on tour in 2026! http://standupmaths.com/shows Here’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/w44THpNJ3jWUPqHy6Join us on Patreon for early releases and our monthly bonus podcast I’m A Wizard - and a special APS Christmas Card!If you’re already 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.

Ho, ho, ho, ho, and welcome to a problem squared, or as I like to call it, a problem slade, a problem-solving podcast, which is a lot like a puppy, in that it's not just for Christmas, it can be consumed all year round. I think you're thinking of turkey. Don't be silly, Matt. You can't eat a country. Oh, my goodness. Beck wrote that line for me.

I want that, make that very clear. Yeah, and you ruined it the first take because you said, I think you're thinking of a turkey. And I was like, I can't rely on you for anything. No, exactly. I'm Beck Hill, the human equivalent of Elf on the Shelf, in that you have no memory of how or why,

but somehow you have ended up with a Beck Hill, despite never wanting or asking for one. And your other host is writing some code. He's checking it twice. He's got to find out that it's imprecise. Matthew Parker's nervous breakdown. Yep, yep, that checks out. On this episode.

I've attempted to quantify the angle of death. I mean, that's Mary. I'm going to organising some church music, which feels fitting for the carol-y time of year. And we have any other Brussels sprouts. Nice. And naughty. Matt. Festive Beck.

How are you? Well, a little insulted that you've got a Christmas-themed rapper for the show coming out on the 22nd of December, which everyone knows. It's your birthday. It's international Matthew Day. But no, let's go with the cultural reference point. I'll be honest. I could remember if we've mentioned your birthday on the show before.

And I didn't want to docks you. That's very kind of you. It's on Wikipedia, so that's super sailed. I'm good. I'm good. I'm getting into the wintery festive spirit. And your birthday spirits? And the birthday spirit as well. We've got cider news. Oh. I'm making cider.

That's the best direction that that sentence could have gone. Exactly. Yes. So we had too many apples this autumn. But too many apples were like, we can't eat all these apples. But we don't let them waste. They just sit on the ground. So I was like, you know what? I'm going to buy a fruit press. I bought Baby's First Cider.

Is that what it's called? I don't think that's what it's called. I would love it if it was. That would be excellent. No. No, it was like, I'm a dofuss and I want to make cider. Please give me everything I need in one box. Yep.

Dot com. And so I got that. The press came in a million pieces. It was very much self-assembly. But I got together and we invited some friends around. and oh i bet that was fun we had a great time what a way to find out no no no tell me more about your friendship

you wouldn't believe the friends i have so i invited two sets of friends around and in both cases they said yes we will come if we can bring more apples two sets of local couples who also have the apple glut problem So everyone was like, I'll come and help get rid of your apples, but we're also going to contribute to the problem.

It's amazing how when you don't live in London, your problems are so different. Yeah, you wouldn't believe how difficult it is out here back. Too much delicious fresh fruit just falling from the sky. Whereas I'm like, I think there's too much carbon dioxide in my flat. It's so small and I don't open the windows to keep in the heat. So we had too many apples and we pressed the... juice out of them. Yeah.

Real. I've never used the mechanical advantage of a screw that satisfyingly. Yeah. And so we pressed them. The kit came with yeast, like baker's yeast. And when I looked online, well, actually, it was very funny. If you Google, how do I make cider? A lot of the top responses, the people in America, saying, you go to the shops, you buy

some apple juice, you buy some yeast, and you mix them together. Right. Then after a while, you get down to, like, how you actually. actually start with the apples. But you can still add the yeast. But I'm like, apples are covered in yeast. Apples are all about yeast. Are they? I don't know if you remember many, many years ago when I was in my sourdough phase. Was it, did I happen to be recording from a cupboard? You were recording from a cupboard. Was this during a period where many people got into sourdough phases because there wasn't much else

to do? And I hate to once again highlight the difference in where we live, but you were trapped in a small apartment. Yeah. And I was... This is the same apartment. Same apartment. The only difference is it turns out that I choose not to leave it. Yeah. Yeah, now it's voluntary.

And to get my sourdough started, I left it under an apple tree. Oh. Because this is traditional. People would put bread like the dough in orchards because then it would rise better. And it's because I don't know why, but there's used for days on apples for some reason. I didn't notice. It's why she used apple skin when I did one. one of my sourdough starters was to get the natural, like the wild yeast going.

Huh. So I was like, apples are covered in yeast. But it's a bit hit and miss what type and quality of yeast and how much and all these other things. Yeah. So the advice is if you want to make sure it's going to be okay, chuck in some yeast, like Baker's yeast. But we had so many apples. We ended up pressing, like we had these um gallon, which is like four and a bit liters, I think, um, bottles to fill. We filled two of them. We had so many apples. We had so many apples. We had so many so much, so many apples, everyone showed up with. I do find the gallon bottles very funny.

They are very funny. They're so big. They're so big. It would be in America a regular amount of milk. Yeah, I know. And we've already discussed how hilarious I find that. So I had these bit with apple juice now. And so in the end, I decided I had so much we could do one of each and compare them.

