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
- report
- contestant
- total
- ordered
- lucky
- numbers
- 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
- add
- advisor
- arithmetic
- blue
- chief
- children
- choose
- competition
- contestant
- declare
- devised
- dice
- die
- eccentric
- equally
- fair
- final
- good
- heir
- honest
- king
- lucky
- numbers
- ordered
- potential
- red
- report
- roll
- rolled
- rolling
- room
- royal
- score
- side
- starts
- successor
- test
- times
- total
- turn
- turns
- winner