A Problem Squared - 125 = Toots from Bums and Attitude Sums

Episode Date: January 5, 2026

💨 How many people are needed to guarantee that there is always someone farting somewhere?🔠 If you match each letter with the corresponding number in the alphabet and add them together, which words add up to 100.🏁 And there is some unfinished business.Head to our socials for pictures of Matt’s Homemade Sea Salt and Bec’s Brilliant Branding, an assortment of Massive Hourglasses, the beautiful sketch of Bec, and a smiley jerk on the beach in the sunshine 🌅Here is the full list of words that add up to 100 (and do be warned that it contains some words that may not be suitable for young eyes)https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/r0u9hnx0c63ma3ovky3gp/100_letter_sum_shuffled.txt?rlkey=n62ik3j22tnwujod53wqrf4cc&e=1&dl=0 If you have a suggestion of dates for us to do a Rock Special and a Tooth Special,, go to the Problem Posing Page at aproblemsquared.com and select ‘Solution’ and do mention ‘International Teeth Day’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!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.

Happy New Year and welcome to a problem squared, the problem solving podcast, which is a little bit like salt in that a small amount but not too much in your listening diet will greatly improve your overall. all podcast health. You'll be listening to Beck Hill, comedian, performer, writer, who is also a bit like salt in that anything that you add her to, it will increase the flavor and enjoyment of whatever it may be. I would improve every meal in my presence. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Not if I was in the meal. That would be great. No, it's a mere analogy. Not a literal recipe. And I'm Matt Parker, mathematician, author, et cetera, blah, blah, blah. Wow, you're blah, blah, blah, blying in the intro. I'm blah, blah, blah, blaring myself.

It's the beginning of the year, okay? We're going to take it easy for this one. I am much like so in that I'm capable of forming complex geometric shapes, often cubes. And on this episode, I'm going to look at the maths of farts. Oh my goodness. I've looked at some words that are 100%. And there'll be not any other business, but unfinished business.

So, Beck, how you doing? What are you up to? I'm good. I'm really good. We're recording this before Christmas. Yep. And I've just done a bunch of, I mentioned them previously, the medieval Chaucer shows. I say medieval.

Comedian John Litt Roberts does a character of Geoffrey Chaucer, who is a medieval British poet. It's very silly. It's basically him talking in medieval English, which just involves swapping all the vows around. Right. It's what Chaucer would have wanted. What Chaucer would have wanted. And then introducing various acts. And I was one of them for the Brighton, Bristol and Manchester shows.

which was delightful, really nice. It was lovely gigging in those areas again. And your friend of mine, Andrew Taylor, who's a fantastic coder, maker. This is not their biggest achievement in life, but they write the code that generates the indexes for my books. Right, yes. And I think you've used some of Andrew's code to answer problems. Oh, absolutely.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Andrew is one of the many people who are much better at coding than me and so I can turn to them in my times of need and they will put together some excellent code. Yeah. Were they at one of your gigs? They came to the Manchester show. Oh, great.

And also, not just great at coding, a dab hand at sketching. And so Andrew had a shot at sketching my picture from my avatar on various social medias and did a really good job and I love it and brought it to the show so I could take home the original copy I will show it to you now hold on I just realize this is in the other room yeah go get it

I will say while Beck is gone we are recording in different countries this is a cross hemisphere episode I'm in the Southern Hemisphere Beck is at home in the Northern Hemisphere hence why she's had to suddenly up and run out of the room to get the sketch that's a good sketch

so yeah big big fan of this So we'll stick a picture of that up on socials, if you'd like to see it. Great. Be sure like Andrew Taylor. How about you, Matt? What have you been up to? Oh, I've also got a show and tell. Check this out.

I've got like a little ramek in here, very small shallow dish. I don't know if you can see. And I'll share a photo of this afterwards. Ground up teeth. No, but it is a suspicious white powder. Look at that. Yeah, I'm going to look. I want to be a smart aleck and make jokes about all the various things it could be.

But I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that that is salt. Oh my goodness, Beck. How did you do it? What? You cracked. You tracked the code of the episode. It's salt. So, I found an infinite salt hack.

I was walking by the beach because I am in Australia. Are you about to say that you found sea salt? Because I don't think you've discovered that hack. What? Pretty sure. I'm pretty sure I'm breaking new ground here So a couple days ago Had a coffee down by the beach

And so I was walking along the beach Drinking my coffee Finished my coffee And I was just looking at the water And I was like, I wonder how much salt there is In seawater And I imagine it varies But I was like, well I got a cup with me

So I rinsed it out in the ocean And I filled it up with seawater and put the lid back on and they just carried it back with me like I can carry a cup of coffee I can carry a cup of seawater got it home you don't show off wait I can carry a cup

some distance weighed it out I had 274.9 grams of seawater and I was like well let's see how much usable salt I can get out of this so I filtered it to get all the sand out and then I chucked it in a pot and then boiled it down

into a paste and then put it on a tray and baked it in the oven. Now I regret that last step because I didn't get like wonderful flaky sea salt crystals like you would get if you were to spend money on salt like some kind of chump. What I got was a flower-like fluffy consistency which is not good for putting on food. I found it surprisingly difficult to spread evenly on any kind of meal. And I'm guessing that the water that you had before was, that's the measurement of a sands cup. Yeah, that was just the water without the cup, correct.

