Dear Readers,
To cut a long story short, I needed a fun code name for a friend whose birthday is coming up fast, and I was thinking…if any fast…idea comes…when suddenly that was it! She can be named as ‘Tiffany’, partly because as Tiffany is an anagram of if any fast, and partly because Tiffany Case in the 1971 film ‘Diamonds Are Forever’ has remained, for half a century, one of my absolute favourite female characters ever in a 007 movie 😊.
Can you think of a classy English eight-letter word that can be made using all the letters of I TIFFANY ? Well, I’m pretty sure that ‘Tiffany’ (who’s really a very smart lady indeed) would find AFFINITY almost immediately.
I have an extra, special affinity for Blog Post #118 right here, because (unless I slow down a lot in future) it’s probably going to be the only one I’ll ever write where my age is half of the blog post number; in this case now, 59 = 118 ÷ 2.
Whenever in my life I might encounter the number 118 again…I will also think of Wout, an incredibly talented 12-year-old musician and super-gifted young mathematician at Musica Mundi School.
Pictured below, is part of Wout’s perfect solution to a fun wee prize puzzle that I sent on Wednesday night to everyone in the school, as we’re looking forward to celebrating several birthdays here this month.
18 is the only number in the left-hand column of the table for which an alternative solution (also using consecutive positive whole numbers) was possible: 5+6+7 makes 18, too.
How can we use Wout’s solution regarding 18 to find a sum of consecutive whole numbers that totals 118 instead of 18?
Well, 118 = 18 + 100 = 18 + (4 x 25), which prompts the idea of simply adding an extra 25 onto each of the four consecutive numbers that Wout used. In that way, 3+4+5+6=18 can be transformed to 28+29+30+31=118.
Time for another quick wee word puzzle/j😊ke…! I might ask my friend if any fit people come to her mind…to which she could respond with the practically perfect anagram, “People…I Tiffany“!
Enjoy your birthday, dear Tiffany, and I wish everyone a wonderful, happy weekend now t😊😊.
With kindest wishes as always,
Paul M😊twani xxx
Paul Motwani 