So we put together one where we added yeast, which is now called the yeast we can do. and then we had one where we didn't add the yeast called Cider's World Try. And so now they've both been bubbling away and they're nearing, like the rate at which they're fermenting are slowing down. So we're going to bottle them soon. Yep. And then we'll let them rest for a bit and then I will bring them out in a future episode. I can't believe that he had a friendship day.

Yeah. That it resulted in puns. And I still wasn't involved. If you had been invited, I wouldn't have been invited. I said, I wouldn't have been the best pun writer at the event. No, no, no, that's fair. That's fair. Yeah, I would have been scorched.

However, would you like to try the apple juice? I was going to ask if there's an apple juice, because I don't drink. Yep. Alcohol. I do drink. I do you consume fluid. Fluid. And I was going to say, do you have any of the apple juice?

I would love to try some of the apple juice. Now, the problem with apple juice, it just wants to be cider so bad. Have you ever been to a bar and you've asked for orange juice and they've used it from Bacartner, the juice? clearly haven't used it for ages. They opened it up for a thing. And then you're like, this orange juice is fizzy. Yeah.

That's what I'm expecting. Well, what we did when we pressed all these apples, we put a bunch of juice into small plastic bottles and froze them. So it's an apple ice lolly is what you're saying. Well, I took it out this morning. Did you put it in a tetra pack? I brought it with me. I didn't put it a tetra pack. I brought it with me.

I've left it defrosting all day. And I checked it right before we started this record. And it is now once again in the. state of matter that is liquid. So would you like and producer Laura as well? Let me go get the juice. Yes. And we can sample the before. There's the juice.

It is. And do you know what? It doesn't look as urinary as I was worried it would. No. Well, you should definitely seek medical advice. So what sort of apples is this from? Mystery apples. Mystery apples. Mystery apples is from the tree in the backyard. That smells real good. It's mystery apples from the backyard. And it's everyone else's mystery apples from their backyards. Now, are we all going to commit to a third of this tiny bottle? All right. Let's give it a go. That's juice. That's juice. That's good juice.

This gets juice. That tastes exactly how I remember it from when we squeezed it. Yeah. And I can barely taste the cyanide from all the pips. I mean, we definitely lift the pips in. The whole apple gets... I think that's what tends to have when they make. Any sort of juice. Mm-hmm. I could have more of this. I'm afraid. I've got some bad news about. they're hell and you have to wait for it to defrost.

I'm going to take it home. Yeah. Oh, that was good. Yeah. Well done. Next time we're in my kitchen, I'll show you the yeast we can do and side as well try. Yeah. Last time I checked, still bubbling away very slowly.

There's like a little valve on them so you can see what they're doing. But I'll bottle them up before long and we're in business. Yeah. So that's how I've been. How are you doing, Beck? I'm good. I had fun. designing this year's Christmas card.

Oh, yes. I've got them here. Do you want to see them? I do. They're in a box. I'm not sure why you've given it to me like this. Well, I want you to open it like a Christmas present. So I'm opening the thing that I, oh, that's turned out nice.

There you go. I have drawn a battleship on the front. Yep. Oh, too soon. With some, I, well, why are you saying now as me? This is me turning cider from rotting apples. Yeah. You're like them apples.

Yeah, that's right. So I've done it with a Christmasy pun. You have. And then when you open it up, you have your very own playable game of battleships where I've replaced the pieces for things we have discussed in the last year of episodes. With only the smallest amount of assembly required. Yes. It's great.

It's come out really well. It turned out really well. Yeah. Good work back. And good work, Matt. For laying it out and getting it all printed. So for people listening who don't follow this closely for our Patreon supporters, above a certain tier, the Wizards, get sent a physical card,

and all Patreon supporters will be emailed a digital version of the card. Yes. So I think you should have that by now. I may or may not have sent out the digital ones. Future Matt be frantically doing it right now, for all I know. If you want us up to Patreon, we won't post any more, but I will do another digital send out at the end of the month. Oh, we won't post any... No, posting is closed.

Physically post any cards is what you're saying. Yeah, the physical ones, end of November was... There will be Patreon posts. Oh, we will post things. Yeah, yeah. We won't mail things. Until next year. Until next year, yes.

But you forget otherwise, lock in for next year. But I will, if I remember, and someone will remind me, I will double check for news. sign-ups to Patreon during December. At the end of the month, I'll email that. You know what will be an easy way to remember? I find saying it out loud, and then producer Laura will send me a message. What, on New Year's Eve? You row around then.

I don't think we have enough Patreon supporters to afford that. Our first problem comes from, Stefan, on the problem-posing page, as a problem square.com. They selected the problem drop down and said, hi there, Beck and Matt. Long time, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Beck. Stefan goes to all the effort to write in.

I don't know when I'm going to start getting sick of this joke. Me? Never. I recently saw Angel of Death, the phrase Angel of Death. Yep. Misspelled as angle of death. Great. I hear that the number four,

sounds like the word for death in Chinese languages. Oh. So it got me thinking, what is the angle of death? So far, my strongest contender is 1-444. It is four revolutions plus four degrees. And the digital route of 1-444 is also four. Is there a better candidate to represent angle of death? Wishing you both a happy upcoming Christmas from Melbourne.