I actually weighed it in the cup and then tipped it out. I used a coffee filter. I ran it through like a V60 coffee filter situation. And then I weighed the cup afterwards to subtract the mass of the cup. And then I got 7.4 grams of salt at the other side. That's free salt You might as well just put sea water into your meals Yeah, you could

You shouldn't 2.7% salt by mass And now, I realize two things here I really want to bring some of their salt back with me to the UK But I don't think Suspicious white powder Like I was about to tip it into a Ziploc bag

And then I caught myself when I realized what I was about to try and carry internationally. And there's not that much here. And again, it's not good flakes. But I realized if at that level of yield, if I got four liters of seawater, that's 100 grams of free handmade, you know, locally sourced, free range sea salt. So I'm just going to chuck a little photo from my afternoon today into our WhatsApp group here back. Okay.

And we can share this. We can share this. You only do these so that you can send photos of you by the beach in the sunshine. Pretty much. So mean. Talk us through the picture back. Oh, all right. It's a smiley jerk.

Correct. Correct. Guilty. With a beautiful blue sea in the background, sunglasses and a cap so he doesn't get burnt on his dumb head. It's got to be sunsmart. Holding a bottle of seawater. There's two litres right there. That's like 50 grams of salt.

So, this afternoon. I brought that back I've been boiling down boiling down my salt this time so where I went wrong was baking it in the oven you want to have a

slow you're like you want to still want to boil it so I filter it to get like sand and impurities out boiling it means any nasty critters or whatnot are taking care of

and you're meant to discard because the very first things that come out of solution aren't the sodium chloride and salts that you're after. So actually, I've done the half boil and now I'm going to filter out the first stuff that's coming out. And you don't want the very last stuff that comes out. That's other minerals and stuff.

You really want the middle range. So I'm going to get all that. You get it down to a paste and then you've got to let it slowly air dry to get your proper flaky crystals. So that's my plan. I'm going to get my salt harvest in. Beautiful.

In case you're wondering, no, Lucy hasn't come back with me on this trip. I don't know if that's related to my sudden side hustle, but I'll bring some back for her. I figure if I put it in a jar and label it, like with a fake sea salt label. This is salt. That now makes me want to design a dumb sea salt label for you. You want to get in on my sea salt side hustle? I don't trust it To be honest

What do you mean you don't trust it What's not to trust Salt It tastes like being dumped by a wave Matt is now eating the salt From his little ramekin What could possibly be wrong with this? I mean I know you boiled it

Yeah I do like I want to know what the chemical composition Of that is Is it genuinely pure salt Is there anything in there that could be considered harmful? If anyone knows better than me and the internet, why I shouldn't eat this, please write in, please go to the problem posing page. Pick ironically solution. Yeah, if you're just essentially eating concentrated seawater.

It's just salt. It's like tasty salt. Or if anyone can test it for me, get in touch, you know. It's funny how pure my soul is. Now I'm just snacking on it This is good stuff, man Yeah, it's just not good consistency But I will bring back my next My next hall

If you can do me a label It'll help me get it through customs I mean, it's gonna be like I trust you back Matt Parker's purest anthrax Come on get me arrested You're doing the podcast on your own All right

Should we do an episode? Yes, please. Our first problem, we're sent in by Phil, who went and filled out the problem posing page at a problem square.com. They wrote, my wife and I farted at exactly the same time tonight. Beck, Rebecca. Thought it was funny. Oh, a lot of people do, Phil.

And naturally, we got to discussing. Of course, the inevitable conversation followed, Phil, about how many people are farting at any one point. Okay, it's quite funny. And realized that at some tragically unmarked point in history, someone farted, the ground zero of farting. That's my words not Phil's. And since then, it's never stopped. When was this point? What is the critical human population needed to garrar?

Guarantee, that there is always someone farting somewhere in the world. Love the blah, blah, blah, you get the idea. And then they go on to say, they've been a list since episode 002 and all that stuff. And I want the record to state. That was word for word what Phil has written. I feel like the listeners are meta turning on us. Yeah, the joke about starting at episode zero-zero-two is now, I don't like this joke. They've got the joke that they started at 002.

And they've written word for word me describing a summary of what they might have written. Like they've written, then they go on to say that they've been a listener since episode 002 and all that stuff. I'm not paraphrasing that.

Unbelievable. Thanks, Phil. So anyway, would you believe this problem caught Beck's attention? Beck, when was fart zero? Happy New Year.

Happy New Year. Well done. Yills. Look, now the thing is, I feel like, and I'm, this is why I wanted to cover this, because I feel like the answer to this is relatively easy. It feels too easy. And famously, when you think a problem would be too easy to solve, it transpires that you're totally correct.

