How does Dobble (Spot It) work?

[@standupmaths]

To clarify: all patreon supporters will be emailed 3 Monomatch Myriad cards that no else will get. Solely so they can check them. Report findings here: www.patreon.com/posts/50645477 And thanks again to KiwiCo for making great crates and sponsoring this video: www.kiwico.com/standupmaths

[@TheCaphits]

Make this into an NFT (and send me one for the idea?)!

[@rohitraghunathan]

I don't think it'll matter but 10303 isn't divisible by 3. You'll have a card leftover

[@Agrajag22]

At 20:35 I think you meant to say “two SYMBOLS that match” (not cards)

[@SioxerNikita]

CAn't help you with the million subs sadly... Been subscribed for years.

[@gz3zbz]

You didn't link to Steve Mould's channel.

[@noahbaden90]

It's funny. Matt says that he and Steve Mould are both close to 1,000,000 subs, when the reality is actually that they are both close to *the same* million subscribers.

[@unclejimmy7]

When I saw Steve's video in my subscription box, I said to myself, "nice, I can't wait to see Matt's video in my subscription box."

[@vigilantcosmicpenguin8721]

When is Matt going to examine the set theory of his and Steve's subscribers?

[@xyz39808]

Certainly the most _boring_ way to optimally order a million unique items

[@YouLoveBeef]

@@vigilantcosmicpenguin8721 Well I would be the anomaly then. I am not yet subscribed to Steve Mould. Didn't know of him until today.

[@epauletshark3793]

@@YouLoveBeef it is quite a good channel. And yes, I do love beef.

[@Zitronenscheibe]

After the infamous Parker Square comes the long awaited successor: The Parker Pentagon

[@fdagpigj]

At this rate, we'll be getting the Parker Hexagon in 2026

[@Ravlen1]

"it's on brand"

[@TheZotmeister]

This right here was the comment I was looking for. Would have made it myself if I didn't find it.

[@jonathanc8845]

I found it after I made it.

[@ggw1776]

Parker Happy Little House

[@deanperkins2091]

The legendary “Parker’s Dobble”

[@Wolforce]

Yes thanks i was looking for this

[@TimMaddux]

“It is on-brand.” -Matt Parker

[@jamesonhardy2126]

Kind of looking like he's doing it on purpose now.

[@EPMTUNES]

Parker little house

[@aperson1]

you have no idea how right you were.

[@Bigandrewm]

Here's a fun game: actually print out all 10,303 cards and sell them individually, maximum 1 per person. Then, a person who bought one who meets another person who bought one can compare their cards and find out what matches.

[@AleksandrStrizhevskiy]

That's actually brilliant! What a wonderful meetup idea.

[@aldude9511]

As you find each symbol on another card you can have them initial it!

[@_shadownotes_]

They should be able to steal it! It would be the biggest game of spot it ever.

[@JungleLibrary]

Then it just happens to be that it's always the happy house

[@VivekYadav-ds8oz]

"Find your soulmate with this simple (tarot) card game!"

[@muellerhans]

The reason why this game doesn't include 57 cards is indeed that the printing company that is used by asmodee (the game company that acquired the rights to Dobble) can only print 55 cards on a print sheet. That's what asmodee told to a german math KZbinr (DorFuchs) which they sponsered to promote the game.

[@AleksandrStrizhevskiy]

Should have made a separate print sheet that just prints the missing cars and sorts them into the other sets. But I'm not a business man, maybe that would be too much extra cost for no gain.

[@hornylink]

@@AleksandrStrizhevskiy that literally doubles the printing costs of the cards to just add 2 cards. (they're gonna charge you for the whole sheet, going from 1 to 2 sheets doubles pricing)

[@AleksandrStrizhevskiy]

@@hornylink Well it shouldn't double it. You would have one extra sheet for every couple of sheets(55/2 = 22 sheets). But yes they would have to pay more and very few people would appreciate the fact that the set is complete.

[@hornylink]

@@AleksandrStrizhevskiy nah look at OP, they say that all 55 cards fit on 1 print sheet, so to add 2 more bringing it to the total 57 they'd need to add a second print sheet. You could technically 27 of sheet one per copy of sheet two and shuffle around cut outs to make use of the extra space on sheet two, but that only works if you're doing it by hand, changing a factory line to do that would be an absurd cost.

