I've just helped towards a Kitty's expensive dental bill. I was happy to do it, because I'm an Ailurophile. The word is relatively modern (1914) and comes from Ancient Greek ἀίλουρος "ailouros" = cat, which is thought to originally mean something like "wavy tail", rather poetic to my mind. A somewhat earlier term for a cat lover was Philofelist, dating from 1843.

A dog lover is a Cynophilist, or Cynophile, from Greek κυνος "kynos" = dog, from Proto-Indo-European kwon, which is also the root of words such as hound, kennel, and canine.

We found this striking Turkey Tail fungus Trametes versicolor growing on a dead log in our garden.

From Wikipedia, it is found world-wide and lives by digesting lignin, a key structural component in plants= tissues. The fungus has been used in traditional Chinese medicine and a range of beneficial properties have also been claimed for it in the setting of conventional medicine. For a summary see this article. I haven't read enough to assess how strong the evidence is, and I think opinion is probably divided.

This puzzle can be found in many places in the internet but was first published by Martin Gardner in his 'Mathematical Recreations' column in Scientific American. It goes like this (this wording is mine, not the original which I don't have to hand.)

1. Can YOU work out what the ages are? (Solution appears further down.)

2. Can you find a number different for 36 but which would still let the second mathematician deduce the ages if they knew the sum of the ages and the fact that the oldest child is called Bill?

A friend travelling in the Eastern Caribbean sent me some photos of flowers. This lovely plant is paperflower, or lesser bougainvillea, scientific name Bougainvillea glabra.

I'm disbelieving of this being a Harvard Interview Question, but that is the title given to a question circulating on social media. It runs as follows:

It's ambiguous and that's probably why it has gone viral, with people offering a variety of answers and opinions and even the occasional quip, such as "Were they going to St Ives?".

So it's not the maths that is interesting but the impetus to debate, discuss wrangle, argue. disagree and tut about the ambiguity.

Still, to get back to the boring old maths, I thought I would ask:

If 7 is replaced by n, what is the smallest answer that we could put forward a case for, and what is the largest?