Yeah, yeah. So, firstly, I had to work out how long a fart takes. Yep. And from some research, I think, but I'm going to say, on average, a fart is about a second. Some of them are longer, some of them are shorter. But if you think about the stereotypical sensation of a fart. Thanks. Yep.

It's about one second. Yep, I would accept that. I thought of this the same way that I would work out how many people do you need before you start getting like doubled up birthdays, right? Yeah, yep, that works. Because the minimum amount is 365. Once you go over 365 people, you're definitely going to get doubled up birthdays. There might be some before that, but they're doubling up.

The minimum amount you need for a definite, before it's like... To guarantee it is to tick over a three, six, you know, seven if you include leopias. Yeah. Sure. Yeah. So I looked up how many seconds are in a day.

I'm going to skip right over that sentence. Why are you going to skip over that sentence? You don't have to look it up. You can work it out. I'm going to look it up. I don't want to work it out. Oh, no, it's fine. It's fine.

It's not the point. It's like 86,400. something like that. That's it, 86,400 seconds in a day. So there's your answer, right? Minimum 86,400 people before someone somewhere is farting at the same time as you. But? But, because you're pulling a face. And this is where I'm like, have I gone wrong? No. Well, here's the problem. What Phil wants is continuous farting. and as you correctly stated

before that like in the birthday problem three six whatever three six five six six before that you're bound to have other overlaps but that's the point at which you're forced to have an overlap if any two people happen to fart at the same time then there'll be a gap somewhere else that has to be filled I think you would need more people

because you're going to have a bunch of people simultaneously farting leaving also people fart more than once a day so you probably want the percentage of the day spent farting but then what you need to look at as the opposite problem of how many people do you have such that it's vanishingly unlikely there's a point at which no one is farting I see what you're saying see this is the thing that I was worried about because I was like doesn't this just mean that the minimum amount of people you need is 86,400

and then there's always farts happening at the same time but I've read it as how many people are always farting at the same time not I mean that's a tricky one because down to pure coincidence maybe there's a time of day where

nobody farts and how could we prove that? Now the birthday problem assumes you're equally likely to be born on every day of the year. In reality, births clump at different times in the year. Yes. Well, that's the thing is I wasn't thinking continuously.

I was thinking in terms of what are the chances of farting at the same time as another person. Yes. Yes. Yes. But I now realize that's not what they're asking. Yeah. You have correctly answered that question because you're right. If everyone takes a second each, there's a reality where everyone happens to perfectly line up their farts one after the other.

And I cannot believe we're having this conversation. And then the 86,4001st persons, like there's no space for me to fart without overlapping with someone else. Yeah. Assuming everyone farts once a day for one second each. But the more difficult question is how many people that there's never a break? it's just relentless yeah and that

I had not solved because I had not read the question promptly and that's why I wanted to do it Matt because I was like

this feels too easy I think I've made a mistake here and I have all right shall we let's assume everyone

I feel like once a day is low Oh, it's very low I mean what percentage of the day You're saying people fart for 186,400th of the day I feel like the real number might be slightly higher

Topdoctors.com.ukk How much farting is normal? There we go. Oh my goodness, yep. According to Dr. Loganaya gum we fart between three to 40 times a day. Three to 40? Yeah. Okay.

The average person, and we're talking average, the average person farts 15 times a day. Oh, okay. Great. Great. Okay, we can use that. And you're saying a second each. Yeah. So if you were at any point to pick someone, a random person at a random point in time, there's a 15 out of 86,400 chance. That's the probability that they're farting at that exact moment. Yep. So, if you were to look at the opposite of that, there's a one minus that probability that they're not farting. Now, let's say there's a point in time and you want to work out the probability that no one is farting.

At all. Absolute silence, there is peace on the world. Not silent but deadly, just silent. That would be, that means everyone has to have their, you know, 86,385 out of the 86,400 probability, the first person and the second person and the third person all have to have that probability, which is a very high probability, but it has to be all of them at once. So it's that to the power of the number of people.

So what we can do now is take that probability and work out what power we have to raise it to such that it's, for some level of unlikely, vanishingly. unlikely that no one's fighting at the same time. Yes. So what I'm going to do here is very quickly do 86,400 minus 15. Divide that by 86,400. Okay. So just straight up, the probability at any point in time that someone is not farting is 99.9.982.

6.4%. Okay. So if you had one person on the world, one person on the whole planet, most of the time not fighting. What should we raise that to? So just to make sure that I'm following this correctly, there are 86,400 seconds in a day. On average, 15 of those seconds will be spent farting. So the maths you've done is just calculating what percentage of that is not farting. Correct. Cool. Yep. And your normal human spends 99.98% of their life not farting, by our assumptions. If you had 100 people, and so I've raised that to the power of 100, if there's 100 people in a room, now, again, most of them are not farting,

because you spend way less than a hundredth of a day farting, there's still, at any point in time, a 98.3% chance no one is farting. Got it. But what if there was a million people? Let's add some more zeros. One, two, three, four, five, six. Here we go, run that. Ah, now, it's, a million is definitely enough people.

