Schlablocks

My old friend Marty Schlabach (yes there is a nice pun/play on words, in the title) came to visit today. He wanted some help with a set of wooden blocks for his granddaughter - Emma. We had a great time etching the letters on this set of blocks he made. You would have definitely laughed out loud at us as we tried to figure out what 40 letters to put on the sides of the 10 blank blocks in the above picture...... not counting the flat boards. How many of which letters? Don't forget that there are three A's, two M's, and one each G, R, O, P, and E! --- yes we did notice that spells grope! That is a total of 50 letters actually, so we needed to figure what additional letters we wanted so Emma can spell lots of words. We want to leave the blanks so they spell out a nice crossword pattern for display. A check of the internet to figure out the relative frequency of the various letters in the English language. And when we got all done and thought we had them perfectly laid out, we etched them carefully keeping track of which letters and how many we had done..... got to the end ---- one blank side left over????? It took another 10 minutes to figure out what letter should go on that last side.

Thanks Marty for lunch, for the extra set of blocks I can etch for Maya, and for the great - if somewhat confusing - afternoon!