Hey. Thank you, Stefan. From London. First of all, the angle, angel misspelling, very funny in general. We had a festival of the spoken nerd retreat years ago, and we stayed in a hotel slash pub called the angel. And I was like, I can't have I spelled the name of the pub wrong. And we all had a great chuckle. Do you put an angle on the top of your tree?

You know, I've always been tempted to do the Christmas angle on top of the tree. Yeah. Yeah. Well, the top of the tree is an angle. Everything's an angle. I don't know if that is true. I think that's true. Name something that's not an angle.

This lid. That's got an angle. Of what? If the sides weren't 90 degrees, you'd be really annoyed at that as a lid. That's true. Thank you. What about an atom? Okay, you got me.

Yes. No, wait. You got me. I'd never come across the angle of death, angel of death before in terms of a pun. Oh, right. Slash thing. I did come across ages ago. Have you seen the signs on trucks, on lorries, let's say, around.

the UK. They have the angle mortes written on them. Yes, all the time. I see them all the time. I laugh every time. Yeah. Death angle. I wrote that down to maybe include it in my book about trigonometry thinking angle mortes is quite funny. But it's equivalent to like blind spot, death angle. So I don't think the mort's in French is like, you're going to die in this angle, although that's what it's trying, you know, effectively saying. I think it's more this is a dead angle in that the driver can't see there. The other half of this from Stefan is that four, and I was aware of this in general that because of Chinese languages,

four sounds like death. And so it's the death number. Yeah, it's not just in Chinese. This is it. I was like, oh, I'm vaguely aware of that, but then this is something you've previously looked into. Yeah, well, I've been learning Japanese on Jeweldinger for a long time now, so I'm not going to report to be.

an expert at it. But when we studied it in primary school as well, and I remember being told, like, you say yon for four, not she, because she is also the word for death. So technically, the number four is she, but you can also say yon. Because I was definitely taught she in primary school for four. Right. And then years later, that was wrong.

I was like, they changed four on me. I don't think they changed it, but I suspect that... Potentially, I don't know who's taught you Japanese, but they're by... Are you saying the Japanese teacher in a suburban Australian primary school was just teaching it straight from the book without all the cultural nuances of the living language? Potentially. Oh! How dare you?

Look, I can't say either or... And I haven't done enough research to find out if there was an official change. Right, I know, yeah, okay. But I do know that this has been an ongoing. going thing in several languages for really long time. It's actually called tetrophobia, which makes sense. Tetra being four, phobia being when you don't like a certain type of noodle soup. Sorry, everyone.

Well done. The apple juice is a one-off. Yeah, I need more of that. So what was really interesting when I was doing some research in many areas of Asia, Hong Kong, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia. it's a similar thing where the two words are very close to each other and I mean I don't know if it's related to the sound and a lot of them it is a sort of like she or sit or very similar sounds I'm guessing it's because they all a lot of them come from cop and origins yeah but the fear of it is really fascinating so in quite a few countries they avoid phone numbers and addresses with the four in it there was a really nice example In Hong Kong, in the apartment buildings for Vista Paradiso and the Arch, they've actually skipped all the levels from 40 to 49.

It goes 39 and then 50. Great. So a lot of people who don't know about tetrophobia in those countries will go and visit and they're like, are these floors missing? Like what's happened here? Is it true that some buildings have skipped the 13th floor in Western culture where 13 is... I don't have an answer to that. that. I can already hear producer Laura clicking away.

So I found that quite a lot of modern buildings have skipped their 13th floor. One of the tallest hotels in Cardiff jumps from floor 12 to floor 14. Some buildings call it 12A, so you get 412, 12, 12, then 14. Well done. One Canada Square in Canary Wharf in London, which is the building that everybody calls Canary Wharf. It's actually one Canada Square, but it's that building with a little pyramid on top. That doesn't have a 13th floor. and there is also no number 13 pod on the London eye.

Oh, wow, and where are those facts fresh from? The BBC News website about Triscodecaphobia. Oh, there you're going. Sorry, Becky, you were saying something I can remember. Oh, yeah, so these apartments, apartment buildings in Hong Kong that don't have 40 to 49, there is another reason other than superstition, which is it's an excuse to have apartments with higher floors, which increases the price.

Y'all, because you're so much higher. Yeah. That's great. So, like, selling a 56 apartment floor is going to cost more than a 46. Get that view. That's it. So I thought that was quite fun. I did know that in many, like, hospitals in Japan, they'll often not be, like, a fore on the wards or anything.

Because if you are sick, you don't really want to get put in the death ward. Yep. I think that's got its own name. Yes. Oh, but I thought this was really interesting. The Chinese Communist Party and the People's Liberation Army make free use of the number four in many military designations for equipment, with examples including the Dong Feng4 ICBM, the Type 094 submarine and Type 054A frigate. The Chinese government policies also usually contain the number four for expression. By contrast, the navies of the Republic of China, like Taiwan, and of South Korea,

refrain from using the number four when assigning pennant numbers to their ships. So just depending on how hardcore they want to sound. I think that was really fascinating. There's some citation needed for this, but there is a suggestion that when Beijing lost its bid for the 2000 Olympics, it deliberately didn't apply for the 2004 Olympics. Oh, wow. Because of the number four.