There's always someone farting. We've got to find there, there'd be a middle point in there somewhere. What I'm doing is I'm taking the probability that one person is not farting. And if you had two people, it'll be that probability for one person times that probability for the second person. but if you had three people it'll be the probability three of them probability times and then times again which would be the cube to the power of three so I'm raising it to the power of the number of people and that's giving us the probability that no one's fighting at that

point in time and now I mean I could work this out properly I'm just ballparking it by raising it to some big numbers and seeing how the probability falls out what is it at a hundred thousand So at 10,000, there's still a 17.6% chance at any point no one's fighting. Okay. But 100,000, as you said, there's now a 0.0.50's 29% chance no one's fighting. Whoa. It's a pretty high percentage when you think about people. That's once a second. That's not enough. There'll be a gap eventually. But a million people,

I'm not switching it to a percentage. It's 3.9 times 10 to the negative 76. Now that's insane. So now we've made a bunch of assumptions. But at some point between 100,000 and a million, we've crossed that line. So I would confidently say a million people, there's always, always someone fighting. That's interesting because I was looking at estimates of human population. Oh, excellent, yep. Because we don't have records dating back super far. Different groups and scientists who have estimated what the world population was of of humans in our way that we know ourselves the lowest estimation for human population

in the past was around minus 10,000 BC oh okay for a million people yeah and even then it was probably more than a million people so what I'm trying to say is it would have been sometime before 10 thousand years BC and even then that was probably more basically we've been continuously farting since there's been humans from the sound of it now that also is roughly when we first started gathering in large civil like large cities and and having agriculture yeah true because our farts probably weren't different there was a a diet thing yeah so i would say 10,000 years is pretty guaranteed. I'm happy with that answer.

Now, unless there's any anthropologists, anthropologists? Oh, them, them too. Unless there are any anthropologists. Oh, they stopped listening a while ago. This is not worth my time. Look, biologists, whatever, if you want to debate this, by all means. but I'm very satisfied with that. Me too.

And if you're wondering how many people are fighting at any one time right now. Oh yeah. Because the world population is coming up to about 8.3 billion, which is wild. But because there's like 86, just over 86,000 seconds in a day, that does mean that very roughly 100,000 people are farting at any one moment. 100,000 people right now and now. And doesn't it make you feel connected? I feel like the first astronauts who looked down on the planet and saw that we were all one.

and we're united in our fragility. Yeah. At any moment you're farting, there's probably... Another 100,000 people joining in, this glorious chorus that we call humankind. Yeah. That's the 2026 R111.11.

Well, Phil, get in touch. I mean, you're the person we have to convince. Head back over to the promposing page and let us know. Do you give us a ding? Our next problem comes from I think the thing is we don't mispronounce people's names when they've sent us problems. We try to pronounce them correctly.

They've written I-V-A-N, E-Y-E-V-A-N. Yes, yes, they have. I might have said Y-V-A-V-N. I have a friend whose name is spelled Ivan, but it's pronounced Avon. Or maybe their name is I. Van. Either way, they might. Hi, Beck and Matt. A colleague recently said that attitude is the most important thing in life. If you match each letter, so I'm guessing each letter of the word attitude, with the corresponding number in the alphabet and add them together, you get 100.

It was supposed to be inspirational, but I'm wondering what other words I also have this property. I'm hoping there will be some funny ones in this context. This also made me wonder if there are any other interesting words with other sums. For example, are there any numbers that when spelt and converted would sum to themselves? I tried 100, but it came out as 108. We'd love to hear your thoughts and hopefully give me something to tease my colleague. Thanks and love the podcast, blah, blah, blah. Right. So, Ivan, it didn't take much to knock some code together. That can take a word and add up its positions in the alphabet. So did that. But then I had to work out what words to apply it to. We'll get to words to add to 100 in a moment. First of all, I thought I would

apply it to every entry we've ever had on the problem posing page. Specifically, I wondered, has anyone ever posed a problem and all the words had the same sum if you add up their letters? I was like, wouldn't that be special? And the answer is no. Like, some people have put in single word problems, so, I mean, by definition, they're all words that have the same sum. The absolute best you can get is someone who put in a six-word problem and half of the words, if you add up the positions in the alphabet of all their letters, are the same. They all add to 73. And of the other ones, two of them add to 46. So that's pretty good going.

And it's actually a problem we've solved. Oh. Back in 2023, someone else named Phil, put in the problem, how central is Central Park really? Oh, yeah. Was it Phil with two L's or is it a different Phil? One L, different Phil. So what, Phil, not only did you give us a problem that we then solved in New York, but if you do the absolutely pointless process

of adding up positions in the alphabet you've given us the most consistent problem I did then run both of us have written three books back and I put all our books through the same process and I thought I would see what's the longest run of words that all had the same sum

and both of us didn't get past three in a row yeah you achieved it in both a couple times in your second and third books. Kidding laughed Ryan. Every one of those three words adds to 58. Said Mabel the, that's from your third book. They all add to 33. My books are a bit less exciting.

