A Problem Squared - 135 = Pasta Water Solution and QR Code Substitution

Episode Date: May 25, 2026

🍝 Why do we put salt in pasta water?👾 Can you put bespoke characters in to a QR Code?🌼And Spring Has Sprung (in the UK) so there’s some Any Other BloomsnessHead to our socials to see some frankly-very-silly-but-fully-operational QR Codes.Boiling and Freezing Points of Pure and Salty Water https://van.physics.illinois.edu/ask/listing/1457Matt 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.

Hello and welcome to a Problem Square, the podcast where we solve problems sent in by people just like you, the listeners. Yes, you listening. That's now your defining feature. Send us some problems. And some would say that this podcast of Problem Square is a bit like spring. Oh, what? Come on now. Come on.

Okay. Hello, listeners. This is the other host. We'll get back in a moment. Yes. I had written an intro for this episode before. realizing that it is actually Matt introducing this episode. Correct.

So I said, I'm going to use my intro in the next episode. It is about how the podcast is like spring. Yeah. I'm like, that's a great idea. I'm going to steal that. And I've put no additional thought into it. So we'll see how I compare to your spring plan. Okay.

It's a bit like spring. Mm-hmm. And that it's bright and colorful. No, wait. No, hang on. There's loads of pollen in the air. Oh, you brute. Whereas Beck, performer, writer, comedian, who you can also hear, is a bit like Spring.

That's where you'd say it's bright and colourful and loads of fun and sunny. Whereas I'm a lot like Spring as a mathematician, in that I can be best understood via my Young's modulus. Put it away. I wish you wouldn't. And on this episode. I'm feeling salty about pasta. Oh. Oh.

I'm going to crack the QR code. And there'll be some any other bloomsness. For the record, I probably should have said spring consonant, not Young's Modulus. Ah. But it was funny to say Young's Modulus. It's a very similar concept. I don't understand. What are the concepts?

Well, Young's Modulus is like how much you can stretch. But like materials, not springs. Hookslaw. I should own a hookslaw joke. Anyway, let's workshop my intro is another time. Beck, how are you doing? Other than I recently had an intro whipped out from under you. I'm feeling very smug because mine's going to be much... Oh, I bet you're going to knock it out of the park next to.

Although I have just realized that next episode, we will be, I think, close to starting summer, if not starting summer. Oh, it would be fine. Yeah. Do it anyway. Yeah, I'm going to do it. anyway, I am well, so I just got back from Comic-Con Brussels. Oh yes. Yes, for those who are unaware, I co-hosts the main stage at Brussels Comic-Con twice a year with another Matt.

Because all your friends are named Matt. I work exclusively with Matt. Good policy. Yeah, if you want to double up with me in something, Matt. Matt's all the way. Lovely Matt Heighton. And I was very excited because our first panel of the weekend. We were interviewing two stars from the show The 100. Now, this was a sci-fi show that was very popular. I actually never watched it. That's not why I was excited. He's not excited. They're a couple that had met on set. So they do these cons together because they're married, they have a kid. It makes it is. It's very cute. They're both Australian. The reason I was excited about interviewing them both more so than the whole massive audience there because they all want to

hear about the 100, all of this. I was excited because both of them have been on neighbours. Give it. That's because every actor in Australia is conscripted onto neighbours at some point. Yeah, exactly. So their names are Eliza Taylor and Bob Morley. Now, Bob Morley was on Neighbours long after I stopped watching, but Eliza Taylor had sort of just started around the time that I, her character was called Janay. I very much remembered Janay, and I got very excited. Because I was like, oh my God, it's Jeney. It's Junae for neighbors. They're delightful.

Great. Good to hear. I didn't actually get to talk to them about neighbors that much because I'm a professional. Because they didn't want to. No, I think I could have happily asked them loads of questions, but I was aware that the audience were there because they all had questions about the distant dystopian future. Yeah, of course. Yeah. But anyway, I was very excited about that.

I also got to meet Bryce Dallas Howard. Oh, wow. Yeah, yeah. I always enjoy you doing the Brussels Comic-Con so I can ask, who are the celebrities? Yeah, Bryce Dallas-Howard, I think, was the biggest one as far as I'm concerned. Yep. Okay, how is she is a human? She's a really nice human.

Oh, thank goodness. Like, sometimes you'll have a good interview with someone on stage. And then offstage, they're a bit like, okay, I just need downtime. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Every time we bumped into her, we would then just get really like, oh, what about that we got really into talking about land before time because of love dinosaurs. But yeah, she's very, very interesting. And it was really nice talking to her about all the Jurassic World stuff and everything. We did have Misha Collins from Supernatural.