Because of the fourness. And then went to do a 2008 Olympics, which eight is the lucky number. Oh, yeah. Chinese, yeah. So there are many, many examples of what number four is not considered lucky. I thought also, just out of interest, just a little quick look into the Angel of Death. Oh. And I realize that I don't want to assume that everybody is familiar with the idea of the Angel of Death.

I can't say I know loads about it. But it's sort of a grin-reepery figure. It's an angel that comes to you when you die. Angel loves death. Yeah, but yeah, it's across many religions. Now, Stefan has then combined these two concepts that the angle of death is the angle with the most fours in it, by some definition of most fours in it.

Right. And Stefan's suggestion is that the angle of death, is 1,444 degrees. Now, explain that to me, because I always assumed that 360 is the maximum angle. Correct. Good. Glad we cleared that up. End of list. Yeah.

No, okay. 360 is the maximum angle if all you care about is where you're now pointing. Okay. If you care about how you got there, then you might need more degrees. What? Because there's a difference between like just staying here and pointing at it versus having done a revolution and now you're pointing at it versus you did two spins and now you're pointing at it. So if you said, oh, I just did a 720, I'll say you're doing a skateboard trick. Oh, yeah.

Like if you do a 720, 720 is a 2-360s. That's impressive. If you said, hey, I just did a sick zero degree. That's deeply underwhelming. Yeah. Even though the end result is you're pointing in exactly the same direction. I see. So the journey sometimes is important.

So that's why they've said four revolutions. Yes. Okay. So what you're saying is you spin around four times and then add four. Yes. So using the word angle is maybe pushing it slightly because now we're talking about just number of degrees gone through. Yeah. But I'm prepared to allow that.

What they're actually saying is if you do four complete revolutions, 1,440 has a lot of fours in it. The fact you can add another four in the end, an extra four degrees, is almost by the by. The kind of sub-facts, the foundational fact, the load-bearing fact, is that four revolutions, if you're using 360-degree circles, gives you an answer, which is half fours. 1-4-40, and that's a decent percentage of fours. But could we have a higher percentage? your fours. If you did 124 revolutions, you'd be dizzy. Yeah. And 124 times 360 is 44,640, which is 60% fours. Wow. That's pretty special. That's a lot of fours. You could still add

four on the end if you want to do that as well, because it ends into zero. They all end in the zero, we're multiplying 360 by something. If you did 679 revolutions, that would be a number which is precisely two-thirds fours. It's 244,440. Ooh. I just, I found all the numbers that are multiples of 360 and how many fours. You can get 12,354 revolutions, and your total number of degrees is 71.4% fours. It's pretty good.

You hit three quarter fours after you've done 95,679 revolutions. Wow. You can get 77.8% fours or 90% fours. What? 90% fours is after you do 12,345,679 revolutions. And what is that number? It's so pleasing. It's 44444444.

That's 9. Oh, that is pleasing. Yeah. And so you could do, you could just do 10-4s. Yeah, but just add you extra 4 degrees on. 10-4, buddy. 10-4. That's where the phrase comes from.

Yeah, yeah, that's right. So that would be the biggest angle of death. So I would argue the biggest angle of death is just 10-4s. Well, yeah, because if you were having to revolve that many times, you probably would be dead. You would be dead. Now, Stefan does have this extra fact about the digit route. I don't get particularly excited about it. that digit roots.

I don't know what a digit root is. A digit root is where you add all the digits together. Uh-huh. And if you get a total that's got more than one digit, you add all those digits together and you repeat that until you get down to a single digit. Ah. Now, there are some practical uses of digit roots. They appear a lot in like numerology stuff, but they are also useful in some genuine bits

of mathematics. What? Because if we go for the 10-4s. Oh, yeah, yep. That's 10 times 4. Yep. Which is 40. 40?

4 plus 0. Yeah. is four also got a digit root of four my proposal is that that's the angle of death well yeah

I mean sorry Stefan but 1-4-4 is not as 4y as 10 4s now for completeness 19 4s in a row is also 4 more than a multiple of 360

Oh. As is 28 fours in a row, as is 37 fours in a row. It goes up by nine each time. Wow. So I still declare 10 fours because that's like the base case, but you can go up to having 19 fours. Yeah. And it still works.

They haven't got the digit route anymore. You'll get it again eventually because you'll come back in phase. But I feel like that's just part of. this extended family, the true hero is 10-4s. Yeah. And it sounds like saying 10-4. Yeah. So that, that's Stefan.

And guess what? What? Ding has four letters. Ding, ding, ding. That was the sound of my mind-blowing. Oh, my goodness. That's incredible. Next problem comes in from Jeron.

who have specified that their name rhymes with erin. But it is spelled Jarron. A fact I used when I pronounced a Jeron. I don't like saying this precedent for people giving us pronunciation notes on their own name. Maybe it's Yeran. Yeran. You're right. Not enough information, Yeran.