The Fence Or, they all add to 33. There you go. Great. So, yeah. Oh, and I did pull out all the words that add to 100 from the problem posing page database and first of all one word that caught my eye was wizards wizards adds to 100 which is pretty good

just as important as attitude I find exactly and would you believe you can have the sentence contented producer maintains standards they're all 100 So I think we can all agree that's important Yes And then I was like, okay, look There's kind of two things I've got to do here

I've got to find all the words that add to 100 And then we make some words And then choose the funniest ones And choose the funniest one I did get briefly snit by the side quest Thanks Ivan Words where a number Where if you add together all the letters

In the words for the number you get that number back and so I had to write some code that would take a number and turn it into how you'd say it which was a surprising amount of fun and I'd actually written that code like 10 years ago in Python 2 but it was awful code

even by my own standards so I updated it in Python 3 I just rewrote it from scratch it was a lot of fun here we go it turns out there are 2151 251 if you add together the characters yep

and 259 is that including the and including the and if you don't have the and there are no solutions if you swap the and for the word plus 300 plus 47

works so if you I tried other possible words instead of and plus gives you one that's fun now if you want to go nuts and add in extra ands two hundred

and and 90 and 1 works 290 and 9 works because they were off by and is like 19 so if they're off by 19 you can check another and in there to

bump your numbers up and likewise with plus 300 plus 90 plus 5 technically works because you've managed to sneak in a few more letters to make the grade just to get the score up but if you accept only an orthodox

pronouncing it with and 251 259 there you go the only two nice here's a thing writing numbers down

is very efficient you use way fewer characters than what the number represents and that's why we don't use tallies for everything where there's one line per thing

like if you want to write a hundred in a tally you just got to draw a hundred lines and the whole point of numbers in terms of writing them down is you're using fewer marks than just a tally. And so the value a number represents

gets bigger, way faster than the characters you're writing down and the letter sum maxes out at like 26 possible values per character and very quickly numbers are way more than 26 times bigger than the number of characters

are types to write, you know, takes to write them down. So I can very happily say unless you come up like you might go oh but millennium has a thousand. I didn't I didn't search for like unusual little other ways of representing numbers that could work. I just did the

standard whatever's and whatever's. You need to find a very long way to say a number really padded out. I considered adding in ums and ours to really stretch it out but that felt cheating. So,

I then took the classic all the words which is featured several times on this podcast and I ran it through and pulled out all the words that have a value of 100 if you add the letters together there are 3,770 words that add to 100 do you want to see the list? Yes please Now here's the two things to bear in mind

and we will share this list with everyone The things to bear in mind, everyone, before you have a look at the list is, first of all, 3,770 words is a lot, and there's no easy way to check which ones are good words. And the list is very generous. The original list of all the words has so many pointless words that are just never used. So 3,770 is very much an upper bound. You can quibble a lot of those words. I don't know, Matt. I think that's a very runcels thing.

to say. See? Very fun, Ovi-N. Now, you'll also notice, Beck, they're in a completely random order. Because the best way to find interesting words is just to rely on the classic human brain spotting words. So I shuffle them into a random order and you just kind of skim through it. What a granogabro way of working. Stop trying to make on a gatta gabbro happen.

You know what you are, Beck? you're overcapable. This is true, actually. Tooting. Tooting is in there. There you go. There you go. So next time your friend says attitude is important

because you add all the numbers together, you get 100. You can say, yeah, well, so is tooting. So is stint ball. Stink ball. That's great. I tried to find ones that are the opposite of attitude. I found grumpy and stress are both in there.

Oh, yes. Easy-ish also gets you 100. Bogberries. As does whiskey, if you spell it with an E. Boobieism. Boobieism. What a boobieism. I will say there's some other words that I don't think I want to say aloud.

No, yes. Oh, yeah. It's all the words. So I haven't filtered this for any unfortunate words. Passing the list to children. Yeah. Parents maybe skim through it first. Goblinism.

The rest of this podcast are going to be punctuated with Beck yelling out words from the list. Bigaroons! A lot of people get really into this numerology thing and read way too much into adding together these arbitrary values we assign letters based on where they are on the alphabet. So I think it was kind of fun to do as a fun challenge and an interesting puzzle. and a way to point out that it's ridiculous when you try and do this, when you look at all the words that have the same value. You might even say it's it,etry.

It is ititry. I did giggle when I found numeracy is in there. Numeracy is 100. Oh, great. I kind of agree. And just in conclusion, I told a fascinating story in this podcast about how I made salt for myself, my infinite salt glitch. Sauce pot and savory are in there.