I am not a supernatural fan. I suspect I would be if I watched it. But there's so much of it now. But Misha Collins is just as charming as you would imagine. He's one of the big ones. He's recently done a cameo on the boys. We also had Grant Guston, Daniel Panabaker and John Wesley's ship. They were all on the C-Duff.

version of the Flash, which was a show that I'd already covered years ago for Sky. I'd gone to their set in Vancouver. I'd met them all there. And then when I met Grant Guston, I did not expect anyone. It was like 2016. It was 10 years ago. I looked very different to how I do now. It was a completely different context.

So in no way did I expect. And as soon as I shook hands with Grant Guston, I went, and he looked at me straight. I went back. And then he squinted and he went, you look familiar. Have we met before? Wow. And I said, look, I did come to the set. It was years ago.

I don't expect you to remember it, but maybe that. And he went, oh, yeah, maybe. But so. There you go. Yeah, yeah. That was very nice. They were lovely. Oh, we also got to interview Finn Carter, who was in Tremors.

Brilliant. And that was a really interesting interview because she was saying how, when she read the script, she thought it was pretty stupid. But then when she got a call back, she was like, well, Well, I am going to take it seriously because I would like this role and I need the money. So Tremors, if you haven't seen it, it's a monster movie came out in 1990. It's more of like an homage to B, like Monster B movies. It had a good budget because it didn't work.

It sort of flopped when it came out of the cinema. But then with VHS and rentals and stuff going to TV, it had a resurgence. And it started to grow this fan base of this being a cult favorite. I remembered watching it as a kid. Great. It's one of those things where these big worm things come out of the ground, the desert in America. They're called Graboids.

It's got Kevin Bacon. Very fun. But they used all these, they didn't have CGI or any, like most of the time. So one thing I found out is when these big creatures were going under the dirt really, really fast. So the dirt sort of goes,

they had all these tunnels built under the ground, like just under the ground. And they would have been like, Men with like sticks and stuff. Wow. Like a do-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-dunneath, which would cause the vibrations of the sand to go up. It's amazing what you can solve by throwing money at a problem. Ah, I love it.

It made me so happy. So I love hearing about that. But I thought what was really fun is Finn Carter was saying that she, she played a seismologist. And she had to say all of these terms to do with like earthquakes and things like that. But she didn't understand what any of the terms meant. Now, these days, you get an audition. piece, the stuff in the script that you're not entirely sure what you're saying, you just do a Google.

Chicky Google, maybe watch YouTube video, like this sort of thing. 1990, that's when it came out. So late 80s. You go get an encyclopedia. Oh no. Finn went on further. Found a seismologist. A real one. Yeah.

And interviewed them and got them to explain what the terminology and the script meant. So she played a role really seriously and then still found the film the acting to be like way too dumb because she was taking it so seriously. Trying to pitch it got straight, yeah. But then came to realize later, like, that's kind of what people loved about it. And I think I love the fact that she was playing it 100% straight while everyone else was like, ad-du. You need to know I'm playing it straight.

Yeah. To highlight the gadoo. Yeah, exactly. I'm not trying to diss anyone on there that we interviewed that I haven't mentioned, but those were some highlights. Oh, they were all great. Yeah, yeah, it was a really, really solid weekend. Well, I thought I continued a celebrity thing.

Yes. The BBC have just announced the lineup for celebrity traders. Yes, I heard about this. And would you believe the good Hannah Frye? I absolutely believe that. It's going in. And we, before it was announced, sat down, because we had a bit of a chat about the maths you could use to win traders. Oh.

And so we sat down and filmed a bunch of mathematical strategies. that Hannah's going to use and she's in the castle. So this is going to be a bit light on details because of the piles of NDAs and everything else. Yeah, I was going to say. But when it's all clear, we have already laid down a bunch of filming to get ready to release the moment we're allowed to on mathematical strategies. It's going to be great. Oh, okay, I can't wait. I'm so excited.

But no, I'm very excited. So I'm looking forward to watching it. Excellent. And releasing. I look forward to watching it as someone who has met Hannah through you a couple of times and think she's pretty ace. Yeah, she's great. Yeah. I think she's going to do very well or she's going to get kicked out immediately.

Oh. I think there's a risk she'll get heave-hoed fronto. I hope not because it will ruin all our mouths. Yeah, you're right. Well, we'll find out. We'll find out. First problem was sent in by, well, it's either one person who goes by the name Vye and Finn or two separate people who are just sharing an entry in the problem posing page

at a problem squared.com. I mean, Vi could be V. Or six. Or six. Yeah. Six and Finn. So, let's go with Vi. Okay.

