full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Daniel Finkel: Can you solve the sea monster riddle?

Unscramble the Blue Letters


You rush to the ancient trusraee room and find five chests, each containing a precisely counted number of pearls prepared by your ancestors for exactly this proupse. Each of the chests bears a number tnlelig how many praels it contains. Unfortunately, the symbols they used to write digits 1,000 yares ago have caneghd with time, and you don’t know how to read the ancient numbers. With hundreds of thousands of pearls in each chest, there’s no time to recount.

One of these chests will save your city and the rest will lead to its certain doom. Which do you choose?

Pause the video to figure it out yourself.

Open Cloze


You rush to the ancient ________ room and find five chests, each containing a precisely counted number of pearls prepared by your ancestors for exactly this _______. Each of the chests bears a number _______ how many ______ it contains. Unfortunately, the symbols they used to write digits 1,000 _____ ago have _______ with time, and you don’t know how to read the ancient numbers. With hundreds of thousands of pearls in each chest, there’s no time to recount.

One of these chests will save your city and the rest will lead to its certain doom. Which do you choose?

Pause the video to figure it out yourself.

Solution


  1. telling
  2. changed
  3. treasure
  4. years
  5. purpose
  6. pearls

Original Text


You rush to the ancient treasure room and find five chests, each containing a precisely counted number of pearls prepared by your ancestors for exactly this purpose. Each of the chests bears a number telling how many pearls it contains. Unfortunately, the symbols they used to write digits 1,000 years ago have changed with time, and you don’t know how to read the ancient numbers. With hundreds of thousands of pearls in each chest, there’s no time to recount.

One of these chests will save your city and the rest will lead to its certain doom. Which do you choose?

Pause the video to figure it out yourself.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations


ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
sea monsters 3
thousand years 2


Important Words


  1. ancestors
  2. ancient
  3. bears
  4. changed
  5. chest
  6. chests
  7. choose
  8. city
  9. counted
  10. digits
  11. doom
  12. figure
  13. find
  14. hundreds
  15. lead
  16. number
  17. numbers
  18. pause
  19. pearls
  20. precisely
  21. prepared
  22. purpose
  23. read
  24. recount
  25. rest
  26. room
  27. rush
  28. save
  29. symbols
  30. telling
  31. thousands
  32. time
  33. treasure
  34. video
  35. write
  36. years