[@AleksandrStrizhevskiy]

@@hornylink Yeah thats what I was saying printing a special sheet that just has two differ cards. But yes then you have to retool the factory so that the extra cards get sorted with each sheet of 55 and, it makes sense that it isn't worth it.

[@bloergk]

Who would have thought there could be such SORROW in the short phrase "happy little house"...

[@bonifaceawa]

Bob Ross?

[@gregjensen2482]

Summary of Stand-up Maths: "What Matt has done: It's on brand."

[@vigilantcosmicpenguin8721]

It's a Parker brand.

[@zenotfun9759]

it's a real parker square of a mistake

[@Mrsparky492]

Others might call it a parker dobble, but I'll use a term from earlier in the video it's a 'doh'bble.

[@xxgn]

I was looking for this comment.

[@chris_hanson7936]

Oh my glob! That is literally the first thing that came to mind when I was watching. Then I saw your comment. Hilarious!!! ....classic Parker thing to do 🤣

[@oz_jones]

Parker Pentagon.

[@_FirstLast_]

The "Happy Little House" story was so funny at the end of all the sweaty maths. Love how the universe just gave him that little gift at the end, and he decided to share it with us!

[@josiahsimmons9866]

Not gonna lie, the happy little house made me so mad because I spent like 10+ mins trying to find the symbol :rofl:

[@hansrens2453]

The hilarious twist for me : watching the video, this man is amaaaazing. And when he 'found' those 2 smiling houses, then found them again, it was like : so the third card is on a row that links the first two. Nice, he simplified the game. I interrupted the video to have a supper break, wondering whether another 3 cards in his 101 selection would share a "row" ? Row, row,row the cards, merrily row the cards ? Btw: Was the number 101 an random choice, or deliberately chosen : find the link 101? And after supper break : WOW he admits having chosen that one single row. Amongst 10 000 + cards, pick 100, or 1%, and it ends up to be Where is Wally, over and over and over... This learned me another thing: it might very well be fun, searching Wally pictures, to find a second match. Probably not intended, but would we find one?

[@Motinu]

German maths youtuber Dorfuchs asked the producer of the game about the 2 missing cards and the answer was that only 55 cards fit on a print sheet. In his video at about 7:52, automated subtitles in english available.

[@nocturnhabeo]

I feel like every programmer on the planet has done this type of embarrassing mistake. You're awesome man.

[@oz_jones]

Parker Match

[@nocturnhabeo]

@UCjlY2PsJoAlrzhK-N8djvVA Saying to yourself "Oh I'll just take the first one of X data set" which results in an annoying or unhelpful pattern you didn't think would show up.

[@skyjoe55]

"I see no reason random() shouldn't always return 3"

[@LCrowsbeak]

@@skyjoe55 or 7

[@stijnvandrongelen5625]

@@skyjoe55 Are you a Debian maintainer?

[@nicksteele5613]

This is, with no exaggeration, a question I've had for YEARS. The first time I saw a variation on this game it just PLAGUED me as to how they managed to pull this off. Literally can't wait to see.

[@NoisqueVoaProduction]

Yeah, I also was asking myself, puzzled by it. It reminds a lot of the logic behind SET. Although SET is a bit more straight forward to the issue while in Dobble it is not part of the gameplay to know how it works... But really cool applied math about... Higher dimension? Projective planes? That sort of advanced math... Pretty cool

[@ShuffleboardJerk]

I bet you literally could have 🙃

[@Fantastic_Mr_Fox]

yeah me too. Well I wouldn't say it has plagued me but yeah I remember 7 year old me or smth like that playing dobble one day (not the first time I had played) wondering A) if all the cards truly had only one match with any other card and B) how they pulled it off

[@wrathofnerds]

"I was so close to not admitting, but...it's on brand"

[@jfein7273]

Classic Parker Square

[@martinnovacek9151]

Came here to say this :D

[@nanamacapagal8342]

@@kyozpsycho Prof pic checks out

[@StarstormHUN]

@@jfein7273 At this point I'm kind of afraid to ask, but where does Parker Square originally come from?

[@FLScrabbler]

@@StarstormHUN 😂😂😂👍🏻 Well, it was an almost perfect magic square that Matt had come up with...

