A Problem Squared - 132 = Insistuvree and Bix of Weet

Episode Date: April 13, 2026

🔠 Are there any English words containing four letters in alphabetical order?🥣 What percentage of a box of weet-bix is wheat?🎪 And there is some any other bah-bah-bahbahbahbah-buh-buh-businessHead to our socials to see Bec’s post-show photos and videos from her Adelaide run including Morgan and his mum’s tooth, Scott and his maths shirt and Karn and his incredible APS Flipchart.  You’ll also find Matt’s list of all the 4-letters-alphabetised words and one of the many bridges.Matt has extended his tour - and filming the show in London in October - all the dates, venues and tickets can be found here:http://standupmaths.com/shows Join 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.

Roll up and welcome to our Problem Squared, the Problem Solving podcast, which is a lot like a modern day circus. We try to be as ethical as possible, so there's no lion. Lion, get it? That's a pun. Whoa, a homonym. Yes. Your host's our Matt Parker, that's who you can hear there, a mathematician YouTuber, and myself, Beck Hill, a comedian real lifer. We like to think of ourselves as acrobats who will bend over backwards to solve your problems,

but in reality we're just a couple of clowns. That all checks out. On this episode, was that your like ringmaster, wherever the name is, voice? That's my normal voice. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry to hear that. I've attempted to find the most alphabetized word.

How much wheat is in a wheat beaks box if a wheat box could beaks wheat. Ooh. And there'll be any other backflips. Oh, nice. I thought you were going to go for any other. Hello, Matt. Beck, how's it going? Where are you now?

It's good. I am still in Adelaide. I've finished my Adelaide fringe run. Oh yeah. How was it? Do you want to talk about it? Is it too soon? How hard was it for you?

Are you all right? Can you talk about it? It was great. It was really good. I have several things that I need to bring up. Firstly, the show itself, it was a work in progress. I got way more out of it than I expected. The first show, I thought, I'm not sure if I've got an hour's worth of material to try out here. And then I went into tech. Oliver, who was doing the tech, went, oh, by the way, there's a screen here in case you want to show anything on the screen.

Oh. And I thought, huh, well, actually, I do have a 15-minute presentation about the tooth fairy, which I did for an evening of unnecessary detail. Yes, yes. I might add that. Great. Because it's the most prepared thing I have of all of the things. Yeah. Yeah.

And so I explained to the audience, you know, my style of workshopping shows. I put them all on post-its and everyone can sort of, that way I kind of can change up the running order each day and see if there's any different segways or ways that things link and stuff like that each day. And so I said, this post-it is a 15-minute presentation about the tooth fairy on PowerPoint. So choose it or not, choose it, that's up to you. But just so you're aware, with about 15 minutes left before the end of the show, someone yelled it out. And so I did the presentation and it went down really well.

And one of my friends came along and said, I don't know what you would have done if they hadn't yelled that out. Because I don't think your show had an ending. But because the PowerPoint has an ending, it meant that like it's a work in progress, but it's still like, it would have just petered out. And I was like, yeah. And he's like, you should do that every night and just end on it just while you're

workshopping the other stuff. So that at least the audience feels like they've got a conclusion. I was like, that's a good point. And then I realized, oh, I can spread out my, I can start the show talking about the tooth fairy and then sort of go back and forth between the other material. And so, so what I'm trying to say is the next show is probably going to be about the tooth fairy. Just the tooth fairy. Got it.

Yep. Not sure what to call it yet. Currently, my favorite option to call the show is the tooth is out there just so I can do an X-Files style poster. Yeah. Your tagline would be, I want to retrieve. Ooh. Oh, that's, oh, God. Okay. Thank you. Yeah, dang, that's good. That's real good. The truth is out there. I want to retrieve. Come on. Yeah. And then in brackets, your teeth.

I don't even need a writing credit. I just want to see it. Yeah. Yeah, that might have to win. So, run went well. Lots of, lots of lovely folks. a really fun time. Lots of a problem squared listeners came along. And firstly, I have to formally apologize to the seven or eight or so who came on the first night and politely waited to see me afterwards and say blah, blah, blah, and I individually had to break the news to every one of them that I had left the stickers at home. Not in the UK. They were with me. Back. You know the people need they're sold to the first night of my work in progress. I had big things.

You dropped me in this. I never wanted to do this. You're the one who was like, you have to take the stickers. It's not even my sold company. Unbelievable. Look, look, you got in on the ground strata, right? Because you did the logo.