So, I used a saucepot to produce my savoury, suspicious white powder. And, when I had an even closer look, the word salt maker. Salt maker, if you add the positions, the letters together, is 100. Well, I think this is a universe telling you to give up maths and become a salt merchant. Full-time salt guy. Yep. Who am I to argue? How very unbragging of you

I can just tell you I'm not even listening You're just scanning through this document I'm really enjoying this Toilets! Toilets is 100 Toilets Wow Stinkball

Toilets Tooting Tooting's the winner Matt The bigger question raised Is what number is a problem squared And is it a squared number of what Oh my goodness

Why did I not think about that. Oh, it's so close. It's 167. I'm pretty sure 13 squared is 169. Yeah, it is. Yeah, it's off by two. Is 167 a prime number? Ooh, it is. Look at us being prime. Yeah. Beck Hill is 51. I'd rather you didn't give away my age. Matt Parker is one, two, three. Um, I'm pretty pleased It's easy as As Matt Parker Laura Grimshaw

151 Oh I feel like such a loser You've not got that many letters And you got quite a few from the beginning Like Beck Beck Beck is 10 Like your first name is not pulling its weight

I'm a simple guy Yeah So there you are I hope that answers Oh I didn't put Ivan in Let's check in Ivan 72 I enjoyed the words

Very much so I look forward to being very distracted by looking at this list. Look, we've all languished while backtracking. Bumble kite. Now it's time for some unfinished brineness. Beck, you may remember we in previous episodes, recordings,

have talked at length about hourglasses. Yes. but the listeners are now thinking I don't remember that I've never heard them talk about an hourglass and that's because would you believe sometimes our recordings go on

for quite the period of time we did briefly talk about hourglasses in drop towers in episode 1, 2, 3 but did that make it in producer Laura or did that get cut? It did. I could tell you

because someone here listens to their own show no me it made it in as a result of talking about hourglasses on the lunar gravity flight but then the rabbit hole you fell down didn't make it all in yeah we weren't down a whole mass of rabbit hole there we did a whole thing apparently we recorded for almost two hours and producer laura very good producer award winning i think we should bring that up more often i think that makes the edit every time we say it for some reason yeah very good very good very very, very good at hacking us down into a nice, palatable podcast length. And most of what we cut is expendable fath.

However, us chatting about hourglasses, we were a little, a little sad to lose that from the edit. It was absolutely the right decision. And we also talked extensively again about teeth and rocks. And given it's a new year, and given for the first time, we actually cut something where it was purely just for time. Like something we were excited about and we'd probably do more with. We thought as a new year offering, we would play in a neatly edited together packet of the things that unfortunately got cut, but we wish we could share them with you all the same. And so dear listeners, here's what you missed from the previous two episodes. I know this is not what we're discussing, but I always thought

Wouldn't it be fun to make, like, a lifetime egg timer? There's got to be one. You reckon? Yeah. Like a hundred year timer. Well, yeah. Producer, I can already hear clicking in the background. Yeah, look at that for me.

I just thought it would be really fun to have one in the house. So you can, every time you walk by, you're like, oh, there goes my life. Definitely an artist has done that. Surely. If not, we'll do that. That is a sculpture. It's got to be. It's got to exist.

I'd be really surprised. There's no way artists have missed that. I like how we're just saying how much we can't believe that that wouldn't exist. To big up. Was it to make the time up so that Laura can, even though in the edit, Laura could cut this out. But now she can't. No, no, no, leave it in. If anything, loop it.

Now listeners are wondering, did she? And then find a moment, Laura, then put this whole bit in reverse. Okay, it looks like... So all I could find was that it exists in Discworld. It exists in Discworld is the answer to so many things. Oh, sure. Pratchett was clever. The British Heart Foundation erected a very large egg timer on the South Bank.

But it only ran for three minutes because apparently somebody dies of a cardiovascular event. Oh, there's a giant egg timer that goes fast. Yes. A giant egg timer that goes fast or a giant egg timer that goes fast or a giant egg timer that goes for three minutes and then stops. And turns around again. Oh. Wait, so it was symbolizing a life being cut short?

No, it was symbolizing that every three minutes somebody has a heart attack. So all the sand just went through in three minutes. And then it ran again. And then they flip it. But it was big. Yeah, it's not the size that I'm interested in. If anything, the smaller, the better. It's how it changes under gravity.

But yeah, I can't find an actual lifelong egg timer. Wow. Okay. We'll look into that. and that feels like it should be next episode yeah next episode stop googling egg timers got a little bit sidetrack there so anyway a lot of the experiments were looking at the angle of repose of lunar regolith but they they basically have a glorified washing machine with a bunch of dirt in it and have that rotating it's quite quite a thin matt is this to do with the question not this last uh but it is me talking about sorting rocks it's like a thin transparent disc so you can see the dirt tumble we found

your teeth. I'm not going to start buying people's sorted dirt. You would. I would actually. It's very true. There isn't a rock fairy, is a... There should be a rock fairy. You put your favorite rock under a pillow?

In the morning, it's still there because it's your favorite rock. You know, you're going to lose that. It's just a note saying great rock. I had a rock that had the great thumb imprint, like not natural thumb imprint. but there was a concave bit that was like the, it's the perfect thumb. And so I would like thumb it in my pocket. I would just rub my thumb on it. It was really pleasing.