[@__-cd9ug]

When he spotted the happy little house instantly, after I spent 5 minutes not finding it, I though he was some sort of savant

[@driesvanoosten4417]

I did spot it!

[@adampayton4695]

There's also a second pair! An circle with an arrow inside! However they are different colors so maybe it's also like the "catch the match game"?

[@MD-vs9ff]

He is "some sort of" savant. A Parker savant.

[@romaindubray2325]

@@adampayton4695 That symbol really made me question wether or not he had made them match color as well... decided I'd gone too far to give up now, so that HappyLittleHouse™ was a real relief to find, even though it was one of the last symbols I checked.

[@jonahwolfe3396]

Same! It took me 4 minutes to find the house. After three minutes I was about to give up but decided that I wanted to prove to myself that my attention span can last more than 3 minutes. But yah, when I saw that he found it in 5 second I was like “what?! How is he so good at this game!” Then I was laughing after he revealed what actually happened.

[@KaiLucasZachary]

I work professionally as a tutor, and using your guide, I've created my own version of Hebrew Dobble so that I can help people learn how to identify Hebrew letters and vowels. This video is the most comprehensive explanation of the game that I've ever seen.

[@homelessrobot]

pretty cool application

[@jubileeYAVEL]

That's awesome!!!!!!

[@ericpeterson6520]

In the beginning God said, "Let n be an integer greater than 1"

[@maxwellsequation4887]

And there was light

[@evan3732]

And then there was MATH!

[@etheraelespeon1986]

And lo’, the n - 1 photons sprang forth

[@maxwellsequation4887]

@@etheraelespeon1986 and lo' then div E = ρ/ε

[@toughnerd]

... go on

[@JavierYahiko]

i love how monomatch myriad ended up giving parker square vibes

[@nex]

Yeah; I immediately thought “cool, he's made Parker pentagons” :)

[@AaronHollander314]

It took me 10 minutes to find the match. The more I look the more I saw new symbols.

[@cjjoyce27]

Can't believe you got Steve to film himself trying to find the happy little house

[@miriamrosemary9110]

So funny when he finds the happy house on another card and he's so confused

[@vigilantcosmicpenguin8721]

I love how it really showed the passage of time.

[@AlphaPhoenixChannel]

Can we get confirmation on if Steve was TOLD they were all the smiley house prior to that clip? Because either way, I was rolling...

[@arfyness]

@@AlphaPhoenixChannel I really think he didn't tell him.

[@r0cketplumber]

"Let n be an integah!" That's how you get people hooked! What an opener! I hooted at that.

[@wouterlahousse9637]

What is your nightmare about? Pythagoras: irrational numbers Euler: e=3 Cantor: infinity Einstein: Heisenberg's uncertainty principle Galois: duelling Parker: A happy little house...

[@bonifaceawa]

Parker, and Bob Ross!

[@uklu]

Matt's nightmare is obviously about the clown icon

[@phichyasuadsawad1583]

No e is 2.718281828459045

[@matheuscastello6554]

the fact you printed the first 101 rows on accident is the cherry on top of an already amazing and hilarious video, i loved it hahaha

[@miriamrosemary9110]

Totally

[@SquintyGears]

😂 The unintended print of spot the atom had me crying

[@zacharybarbanell1064]

Having done the math before, and having also wondered why there's 55 cards instead of 57, I came to the reasonable conclusion that it's because, since the main way to actually play the game starts with a single card in the center, the remaining 55-1=54 cards can be evenly divided among various numbers of players.

[@matthewstuckenbruck5834]

Interesting, but why then is the junior version 30 cards? 29 doesn't split very easily. Are the rules different?

[@alxjones]

This generalizes in an interesting way. If you have N cards to divide amongst a set of players, what is the "best" number of cards to leave out? You could look at the closest "highly divisible number" less than or equal to N, or maybe the number less than or equal to N with the most factors. You might want to prioritize smaller factors since they should represent a more typical group size. You can model this as a question about the LCM of subsets of {1,...,N}. Definitely some interesting mathematics to explore there.

[@88porpoise]

Money is on someone thinking the multiple of five just looks nicer.

[@MrTyler918273]

I would guess it doesn't have a mathematical explanation; rather a marketing and/or economic one. Someone in the marketing department probably said "57 (or 31) is an odd number (not just the fact that it is not even, but that it is relatively unusual or unfamiliar). If it will work with a more approachable number, say a multiple of 5, that would look better on the packaging and we can even save a few cents per unit."