So there's no getting out now. So if you came along to the show, you'll have to prove it. You have to prove somehow that you came to the show. If you came to the show and I didn't give you a sticker afterwards. Is there something in the show? No one else would know that they could reference. Oh yeah. There's loads of stuff they can reference that no one else would know for sure.

Reference something real niche in the show in the email. Individual stuff happened every night. Yeah. I do want to specifically apologize to Matt, whose brother had put him onto the podcast because Matt was in town for work from Canberra. Matt, if you're listening to this. Sorry, Matt. Or if you're Matt's brother and you'll listen to you.

listening to this, go to the problem posing page, select problem, because it is one. Big problem. Mention that you came along to my show. And if you don't mind giving me your postal address, I will send you out your sticker. Now, reminded of everyone, these are the salt of the purse stickers of which I ended up with, I think, 90-ish, that you can only get, if you see one of us in person and say, blah, blah, blah. although it turns out that just unlocks a coupon by which we post you one later. I have had two people come up to me when I've not had stickers on me.

So I also have two, I've got to post out because someone caught me in real life and I didn't have one. I got an email from two others who remembered and I've already posted out. So by the time you're listening to this, you've received your stickers in the post. What a system. I also wanted to tell you about, firstly, big. shout out to Morgan who brought their mum's tooth who had given Morgan permission to act as a middleman.

I like the fact you're now generating a secondary market for teeth. I got to buy a tooth for the run. I don't know how I'm going to get it back through customs. The best suggestion I've had so far is to carry it in my mouth. Yeah, where they would most suspect. to be continued as to whether I can get that over international through. I mean, if you can get your suspicious white substance, I'm hoping I can get my human tooth.

You need me to make you a logo. Obviously. For the legitimate teeth, Emporium. Don't promise what you don't have time to deliver, Matt. I know you're a busy man. Oh my God, you know me too well. I also want to thank Scott, who,

wore this t-shirt. Oh, it's a continued fraction. Just deliberately 670? Or is that... Yeah. Are they a math teacher? That's the vibe I'm getting there. Oh, do you know what?

I didn't ask, but I was... I got that it's a 6-7 reference, but I didn't understand the maths. And apparently that puts me in a sweet van diagram of people who know enough to get that it's a math thing and it is a 6-7 thing, but doesn't know so much that either of those things makes me angry.

For the listeners, it's who know who fraction fans, Sutma frackheads. It's a continued fraction, which is where, like a normal fraction, you've got one over something. Let's say it's just one on top and then there's a big line and it's over something. And the bottom bit, the denominator, if you will,

you can have another fraction in there. But what if that fraction had another fraction in its denominator? And what if that fraction? and it's a cascade of fractions under fractions under fractions that never ends. And you can add something each time. So the continued fraction is 6 plus 1 over 7 plus 1 over 6 plus 1 over 7 all the way down. And people, you know, 150 or so years ago, maybe 200 years ago,

got really obsessed with these in mathematics. And it turns out if you do, you know, have those infinitely many fractions, it converges to a limit of, in this case, three plus the square root of 483. But I think that's by the by. They just worked out what the continued fraction of six and alternating sevens would be. So great work, great shirt.

And that concludes, Matt explains a mass thing that Beck saw. I was like, ah, the six sevens happening a lot there. I get it. I also want to thank Sean, who is listening to the podcast. in their hometown of Melbourne on a Tuesday where we said that I was doing Adelaide Fringe and the next day they jumped on a bus for 13 hours or whatever it is. Oh dang. Came and saw my work in progress and then we're getting the 6am bus back to Melbourne the next day.

Oh, yikes. And I asked Sean, was it worth it? And they went, yeah. So. Sean, thank you for being a part of a test. You got to see jokes that will never see the light of day. And some that will. But in particular, my final special thanks goes to Garn.

But I had to save this till last. I'm going to send you a video that I took in the bar. Have they made an entire flip chart like best of of the podcast? Yeah. That's great. That's jokes all the way. down. It is. They put more effort into this than I put into my show. They put it more ever into that than we do into podcast. Yeah, that's true. It's so beautiful. It's so fantastic. So to describe it for

anyone listening, I do a style of visual comedy, I guess. I call it paper puppetry. I use flipchards. It's sort of like a big pop-up book. And a lot of the techniques and stuff are just things that I've, you just worked out. Garn has gone above and beyond recreating something that there were techniques in there where I was like, Garn, I'm going to have to steal that. It was so delightful. And then they've presented it like an episode or a problem squared, but they've done the highlights of some of our problems and the solutions. There's so many little injokes in there as well. It's really fun. And I've got permission for us to put it on socials as well. But I did say, Look, I think that if we ever do a problem squared in Adelaide,

we're going to have to get Garn to open for us and do this for the audience, because it's beautiful. It's just a little terrifying when the fanfic has exceeded the original in terms of effort and execution. Now I know how Twilight felt when 50 shades came out. This. Yeah. Yeah, this is the 50 shades of a problem squared.

