Comments on: Guardian 25,657 – Araucaria

By: RCWhiting

RCWhiting — Sat, 09 Jun 2012 14:20:48 +0000

Ripenno
With that misthought you are missing out on one of the great historical stories of mathematics. Try Beckmann’s book for a starter.
If you remember the amateur search for bigger primes in the 60/70s when PCs became available,well, the search for more decimal places in pi lasted for centuries and led to some amazing stories.
Incidently a diameter and circumference are measurable (therefore always approximate) but not countable.

By: Allan_C

Allan_C — Sat, 09 Jun 2012 13:22:21 +0000

And btw there are better approximations for pi than 22/7. The square root of 9.87 is one and, even closer, 355/113 is another.

By: Thomas99

Thomas99 — Sat, 09 Jun 2012 09:00:35 +0000

Damn! In the preview the symbols all came out beautifully – I assure you the first “?” is indeed the Greek letter pi!

By: Thomas99

Thomas99 — Sat, 09 Jun 2012 08:59:25 +0000

Quite right, morpheus: “Perhaps the best-known irrational numbers are: the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter ?, Euler’s number e, the golden ratio ?, and the square root of two ?2″ (wikipedia). We still seem to be terrifyingly mathematically ignorant in this country, so good for Araucaria, for slipping this in.

By: morpheus

morpheus — Sat, 09 Jun 2012 07:45:33 +0000

Rippeno @38 22/7 is an old shorthand for PI but it’s only an approximation. You’re right about the ratio of circumference to diameter but you’ll never find a case where both are whole numbers. As PI can’t be expressed as a ratio it is an irrational number- Im sure wiki can give more info.

By: Ripenno

Ripenno — Sat, 09 Jun 2012 06:58:42 +0000

Just one issue with 9 across. PI is not an irrational number. It is 22/7 and so can be expressed as a ratio. If you think about it it is the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter. These dimensions are real and measurable for a host of different circles, so it must be rational.

PI cannot be expressed as a recurring decimal, but this isn’t the same thing.

I solved the clue although I couldn’t parse it anyway, but thought I would point it out.

By: JollySwagman

JollySwagman — Sat, 09 Jun 2012 01:30:13 +0000

FWIW poster’s contributions – one poster – many contributions

By: JollySwagman

JollySwagman — Sat, 09 Jun 2012 01:29:12 +0000

“posters puzzles” above s/b posters’ contributions

By: JollySwagman

JollySwagman — Sat, 09 Jun 2012 01:26:49 +0000

@Eileen #26 Although I am only a recent poster here I have been a reader for much longer and so am, sadly, well aware of the discussions here.

I’d better not offend Paul B as he seems to have a special dispensation to break all of the rules of this board (even #29 right here) whilst calling others trolls and demanding that they be banned from the board.

He may well only recently have come down from the trees but the converts are always the worst. If he is not an arch-ximtroll I don’t know who is.

Since football has been raised I suppose the comparison might be valid that there are those in that game who are best to let their feet do the talking.

As far as A’s definitions go, the Great Man talks about definitions at 2:05 here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjQic20azrk

so indicating where they do not make an exact match as synonym/case/part of speech etc is quite otiose, even when accompanied by a condescending (or otherwise) “how much I liked the rest of the puzzle”.

@Paul B – you asked some time ago whether it was possible to search for all a posters puzzles on this board.

Go out to Google and go:

site:.fifteensquared.net “paul b”

and see for yourself what light you appear in. “O would some pow’r the giftie …” – glad I’m not your agent.

PS
There is a long recognised tradition on internet boards that picking on typos means you’ve lost the argument – like mentioning … er y’know that Austrian guy. I did in fact spell ximenean correctly twice in the same post so it was quite obviously a typo. Just such a shame the wretched man’s name has to crop up so often.

By: Andy D

Andy D — Fri, 08 Jun 2012 21:41:10 +0000

Very rarely attempt a puzzle on the day it’s published but we did this one this evening after dinner. Very enjoyable, as always, with Araucaria. Looked up how to spell SEBASTOPOL so found that SEVASTOPOL is an alternative – and the latter parses correctly.

Loved 6D – well, one of us got it immediately!

Horticultural theme was fairly easy as we know these shrubs. Araucaria had another similar theme in 25,652 – is this a series to be continued?