I was trying to make Fafelais pasta But I was trying to make that from scratch for a salad Oh my goodness, dial it back a bit by And their friend, Finn, Told Vi to salt the pasta water When I cook it I thought it was just for seasoning

But Finn said it's because it raises the boiling temperature of the water So the pasta can cook faster I've never heard that No, neither of that. Oh, let's not, okay, that's not get ahead. Vi for it was a bit dubious because surely salt can't increase the boiling point that much, I agree, with the kind of amount you would add. Also, with salty water now make it harder for the pasta to absorb water because of osmosis reasons. Wow, wow. Now, oh, thank goodness. Okay,

Vye and Finn have done the basic cursory Google. Just to check, you can't find the answer immediately. and they say there is not much literature about salted pasta water that answers their questions. So, in short, other than making the pasta salty, and we're not here to diss making things taste salty, Vi and Finn want to know, are there any other benefits to salting the pasta water back? Okay. What do you go for us? So firstly, have you ever heard the thing of salting your water to make a lot? pasta? I'm aware

you put salt in the water for making pasta. What was your reason? I figured it was 100% flavour based. I did not think there was any reason other than adding salt, be it your own homemade sea salt.

Or if you're a lazy person who doesn't seize life you would just buy it from a shop. I didn't realize it it was for anything other than the delicious flavor. And background lead. I think there's plenty of background lead in your salt. Thank you very much.

I think this might come down to me misremembering something that I thought my mom taught me. My mom taught me to put salt in the water when you're making pasta. I was under the impression it was to stop your pasta from sticking to each other. Oh. So I had to check. One thing that I did find was interesting, the idea that it raises the boiling temperature of the water so the pasta can cook faster.

Adding salt to water will raise the boiling point. Does it? It will take longer to boil with salt in it. It's not a huge amount and it's negligible as far as the cooking time of the pastures involved. That's interesting. I had no idea because I knew it changed freezing, so that makes sense. Yeah. That it would change boiling.

I just never put calcium and sodium together to make the logical leap. what I've seen here from the University of Illinois, about half a degree Celsius increase for adding about 30 grams of salt and a kilo of water. I mean, that's a decent amount of salt. You're now cooking it in water that's 100.5 degrees Celsius. Yeah, it's not much. Yeah. Nah.

So it does appear to be largely because it helps flavour the pasta. There's a lot of arguments as to how much salt you should. put in. Right. So some people say like sea salt, like it should taste like the sea. That, I'd be hypocritical to disagree. That was like two tablespoons of salt to every four liters. There's more salt in the ocean than you expect. Although in most cases they do say about one tablespoon to every four liters of water. Okay. What they do say is with that first amount where it's just like a nice like, like that imami kind of almost like a miso level. of salt. The reason

they also say that is because you can reuse that pasta water that's got the starch in it in your sauces to help thicken it up. Oh, nice. So it's a nice way of reusing the water. It's also getting a bit more flavor and a bit more of that starchiness in there. I saw some anecdotal evidence

to say that because it's seasoning it, they said it affected the cooking in a way that meant that it was easier to get at that perfect aldente way where it was like slightly chewing the outside. And it. And yeah, similarly. Well, to be fair, I do think that is the best way to have faster.

Oh, I know, but I don't think the saltiness. So salty, I can't better cook it any longer. Yeah. But there was something to do with, it was something to do with the way that it interacts with it, it changes the texture of it. I saw another thing somewhere to say that it helps the pasta to stop sticking because it changes the, the structure on the outside of the texture. Does the salt just make it so delicious?

No one can bear to wait to cook it that long. Possibly. Okay, but there are arguments kicking around that the salt somehow reacts with the pasta. Yeah. What I did think was interesting, and this was what really hit me the most out of all of this, and I realized that I've been doing it wrong. And this will upset a lot of people to hear about me. When I cook pasta, I tend to just like start boiling the water,

but I don't necessarily put the pasta in after it started boiling. you're definitely only supposed to put the pasta in once the water is already come to a boil. Can we just recap here? You're getting a pot, putting some water in it, putting it on the stove. And you're like, eh. Close enough. There's some bubbles. Why are we waiting?

Let's just get the pasta in there. Yeah. Okay, yeah. Now, I don't know why, but I do wait for it to boil and then I put the pasta in. I don't cook that much pasta. But I don't know why I'm doing that. You, like, this could also be a, Matt, you've been cooking wrong the whole time. You've been wasting your life waiting for it to boil first.

No, no, no. You are supposed to do that. It's going to come to a rolling boil before you put the pasta in. And that is definitely meant to help with making it more al dente and stuff because then you are getting that. Because if you put it in at the beginning, it's soaking up the water. It's got longer to soak up the water before you're boiling. So then you end up with that sort of wet, chewy pasta. Yeah.

And not chewy in a good sense. So I have been doing it wrong. I should be adding my pasta to the water after it's boiled and that might solve the reason that I can never get the Aldente. Ah, there it is. Experience. Perfectly correct. This also means you're not supposed to put the salt in until after it's already reached boiling point. You put it in with the pasta.

That does make a difference. Because if you put the salt in at the beginning, then if it's sitting on the bottom of the pan, depending on your pots, it could start creating pot marts. in the bottom of the pots, depending on what you use. It can become stuck to the, like. Wasn't it dissolve? Not instantly. Not if it's cold water. Oh, got it.