[@jalsing]

Maybe it's just to save money and waste on printing. They might fit nicely 5 across on the stock before they're cut. Same with the smaller set both are multiples of 5....

[@dracuul78]

I have always wondered what magic was needed to design the Dobble cards, thanks for this perfect (and hilarious) explanation. I'm so amazed how well you structure your videos and use these excellent visuals. Starting with the silly 'spot the atom' version, and referring back to it later, I was in tears from laughter...

[@Corwin256]

I love your ability to take giant mistakes, make them hilarious jokes, and then build a message that it's OK to be imperfect. Come for the laughs, stay for the life-changing attitude shift. And more laughs.

[@Koisheep]

It's so refreshing to find a maths channel that keeps coming up with new topics you didn't know about despite being a phd student lol

[@SimonBuchanNz]

It's so refreshing to find a maths channel that came up with a subject I *did* already know about! (projective geometry being a big thing in 3d rendering) If not something I would ever think to try to apply in this context.

[@hugofontes5708]

@Hopeful Interpretation doesn't take a lot of genius to at least know about trendy or popular topics in your own field that are covered by KZbin channels for views and popularizing academics, specially when the channel actually surprises you on the regular. Or does it?

[@pseudopod]

I like how Matt put the clown mathematically as far away as possible, but it was also the physically closest set of cards

[@lozzaaa15]

goes to show that he believes in maths more than he believes in physics

[@ziwuri]

@@lozzaaa15 this... actually almost makes sense, in a weird way.

[@ahobby]

Haven't seen it yet, but I'm guessing he's put it away in manhattan distance or chessboard distance or quasi-euclidean distance, something of the sorts, rather than straight up euclidean distance :P

[@quinnmartin4236]

The fact that you ended up going full circle and making Spot the Atom accidentally is just too conveniently ironic. God has conspired against us all and it was hilarious.

[@tristanwegner]

Yeah, I was so happy that he decided to admit it!

[@johannschiel6734]

A parker monomatch game...

[@Intermernet]

God may not play dice, but he definitely plays "spot the happy little house".

[@IRONMANFAN-oc9fr]

He said in the video that maths is all about spotting patterns and he has inadvertently PROVED this very fact! HAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHA

[@jonarcherii]

On your pentagon, there is another set of symbols that (kinda) match. They both have a circle with an arrow in it, and they appear the same except the color is different. My theory is that one was an “up” arrow, and one was a “down” arrow, but that bit of information got lost in the randomization of the rotation of each symbol.

[@Maseiken]

N: "I wish I could be an integer." Mathematicians before 1906: : "Absolutely not."

[@sorellana2154]

lmaooooo

[@barbapappa99]

OK, I'll bite. Why?

[@TSiAhmat]

oh and before i forget, N stands for any number between (- infinity) to (+ infinity) [if we are talking about math]

[@Maseiken]

@@barbapappa99 before that no one suggested letting it.

[@tapatorta]

I love you

[@jounik]

Next in line: Monomismatch Myriad where you have ~10k cards, each with ~100 symbols, the challenge for each pair being to find the one symbol that is *not* on the other card of the pair.

[@danielyuan9862]

that's just n cards with n-1 symbols each such that you take any n-1 symbols of n total symbols.

[@n8r8rutube]

You really Parker Squared that print job :P

[@jubnx2781]

I literally was wondering about this 2 years ago and still now today because we played this at the lake, I now know. Thx

[@Verlisify]

So find century old math columns and make card games out of them Interesting business venture

[@eboyarski]

In 2015, I helped design a similar card game with 73 symbols, 9 on each card, and 73 cards. So, an order of 8=2^3. I used Sage to generate the solution. I never quite understood the math, so I appreciate this video!

[@mymoomin0952]

"I'm not sure if that's genius or lazy" The soul of mathematics right there

[@dragoncurveenthusiast]

absolutely! nicely spotted

[@ChazCharlie1]

I was going to say engineering

[@LadyPelikan]

Ooo. Deep.

[@golightning291]

a game for -6 people? sounds like my social circle

[@anushrao882]

That negative six got me laughing way more than it should have.

[@luiscarlosqg]

Yeah, that was funny.

