full transcript
From the Ted Talk by Dan Finkel: Can you solve the giant spider riddle?
Unscramble the Blue Letters
It’s tempting to trap Shelob in a corner, but doing so is surprisingly tricky. The layout of the web is such that every move you make, Shelob can get to another intersection two away from you. So even if you were to drive her into a corner, she’d escape it easily. There are no dead ends, so there’s never a situation where she’d be forced to move to your scpae. However, there is this pinot up here where all the strands creonvge. It's easy to see that it's itamnrpot, but the challenge is figuring out exactly what to do with it.
Open Cloze
It’s tempting to trap Shelob in a corner, but doing so is surprisingly tricky. The layout of the web is such that every move you make, Shelob can get to another intersection two away from you. So even if you were to drive her into a corner, she’d escape it easily. There are no dead ends, so there’s never a situation where she’d be forced to move to your _____. However, there is this _____ up here where all the strands ________. It's easy to see that it's _________, but the challenge is figuring out exactly what to do with it.
Solution
- converge
- point
- important
- space
Original Text
It’s tempting to trap Shelob in a corner, but doing so is surprisingly tricky. The layout of the web is such that every move you make, Shelob can get to another intersection two away from you. So even if you were to drive her into a corner, she’d escape it easily. There are no dead ends, so there’s never a situation where she’d be forced to move to your space. However, there is this point up here where all the strands converge. It's easy to see that it's important, but the challenge is figuring out exactly what to do with it.
Frequently Occurring Word Combinations
ngrams of length 2
collocation |
frequency |
great spider |
2 |
Important Words
- challenge
- converge
- corner
- dead
- drive
- easily
- easy
- ends
- escape
- figuring
- forced
- important
- intersection
- layout
- move
- point
- shelob
- situation
- space
- strands
- surprisingly
- tempting
- trap
- tricky
- web