I'm going to go with Jaron from herein. Jaron's capitalization. I finally caught up. and now exist in the same time as the current episode. Well done, Jeren. They've been a fan of Mats for going on 12 years. Oh, I'm so old. And they very much enjoy the podcast.

Beck is hilarious, and I've enjoyed hearing the two of you banter and create solutions together. Yeah, my elf and the shelf is really shining through here. Oh, now they get down to business. They are a church music director, and they have quite an extensive library of music. When they started, a volunteer was in the process of organizing that music. and they're very appreciative of what the volunteers doing. I can feel a butt coming. I can feel a butt.

Oh, wait, the next word here. But, but Jaron feels that the way it was being done was not the best, classic Jaron. Sharon's always got an opinion on the best way. Do you know what? I would want a music director who wants some direction with the music. I feel like. It's literally Jaron's job, isn't it? Yeah.

Yeah, to direct this music. So, the music is currently being organized. alphabetically by title. Well, it's hard to argue with that. I mean, if I was a volunteer, and I was told your next task is just to organize the music, and I don't have any opinions about it. Yeah. Alphabetical by title. Yeah. No one, no, you know one can complain.

Yeah. They can have suggested improvements, like I suspect Jaron's about to. Like, would you put O little town of Bethlehem under O? Under O. Oh, yeah, yeah. I would do a naive. There'd be so many things, songs that start with the, they're all going in the T-section. And I'm guessing this is like physical music. Oh yeah, otherwise this would be a pretty trivial task on a computer to just sort. So there must be physical music.

Jaron's problem is if they get more music, they're going to have to put it in the middle somewhere and all the music after the new piece will be shuffled forward and that will be very annoying. I feel like Jaron is not, is giving us like breadcrumb clues as to what the actual filing system is. Do you think it's in a filing cabinet? But they're easy to slide forward. Yeah. They make a terrible noise. It does sound like the shelf is only so long, and they're a bit nervous about which funds are getting pushed off the sides.

So it must be a physical sorting system where it's annoying to slide things around. Is it like a pile of sheet music? Like a vertical stack. A vertical stack. So like A is the top page and it's water. I was wondering that. And so you have to kind of filter through everything. Jeron has used the direction shuffled forward.

Not up. Yeah, yeah. I was wondering about that because I went back to my old church, which I quite like. It's the only one I've been to where I feel like I don't have to pretend like I am more godly than I am. But there's a real community vibe about it. I like the community and I like the feeling. And I was helping out with some of their craft stuff this week. They were pointing out how one of the people had volunteered to organise all the craft things.

And they've done a good job. It's pretty similar. It really, yeah, there is a real sort of people last minute going, I think this is the best we're going to do with the time we've got. And yeah. So I can imagine there being a pile or even in those boxes that you would, I don't know what they're called. Like a box file. Yeah, but they're like standing up.

They're sort of open. Like a ring binder kind of thing. I mean, a ring binder would, do you know what, that would make sense, shuffling forward if you're putting it a big ring binder. You go take them all out, put the new one in. Yeah. Put the rest back on top, that could be it. Either way, it does suggest that at Sauron's church,

I'm just going to start saying different names, at Jason's church, when the music is shoveled forward, they have to then just go start again. Or they're always playing by alphabetical order. Right, and they go, oh, I'm going to start over again. Not amazing grace again. Well, hang on, the final request from Jaron here is what logical efficient slash some other positive adjective way to describe something way

is there to organise my music oh wow yeah jaren's really taken ownership my music i occasionally let god borrow it uh going forward but not shuffling forward no no i think as someone who has attended services i think it should be done on genre like on vibes right okay Like a library, like the Dewey Decimal System. Yeah, exactly, exactly. A Dewey Decimal System, but for music. I don't know if there's a way that you could calculate vibes based on like BPM or... I feel like in this scenario, the lyrics are going to have a big impact on the vibes.

This is the thing. It's like you want to look at both the feel of the music, like is it big and epic or is it quiet and somber? Because then depending on the sermon, you could sort of match the music to. the feeling or you know the theory in fact funnily enough the service i just recently went to and this will date when the episode was recorded for anyone who wants to look it up but the service i most recently went to was just after the feast of st celia who was the patron saint of music or musicians or something like that and so the whole service was about music very lucky there's quite a few musical people considering that it's not a massive congregation there's some really good musicians in it so like

cellists and And they're all harmonized. It was very beautiful. And that was really good because they had some really sort of musically fantastic pieces. Yep. But then, yeah, obviously around Christmas, you have a Christmas carous. So you want to put them by time of year, season.

Yeah, do them by like seasonal feasts and whatnot. Is that going to help here, though? Because it feels like they could just do them in categories by first letter. Oh, I see what you're saying. Yeah. I think definitely you want to categorize them based on... what they might apply to, whether it's around the time of year or if they're doing themed based, let's say it's a sermon about death. You want to be able to go like, here's the death ones.

