Matthew Scroggs
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mscroggs.co.uk
Matthew Scroggs
@mscroggs.co.uk
610 followers 150 following 150 posts
World's #1 matchbox fan
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mscroggs.co.uk
Books I finished in 2025
Red Country by Joe Abercrombie The Mystery of Locked Rooms by Lindsay Currie The Fellowship of Puzzlemakers by Samuel Burr Clown Town by Mick Herron Cider with Rosie by Laurie Lee The Satsuma Complex by Bob Mortimer The Great When by Alan Moore Y: The Last Man (#1-#10) by Brian K Vaughan and others The Arrival by Shaun Tan
January 4, 2026 at 9:23 PM
mscroggs.co.uk
#NetflixChristmas Reviews 2025 #3: A Cinderella Christmas Ball.

Dance instructor teaches Sir Prince King II to dance then finds love and her father or something.

🎄💃❤️😴🎄/5
Two people standing in front of a Christmas tree.
December 15, 2025 at 9:51 PM
mscroggs.co.uk
#NetflixChristmas Reviews 2025 #2: Haul out the Holly.

A Hallmark Christmas film, but thankfully not one of the really cheap feeling ones. Has the other one from Mean Girls in it, who obviously goes to a small town to celebrate Christmas.

🎄🌨️📜🌨️🎄/5
Still from the film Haul out the Holly.
December 15, 2025 at 9:44 PM
mscroggs.co.uk
#NetflixChristmas Reviews 2025 #1: Champagne Problems.

I've already forgotten the plot of this one. Although I do remember the montage of moments from earlier in the film about 2/3 of the way in - the sign of a true blockbuster.

🍾🥱😴😴😴/5
The poster for the film Champagne Problems.
December 8, 2025 at 10:15 PM
mscroggs.co.uk
If you're interested in doing a PhD in maths or science with a medium to strong software focus, the CDT that I'm involved in running is having an open day on 24 November. Sign up to attend at www.eventbrite.com/e/collaborat....
Advert poster for the CDT open day on 24 November. EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Collaborative Computational Modelling at the Interface Open Day 3:30 – 5:30pm, 24 November 2025 Ground Floor Collaboration Space, UCL Bidborough House 38-50 Bidborough St, London, WC1H 9BT Interested in a fully funded 4 year PhD position in London working at the interface of computational modelling, data science and research software engineering? The CCMI CDT is a collaboration between University College London (UCL) and Imperial. Our students join world-class research groups across UCL and Imperial, covering a wide range of application areas, including numerical methods, fusion energy, the life sciences and machine learning. All places on the CDT are fully funded for home students, including generous stipends to cover living costs. A limited number of fully funded places for overseas students are also available. Come to our open day on 24 November to find out more. To receive updates on when applications open for our 2026 cohort, visit our website at ccmi-cdt.org
November 13, 2025 at 3:15 PM
mscroggs.co.uk
If you want to know what the puzzles in Puzzlebug are like, here's the one on the first page for free
Three triangles puzzle: Nine of the points above are the vertices of three non-intersecting triangles. Each of the grey lines intersects the number of triangles that the line is labelled with. No point is part of more than one triangle and one point is not used. Draw the three triangles
August 30, 2025 at 7:23 PM
mscroggs.co.uk
I'm very glad that the Switch version of Final Fantasy 12 has a 4× speed mode
Photo of final fantasy 12. On screen it says "Yiazmat vanquished"
August 17, 2025 at 3:56 PM
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The comma caterpillars in the garden have started turning into chrysalises.
A comma butterfly chrysalis
July 8, 2025 at 8:44 PM
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A comma caterpillar
July 5, 2025 at 9:39 AM
mscroggs.co.uk
Some comma caterpillars have made their home in our garden
July 5, 2025 at 9:38 AM
mscroggs.co.uk
Forgot to go buy all the newspapers this weekend to get all the wall charts but thankfully Tesco had one copy of Match of the Day magazine left
Wall chart for the Euros on my wall
July 3, 2025 at 6:46 PM
mscroggs.co.uk
A very wide nonogram puzzle
June 8, 2025 at 9:48 AM
mscroggs.co.uk
I made an animation of a visual proof of Pythagoras's theorem for #MathsAnimationTMiP (using LaTeX and TikZ). Video of how I made it coming very soon
June 1, 2025 at 3:37 PM
mscroggs.co.uk
Had a fun day playing noughts and crosses against MENACE at @aiatkings.bsky.social AI Festival today
The 304 matchboxes that make up MENACE on a table A progress graph. MENACE lost a lot of games at the start, then lost a lot fewer later on
May 24, 2025 at 5:29 PM
mscroggs.co.uk
You already have this one, right?
Noughts and Crosses game in an advert at Manchester Piccadilly station
May 2, 2025 at 8:49 AM
mscroggs.co.uk
Am I the first person to solve ophex 1 (www.andrewt.net/puzzles/ophex/)? #StecksConf
Ophex 1 solved
April 26, 2025 at 3:26 PM
mscroggs.co.uk
My favourites are the four tickets that exist to tell us we don't have a seat reserved
Me holding four tickets that say "Coach * No specific seat reserved"
April 25, 2025 at 7:50 PM
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Me: Hello ticket machine. Two return tickets from Peterborough to Manchester please.

Ticket machine: printing 1 of 12
Me holding 12 train tickets and 1 receipt
April 25, 2025 at 7:48 PM
mscroggs.co.uk
I made an animation of a cube folding from a net for #MathsAnimationTMiP. Video of me making this using TikZ coming once I've had time to edit it.
April 3, 2025 at 4:41 PM
mscroggs.co.uk
Also the issue 21 crossnumber is one of the most ridiculous I've written so far. Good luck! chalkdustmagazine.com/regulars/cro...
An over-zealous copy editor has ‘corrected’ this crossnumber. In the original puzzle, every clue was of the form a † bA or a†bD, where a and b are positive integers, and † is +, –, ÷, or × (and A and D stand for across or down); the copy editor then took every clue, calculated a † b, and replaced a † b with the result. For example, if a clue now reads ‘6A’, then the actual clue could be: 0 + 6A, 3 + 3A, 12 – 6A, 1 × 6A, 2 × 3A, 6 ÷ 1A, 120 ÷ 20A, or many other things…
March 17, 2025 at 9:05 AM
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The animation I made
March 7, 2025 at 8:01 AM
mscroggs.co.uk
PS. I love that a couple of "Springer Didn't Graduate" books made using @christianp.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy's generator (somethingorotherwhatever.com/didnt-gradua...) show up mixed in with the real books when you Google "springer graduate texts"
A parody Springer Greaduate Test: When All The Arrows Mean It's Obvious (second edition) by Sandy McLane?
March 6, 2025 at 8:25 AM
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Really hope someone somewhere has sent their kids to school dressed up as a Springer graduate text for #WorldBookDay
Screenshot of Google image search for Springer graduate texts. All the books are yellow with a white bit at the top.
March 6, 2025 at 8:22 AM
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Second video is a group of us performing the example song from the musical notation article
The word Wikipedia set to music
March 3, 2025 at 10:42 PM
mscroggs.co.uk
Project ideas I have no time for #385: Make a YouTube video of me and someone else performing the example screenplay from the Wikipedia screenplay article (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screenp...)
Wikipedia's example screenplay
March 3, 2025 at 10:08 PM