[@graemed8792]

at 3:34 the "slick" genuinly gave me a good chuckle

[@tune_fisch0269]

For the German viewers here: Dorfuchs made a very good Video about Dobble a while ago

[@mandygoring2001]

And he included an explanation why there are only 55 cards in the game...

[@SuperMrMuh]

@@mandygoring2001 aaand... what is the explanation?

[@Sebb747]

​@@SuperMrMuh It's this video at roughly this timestamp: kzbin.info/www/bejne/rKq8hHh6fLqXosk TL:DR he asked the manufacturer and it's indeed limited by printing; the shop can print exactly 55 cards on a sheet.

[@jankisi]

I thought I had seen something like that! Thanks

[@michaeledinger8256]

From the producers of Parkers Square: Parkers Pentagon. Laugh so hard that I cried

[@alinayossimouse]

Your mistake getting your cards printed made me really happy, not at the expense of you messing up but at the beauty of how well it ties into what we had just learned and how easy it was to make such a grave mistake

[@dahemac]

I love that you have probably persuaded a renowned solar physicist to periodically throw game packages at, or to, or past you. 😁

[@benjaminsmith3625]

Physicists are big fans of particle accelerators after all!

[@wellshit9489]

They need to test how the velocity, time and mass affect the results obviously.

[@vigilantcosmicpenguin8721]

I prefer believing they actually teleported on screen on their own.

[@reneejones6330]

"Spot the happy little house" is MY kind of matching game. Love it!

[@AaronZull]

I have been waiting for this exact KZbinr to make this exact video for several years now! Thank you!

[@toughnerd]

I never thought a pentagon could be classified as a square before... But those pentagons are the parker's square of monomatching games.

[@Jordan-zk2wd]

About that... kzbin.info/www/bejne/pGiqioybp9GEjdU : P

[@atomic3691]

"Negative six players?" I don't know why, but I couldn't stop laughing.

[@WesYarber]

‘Twas a good one

[@pyglik2296]

We should switch to the correct notation [2, 8] ∩ ℤ.

[@kirkanos771]

I didnt get that joke either.

[@ssnoyes]

@@kirkanos771 It's for "2-8" players, which you are supposed to read as "2 through 8" but Matt has interpreted as "2 minus 8".

[@davidgould9431]

Similar(ish): I finished a jigsaw in 18 months - I was really pleased because it said "2 to 4 years" on the box.

[@Iwasneverevenhere]

Regarding the number cards, German math KZbinr Dorfuchs also made a video on this game. In it, he contacted the company to ask about the number of cards, and they answered that it simply had to do with printing, although I don't remember the details.

[@Ulkomaalainen]

The game company said the printers only could do 55 (well, or 110 with 53 thrown out). Why that is wasn't solved but it was also the suggestion that it is was Poker sets (or, more broadly, the standard 52 cards plus three anything - joker cards for example).

[@ultimatedude5686]

@@Ulkomaalainen My guess it that it was the 52 cards, two jokers, and that extra card they always include for branding

[@breberky]

After spending many weeks trying to code the Dobble generating algorithm (brute force with a lot of optimization tricks, still running for long hours), the existence of the cyclic difference set literally blew my mind. Now the job is done in a second. You have saved my day! Thank you!

[@cj719521]

Paused at 7:00 to say this: Okay, but how long did it take to put the 7x7 Feno plane in order like that? The amount of detail you consistently put into these videos is astounding (and so satisfying)! Thank you for the work you do!

[@liborkundrat185]

My guess is: - The start was to separate all cards with a single symbol, in this case the clown. This left him with 49 cards to be put into the grid and 8 involving the clown to be left on the outside. - Then he searched for 7 cards with a shared symbol among the 49, putting them into a single row. - Then he searched for 7 cards with a shared symbol among the remaining (42) cards, putting them into another row. - Then he repeated the previous step, chopping the amount of remaining cards down to 35, then 28, afterwards 21, 14, and finally the bottom row of 7. - Then he rearranged all symbols within each row so there was a shared symbol (same match) in the whole column. And by process of mathematics, that should be enough to get the final picture, as the symbols in the diagonals are defined by the rows and columns. So, it probably didn't take *too* long with a system like this, but still, fairly long. Especially with two cards missing, which he only had to make (and add) afterwards.