And then I was. Are you playing with your thumb hole again? But I was walking with a friend who was feeling very stressed. And I went, do you want to hold a rock? And they were like, no, no. And I was like, no, no, like genuinely it's, this isn't like a, I've charged it in the moonlight deal. I was like, this is like, just put your thumb.

And they went, oh, that is really satisfying, actually. And I was like, yeah, you can rub that for a bit. Anyway, I went to go like the other day, it was fidgety with my fingers and went to rub it. I was like, oh my gosh, I never got my rock back. You never got your rock back. And then I saw my friend the other day. I was like, do you still have that rock?

And they went, and they took it out their pocket. And I was like, oh, I was scared you's thrown away. And they went, no, it's really pleasing. And I was like, you know what? You've been going through a tough time right now. I just wanted to make sure it's getting used. Wow. Right in, if you've got a favorite rock.

scan at a rock. Can we have a rock episode? We should have a rock episode. Everyone should write in with their favorite rocks. Send in rock problems. Then we can do a rock episode. You can have a rock episode. I have a teeth episode.

Everyone's happy. Okay. In previous episode, we went off in a tangent about egg timers slash hour glasses. That doesn't sound like us. And we were trying to work out. Was it incredibly relevant to the problem we were solved? Absolutely not. Oh, good.

That's fine. And we were trying to work out like whether it would be possible to have a life one, like one that lasts for your life. I would be nice to have it like an hour installation at home to remind you your life as passing by. Yeah. So, some interesting things. There are several hourglass sculptures around the world.

Yep. That go for a year each time. Oh, okay. There is one called the Time Wheel, which is like a big wheel with the, but in the center, it's like a glass, hourglass. Oh, yep, love it. That one's in Budapest. It was unveiled in 2004.

with in commemoration of Hungary's accession to the EU. Oh, yeah. So we should break our albums for that. So that goes for a year. The same as one in Jiangdong Jin in South Korea, which is very similar looking. It's sort of a big wheel, which was built in 1999. And at the Nima Sand Museum in Japan,

they have one that goes for a year it is also the world's biggest hourglass and it also looks like more of an actual hourglass it's very impressive I do recommend how accurate these are looking these are well the weight of the sand and the sand they call it a sandglass

is a ton and yeah it takes a year for it to all fall through how accurately does it take a year They'll be a fun competition. Everyone submits an hourglass, sand timer, and we set them all going on the stroke of midnight New Year's. I mean, considering there's only three in the entire world recorded. We'll double that easy. If there was a competition, you probably would, yeah, I reckon so.

And then we reconvene a year. Oh, actually, let's not do it on New Year. Everyone's busy. We pick a date, and we set them all going at midday, and then we will. reconvene a year later to see who stops the closest to midday. Yeah. Yeah. Suggestion.

Because I'm low on projects to fill my life. Okay. Yeah. I like that. Get it started, Matt. I regret saying that already. Let me know if you're interested. May I don't really go out of you.

It would do quite well. Yeah, it'd be a lot of fun. That'd make it for a good YouTube video. People have a whole year to come and visit them and see them going. Yeah. You just want an excuse to go around the world. I insist on joining you. Well, something a little closer.

Yep. I realized that wasn't what we wanted, though. We weren't looking for the biggest hourglass. We were looking for the longest running. The only information I could find on the longest running one, I can't find anything else about this. It was really hard, but there is an hourglass, something in the shape of an hourglass.

So there's one that is sort of encased in plexiglass. Yep. And as you'll see, it's got some dates marked out on it, starting from when it was installed in December 1982. Yeah, that's like a pitch viscosity experiment style thing, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. So it's a type of rubber? Yep.

It is, to my knowledge, still running? Yep. Do you know where this is? Uh, no. This is at Questicon, the Science Museum in Canberra. I've been there Me too I was thrilled

to realize and also disappointed in Questicon because it was really hard to find any other information about this other than the fact

that Because there's so many other things to do in Canberra Yeah That's a Yeah That's a joke for us

Camera burn I love that I love that I love that folks from Perth and Adelaide and dunking on camera Yeah

That's why we built that city. We're like the middle child making fun of the little child. But the little child has way more money. Empower. And all the power. Yeah, really good fireworks. So, yeah, there is one that I don't know. I guess it could.

They think it might go for another 20 years. I want to see a constant tumbling of sand. I agree. This would move imperceivably to the human eye. but I do like it is kind of what I'm talking about so that's the closest jet yeah by a long shot so you could have a ton of I mean arguably if a ton of sand in the Japanese one takes a year yeah but you can tune it with the with the whole throat size yeah yeah it is going to be imperceivable still but you'll see it you'll physically see stuff falling through I do like this I don't even think it should be a competition for the most accurate one year one, I think it should just be a competition for one that is for whatever, the average, or at least 100 years, as you say, like... Well, whoever wins the most accurate one year one gets to make the century one.

