full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Dan Katz: Can you solve the cheating royal riddle?

Unscramble the Blue Letters

You’re the chief advisor to an eccentric king who needs to declare his successor. He wants his heir to be good at arithmetic, lkucy, and above all else, honest. So he’s devised a competition to test his children, and orederd you to choose the weinnr.
Each potential heir will be given the same two six-sided dice. The red die has the numebrs 2, 7, 7, 12, 12, and 17. The blue one has 3, 8, 8, 13, 13, and 18. The dice are fair, so each side is equally likely to come up.
Each csnenatott will be sent into a Royal Rolling Room, where they’ll roll both dice 20 times. A contestant’s score starts at zero, and each turn, they should add the ttoal of the two numbers rolled to their score. After 20 turns, they should reprot their final score.

Open Cloze

You’re the chief advisor to an eccentric king who needs to declare his successor. He wants his heir to be good at arithmetic, _____, and above all else, honest. So he’s devised a competition to test his children, and _______ you to choose the ______.
Each potential heir will be given the same two six-sided dice. The red die has the _______ 2, 7, 7, 12, 12, and 17. The blue one has 3, 8, 8, 13, 13, and 18. The dice are fair, so each side is equally likely to come up.
Each __________ will be sent into a Royal Rolling Room, where they’ll roll both dice 20 times. A contestant’s score starts at zero, and each turn, they should add the _____ of the two numbers rolled to their score. After 20 turns, they should ______ their final score.

Solution

  1. report
  2. contestant
  3. total
  4. ordered
  5. lucky
  6. numbers
  7. winner

Original Text

You’re the chief advisor to an eccentric king who needs to declare his successor. He wants his heir to be good at arithmetic, lucky, and above all else, honest. So he’s devised a competition to test his children, and ordered you to choose the winner.
Each potential heir will be given the same two six-sided dice. The red die has the numbers 2, 7, 7, 12, 12, and 17. The blue one has 3, 8, 8, 13, 13, and 18. The dice are fair, so each side is equally likely to come up.
Each contestant will be sent into a Royal Rolling Room, where they’ll roll both dice 20 times. A contestant’s score starts at zero, and each turn, they should add the total of the two numbers rolled to their score. After 20 turns, they should report their final score.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations

ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
highest number 2
number theory 2

Important Words

  1. add
  2. advisor
  3. arithmetic
  4. blue
  5. chief
  6. children
  7. choose
  8. competition
  9. contestant
  10. declare
  11. devised
  12. dice
  13. die
  14. eccentric
  15. equally
  16. fair
  17. final
  18. good
  19. heir
  20. honest
  21. king
  22. lucky
  23. numbers
  24. ordered
  25. potential
  26. red
  27. report
  28. roll
  29. rolled
  30. rolling
  31. room
  32. royal
  33. score
  34. side
  35. starts
  36. successor
  37. test
  38. times
  39. total
  40. turn
  41. turns
  42. winner