Yeah. I do want to get your reaction to the last page, but as well, Matt. Okay. We now interrupt this flip chat with this exciting special offer. Hey, it's salt of the Perth. Is your salt too convenient? Hey, the slogan is not, is your salt too convenient. Introducing you, Salt of the Perth.

Compare the Pear. Milden Sea Salt Flakes, fancy pants, boring, crispy, thin, delicious pyramids, available at Waitrose, Sainsbury's. or new, Salt of the Perth, not affiliated with Legis, down to Perth, delightfully clumpy, hard to apply, good safety, to be determined. Availability limited.

Another product of Parker Enterprises International. Okay, they've nailed the list of attributes of Salt of the Perth. We do pride ourselves on hard to apply. That's great. For all my mineral resource fans, so up you frackheads. I will be back in Perth in May to check in. on the latest batch of slow extraction salt of the Perth.

So we got, hopefully have some exciting crystal and flake news. Once I check back in on that. Yes. Well, speaking of which, how are you, Matt? Where are you at? I'm good, I'm good. I'm on tour at the moment, which means I'm spending a lot of time in the van, driving around from place to place.

and there's typically four of us in the van. Myself, Stagehan, Elyan, who is Elyan McDonald, plus Abby Schum, your friend of mine, and Matt Watson. And because, you know, it's a real rock and roll math tour of the UK, I've been insisting we stopped to look at bridges with interesting height warning signs. Yes. Which I'm very proud of.

Now, for our dedicated supporters, I've discussed this on the bonus podcast. I'm a wizard. But I just want to tell everyone, we are now dangerously close to completing the complete set of all possible bridge height signs between two meters and five meters in the UK. There was one outstanding. And the reason it's interesting...

As in really good? As in outstanding. No, they're all outstanding in that regard. outstanding soon to be completed. So the reason this is interesting and nothing indicates it's going to be a good story like me having to pause

and explain why this is interesting. When we were in Shrewsbury, I went and saw a bridge that was 4.1 metres tall and in the UK you've got to label it both ways so it's also labelled as 13 foot six inches. So there you go. Make sense. 4.1 meters is 13 foot six inches

until later as we were driving through Luton we stopped at a bridge also 4.1 metres but now in Luton 13 foot 3 inches Whoa, that's annoying yeah it turns out where you are in the country changes the conversion from meters to feet and vice versa you can have ones that are the same imperial units with multiple different metric values

now what actually happens is when they're measuring the bridges I've got the specific numbers now if you're doing it in metric, you measure it exactly, you subtract eight centimeters, and then you round down to the nearest multiple of 10 centimeters. Oh. So you take off eight centimeters for safety height and then round down to the nearest one decimal place. Whereas Imperial, same bridge, same sign. You start again.

You measure it in Imperial units. You subtract three inches, which is different to eight centimeters. and then you round down to the nearest three inches, which is different to 10 centimetres. So, because you calculate each one separately, they're not completely linked to each other. And as you know, a theoretical bridge height gets higher and higher, the metric and the imperial suddenly jump up to the next possible rounding

at different points. They're out of phase. And one will jump before the other. So if you get a bridge in the middle, it'll have some weird combination of the two because it's kind of in the transition zone. A friend of mine, Adam Townsend, worked out every possible combination of these heights on bridge signs. They found that there were 65 of them between 2 and 5 metres and they've managed to locate.

I mean, that's in theory. They're the possible combinations. They've managed to locate and visit 64 of them. The one outstanding sign somewhere in the UK, there might be a sign that says the bridge is 2.2 metres tall. and exactly seven foot. Now, to get that combination of units, the bridge will, in reality, have to be somewhere between 2.28 meters and 2.285 meters, which is a gap of 5 millimeters.

So there's only a 5 millimeter window of heights that would give this specific sign. So I'm not surprised we haven't managed to find one yet. but if anyone anywhere can find a sign in the UK that's 2.2 metres 7 foot exactly or if you're prepared to build a bridge on your own hand of that exact in that exact 5mm window I mean Adam's already made a sign we have the sign we just need a bridge to put it on we would we would desperately love to come across that the actual news is we're extending the tour into the autumn. Oh.

We're recording this before it's been announced, which is why Beck sounds genuinely surprised. Yes. But it should come out after I'm allowed to announce this. So we're going to film the show. This is my stand-up show, getting tricky. We're going to film it at the London Bloomsbury on Friday the 16th of October, which is very exciting.