But if you're adding the salt after it's already hot water, then it will dissolve. It's all faster. I understood. Yeah. And that's, I have definitely been doing that. The reason why that hadn't occurred to me is an Americans are going to be shocked by this. I boil the water in the kettle first. Yeah, me too.

Then put it in the, the pot, add the salt, get it to a boil, wang in the pasta. And I think that's the problem is I boil water in the kettle first, stick it in the pot. But it's not boiling. By the time you put it in the pot, it's cooled down a fair bit. Oh, yeah. I think you're probably fine. Like, it's still pretty hot.

Yeah. Even when you put the pasta in, that absorbs heat. Yeah, that's true. It takes off the boil a bit. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So.

I'll give you half marks. I did find a very interesting video. from someone who was like, my pasta hack, and she was like, you know, you're supposed to add salt to the pasta as you put it into the pot, but I always forget this. So here's my hack and then it like cut to her box of pasta that she's just put the salt in. Oh, pre-mix the salt with the pasta. That's genius. Which only works if you're cooking a box worth of pasta.

If you're... No, no, you're just going to shake it up each time to get a good. good even mix. You're just going to end up with that last bowl of pasta being so salty. So good. And then in her video, she was like, let me know what you think in the comments. And people are angry. Now, was it rage bait or people just too conditioned to see the brilliance of that idea?

Possibly. I mean, it was a bit genius. I did love, someone just replied, you do what? I can't point out why, but this highly upsets me. You know, they could just add more salt to the pasta dough, surely, right? Yeah, that's the solution. Why are we doing their work for them? Yeah, it's true.

So, in conclusion, it's not because it raises the boiling point of the pasta or the temperature or whatever. No, even though it does. It does. Not much. Not much. It is mostly for flavor. And technically, in a sense, I did find some anecdotal evidence to say it makes it harder for the pasta to absorb water, the ions and the salt interact with the gluten strands and that blah. Yeah, yeah.

Citation needed. Yeah. But on the whole, it does seem to be agreed that the traditional way make it is to salt your water. Just give it a little bit of num-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-m. Because it's delicious and salty. Yeah, exactly. Are there any other benefits? No.

It's tasty. Oh, well, actually, no, that's not true. Are there any other benefits? Yes, if you're going to use some of your pasta water in your sauce. Oh, yeah, yeah. Then you've got some pre-season starch water. Yeah, but you can just add salt to the sauce. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's the great thing about salt. Chuck it in any time you want. I mean, I'm going to give you a ding. Vi, six, if you want to get in touch to clarify your name, please do. Or if you'd like to give us some feedback on what you think about, Beck's salty solution. Let us know. Our next problem is from Stuart, who says, in your last video on bridge signs, so I'm assuming Stuart is addressing you, Matt.

Well, if we both made YouTube videos, it would be ambiguous. If I'd done one about bridge signs. Yeah, yeah. Which are who are you talking to? do you to do it. Yeah. Your QR code for your Kickstarter for your show, getting tricky with it. Yep.

Oh, wow. Yep. Hang on. Matt, have you chosen this problem because it's... Free promo. Absolutely. Yeah. So if anyone wants you to answer a problem, all they have to do is reference something

that you're trying to push. Tickets available. 16th of October. So your QR code for your Kickstarter for your show, getting tricky with it. Had a few pie characters in it. Yep. How? Wait, can you get numbers in QR codes?

I'm confused. Oh, do you want to see the QR code? Yeah. Someone doesn't watch your videos. But you know, from when you watch the video. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Interesting.

Beck, we're going to play a game of Scan the Barcode. Ooh, I love this game. Yeah, so if you get your phone out, that's the barcode I showed in the video. Okay. And we'll put this on socials. It's a normal looking QR code. I can't, oh, I do see some little pie logos in there. Yeah, but if you scan that.

All right. It's taking me to a bit dotly. Yep, which will then push you through to the Kickstarter. Yep. And while we're talking about it, I mean, the Kickstarter is now closed, so sorry. Oh, okay. But the extra, the bonus tour in October, tickets are on sale. Oh, okay.

Yeah, we're going to like bath and. Coventry, going to the Warwick Art Centre. And then we're filming the show Friday the 16th of October. Come along, everyone. Bloomsbury Theatre. Bloomsbury Theatre in London. And a promo. What about this one?

What's that going to do? Okay, so you're showing me another QR code. Yet again, I can see there are some pie logos. Okay. Oh, it says text, Beck Hill. Yep. That is a QR code of just the text, Beck Hill. Yeah, it's just taken, when I clicked on it,

it took me to my note app. and just wrote Beck Hill. There you go. Which as far as I'm concerned, all QR codes should do. You're all welcome. So, here's the story in various bits. Oh, if you don't wrap it like Will Smith, I'm not interested. West Philadelphia.