[@Trumpington1]

@@liborkundrat185 it’s more involved than this. You’ll see if you try for real…

[@Trumpington1]

1. Choose a symbol that links infinity cards eg clown 2. Pick any card out of those 8 clown cards that will represent rows. From now on, the 7 other ’row symbols’ on that card will be common with the symbols linking each row. 3. From remaining 47 cards, arrange 1st row of 7 cards to be all cards containing one of those ‘row symbols’ 4. So the same for other rows At this stage columns don’t match and you’ll see a couple of blank spots due to having 47 card to fill 7x7 5. Pick another clown card to represent columns. 7 other symbols on card aside from clown are ‘column symbols’ 6. Keeping the rows intact reposition cards so that each column has common symbol with column card. At this stage rows and columns all match up nicely but the main top left to bottom right diagonal probably doesn’t. You can switch any row / column around to make a diagonal but you’ll probably find the parallel diagonal doesn’t match. 7. Find the main diagonal infinity card by looking for common symbol between lefthand most 2nd row card and top right card. Now rearrange grid so that main diagonal matches the common symbol between the top left and one of the other symbol on the diagonal infinity card. Don’t rearrange top 2 rows or left column during this. Should be done…! Nb for step 1 don’t choose symbol where there are cards missing eg snowman.

[@liborkundrat185]

@@Trumpington1 I see. That's pretty neat, and much more accurate/systematic than I thought. Cool for figuring it out.

[@michielhorikx9863]

@@Trumpington1 This indeed works very nicely, thanks for the algorithm!

[@anarchyseeds4406]

Wow that is hilarious Matt. I was amazed how fast you matched the happy little house but that outcome is truly comedic.

[@Xanthaar]

Outdone the Parker square with this one. I'm crying with laughter at the happy little houses on all the cards :)

[@bluecat2991]

So am I. It's so Matt.

[@TacoMaster3211]

The Happy Little House Incident must make it into Humble Pi 2, or maybe Humble Tau if you wish.

[@thegreatsalad]

Humble Tau, love it haha

[@frederf3227]

Im holding out for for Humble 540 degrees.

[@vigilantcosmicpenguin8721]

Something about that book will come full circle.

[@dfgaJK]

What made finding the happy little house, it took me about 2min, is that the contrast/saturation is sightly diffrent. (or at least it steamed to be in the image of you holding them up.)

[@IllidanS4]

I remember that when learning about projective geometry, the lecturer actually brought this game to the lesson, I think.

[@richardwithanarr]

I like how Matt frames himself sitting in front of the circle artwork behind him. Santino Parker, patron de numeros calculadores

[@wolfelkan8183]

"Catch the Match" also known as "Make Fun of Your Colorblind Friends"

[@yuvalne]

+

[@trickytreyperfected1482]

+

[@aviko9560]

+

[@sandeepwangde269]

+

[@francogonz]

+

[@thekinglydragon]

I will be using that -6 players joke for the rest of my life. I have no idea how I've never heard it before. Thank you for enlightening me

[@andyland00]

Great video! As an engineering student, however, my inner manufacturer is pained by the fact that you chose to make your myriad out of pentagons rather than hexagons... hopefully there was some printing size limit that made the difference in wastage between the two shapes negligible?

[@mgarratt101]

It makes zero difference, obviously you're a beginner engineering student, you'll get there one day

[@paulbockmann8402]

@@mgarratt101 seems like you’re the beginner, only triangles, squares and hexagons can tile a plane without any overlap or gaps. You’ll get there one day ;)

[@iteragami5078]

Good question. It would depend on the size of the polygon compared to the roll of paper to be printed on. Cause while regular hexagons do tile the plane perfectly, they leave jagged edges at the border, so you would compare wastage to densest pentagon packing known.

[@diceLibrarian]

He's Matt Parker, Pentagons are just cooler shapes

[@AidanRahder]

@@diceLibrarian Hexagons are the bestagons.

[@adampayton4695]

There's also a second pair! An circle with an arrow inside! However they are different colors so maybe it's also like the "catch the match game"?

[@annekay281]

I found the same pair and if color variation was an acceptable option you would not need that many unique symbols or cards that large.

[@jeffreybernath6627]

This is the hardest I've ever laughed at a KZbin video. Matt, thank you for telling us about the smiley house in the top row!

