full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Daniel Finkel: Can you solve the cuddly duddly fuddly wuddly riddle?

Unscramble the Blue Letters

When two eggs fuse, the number of eggs of each of those colors decreases by one, and the number of the third color increases by one. That means they all change parity, or esvnenes and oednsds, at the same time. Right now all three piles are odd, but you get to add an egg to one color, which means that it’ll be even and the other two will be odd. Whichever color you choose will always be the opposite parity of the other two piles: odd when they’re even and even when they’re odd, since every egg fiuson flips each pile’s ptriay simultaneously. We want to end with 1 blue, 0 prpule, and 0 red eggs, or odd, even, even. That means we want the blue egg pile to be the opposite parity of the other two plies at the satrt as well.

Open Cloze

When two eggs fuse, the number of eggs of each of those colors decreases by one, and the number of the third color increases by one. That means they all change parity, or ________ and _______, at the same time. Right now all three piles are odd, but you get to add an egg to one color, which means that it’ll be even and the other two will be odd. Whichever color you choose will always be the opposite parity of the other two piles: odd when they’re even and even when they’re odd, since every egg ______ flips each pile’s ______ simultaneously. We want to end with 1 blue, 0 ______, and 0 red eggs, or odd, even, even. That means we want the blue egg pile to be the opposite parity of the other two _____ at the _____ as well.

Solution

  1. evenness
  2. purple
  3. fusion
  4. start
  5. oddness
  6. parity
  7. piles

Original Text

When two eggs fuse, the number of eggs of each of those colors decreases by one, and the number of the third color increases by one. That means they all change parity, or evenness and oddness, at the same time. Right now all three piles are odd, but you get to add an egg to one color, which means that it’ll be even and the other two will be odd. Whichever color you choose will always be the opposite parity of the other two piles: odd when they’re even and even when they’re odd, since every egg fusion flips each pile’s parity simultaneously. We want to end with 1 blue, 0 purple, and 0 red eggs, or odd, even, even. That means we want the blue egg pile to be the opposite parity of the other two piles at the start as well.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations

ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
blue egg 3
purple combine 2
red eggs 2
eggs give 2
egg fusion 2

Important Words

  1. add
  2. blue
  3. change
  4. choose
  5. color
  6. colors
  7. decreases
  8. egg
  9. eggs
  10. evenness
  11. flips
  12. fuse
  13. fusion
  14. increases
  15. means
  16. number
  17. odd
  18. oddness
  19. parity
  20. pile
  21. piles
  22. purple
  23. red
  24. simultaneously
  25. start
  26. time