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In an attempt to stay up long enough to watch the England match, I watched tonight's episode of the 1% club. As a fan of quiz shows (who would like to come up with one of my own) I admire the format and Lee Mack is the perfect host.
Obviously I wouldn't mind a go, though I suspect a celebrity version might prove a bit expensive and you wouldn't even really see 80% of the contestants. I am not sure I'd succeed though, because (maybe due to my aphantasia) I can't do those puzzles where you have to make a 2D object into a 3D one.
But part of what makes it a good quiz is the time limit. Sometimes your brain just won't see the pattern and panic sets in and you're done.
Having said that, tonight I guessed the right 2D to 3D object and there was only one other question that I didn't get (though there was one later on that had a convoluted question, that seemed so easy that I might have passed on it).
The 1% question opened up an old memory for me. It was basically asking what is the sum of adding all numbers from 1-100 (though it gave an extra clue by giving some examples of pairs that made 100).
When I was about 11 or 12, a new maths teacher came to our school. He only taught us for one year (it might have just been a term - perhaps he was filling in for someone who was ill). His name was Mr Westmore. I think he might have been South African, but that's just a vague guess/memory (though it sort of checks out with his personality - arrogant, but fragile (no offence South Africans - oh you've taken it, proving my point). In the first lesson he introduced himself, "My name's Brett Westmore," which was already a weird gambit as most teachers didn't volunteer their first name (part of the fun of school life was finding that info out - the 1980s were a dull time). "And I've heard it all before, so don't go calling me Wet Breastmore." I think he gave us some other potential rude nicknames for himself, which was very kind of him. I wish I could remember them all now, but Wet Breastmore was so good that it doesn't matter. We would almost certainly never have thought to call him Wet Breastmore on our own. But look at me now, 45 years on, still calling him Wet Breastmore. Thanks for the tip. Or should it be the damp titbit?
Anyway one day he was telling us the story of a famous mathematician who had been asked as a child to add all the numbers from 1-100 and was able to provide the answer straight away. "Could we do it?" he asked, expecting the answer no.
I was pretty good at maths and my brain was young and fast and it immediately struck me that the way to do this was to add do it by 100+0 then 99+1 and 98+2. I realised there would be 50 lots of such pairings and then just the 50 left over and I responded (pretty much immediately 5050).
This did not suit the lesson that Wet Breastmore's was trying to impart. If this was a display of mathematical genius then a little oik in Cheddar shouldn't be able to do it too.
"Ah, you've obviously heard it before," he sneered.
But I hadn't heard it before. Like the famous mathematician I had used fairly basic maths to work it out.
I remember feeling a bit stung that I was being accused of cheating when I had genuinely just worked this out. Maybe I was a bit more than stung because this story has stuck with me for basically half a century.
Maybe rather than shooting me down Wet should have realised he had a mathematical genius in his class, who might one day have gone on to win £90,000 on the 1% club (if only he had understood the question about birthday cakes).
Or at least have acknowledged that although it takes a bit of lateral thinking, this is a challenge that anyone with a decent understanding of maths could get right.
It could have been a moment I remembered with pride if he'd reacted differently, but I am guessing that this was his first year as a teacher and that he was finding his way.
I don't remember anything about him other than his self-appointed nickname, this incident and that he might have had an accent.
The lesson there, for any teachers, is maybe to say "Wow, have you heard that before?" and when the pupil says "No," then say "Good job."