[@CBWP]

"You can trick young people into becoming engineers." - Matt Parker

[@afonsoferreira5171]

The Parker Dobble edit: just refreshed the comments, good to know everyone thought the same

[@zozzy4630]

Parker Pentagon!

[@rossradtke]

I was gonna say its an upgrade from the Parker Square... ..."Now with FIVE sides

[@samp-w7439]

I watched this a while back, wanted to generate my own dobble (for reasons which I won't go in to). I recall Matt saying cyclic difference sets are hard to generate, so I decided I would try to write some code for it. It's a simple recursive backtracking algorithm, not much fanciness. Wrote it in python and here it is: def check(nums, target): differences = 0 ind_diffs = set() mod = target * target - target + 1 for n1 in nums: for n2 in nums: diff = n1 - n2 diff = (diff + mod) % mod if diff: differences += 1 ind_diffs.add(diff) return len(ind_diffs) == differences def generate(target, current=None): current = current or [0] mod = target * target - target + 1 options = range(current[-1] + 1, mod) if check(current, target): if len(current) == target: return current for option in options: res = generate(target, current + [option]) if res: return res print(generate(8)) The code is surprisingly fast for small sizes of difference sets, but, I tried generating the length-102 set that you would need to generate Monomatch: Myriad, and it still hasn't finished running (over an hour). This makes sense, as recursive backtracking scales quite poorly (I think O(n!)), so I'm not surprised. In any case, I just wanted to share my findings. Cheers!

[@jordanrivera467]

Funnily enough, I first played this game during a free day in math class, truly coming full circle with this video

[@DannyGottawa]

Paraphrased Matt: 'Just make the two extra cards yourself.' Couldn't I just make them all? Nervous Matt: Shhh

[@PauxloE]

There are dobble/spot-it generators on the internet. Upload a set of icons (use your own ones so there are no copyright issues), get the cards, print them. My wife made some with fruits and vegetables.

[@HeVi7]

That's a Parker Square of a game you've printed there 🤔

[@reformCopyright]

"Let n be an integer!" And the crowd goes wild!

[@NoomiSense]

haha, this was amazing! You should challenge Steve to discover the most efficient way of spotting the symbol on the Myriad cards. Would a sorting methodology work best here? like a 'shell-spot' or a 'quick-spot'? Or is our brain more attuned to focusing on a single colour at the time? I went through so many spotting-tactics and I couldn't even see the happy house. When I realised that the this game was so hard that the YT algorithm couldn't even spot the *leaf* I decided to un-pause the video.

[@calebj5852]

I wondered about this when my family played over the holidays this past year! Thanks for the explanation!

[@DAveShillito]

Literally everybody watched this video and looked to the comments to see if they would be the first to post "Parker Dobble" :D

[@ryjtse]

Oh now that is delightful.

[@Nosirrbro]

Parker Match!

[@esotericVideos]

I think Parker pentagon is more apt. It suggests that with time Matt will find a way to embarrass himself with all regular polygons.

[@better.better]

Parker Plane... Parker Dobble is just ridiculous! personally I feel that the concept of a Parker plane being an infinite sequence of happy houses is very comforting

Nope, I went on to check who else found the smiling house. EDIT: ...and I unpaused the video and learned the truth :D :D

[@MisterNohbdy]

*points to box* "These guys sponsored me! They're great!" *promptly tosses box onto floor*

[@ideegeniali]

I tried hard (well not actually that hard, i gave up quite soon actually) to find the math of dobble. Then concluded i didn't have the math instrument to deal with what at first looked like a simple combinatory problem. Thank you for explaining in such an entertaining and multiple approaches way!

[@Hjerta92]

When we were playing Dobble last summer we started wondering about the mathematics behind it, and how many cards you could make with x number of symbols on each card. Our formula was x*x-(x-1), so 8*8-7 in the case of Dobble, although we couldn't have explained exactly how it worked.

[@RubenCeuppensOfficial]

Steve's face at the end when he realises, is hilarious.

[@nitehawk86]

The face of someone that isn't sure if they are being trolled.

[@biranfalk-dotan2448]

Matt is a professional at making #ParkerSquare, the rest of us just Dobble in it

[@skyjoe55]

Get out!