Yeah, but no, but hear me out. So they're all in one big, they're all in one big stack. They're all in four, four. That's where that comes from. Hey. There's one big stack. It's like a single dimension that they've got to be ranked along. Okay, yeah, as if one shelf. One shelf. It's a one shelf scenario. So, you know, like, some people store their books by the color of the spine. Yeah. And you can do it in spectral order. Matt, yep. That works. It's a one-dimensional sorting, unambiguous sorting. And whenever you get a new book, you're like, oh, I just got to scan along the spectrum until I work out where it sits and then you slated it. Job done. I think you've cracked it. Oh. Because you were saying this is like just one shelf, right?

We've just been talking about revolutions. The key is to have one of those spinning shelves. Circular shelf. Yeah, it spins. That way, wherever, if you're keeping an alphabetical, if that's fine with you, but your issue with the alphabetical is the shuffling forward. Well, if it's a spinning shelf,

it's not shuffling forward or back. Which way is this shelf spinning? In whatever direction you want. You still got to make room for the new one. That's the problem. well yeah just make sure it's big enough to add new music to it i think the issue with the shuffling means you need something where you don't have to move a large section of the music when you put in a new one which means you could have something like last in first out so whenever

you get a new bit of music you find the oldest bit of music whip that out and chuck the new one in where it was. I don't know if you've heard new Christian music, but I don't think you're compared well to the old line. I'm just saying that's a system. Last in, first out. I think you just want to get a bunch of binder folders for different categories, whether it's joyful songs. Look, you're going to have to pick a one-dimensional spectrum of emotion.

Everything goes from Christmas to Easter. Yeah, yeah, yeah, basically. And you've got to sort everything. everything on that. Yeah. And then you have a binder for each thing. So there's enough space to add new things in and it's not going to ruin it all. The fact they've got to move so much stuff around.

I feel like it is a logistical. Like, it's an infrastructure issue here. I mean, look, we're in this day and age. The answer is to digitize all of them and then be able to tag them all so you can search them easily. No, it's alphabetical by notes. So, all the songs that start with an A. go first. I mean, it doesn't solve the problem, but I love it.

It'll work. How do you organise your music, Matt? Alphabetical by notes. But do you have like a way of like... No, I sort things by, well, I categorise my books using a system of sorted by where do I remember putting that? Yeah, I've seen your system. Where do I last remember having the vibe of that book being nearby?

Like, where do I see it last? Is it a bedroom book or a bathroom book? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Maybe that's why I'm finding this whole conversation so alien. I'm like, I put it in the pile. What are you talking about? Well, these days we tend to sort our music via playlists. Oh, yeah.

Some of us do have, like, record or CD collections. Although that said, my collection is so small due to trying to save space. What order am I going to put these two CDs? Yeah, exactly. So it's not really an issue. But digitally, I listen to most of my music via playlists. My playlists are very much. The playlist I put together, most of them are what mood am I in?

Right. So I've got like music for grey days. Like autumnal beats is one of them. That makes a delicious stew. I have one that I made for you, I think, like when you first started working on... Music to get back to writing by... It's called Music to write solutions too. I got to fire that back up again.

I've got to start running. I listen to albums. Now, that's interesting. Yeah, the way the artist intended. Another way, which we haven't mentioned, is organising it by composer. Yeah. I think there's a technical name for the messy desk approach to filing things. You just dump stuff on the desk and things you use the most often will filter their way to the top.

Yeah, I don't think church music is the one where you necessarily want the most often. People are going to get real sick of the same songs real quick. No, no, no, no. But if they want a different one, they can find it. find it, it's just harder to find the less commonly used ones. I think it's like volcano salt or something ridiculous. I think that doesn't make it easier. Well, I'm not here to make it easy. I mean, they did literally ask for the most efficient. Oh, that was one of the options. Sorry, sorry. I'm using other positive adjective. Yeah, chaotic. Chaotic. Yeah, it's a fun.

Like a positive chaos. Surprise. Yeah. Chaotic good. That's what I'm it's called yeah as a professional chaotic neutral i do feel like we need to ask the producer who works with sound-based stuff laura what how do you organize your music well if it was left to my own devices i would just have it all alphabetized you're such a geron but jaren's not the one that alphabetized it no it's so left to my it's being annoyed at someone else having a different system. Yeah, you're the geron. Yeah, yeah.

My husband and I have a lot of vinyl, and we have now officially combined it all. Oh, wow, it's getting serious. So he has... I mean, they are married. I love saying that to people who are married. So he has sort of taken your approach and grouped stuff by vibe. Yeah. So like the type of music it is.

So he's done it by genre, and then within that. organized things, I can't find anything. Right. Because it turns out I don't know what music is. But I find it eventually. It's all generally there. I guess what we're learning is that I'm really organized in my work, but when it comes to the home stuff, ah, it's fine.

Yeah. Whatever. I mean, enough of this at work. When I rearrange everything in my flat, I realize that the way that I organize my books, is mostly based on comic books and graphic novels and then books my friends wrote because those are kind of the two times of books that I own. Right, yeah, yeah, books I was given for free.