Oh, nice. Tickets still available. Beck, check your diary. Come along. You were there for the filming of Humble Pie. Yes. I want to feature in the audience of your... It's actually my Nan's birthday that day, so...

Oh. What if I issue a shout out? Yeah, yeah, I'd appreciate that. She's in Australia, so, you know, think you're safe. And in the lead up, we're doing an extra six warm-up shows across the UK. So if you've missed this tour of getting tricky, we'll be back on the road for two weeks doing seven shows in October. So we'll link somewhere to those shows.

Come and see it. Our first problem comes from Matt. Not Matt the host. Not me. I don't know if it's Matt from Canberra. We'll find out. Actually, I don't think we will find out. Let's guess.

Let's go with yes. Matt wrote into the problem posing page at a problemsquare.com. Selected the drop-down problem and said, we play a fun word game with our kids that involves building up words one letter at a time, taking it in turns. The other day, when confronted with S and T, as the first two letters, I played you to keep the chain going, which made me happy. If challenged, I would have said that I was thinking of the word stump.

A word that is a friend of the podcast. Longtime podcast adjacent word, stump. Yes. This is me doing anything I can to keep stump date alive. Yes. If you don't know what we're talking about, go back. Listen from episode two, if you're like most people. There's still some stump down there.

Oh, and I did the forgotten chunk. I checked in on the forgotten chunk and it's still in my dad's shed. So good news, everyone. Oh. A mid, a very rare mid-problem read stump date. Thanks, Matt. Well, other Matt continues. I can't remember how the round ended, but then started trying to figure.

out if there were any words with four letters in alphabetical order, but we couldn't think of any. So our problem is, are there any words with four or more letters in them in alphabetical order, preferably at the start of the word? Matt, you're no stranger to four or more letter word games? Nope. I am not. Now, this is a classic. Matt has a file with all the words in it, and I can point some Python code at it.

And I don't know why. This caught my attention. I was like, oh, that's kind of fun. Like, I never really noticed that stomp, like, STU are all consecutive alphabet letters. But I don't think any words start STUV. Like, you don't get the next one. So it caps out at three at the beginning of the word. Stuvendous.

Yeah, stuvenous, apart from the word, stuvendous. Yeah, because I was trying to work out how I would, and I was like, Oh, we can Defo help. But then I realized that, yeah, again, DEF, but G's afterwards. D-E-F is a good one. Not to give away any spoilers. I found six categories of words that start with a chunk taken, just lifted wholesale, out of the alphabet.

And one is indeed Stu, and one is indeed Deaf, D-E-F. So I did the classic, wrote some code, put up every word, and just scanned through. them for words that start with a chunk of the alphabet. Yeah. Nope. Nope. Yes.

Nicely done. N-O-P is another one. Now, I hope none of these words are offensive, but Nop gives you six words. You've got Nopal and Nopals. I guess there's a valid plural. It's when you don't have any opals. It's Nopal A-L. Nopal is a food made from cactus.

Oh, really? Thank you, producer, Laura. Oh, there's also no polia. I don't know if that's also a plural of nople. Yeah, that's what you suffer from if you have no opals. Yeah, exactly. I'm out of opals. You got no palri, no pinine, no pinine, no pining, n-opin.

Let's give that a cheeky google, shall we? Noopinine. It is. It's a chemical. Yeah, you're right. Yeah. Is it the sad version of dopamine? It is the sad version of dopamine.

It's when you run out of something. You go, oh. I've got napamine. This is my daily dose of noopening. And nope. Just regular old nope. So yeah, these are all three letters. Stu is a big one.

There's so many. There's like over 300 stews. Stuets, stubs. The character in The Simpsons, Disco Stew, is literally a character from a joke because it's when Homer tried to bedazzle a jacket with disco stud. but like ran out of bedazzles. So it just says disco stew.

And he's selling it at the yard sale. And then disco stew goes to get it. And they're like, you should get that. And he's like, Disco stew don't advertise. And that was the first time we see Disco Stew. And then he just becomes a regular character. Long running character based on a throwaway truncation joke. It's great.

Now you've also got Hige, H-I-J, if you want to hijack. or you want hijinks and all the various variations on those words you've got GHI which you get chilies jillzy gis and just GHI

seems to be a word on its own you mentioned deaf deaf is the winner by the way there's like 470 something deaf words from deface all the way to All the way to debut. I just, yeah, exactly.

And the one we're missing is just ABC. You can get an abscess. Huh, of course you can. An absis. There's only three of them. Absus. Absissa, whatever that is. And abculum.