That's where I was born and raised. So whenever I show a QR code, if I can, I will hide extra pictures in it. Because the QR code is just a bunch of black and white pixels. Although there can be other colors, two contrasting colored pixels. Yep. And you can do a lot of fun things with pixel art. Like low-res pixels. So the pie symbol is a classic because you can just put a pie symbol in there.

And it look like a pie symbol. That's a lot of fun. Yeah. And the reason it works is because a QR code has a lot of error correction in it. which means not all the pixels you're looking at are the actual data. A bunch of them are redundant extra data. Oh. So your phone or whatever you're using to scan the QR code can still read it

even if it doesn't see all of it properly. Is this a bit like how if you read a word that's been misspelt, but the first and the last letters are the correct ones? you can usually work out what the word is. I'm going to say yes. That's your brain doing error correction because it's looking at the letters and matching it to a word that begins and ends like that and the middle ones are all the same. I don't know the details about the psychology of what your brain is actually doing

because people make some big grand statements about that experiment. Okay. But in essence, yes. So what it's doing, so error correction can be as simple as, like if I wanted to tell you the number one, two, three, what I could do is say each digit five times. I could say one-one-one-one-one-one-22-22-22-32-through-three-three-three. So if you missed any one digit somewhere, it wouldn't matter,

because you know I said each one five times. Okay. And that's a simple form of error correction. Like if I was to send that to you in a way that could get corrupted and you got 1171 and you're like, Well, clear that was meant to be a one. Right. It's been turned to a seven.

Yeah. Because I know there were ascending groups of five repeated. And that's like a very, it's not very efficient, but it's a very crude way to do error correction. I see. Okay. Okay. And you can do way more complicated versions of that. And something I like to compare it to is like a Sudoku.

Because a Sudoku has a bunch of overlapping mathematical patterns in it. Now, we're not just talking about repeating the same. same digit over and over. But we're talking about, we know for Zodoku, every column and row and section have digits one to nine. There are similar codes to that for error correction. They're not as simple as all the digits one to nine, but there can be a mathematical pattern applied to rows and columns and regions. And if you get a Sudoku puzzle and a bunch of it's missing, you can fill in all the missing digits. Yeah. And that's the whole point of it as a puzzle. Yeah. But in terms of error correction, if we were sending data digitally and a bunch of it gets

lost, as long as enough of it is left, you can recreate all the missing bits that should have been there. And QR codes do that. They use something called Reed Solomon. That's the name of the error correction. It involves, you know, pretty complicated mathematics. I would expect so. In a very, the smallest conceivable nutshell, it gets the values you want to transmit and

uses them as like coefficients in a polynomial. You're going to want to translate that for me? That's as far down as I can bring it. No, no, no, no, as in like, let's say you've got an equation with certain properties. And you know when you do like quadratics, it's like 7x squared plus 12x plus 5 or something. Okay. You can have equations or polynomials with certain properties. and you know if one's missing what it must be

because you know the rest of them and you know the properties it must have and so you can fill it back in again. It does that but in a very complicated way. And Reed Solomon's used all over the place. Famously, it's what CDs used to use. This is very cool. And it's used in loads of data transmission users, Reed Solomon.

And it's used in QR codes. Very clever way to do these things. And so it means a QR code, companies often put logos in the middle of a QR code. Yeah, yeah. They're doing that because there's enough error correction they can just cover up part of the QR code. And it can figure itself out.

Yeah. People can still scan it. It can figure itself out. And so I was like, well, hang on, what if? I use the error correction and I flip some of the white squares of black and black to white to make pictures. But I don't change too many. So there's enough left that are correct. It can fix my dufer pie symbol by using the other ones to error correct that.

Huh. And I used to do it by I. I would just get the QR code in Photoshop. And I'd get the little picture I wanted to put on it. And I'd just kind of squint and go, I think over there looks the most like it. And then I'd just go and change, manually change them in Photoshop and then check it still scanned. Yep. A little while ago, I was like, it's going to be a better way to do this.

And so I wrote some terrible Python code. So what my code now does is take. whatever it is you want to put into a QR code, uses the Python library called QR code. It just uses that to generate a QR code. But before the visualization step, it just takes the bits, the ones and zeros of what you should color white and black. And it takes a bunch of pixel art I've put in a folder. And it takes each bit of pixel art and compares it to every possible location it would fit on the QR code. and keeps track of how many white to black or black to white you'd have to flip for each one.

Yep. And it ranks them all by the ones in the location that requires the fewest changes up. And then you apply as many as you can until you break it. Okay. Now, I meant to write some more code that can scan a QR code so I can keep checking if the QR code still works or if I've exceeded the error correction. Right. Because Reed Solomon, the way the error correction works, and the way QR codes bunch data up.

It's very, very clever. But it means there's no simple answer to, oh, you can change seven pixels. Like there's no... Right. Because it depends which chunks of data it overlaps with and how... There's a whole bunch of things. I have a question. Yes.