Yeah, that's pretty much my entire collection. I think the music should be sorted by, now hear me out, I'm not just being silly anymore. Okay. Length. Yeah. So longer stuff on the left, shorter stuff on the right. Oh, I like this. And then when you put something new in, because you systematically put it in where it belongs,

move everything else to the right, the ones you're more likely to move and have to move the most often are the lightest, easiest to move once. And so that minimizes the frustration of shuffling them forward. For whatever system, the infrastructure may be forcing upon them. Yeah. I like that as well, because whether it's a film or comedy night or service or whatever, no one likes it when it overruns and it would just be nice if they just

timed out the music I can grab a short one yeah exactly like oh what's that Reverend Steve is going to do a talk today well he's a bit of a yabber so let's choose some of the short

songs to go in between if it were me I'd choose short songs all the time I don't like here's my issue Gerand you can solve this for me why is church music always slightly too high every time

I don't know if you've ever had to sing along to a church song but they're always slightly too high so there's a moment where you go I hate this I always have a sore throat at the end of a service is to remind humans that they're fundamentally flawed yeah it works I just end up having to sing at the lower octave down and then sounding like I'm grumbling

yeah take that to the big guy for me right so what's your official advice for jazzer here I think I think genre based folders slash binders. And you can choose

whether you want to do it alphabetical or whatever. Infrastructure overhaul. Yeah. Into folders. And then categories for folders and then sorting within a folder. And then you're putting those folders on a spinning shelf. Something has to spin.

And then within each folder, are they sorted by most that genre to lease that genre? I think that comes down to personal preference. So they're alphabetical within. Probably alphabetical within. Alphabetical by note within each folder. Got it.

Or just by like beats. Right. They're sorted by royalty cost per song. Yeah, yeah. Then you can just chuck out the expensive funds. Yeah, exactly. Just grab a couple cheapies. Right.

Well, Jeron, let us know if any of that was at all helpful. And even if you ignore everything we've said, we would love to know what system you do end up implementing. If we have any other church, and I mean specifically church music directors. Oh, really? going to be a lot of people who I'm like, oh, I'm a, I'm a choir director, or I'm a primary school choir director or what, no, church music, because it's very specific, I would like to know if any other church music directors, A, listen to the show.

Yeah. And B, what is, do you have a system in place and how hard do you rate it? And has listening to this also helped you? Or are you sitting there going, I've got the perfect system? Yep, okay, send them in. Let us know. Go to the problem posing page at problem squared.com. And now we're at any other Brusselsness.

Well, sproutness. Sproutness. Otherwise it's just a place. This is true. A lovely place. Brussels sproutness. To start with, we heard from Ahmed. Oh, yes.

Pose the biweekly, tweakly, twigley. Had a lot of fun with that. Staff in episode 1-2-1. Amid's come back saying twing! Twing! That is a dinged twice a problem. I think it should be coined as well for future episodes. Not only did you and I definitively conclude that the original intended use of the word biweekly was to be twice a week.

We did. Thank you, Ahmed. But we also came up with perfectly usable alternatives. Amid also said, fun fact. I was listening to this episode as I was driving to work and as soon as I logged on I saw an invite for a one-to-one meeting with bi-weekly in the title

I immediately went to open that one to see what it meant and it turned out they set it up to be every two weeks I meant I meant Twakley they are the change they want to see in the world and sent the link to the episode

with no extra context which was met with confusion at first two hours later the meeting invite title was updated to twakley and I can confirm that you have one extra subscriber and listener hello Ahmed's colleague yes hello and what I would hope to be the first citation to the episode for the words tweakly and twakley all the love from Egypt Ahmed thank you

we couldn't have had a more appropriate first citation yeah yeah thank you so much and thank you um as colleague and a reminder to everyone else listening to up your game. Oh. Start using Twockley more. Yeah, get out there. Tell us. Now, Sir Goodson on Instagram replied to one of our posts to say,

our quickfire episode, which was the following one, 122, was, and we quote, such a good episode, it should become a twi-yearly tradition. Do we suggest to we yearly? I wouldn't have signed off on that. I think Twirley and Tworley. No. I don't think I had any part in that. I did.

Yeah, you did. Yeah, Twirley was twice a year. So they're not telling us to do it every two years. Few. I agree with you. It's a good sin. Now, a lot of people have come in with new names for the new DO. So, one two two episodes before this one you're listening to right now.

Matthew on the problem posing page, not me, said, instead of the word newdeo, how about one that follows on from the prior episode? Although they've merged it with the the Tudio, like Tudio. I think Tu-Dio, obviously, or Tu-Dio. And then if we move again, it's the three-d-o. I guess it would be the two-d-o. Two-D-O, three-d-o, four-d-d-o. Yeah.

I mean, it's future-proofed, give them that. Yeah. In fact, Matthew's not the only one. Dave had also suggested Tudio. assuming it is a second studio and they actually did say pronounced either Tudio or Trudeo. Keith is suggesting either

oh we're trying to put the word current and so to update it so instead of being new just the fact that it's the one we're in at the moment the Carrudio for current or the contemporadio oh my goodness thanks for joining in Keith

he also heard from Luke he said hi Becker Matt, I'm skipping the blah, blah, blahs. Thank you for telling us to go straight to a solution for the new name and the new deal. You could go for the current, so we've had a couple of current studio. The current studio or Curio, a nod to curiosity. Oh, okay.