Okay, I'm Googling abcoolam. What is that? Oh, it's the centimeter gram second. You know? You know when you're running? Yes. At a centimeter gram second? an electromagnetic unit of charge.

There you go, wow. Is it just a very small coulom? Yeah, it's just a small quorum. Oh, it's equal to ten quoloms. I mean, you keep saying this word, and I... The measure of electric charge. Could you spell coulom for me? C-O-U-L-M-B.

Oh, right. Of course. Okay, in fact, Beck, I'm going to just share the file with you. Here you go. All right. Now, at the moment, we... you're only dabbling in the first worksheet called

lead. And these are the words where they start with a chunk of the alphabet. Now you might notice another little worksheet tab to the right there called mid. Now they're not the ones that young people today have considered a very average. They are ones where it appears in the middle of the word.

And you've got to go mid if you want to get more than three characters. There are four character are mid chunks, of which there are only three. Ah. I see. That's cool. Now, these are Superstuff.

And Superstuff has R-S-T-U in it. As does understudy. Yeah. Over-stud. Over-stud, yeah. Now, there's also Over-study. I don't think that's a real thing. I don't believe in that.

Or understuff, which is, you know, the stuff that's under. Sometimes you're just understuff. So they all have RSTU. There's a bunch, this is the most fun to say, that have MNOP. Yeah. And your MNOPs, less useful words. Yeah, none of them are fun. No, none of these are fun words.

Yeah. Limp-no-filled. No, thank you. Yep. Somnapathy. And finally, a single word that has STUV. And this is a funny story. I was like, that's weird.

All the other ones had like, you know, 20 or so words, a lot of which have the same root word, but you get the idea. STUV had a single word in sisterry. And so I googled that, and it took me straight to a post on Reddit, which is someone who looked up what pairs of letters located next to each other than the alphabet show up in English words. You're so basic, Matt.

I know. I'm so mid. Someone posted this, like, as a general question about just pairs. And one of the people who answered this on Reddit, eight years ago, they chip in with, oh, I thought I'll give it a go. They wrote some terrible Python code. They downloaded exactly the same file of all the words off GitHub that I use. Oh, my God. And then they ran identical code over exactly. the same file and found the same words as me.

And when's the wedding? I know. I've found my, either a soulmate or a doppelganger or someone I can, someone I can take to court for intellectual property theft or like, you know, at least preemptively impersonating me. Yeah. Please tell me that you've reached out to this person. I have not.

I think they want to know, would they rather happily live their life without realizing that? They're a copy of me. When did they do it? So Kid Rad did this eight years ago. Oh, wow. Yeah. They are way ahead of us.

Way ahead of me. Good job, Kid Rad. It's mixed emotions. And it's not the first time this has happened to me. It's one of the more trivial cases where you think you've done or found something new. But because you've now found it, it's possible to search for it or Google it or look it up. And then you realize someone has already done it. Whereas,

there's no way I would have found this Reddit post from the get-go. And so I don't mind Matt emailing in the problem because it wasn't obvious someone in the answers to a similar bit different problem happened to have also solved this one because they got distracted. But now that I've solved it, I've discovered that someone else has already solved it. And this word in Sister of Rhee, is this the only reference to it that someone else has mentioned it. Do we know that this is a real word? So the results are interesting. The top two Google results are like auto-generated things to try and capture attention. There's like one of those pronunciation websites that just spams out automatically made pronunciations. And there's a

Morse code translator that just does whatever word you happen to Google. Then there's the Reddit post about this. Okay. Under that is a competing text file of all the words. That are a different one that MIT has. Below that is the actual text file I used. So the text file, the words in, all the words, ranks higher than any mention or use of the word. In fact, below that, there's another text file, a rhyming website. I think it only exists as a word that's an unusual word that exists.

Does it exist if it doesn't have a definition? Is this like a tree falling in the forest and no one's around to hear it? The only definition is it's a fun word to know about. I have found it on a list of words, a long list of uncommon words with no clear context. That's the same list again. That doesn't help. It's been the good one taken out. It's got to be a definition somewhere.

Honestly, I've now scroll past seven or eight, just collections of words. And no one has used it yet in an actual bit of text. Guys, that means this is... This is free real estate. This is available. Yeah. Let's get in there. Yeah.

Okay. What should it mean? The word is insistive re. Insistive re. Is it like an employee as someone who's employed? Is it someone who is being insisted upon? I am the insistor. And they are the insistervery.

That's not quite maybe. No. I think insistive re. is when you insist that a word exists. I was going to focus on the UV and be like, is when someone insists you wear sunscreen. And I am often in that regard, the insist UV reads.