Because I've come to realize I'm not entirely sure how they work at what website to point to. Oh, right. Okay. Yep. Like, is it possible to hijack a QR code? Not easily. Okay. So, for a while, I thought it would be a fun thing to do on stage is to do a QR code by hand.

So, like, you get someone's name from the audience and then make a QR code like I did for Beckell, and then they get their phone out and they scan it and it and it's like their first name or whatever comes up. And the actual encoding in a QR code is super straightforward, which is why I thought it would be possible. So QR codes and code letters and pairs. There are 45 different characters you can have in a QR code. And I'm guessing that's all the characters that would occur usually in a URL. It's, yeah, it's standard English alphabet, digits, 0 to 9, space, dollar sign, percent, asterisk, plus hyphen, dot, forward slash, semicolon.

So it's basically everything you need for a URL. Yep. The beck begins B. If it's a normal English letter, you add nine to its position in the alphabet. So B is the second letter. You add nine, you get 11. So B is encoded as 11. E, fifth letter, encoded as 14.

Okay. But because they're numbered from 0 to 44, every single one of them in binary needs six binary digits or six squares to encode it. But what they do is they take them in pairs, multiply the first one by 45, add it to the second one. Now the maximum possible value you can get is 2024, which can be encoded in 11 bits

because it's just under 2048, 2 to the 11. But what it means for everyone listening along, because they pair them up, multiply one by 45, to add it to the other one, instead of needing 12 squares per two characters, you only need 11 that's a saving of a whole square. It's pretty clever for very little extra effort. And I was like, well, I can do that in my head.

I just need to learn to convert everything into the numbers. multiple by 45, I can learn to do that add, turn that into binary. I can do that. And then a QR code, the data starts in the bottom right-hand corner and snakes up a column two squares wide until it gets to the top. And then it comes back down next to it, and then up the next one, and down the next one. And there's a little bit of, you know, carefulness on where you put them. And I'm like, I can do all this.

but you cannot turn off read Solomon error correction in the QR code standard. You have to have some error correction because I figured you could encode QR codes with no error correction because you can change how much you have. It makes it better in literally every situation except if you want to do it by hand. Yeah. But if you're scanning it and stuff and things are like your camera's moving, there's some fuzzy, It's not focused properly. It can still guess

based on what it can focus on. And I just figured because when you make a QR code, there's a dial you can turn up and down for how much error correction you want. Yeah, I feel like I remember generating QR codes and having an option for how complicated they looked. Yeah, that's basically it.

Yeah. And they've got letters. They've all got letter names. So I'm using error correction level H. in my code here. You can change the amount of error correction. I just figured if there's a dial that can go up and down, if you turn it all the way down, it goes to zero.

No. No, it doesn't go to zero. There's no way to make a QR code that can be scanned normally without some error correction. And Reed Solomon is not, you can't do that in your head. Yeah. So that sunk my whole. I'm sorry.

I was pretty sad. Why are they called QR codes? What does QR stand for? I can give it to you as a pretty quick response. Yes, please. It's quick response. Oh, I see what you're doing. Thank you.

I set you up perfectly. I love it. Thank you. Wow. Quick response code. Yeah. How boring. I know.

It's like a lot of these things. You're like, oh, okay. Yeah, yeah. I mean, yes. I would have called them chaz-wasas. Yeah, exactly. Okay, so tell you what, let me show you. just to to land this, let's make a QR code for a problem squared.

Okay. Now, TTPopoprogramSqured.com, right? And now watch what happens when I, you're going to see a whole bunch of QR codes appear one after the other, ready? Yep. And run. Boop, boop, bo, bo, bo, bo. Ah, okay, so you've got some Pac-Man ghost.

Yeah. You've got a space invader there? There's a space invader alien. Yeah. Yeah. However, my code doesn't know which point. it's broken the QR code. Ah.

So what I do is I scan it and then I can take them out one at a time. Oh, fun. Do you want to try and scan that? Does that one work? Okay, that one didn't scan. Let's take out the worst one. Ready? Okay, it took out the Space Invader Alien.

Does it scan? Not yet. Okay, take it one more. It took out one of the Pac-Man ghosts. Nope. Okay. Another Pac-Man ghost gone. Okay, that's scanned.

So that's what I did. I just encoded it to give a whole bunch of versions. That one that scanned? Yep. Can we pop that on Instagram? Yeah, absolutely. It's pulling from a bunch of folders that have different pie symbols, a bunch of Pac-Man sprites. If you want to make

some pixel art, I'll add that into the folder and run it again. I'm going to make so many butts. Yeah, yeah. So the way it works at a very boring level, there's one of my pie symbols. So you can see I've just drawn a pie symbol. Yep. The black is the pie symbol.

white is the blank space you need around it. And then any green pixels, I don't care what goes there. Yeah. And it does them normal and inverted because, as you'll notice in R1, you get some, there's a Pac-Man ghost that's black on white, and then there's pie symbols that are white on black. Yeah. And so it'll compare it both ways around.