Love the show since episode two. Wow. What's with these people who keep starting episode two? I mean, I don't blame them. Were we just terrible in episode one? Look, I would say that the show has only gotten better with time. It's an upward trajectory. Bubblehead, their choosing of a name on the problem posing.

page. They have a Matt and Beck, blah, blah, blah. Stude Neo. Oh, so they put the Neo for New at the end. That's good. Good work. They did also suggest maybe Stunio, which is a bit easier to pronounce. And Daisy on the problem posing page has the suggestion for a permanent name, a studio squared, a studio with a superscript two. I mean, my favorite is Emma. Yes. He said slightly more proper alternative to the new deal is the scandal. I mean, it's a step in the right direction. The speedio. The nakedio.

Berryo. Great suggestions, everyone. Thank you for your creativity. They've all focused very heavily on the fact that this is the new or current or, you know, a point in time studio. Hmm. I would like to suggest I just want like a pun math studio name. And then that would be like evergreen.

My suggestion was prime wood studios. Nice. Yeah, I get it. Yep. Yep. Yep. Great. A counterperson, Alex, wanted to call it Studio 314.

Yes. And that's the end of the list. That's the whole list. No, New Deal, 54. was the one I wanted to get to, yeah. I do like Primewood Studios. Yeah. Along that line, I would also want to go

with like, Polywood. But it's like a polygon. Like a polygon. I see what you're doing. But then it does sound like... I feel like it's a very different studio. Polywood nudio really... Yeah, exactly. Thank you.

I see what you're going for. And I will give it some thought. Yep. I think you're going to have to work really hard to new deal is just so cat-beat. I will take people's comments on if they prefer Studio 314 to Primewood Studios or if they can beat either of those. Yourself included. Yeah, yeah. You know I love a challenge.

That's the only way you can get me to change the name is if I'm... If you come up with one that you think is hilarious, then you'll jump horses. very quick. Yeah, it's true. I want to thank everyone who is listening, because without you, we're just yelling into a void. And I especially want to thank everyone who is a Patreon supporter of us, in particular, three from our naughty or nice list. It's just the same list, by the way, yeah, same list. And on this episode, three of those Patreon supporters are...

Sintnai, Klaus. Ha, glund Kev Indobish Dang Mo Regan Mo T If you would like to be thanked

Potentially and have your name is pronounced Potentially and definitely receive some wonderful bonus things Like

Your digital Christmas card If you've left it too late for the physical one and our bonus monthly podcast, I'm a wizard, then go on over to patreon.com forward slash a problem squared. And finally, I'd like to thank jolly old Matt Parker. I am a little donkey back hill and our little baby in a manger. Wow.

Producer Laura Grimshaw. I mean, what are we? But if not, the three wise men? Donky. Merry Christmas. Bye. Would you like to see where the ship you didn't find was? Yeah, go on.

I got some bad news for you. It's not on the board. It is on the board? How mean would that be? You were so close to hitting it. Oh, really? Unbelievable. You genuinely just got really unlucky and the game could have turned right at the end there.

I mean, it couldn't have because... Well, you... You had one shot left. No, you shot and hit. This is like five moves ago, C7. Yeah. You shot every which way, but the ship directly underneath. If you'd gone down first, as opposed to left and right and up.

And do you know what? The funny thing is, part of me thought, I wonder if there's another one in this direction here because I did notice it had quite a sort of pleasing, almost pattern emerging. Yeah. They're pseudo-rander me, but I thought two of them should tell. touch. Yeah. And it is quite pleasing in a rude way. Yeah. So you, you were very close. That is. What a game. Very enjoyable. Do you want to see the game that I've brought to start off the next one? Because that game just went for over a year. Well, every year. Yeah. That's good value.

I brought another one. Now, before we bring it out. Yeah. Will this be a continuation of the best of three? Oh. I mean, I feel like best of three needs to be. the same game. It could be different games. This is not because I won. I would have been arguing this anyway. Sure. I look like they have a game that takes a decade to play out. We'll have a metascore. Okay, Karen, what do you go? Could you? So, Beck has removed, and I cannot tell you how pleased her facial expression is right now. What is a travel edition version of Connect 4? Yes. I've also numbered and lettered the spaces, so the listeners at home. Oh, you've labeled it all know where we're going so we as we put in our pieces we it's good to have a sort of

coordinates yeah now is it a move each per episode or is it one person playing per episode i think one person playing per episode i think it's one because that we get equal thinking time that way yeah okay okay that seems very well um would you like to go first i'll go first absolutely i've learned from this show that going first is often a do you want red or green An advantage, green, please. By the way, by those colours, you know that this is not an official... No, this is off-brand. Green?

Absolutely. It's also really not colourblindness friendly. The red green, aggressively anti-colourblind. Okay, where would you like to go? I'm going to go for F4. Well, I guess it's column four. And it's going to fall. right to the bottom which you've labeled as F. Yeah. Great. Fantastic opening move.