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How much stuff is Double-Double-Stuf?

27 Comments

As an experiment, I bought a package of peanut-butter-creme Double-Stuf Oreos. I had one bite of one, and decreed them “fit only for children.”

The children are eating them now. Patches, in particular, is eating them. He peeled the Stuf out of two cookies (the PB creme is firmer and less sticky than real Oreo creme) and used them to sandwich one Oreo cookie “cookie.” And then he looked up and me and said “Look! A sammich!” And then proceeded to eat it.

Obviously two times “double” stuff is “quadruple” stuff. But if you then HALVE the amount of cookie, what do you call it? Does the original ratio of Stuf to Cookie matter, or can the cookie and creme amounts be treated as variables, and the equation somehow reduced through Oreo Algebra?

Consider: If the original oreo cookie is represented by O(oreo cookie)=C(the two chocolate cookie parts)+S(stuff on the inside), then a double-stuf would be O=C+2S. Patches’ Sandwich becomes O=C/2 + 4S. Multiplying both sides by two, you get 2O=C+8S… which isn’t the same as “Octuple-Stuf” because you’ve got that “2O” hanging around on the left side of the equation. Solving for “Stuf” you get 2O-C=8S, and then S=(2O-C)/8, neither of which is especially helpful.

I guess the real question is “Do Oreo Cookie engineers get hung up on Double-Stuf algebra, or is it just me?”

27 thoughts on “How much stuff is Double-Double-Stuf?”

    1. ::sigh::

      ::loots corpse for 30 silver::

      ::casts Rebirth::

      (in a low grumbly voice)
      Pity work needs him there, otherwise I’d let him sit for a while

  4. The Oreo cookie “engineers” (aka: “cookie culinaries”) no doubt dreamed up your “cookie conundrum” just to mess with your poor, overstressed mind— (and of course to delight your rugrats with the physical hard—and software, aka: really yummy filling)… 😉

  7. Oreo

    Does the Double-Stuf Oreo cookie have a greater diameter, radius, and circumference, than a standard Oreo? If so, the ratio of cookie-to-stuf matters in the Oreo spectrum, and if not, then no.

    1. Re: Oreo

      My wife and I are now considering the implications of a septuple-stuffed, mint-flavored, fudge-covered Oreo on the parent-child dynamic.

      Eeeeeeeevil.

  8. And this, Howard, is one of the many reasons you keep us geeks hanging on your every update. Because geekery is not a hobby or a job, not even a lifestyle, but a genetic condition.

  10. Okay, a standard DoubleStuff Oreo has twice the Standard Oreo Filling Units (SOFU) of a Standard Oreo, with a constant cookie quantity. A notional cookie with the standard two cookies and four SOFUs would clearly then be a QuadrupleStuff, and a notional cookie with eight SOFUs would be an OctupleStuff.

    Now, a standard Oreo with one of the cookies missing is half a DoubleStuff, since it has exactly half the cookie (1 instead of 2) and half the filling (1 SOFU) of a Doublestuff (2 cookies, 2 SOFU). Similarly, a DoubleStuff Oreo missing one cookie would be half of the notional QuadrupleStuff, having half the cookie and half the filling of a QuadrupleStuff.

    And finally, we find that 4 SOFUs to 1 cookie is half the units of a notional OctupleStuff (which would have 2 cookies and 8 SOFU). So he had half of an OctupleStuff cookie.

    The problem with your algebra is that O is “whatever this Oreo is made of”, but you include no reference to “what the standard Oreo is made of”. There is accordingly no reference in the equation by which one can relate the unknown cookie to a standard Oreo. Solving it for any value doesn’t tell us what to call it.

    2. Brilliant. I knew I was doing something wrong there.

      O=C+S
      P(doublestuff)=C+2S
      Q (quadstuff)=C+(2s)*2
      R (octuplestuff)=C+(2s)*4

      So yeah, he had C/2+(2s)*2. That’s 1/2 R, given the definitions above, so he had half an octuplestuff.

      Thank you. I can go to bed now.

  11. After thinking for half a millisecond, then reading the replies to make sure I wasn’t duplicating any of them, I decided to answer the question you posed:
    “Do Oreo Cookie engineers get hung up on Double-Stuf algebra, or is it just me?”
    Simply put, no. The average American who attended a government school can easily figure out what double stuff means, especially since it’s spelled as though it belongs in a teenager’s blog. Ask that same person to calculate any higher than that would be a marketing flop. Assuming the engineers get really bored, they might play around with the idea, but personally, I think they’re too busy trying to invent other ways to keep the evil Keebler Elves from stealing more shelf space.

  12. Sounds like youra Father’s Day math situation was more tasty and entertaining than mine – my dad explained to me the physics of exploding a building (in relation the the WTC collapse and conspiracy theories).

    I didn’t know that in a vacuum, if you dropped a billiard ball off the top of a 100 story building, it would take about 10.5 seconds to fall (with the rate of speed being 32 feet per second, and velocity related to the force of gravity. He gave me the equation, but I forgot it.).

    Anyway, I’d rather eat oreos than think about 9-11, even if math is cool.

    1. There’s a lot of stuff that I’d rather do than thing about 9/11. Come to think of it, there’s not a lot of stuff I’d rather do than eat Oreos. So…yeah. Thought I had a point, but no, seems I’m just here to waste your time and mine.

      \m/ LJ RULZ! \m/

    1. (I=InsideOut, O=Oreo, P=DoubleStuf, Q=QuadrupleStuf)

      I=C/2+2S
      O=C+S
      P=C+2S
      Q=C+(2S)*2,

      It follows that 2I=C+(2S)*2, therefore 2I=Q, or I=Q/2.

      An Inside-out Oreo is half a quadruple-stuf.

  17. I get hung up on the same things

    I get hung up on the exact same sort of thing, but I wonder more what exactly establishes what is double-stuf, why they spell it stuf, and the like, eventually moving on to what it creates if various odd combinations are reached, but really, in the end, that simply is not within the scope of human oreo knowledge, perhaps one day in the distant future, when Annihilation Plants are a common source of energy…

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