This is very impressive. Thank you. You know what? It didn't take that long to code, and I've been putting it up for so long. Now it's almost too good. Like there's like a distracting number of things I can hide at once. Yeah. In a big QR code.

I mean, arguably, doesn't this mean that you could create a website where if people want to create QR codes? If you were able to create an entire database of pixel art that it could draw from. Yeah. Choose these symbols. Yeah, 100%. Someone who's not me could absolutely do that. So I also then ran through because my code I could fix this

it doesn't artificially inflate the size of the QR code so I just put in the long URL that goes to the Google form direct that we use for the problem posing page and it means you get one of these massive ones and that's got a whole bunch of extra stuff hidden in there so I'll share that as well

and if anyone out there wants to code it up as an actual website, be my guest. Yeah. Send it to us. We'll mention it. You're not getting my code, but it's terrible. Yeah, that's a given. Yeah, as established.

But yeah, I think it's a lot of fun. And people always comment on it. I think it's a very funny thing to do. Could you, in theory, if you had a very big QR code? Yeah. Let's say we did a pixelated picture of your face. I got some terrible news for you back. I've already done that.

10, 15 years ago, my business cards had a big QR code on them that had my face in it. Okay. What would I have called that? QR Matt. Okay, now, now, for the record, I still had hair. That was my old QR code. Yeah, right, we're going to put that on socials. Okay, fine.

So, you could in theory have a large, one large pixel icon. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, yeah. Yep, we'll share that. That's so stupid. I thought it was so funny. Oh, how times have changed. That's so cool.

Yeah. But you can do it by eye. Like if you don't want to or can't code, that's fine. You can just chuck it in Photoshop and flub them. Do you know what's really interesting is that I'm aware that the thing is you're very good at making maths feel accessible. And like, you don't have to be a super genius to understand it. I lead by example. Well, the thing is, is that I will, sometimes it'll come up that I work with you in conversation with other people.

Oh. And they'll be like, I love Matt. His videos are great. He's a genius. I love the way he does things. And you're like, let me just stop you there. And I think, the problem is, is that I think you have to have quite a good grasp of, maths and to understand what you're doing in order to appreciate how clever it is what you're doing.

And that probably goes for a lot of things, right? I think there's a lot of things in life where we can't fully appreciate how clever someone is without the base understanding of what they're doing. It's like when I went to see, actually this was with the Edinburgh Festival Fringe one year, to see a circus act, like in one of the circus tents out on the meadows. Meadows. And I went with a friend who has done trapeze stuff. And so she was next to me, and as we were watching them do all these things on the

tripes, I could just hear her going, that's easy. That's difficult. That's easy. Yeah. Oh, that's impressive. That's easy. And to my eye, I'm like, it's all incredible. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, that's a ding from me. And if it's not from Stewart, then I don't know what. Great. And we'll report back with a new QR code once I have. Yeah. You've drawn some low resolution, but... Yeah.

And now it's time for any other... Boingness. Boingness. Boingness! Because it's a spring. Because it's a spring. Good work. I'm glad we got there eventually.

Someone named Matthew, great name. Okay, this is a rare... They've posed a problem and offered a solution in one foul swoop. They've said other podcasts slash artists have a name for their fan base. And as an example, they've given Swifties for Taylor Swift. Now, have we talked about names for our separate fan bases before? I can't remember that was on the podcast or not. Yeah, I can't remember me that.

Mine's beans. Oh, you've got beans. Because it's a hill of beans. Ah, brilliant. That's very funny. Oh, becked beans. That was it. Becht beans.

Yeah, yeah. I think I've got mathematicians. Nice. So, do they want to know what we call people to listen to this podcast? Matthew then says, I think we are called dinguses. Yeah, 100%. I feel like we've referred to our listeners as dinguses before. I'm sure we have.

Or dingai. Yep, you dinguses. Yeah, yeah. That's what it is. Dingoes. And now before we carry on in any other boingness, we somewhat controversially are going to have a subcategory in AOB, because we are back in the same room together.

Yes. We should have not done for a while. And while we were in separate hemispheres, I talked about Girl Scout cookies. Yes. So they had it back at a thin mince, a friend had brought it before me. Yes.

And I have, I saved one of the sleeves of thin mints. I'm pointing at the box right now across the room. Let me go grab it and hands it over to you back. They've been taunting me. Oh, I do, wow, wow. You know what? They don't look as thin as I expected. No, they're pretty chunky for something called thin mints.

Yeah, they look like... You're imagining like a, you know, after eight or something. Something that's wafer thin. Yeah, look, we're not going to do it. I'm not going to open these up and eat them on, Mike. You are going to open them up and try one. It's like a roll. If you imagine like when you take out like a roll of Oreos, you know,

the thickness, I would say is about the same as a digestive. Okay. Maybe slightly thinner. Way smaller diameter. I will say thin mince. did make me think of after eights. Correct, me too. Now, to be fair, those are not cookies.