[@garrettthompson3286]

5:55 I was fully ready for a surprise diagonalization argument like Cantor's

[@erdnaelarresaccor3450]

A friend of mine was sure there was a mathematical trick behind dobble and wanted to tackle this this as his subject for our mathematic oral test. Thank you for him

[@spencerbruce]

I was just playing this game with some friends and we were working through the math on how to make this game! Thanks for the wonderful video :)

[@dansushi]

In addition to the happy house, there's also a matching arrow with a circle around it!

[@spectralpiano3881]

I also found the arrow in the circle first, but after closer inspection they don't actually match, the left version has slightly longer arrow head lines than the right version. I was confused when he then told it was the happy little house xD

[@haulin]

Maybe they also have to be the same colour. I imagine it cannot be easy to come up with 10303 unique symbols.

[@snipperjoey1151]

Honestly I'm proud I spotted the little house in about a minute.

[@miriamrosemary9110]

I looked for quite a while and couldn't find it. Good job!

Likewise, I found it in a minute or two. But it could have taken a lot longer, it was just luck. EDIT: ...and I unpaused the video and learned the truth :D :D

[@vigilantcosmicpenguin8721]

I think the trick was to search through each color.

[@jasonrubik]

Next road trip : Dad: I spy with my little eye, an atom !!! Kid : At least its not the scary clown ! Dad : He's too far away, I can't see him yet ! Edit. just finished the video... its one of the funniest ever from Matt !

[@cl3m3n7]

This was an amazing video ! Great cinematography, really fun and the math is incredible !

[@hapticflapjack]

The thrower should get a credit. (And the filming location looks lovely too.)

[@Kira_7237]

Omg. Steve’s reaction XD

[@knkspl]

Actually when I was looking for the symbol, I first spoted the arrow in the circle on both cards (near top and right for the left card and right from center for the right card). Now I know that they probably don't count because different colours, but my wounded pride demands I speak up and complain for a bit about using 2, too similar symbols. So "0/10, not recomended". Haaaa, now I can finally know peace :). Also great video, I loved it.

[@rafaelrios5228]

Oh wow, I've just seen the water computer and this video released right after

[@EPMTUNES]

I love the frequent Matt/Steve uploads!

[@sugmadic7649]

Xd

[@theplanbee79]

I've wondered this question many times while playing Spot It. What a timely video. Thanks!

[@F_L_U_X]

0:04 It also says that the hour-glass is 15 feet tall.

[@toppocket2856]

Great to see Matt channeling The Head from Art Attack when revealing his mistake.

[@jaymoney5090]

28:25 "They're all smiley house" Always have been

[@mikemooney83]

The Parker Pentagon! 🤣 But hey, you gave it a go. 👍

[@tiger12506]

My family and I played Spot It a lot as a time killer while waiting for food at restaurants the past ten years or so. I've came close, but never buckled down and figured out the details like in this video. Neat. I'll have to make my own set now!

[@thelanavishnuorchestra]

This was fascinating. My math skills don't extend to this domain, though I find combinatorics very interesting.

[@unusedTV]

"Spot the happy little house" will become a bonus chapter in the next edition of Humble Pi - which I really enjoyed, by the way!

[@Kenjuudo]

This video was totally hilarious! I seldomly laugh out loud when watching videos, but this one did it. Thanks Matt/Math & Steve! Finally earned yourself my subscription!

[@skylark.kraken]

At christmas we had this game, and after playing it with my nephew I set out on solving how it worked, I found the rotational answer as it's a technique in programming. I didn't realise that it was a big deal

[@miguelescalantemilke7204]

Now I’m really curious on how it can be used in programming:0

[@SimonBuchanNz]

As a programmer, me too! Some sort of perfect hashing?

[@trans_foxgirl]

I'm reminded of a CRC but I'd implement that in hardware instead of software

[@skylark.kraken]

@@miguelescalantemilke7204 Well, I've used it more for programming challenges like on Codewars and there was an Advent of Code question which was a lot simpler solved like that. I can't remember an exact use, but it's probably limited outside of games.

[@n20games52]

I design board ga,es and card games and will certainly share this with all the people who tell me designing games is easy. Loved it!

[@LeoStaley]

Matt, I count on you to mess things up. It helps me remember that I'm not a failure if I mess up like you. I'm really glad that your brand is you cocking things up.