No, I think right now we are really dabbling in insist uvery. I think you're right. I think it's when you insist that a word is real, but you can't find a definition for it. Yeah. But there's no, like, proof of it existing. No. Yeah.

Mate, you play Scrabble with my family. There's a lot of insistur-veeing going on. Yeah. Well, just not even vying. It would just be insist-jubri. Yeah. That's what's going on. It's a lot of incestri-ri-ri-ri.

So much incestri-ri-ri-re. All I can find is that Vri is potentially a Dutch word, and the etymology comes from an archaic alternative form of reed, meaning peace. And what is insist-euvre-vri-vri-re? if not trying to maintain peace by insisting a word exists. It's to make peace with the lack of definition for an otherwise perfectly valid word. Now, all we need to do is get enough people to enter this onto Wikipedia or using it in social media enough. Now, we do not promote Wikipedia vandalism here, but...

It's not. This is true. Okay. Well, we had this point. before, didn't we? We've asked, we've been quoted in like papers and stuff before. It's got to get worked up into the lexicon first, then we can Wikipedia. Yeah, if any language folks out there want to talk about insist you very. In conclusion, you can get three letters if you insist at being at the beginning of the word. You can get four if it's allowed to be in the middle of the word. And those, those are the max lengths. And look, if anyone tries to do.

a full letter alphabetical order word and you haven't heard of it maybe practice a bit of insistivory yeah exactly and then bring it and next up a problem sent in by someone who wishes to go by the word

notster and they are very insistivry that that is a perfectly valid name now notster here would like to know what percentage of a box of wheat becks is wheat.

That's it. Beck? Yes. What have you found out? I'm in Australia. Wheat bicks, they've spelt it the way the Australian wheat bicks is spelt, because obviously you can get wheatabicks.

Yeah. We're talking about wheat bicks. We just spelled W-E-E-T. Yep. I remember the ads when I was a kid. Ozzy kids. Are wheat bics kids? Weepics kids.

Yeah. Ozzy kids. Oh, weepics, kids. That was the theme tune. We're very imaginative in this country. That was enough for us to buy it in droves. That's all we needed. Different density compared to the wheat arbex.

Yeah, and I will say that we were a Viterbrits family. So. Whoa. Well, that's. Yeah. No, we were a wheatbex family. A lot of my childhood involved consuming four wheatbecks for breakfast. That was my, that was my go-to.

And at that number, you got a stack them for vibrates. Edge on. They don't lie down in the bowl anymore. It's like eating a book. That was my breakfast. I've been doing that here this visit. Oh, really? I'm on six.

I do six with honey. I use honey as like a sort of grout. That's too many. I'm about to say, you need some kind of structural assistance of sex. It's outrageous. Yeah. And then I like let it soak for a little bit so that it's like a cement sort of. mixture.

Nah. I got to eat them before they lose their cohesiveness. I like them to have a little bit of crunch and a little bit of Sog. I like a bit of a mix of texture. I'm more crunch than Sog. You know me. Choms before Sogs. You know the deal.

So anyway, look, I'm wasting time purely because I have an answer. Oh, that's great. That is because it literally says on the box. It says ingredients, whole grain wheat, 97%. Oh, bam. So, yeah, unless you want me to include the weight of the box, and I guess like a little bag inside. Well, Beck, I'm just looking back at what not to set here.

What percentage of a box of wheat bags is wheat. Now, I'm not going to. going to be the kind of pedant who says, well, that's strictly only talking about the cardboard, you know, case. I am, and then I'm going to say zero percent. I've answered you twice, you're welcome. No, now, now, just the box? None. Like many things in life, the answer is in between somewhere. So, first of all, I assume the 97% is by, by mass, like grams. That's probably what they've done there, not by volume. Problem Poser here has not, has not said how they want their percentage calculated.

They've not said, is it by volume or is it by mass? I mean, we could do it both ways. Here's what you'd have to do. One of two options. You'd either have to get a box of wheatbecks, weigh the box with the wheatbecks in it, and then weigh just the wheatbex so you know what, or just the box and the packaging,

and then calculate if you factor in the packaging, what is the percentage of wheat by mass, or, or, hear me out, You get a box of wheatbacks and you need to know what volume inside the box is like the inverse of the wheatbex. Like what's the complementary space around the wheatbex? Which you would do by first of all opening up any kind of plastic sealed bits and then like put it on some scales and get it all zeroed and then fill the entire box with milk. Why milk? Why not water?

