full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Daniel Finkel: Can you solve the unstoppable blob riddle?

Unscramble the Blue Letters


That makes it seems like you’re doomed to keep creating obtuse angles. But as with so many of life’s pbreloms, we can look to pizza for inspiration. Imagine squaring off the outside of a pizza, so that instead of a cclire, it’s an octagon. When we cut it into slices, each of the eight triangles is acute. This works with larger polygons too. Importantly, it also works for some polygons with fewer sides, including heptagons, hexagons, and pnaegntos. That’s good news,

because if you cut off the sharp corners of the blob triangle, a pentagon is exactly what you’ll be left with. And just like a pzzia, you can cut the blob pentagon into five autce triangles. That’s 7 cuts, and it renders the blob completely inert. You’ve saved the day! Now you just need to figure out what to do with all of these gnait, pirlaactlcy indestructible triangles.

Open Cloze


That makes it seems like you’re doomed to keep creating obtuse angles. But as with so many of life’s ________, we can look to pizza for inspiration. Imagine squaring off the outside of a pizza, so that instead of a ______, it’s an octagon. When we cut it into slices, each of the eight triangles is acute. This works with larger polygons too. Importantly, it also works for some polygons with fewer sides, including heptagons, hexagons, and _________. That’s good news,

because if you cut off the sharp corners of the blob triangle, a pentagon is exactly what you’ll be left with. And just like a _____, you can cut the blob pentagon into five _____ triangles. That’s 7 cuts, and it renders the blob completely inert. You’ve saved the day! Now you just need to figure out what to do with all of these _____, ___________ indestructible triangles.

Solution


  1. practically
  2. pizza
  3. problems
  4. acute
  5. circle
  6. pentagons
  7. giant

Original Text


That makes it seems like you’re doomed to keep creating obtuse angles. But as with so many of life’s problems, we can look to pizza for inspiration. Imagine squaring off the outside of a pizza, so that instead of a circle, it’s an octagon. When we cut it into slices, each of the eight triangles is acute. This works with larger polygons too. Importantly, it also works for some polygons with fewer sides, including heptagons, hexagons, and pentagons. That’s good news,

because if you cut off the sharp corners of the blob triangle, a pentagon is exactly what you’ll be left with. And just like a pizza, you can cut the blob pentagon into five acute triangles. That’s 7 cuts, and it renders the blob completely inert. You’ve saved the day! Now you just need to figure out what to do with all of these giant, practically indestructible triangles.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations


ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
acute triangles 2


Important Words


  1. acute
  2. angles
  3. blob
  4. circle
  5. completely
  6. corners
  7. creating
  8. cut
  9. cuts
  10. doomed
  11. figure
  12. giant
  13. good
  14. heptagons
  15. hexagons
  16. imagine
  17. importantly
  18. including
  19. indestructible
  20. inert
  21. inspiration
  22. larger
  23. left
  24. news
  25. obtuse
  26. octagon
  27. pentagon
  28. pentagons
  29. pizza
  30. polygons
  31. practically
  32. problems
  33. renders
  34. saved
  35. sharp
  36. sides
  37. slices
  38. squaring
  39. triangle
  40. triangles
  41. works