No. So that's probably where I went wrong. Yep. But yeah, okay, all right. I love this box. There's something really, even though this is a recent purchase, you know,

that's from this season. The expiry date is September this year. But this, I mean, if they're holding onto like a nostalgic vibe, nailed it. Yeah. Okay. You know what these remind me of?

Yep. They are a dry version of Arnott's mint slice. There's a deep Aussie cat. Because the Arnott's Mint slice... Mint slice. It's very, very similar. But on top of the biscuit layer, you've got like that sort of peppermint cream. Yes.

Which gives it a chew. These have no chew or cream. So it's just dry. It's lovely minty, but dry biscuit. Yeah. Very crumbly. Dust. Which just further proves.

my point that like, I think Americans when they, when they do cookies, like they should stick to those proper, like, cookie dough cookies. Chewy. Yeah. Chalk chip. America, you peaked at your chock chip cookies. This, it feels like they've attempted a British or Australian biscuit and failed. Yeah.

They're not, I can, now I can see why you get hooked on them. I can see if this was your childhood. You're like, love a thin mint. It's distinctive. It's tasty. I'm not against it. Yeah, they dissolve pretty quick, which means, like, there's room for more. They're over real fast.

I don't feel the need for anymore. The packet does say the serving size is four, just for reference. Oh, good. I've got two more I can have. Yeah. Now, the reason I've cracked these out so we can all enjoy them is the rest of Aob, are everyone who wrote in to share something Girl Scout cookie related with you. Yes.

And just to recap for anyone who didn't hear the previous episode, Girl Scouts don't bake the cookies. They're made in a factory and put in a box, and they then just sell the box to someone. Yeah. And you had questions. I just wanted to hear from people who knew about this. So we heard from Damien, Ian and Spike,

who all recommended a Freakonomics episode. Separately. All together. Separately. Whoa. Free votes. James who recommended an episode of stuff you should know. So that'll give me something to listen to while I'm on the train.

Great. They can fill in the gaps. Yep. We also had some recommendations on how to eat thin mints. Yes. I particularly like Emily. Because we asked people to put their credentials in. Yeah.

And Emily, you're the only one who really did it. Emily's got credentials, Girl Scout. Yeah. I like you, Emily. So Emily got the track record. Now, I didn't see there some time to prepare them this way for you. But Emily says, freezing your thin mints will elevate the experience. I don't doubt that.

And we heard from Zach who suggested their favorite way to eat thin mints is essentially the Tim Tam slam. That's what I thought when I wrote it. Yeah. So they're recommending biting. one side of. So the biscuits, or cookies, I guess, cookies, they're round and covered in a thin layer of chocolate. So basically, Zach is saying, expose the biscuit to air. From either end.

By biting opposite bits of chocolate off and then you can sort of suck your drink through it. As an Australian, I refuse to do the Tim Tam slam with any other type of biscuit. Apparently dozy does are the best Girl Scout cookie. in Zach's opinion you can do the straw method with them but not as easy as you can with thin mints cool all right

Matt is already Googling Doocy Doze It looks not just similar to like Kingston We're only using Arnett's biscuits as our references for these things Yeah docy doughs are peanut butter creams So oatmeal biscuit

They're like sandwich biscuits With creamy peanut butter inside That sounds good Yeah I'm out of trying to suck something through peanut butter would be quite difficult. You're going to suck the peanut butter right out of it. Maybe even enough that I'll have a go at a... Well, the thing is you can't call it a Tim Tam slam.

You've got a thin mint sprint. A thin mint sprint is a perfectly good name for what it is. Right, we've had enough of this episode. Then mint sip. I'm moving on, everyone. Don't worry. So, thank you. And the other one's called a dosy damn.

So. A dosi don't. Anyway, we'll end in this episode. Thank you for listening, everyone. You're amazing. We really appreciate it. And we like to specifically individually name three listeners who are picked at random from our long list of Patreon supporters.

Not long enough, mind you. It could always be longer. It could always be longer. Patreon.com slash a problem squet. So, the reward that these Patreon supporters get while being name checked is the honour of us mispronouncing their names. Yes. Which this episode shall include.

Ra, vis-e. Maita. Alm. McHev of Jay or Dane Le Well, Beck

you really suck the peanut butter that one That's it I'm Matt Pucker You're listening to Beck Hill as well And huge thanks

to our producer Laura Springshaw See you next time Right, Rebecca It's your move On the big Connect 4 board It's a pretty

good pattern. You got some real options here. Yeah. Look, I don't agree with the politics, but can I go far right? My far right. Someone's far right, someone else is far left. That's true. That's interesting.

I don't like that at all. Yeah, good. Very upsetting.