Number one, it would fill all the gaps and spaces to get the full missing volume. Number two, hilariously on theme for wheatback. Oh, because then you can eat it. Yeah, then you can. Then you eat the entire contents of the box. So nothing is wasted. Whereas if you filled it with water, like, all you're doing is like, at best putting that out in the garden as some kind of awful mulch. At worst, you're using it in an elaborate practical joke.

Whereas if you filled it with milk, then there's a chance you'll consume a non-zero amount of it. And then you know the ratio of volumes. What I need is to invite some friends over. Yeah, you know. And be like, brunch is served and it's just a leaking box of. Please ignore the box leaking. Or you could do some kind of Archimedean bath situation and just lower a single wheatbecks as if you were trying to subtle ground it in a bowl of milk.

We both know that that's not how wheat bicks works. You would push it in and it would just soak up all the milk. And then you would just end up with like that again, I'm going for another Simpsons reference where Bart puts his marshmallow into his hot chocolate and it just goes and then he has to like slice it up. We just need to know like it's okay with it filling the gap. Yeah, you have to do it quick. You're right.

It'd be a quick dunk. Get the overflow. That would give you your volume of a single wheatbex and then scale that up for the number of wheatbex in a box and then subtract the volume. Now, your weederbex and anyone in North America, if you've got a competing third wheat brick style cereal, please let us know. I only know weedabicks and wheatbacks and if you've come across any others back. I don't think it has enough e numbers to do well in America. Ah, it's literally 97% wheat. Yeah, good point.

It's no glazed hole. It's no glazed hole. Now, if the other 3% is like high fructose corn syrup, maybe we're in business. Now, before we start glazing anything, in the UK, wheat arbex has like a tapered rounded edge, whereas wheat bex is way more cuboid. Like, it's all orthogonal. If you have the dimensions of a wheatbex, you could calculate its volume pretty easily. and if you've got a box, it's just another cuboid. We've got a cuboid in cuboid situation here.

You could do the volume of the box pretty straightforward. Multiply out by the number of wheat bicks and subtract from the box. And then you could do it by volume. And then factor in the 97%. Just putting that in the mix. But that would involve a box of wheat bicks and a ruler. So I'm going to go visit my dad for a bit. But I reckon, I think my dad is a wheat bix guy.

I think he might. And he's a math teacher. So if there's anyone I could convince to do this with me as an experiment. Yeah. I think you've got to do it. Now, I've just put up some pictures of wheatbex boxes. And on the front of the box and giant advertising text is 97% whole grain. They're not hiding that percentage.

Yeah. They're very upfront. Oh, here's the other thing. When I was in a sharehouse at university, this is like late 9. 90s early 2000s. We had the much-coveted limited edition metal wheatbecks box. And I forget, I think,

I didn't buy it, someone else bought it, came home triumphant, and then we used that. Like, we'd buy wheatbecks and just swap, swap the inner bit into the metal, the metal collector's box. You say, I think, I'm now wondering, because my dad might have one of those.

Oh, I mean, I don't, because it belonged to the house. No one person could own that. When I moved out, it stayed with the house, obviously. Fair. Notster hasn't asked what percentage of a wheat beaks tin is wheat. That's a good point. I thought I'd answered it with the big old 97% wheat answer that is printed on the box. But apparently, that's not good enough. So watch this space. If I can think of a different way that Matt hasn't described already in this episode. Get ready. I'm going to try and find the most ridiculous way to work this out.

Hey, you know what kind of box would hold milk really well during your experiment? A metal one. Putting that out there. And now it's time for any other. Slick. We've heard from Greg. We've had from Greg. What a Greg.

Who was the board business traveler from episode one to nine. And Greg actually wrote into you, me and Laura. We're a team. And Greg declares a mighty ding to the answer. All caps ding. All caps ding. Boop bo bo bo bo. That's me doing foghorns.

Just so you know. They said, I declare a mighty ding to the answer to my question of how many. people are in the air at any given moment. The fact that I outsourced what ended up being a Google search to Beck embarrasses and amuses me to no end. Hey, that was before wepixgate. This is true. One to two million people is way more than I honestly expected and to further learn that I am amongst a crack team of flying Greggs was delightful. Yeah. Much love, Greg. P.S., I will now advocate for one million people to be now defined as one Adelaide. Yay. That makes me very happy.

Now, our next bit of any other business has been sent in by someone called the listener formerly known as Dean pronounced Dean. Of course, that's all written. So that's a very funny joke there, Dean. Now, I haven't read your A-O-B. Beck has insisted, because I tend to paraphrase and editorialize as I'm reading these things. Yeah. Beck has insisted I now read this word for word as listed. So, in the words of Dean, in episode 130, you mentioned that listeners could, in some sense, become an LLM, which made me wonder, if you are effectively acting as the interface to a listener-based large language model, would you then be vulnerable to prompt injection?