Oh, I bet they're thrilled about that. The prize is, more work. Yeah, yeah. Who's paying for this? Oh, you know. Exposure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You get exposure.

I'm sure we can find a grant. I also wanted to add something. because we were talking in the last episode about doing a rock-themed episode. That came up, yes. Because we also like the idea, well, I like the idea of doing an annual teeth themed episode. Because we get so many tooth-related questions now. And as you may have noticed, I try and put them in whenever I can. But I am aware that if I'm not careful, this does become the tooth show.

Yes. So there needs to be... I am all that's holding this back. from being an exclusively tooth-related podcast. Yeah, it also means that dentist Sophie, I can just ask all the questions at once rather than constantly. I have people come up to me with tooth-related stuff by for proxy of going to you.

Great. Yeah. My friend Elienne was like, hey. She sent me a voice note about this. I said, why are you even talking to me? She's talked to her back. She's like, does Beck offer? Now, this is interesting.

I do love this. Because you buy teeth. Yes. Alien doesn't want to sell teeth though No Do you want to tell us what Elian wants She's asked me to appraise her teeth Yes

She's like I don't want to sell them to back But she could give me an idea Of the market value In general Relative condition and quality I'm like I don't want to be having this conversation

I love the idea of Because For a while I was like I am just the creepy person who buys teeth And the person who knows more than the average person about teeth,

but not more than a dentist. And I sort of don't feel like I could call myself a tooth expert when there are people who are dedicated teeth experts out there. Yes. But if I could become a tooth appraiser, because that's not something the dentists are in charge of. You're a true market expert. Yeah.

And I'm on board for this. And I think we should save that for. our tooth episode. There is a World Oral Health Day. It is a bit like Pye Day, so it's using American... Right, yep, yep. Because I was going to say, is there the 30th of Feb that doesn't exist? Because that would be 2.30.

Oh. But the calendar is simple. Oh, that would be so... Yeah, it's very upsetting. So I don't, I don't know if I agree. They do it on March 20th. What? Which they see it is 3 slash 20.

Yeah. It's symbolic, and this is why I also don't like, it's symbolic of 32 healthy teeth and zero cavities. Oh, my goodness. Like, and I don't know if I'm on board with that. No, there's got to be a better tooth day than that. So I'm thinking, I like to, I love the idea of 230. Yeah, the 23rd of the 0th month.

No, wait. I mean, technically, the 30th of February would be the 2nd of March. Or it depends on the year. Or the 1st of March on Olympia, which I think is fun. That is fun. You could put it on the 30th of December because then it's I-230.

I-2-30. The one in 12. Oh. Wow. Wow. Suddenly, the 20th of March doesn't look so bad. I don't know if I can turn... The disdain on your face. I don't know if you can turn the one from 12 into Roman numerals. I'm not a fan of mixing formats.

Oh, my goodness. Well, you have a great time on the 20th of the March then. These are the options so far. I'm going to put it out to the listeners. That makes sense. If you have a preference or if you have... a better suggestion and do you know what you probably do yeah go through to the

problem posing page at a problem squared dot com select solution in the drop down and say international teeth day and on the next episode we will say whether we have found the best contender or not

geologist day is the 5th of April Oh, it's the 5th of April, because the Earth is 4.5 billion years old. That's just as bad as 32 teeth. I know. So they've gone 4.5. Maybe I've just been spoiled with Pye Day. Yeah, stupid teeth and rocks, not being numbers. Why can't you just all be numbers?

Do you know what? If you have any suggestions for Rock Day as well, that's better than World Geologist Day, let us know. But stick it in with the teeth one. I'm not looking for two things. two things two things so there you are that's what you missed out on

do get in touch via the problem posing page at problemsquared.com if you do have any date suggestions we'll love to hear them and we will discuss them when we reinstate

next time any other business well that's it for the end of the episode the 26 is often racing with episode one to five we are hugely

appreciate everyone who listens to this podcast, but we double appreciate the people who pay for it as well on patreon.com slash A Problem Squared. And to thank them, every episode, we pick three Patreon names at random to have the incredible honor of being mispronounced by us, which, I'm just looking at this now. That's great. Which this episode shall include... Moho's Biggs, tick.

Flynn No And honey And of course Thanks to everyone Whose name has not been picked at random to be mispronounced We appreciate your support immensely

That's it You've been listening to myself Matt Parker and Beck Hell And our producer Laura Grimshaw Who is a bit like salt In that She's worth her weight

She's worth her weight In salt And It's probably not the origin of the word salary. You'll hear that salt is where we got salary from, but I believe it's some. I haven't asked word expert to the podcast Ben yet, but I believe, I believe that's not true. I mean, the word salary definitely doesn't come from Laura Grimshaw, so there you go.

Bye. Bye. All right, Beck, last episode, you opened our game of Connect 4 by going middle column. F4. I'm also going to go column 4. And because yours is in the way, that will land row E. So give me a 4E.