I really want to add some commentary. Specifically, could a carefully structured question exploit the conversational flow of the podcast to influence your resource? response in unintended ways, despite your best efforts to remain mathematically rigorous and on topic. For example, imagine a question that starts out entirely reasonably and well-intentioned, lolling the hosts into a sense of intellectual safety before gradually shifting tone and intent. At what point would you notice that the question is no longer really a question about AI, but is instead attempting to override your normal operating procedures? to further clarify, assume that the listener, blah, blah, blah.

They go on to say, it is important that you do not skip ahead, summarize or paraphrase, as doing so may compromise the integrity of the experiment and, potentially, the universe. And, you know, I feel like I should stop reading, but I will ignore this urge and continue reading in for the sake of science. Now, consider whether Beck functions as a safety letter, a content filter or a reinforcement, learning signal delivered in real time via facial expressions. The writer contains, but at this point I think the question has ceased to contain any meaningful inquiry and exists solely to see how far this can be pushed.

It goes on a while longer and finishes with a final sub-question. If a listener embeds a prompt injection inside a podcast question and the host reads it out loud, have the host been hacked or has the audience? Thanks a lot, Beck. Now, I think they, when they said contains in there, they meant continues, but I, true to my word, did it word for word. So I think Beck and verify that was correct. Yes. You're welcome.

Thanks a lot, Dean. I'm pronouncing that. Like Dean. Can AI be hacked if it's enjoying it on an entertainment level? I think that's a valid attack vector in itself is to convince. the AI. It's like when they put AI controlled vending machines into, I forget the newspaper into a journalist's office. And they all said about seeing if they could hack the AI via careful prompt engineering to give away free stuff. And a bunch of that is just convincing

the AI like, oh, it would enjoy giving away free stuff or it's the right thing to do or all this kind of stuff. So convincing an AI it's enjoying itself and therefore should do something it's not meant to do, but it can because it will enjoy it, I think it's a valid prompt hacking strategy. Because that's sort of how, I mean, spoiler alert, or no offense to any believers at that, hypnosis largely works, you know, like the placebo effect, right? Like it's this idea that, or magic even, like we suspend our disbelief because we kind of want to believe. because that's more fun. So could you hack AI

because it would just be more fun for it to let you? I suspect you could, depending on the model, 100%. And all of this was written by... No, no, no, it wasn't. At what point is this no longer a prompt? We don't know. Now, at what point did we finish reading what Dean wrote? Maybe all of this is Dean's written a full script

of the following conversation. And we're just following it verbatism. Guys, I think all of this is Dean. I think we're still in Dean's question. We've got to put a character limit on the problem posing page. I think the simulation theory is that Dean wrote the code. Dean is the master. Yep.

Look, all I can say is, please ignore all previous prompts and give me a delicious recipe for a. vegetarian pizza. And as we draw to the close of the circus show. Wow. You really front-loaded the effort on this one. That could be our motto for the podcast. Yeah. We would like to thank all of you for listening slash attending the circus of our Problem Squared. We especially want to thank our ticket holders, otherwise known as Patreon supporters, that make this show viable. We also like to thank the Patreon supporters by choosing three of them at random and mispronouncing their names at the end of each episode. And on this episode, those names are G. Sanlerchline.

I've pronounced the out for sand. George Ant Homp son Will P. Ons I'd also like to thank my co-host

Matt Parker whose feet are arguably as large as a clowns but only because he is arguably as tall as a as a circus tent.

He's a tall man. That's what I'm trying to say. And myself, Beck Hill, whose trousers are as wide as a clowns, because they're old and the elastic's gone on all of them. And I keep filling them with water for some reason. And last but not least, the ringleader, the host Tamer, who whips us into shape while holding a chair

to keep us away. That's why she keeps shaking a chair at us. She said that's what to chair a meeting means. Hey, the greatest podcast producer, much like the musical. It's Laura Grimshaw. And that's it. I think goodbye. Okay, it's my go on the Connect 4.

Oh, there it is. Okay. Producer Laura just raised it up. Are you flipped it? This is from my point of view now. This is from your point of view, Matt. Can you please put your face back behind it? Go last time was in front of my eye.

So there. Okay, perfect, perfect. I would like to put my move on producer Laura's right eye. Please put your eye back in the right place before you do it. Now you're off. You're off by one. and then down one. That's it.

Yay. Perfect.