Hello, Puzzlers! AJ has a new book out! You can order "The Year of Living Constitutionally" right now!.
Puzzling with us today: our very own Chief Puzzle Officer, Greg Pliska.
Join host A.J. Jacobs and his guests as they puzzle–and laugh–their way through new spins on old favorites, like anagrams and palindromes, as well as quirky originals such as “Ask Chat GPT” and audio rebuses.
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"The Puzzler with A.J. Jacobs" is distributed by iHeartPodcasts and is a co-production with Neuhaus Ideas.
Our executive producers are Neely Lohmann and Adam Neuhaus of Neuhaus Ideas, and Lindsay Hoffman of iHeart Podcasts.
The show is produced by Jody Avirgan and Brittani Brown of Roulette Productions.
Our Chief Puzzle Officer is Greg Pliska. Our associate producer is Andrea Schoenberg.
Hello, puzzlers, Welcome to the Puzzler Podcast, The Foam Tulip and Your Puzzle Latte. I am your host, AJ Jacobs, and I am here at the Ritzy iHeart Studios with Chief Puzzle Officer Greg Puliska.
Hello Greg, good morning AJ. You know I have a Lotte right here, but it has no foam tulip.
On it, any art whatsoever.
No, it's look, it's inside a cup from a major national coffee chain and it's all gone, jostled on the bus, outrageous, nothing left.
Well, maybe it's more like a Jackson Pollock.
Maybe No, it's like a Roscoe. It's just one solid color.
In there, right, it's just brown. Well, I am delighted to see you and the fact that you have a body below the chest area. That's exciting because usually I see him on zoom. But but Greg, I hear that you might have a puzzle for me.
That's why we're here. This is the Puzzler Podcast with A J. Jacobs and I have a puzzle for Jacobs. Well, look, you play wordle, right.
I actually have not played wordle in about a year. In about a year, I'm familiar with wordle.
Sure, good and you're familiar with some of the spin offs.
I am, I am very creative.
One of those that you that you like.
Uh, let's see there was one with Yiddish like uh that maybe it was called That's true, there was, but you know there were a lot.
That they're suing World right now. Oh, the Times is suing whoever made World, which is a geography when you get an outline of a country and you try to.
Well, that's a shame, I have to say. I am. I am pro free speech in terms of wordlespace.
And there's nothing about it that's anything like wordle except the extra you know, the title, which has a right similar Well, what if.
The New York World sued the New York Times for.
New York or for ceiling across New York. Good point, right, I agree with you. Let's let's let the ideas be the ideas. Well. I've just invented a whole bunch of new games all that use the R D L E suffix. Okay, right, So there's World and all those other ones out there. I'm going to give you the kinds of clues you get for each game, and you tell me the name of the game. Love it, So for example, if I said tweets chirps and squawks, that would of course be birdle right.
The tweets threw me off because then I started thinking ex elon musk, and I went down a bad rabbit hole.
Bad rabbit hole. No, no, this was just the avian tweet chirps and squawks.
All right, quite the rest.
Here you go, A group of bison, a group of cows, a group of zebras.
Oh interesting, all right, all right, here I am modeling for our guests that it's okay to not know, yes immediately, all right, Wait say it again. I was thinking bovine at first.
Or a group of bison, a group of cows, a group of zebras.
Okay, No, I do have it. I do have it. It's a hurdle, hurdle exactly because I was thinking group nouns. I was trying to get tricky murder of crows, that kind of thing.
But it's just straight straight up herds. That's what you call each of those groups. I heard of bison, I heard of zebras.
Oh I want to I though I saw once it was a dazzle of zebras. I think that's that is an alternate group.
Probably, you know, all those things are made up. They're made up the things, but they are fun. They are fun. What do we call a group of puzzlers? We need a term for them.
Oh that is a good nerds.
Nerd could be good. Now, yeah, you've ruined that shit. That's all right, all right. Here's another one, boutine, cottage cheese and Caeso blanco.
Oh all right, well those are they're all dairy products, and but I think they're more than dairy. They might have curdled.
You answer, it is curdled. They all have cheese curds in them.
Delicious.
Actually also had junket on that list. Have you heard of junket? No British, it's a British cheese curd dish interest. One of our producers wrote junket question mark. So I got rid of it.
Well, now we know, now we've learned.
I got it in there anyway, thank you. Here's another one. A base, a dimension, and a rock from the Sun.
Okay, okay, it took me a minute, but I think I got it with that last clue, which was a hit sitcom from wayback when. Yes, and I believe it. They're all thirds third base dimension.
Would be the game. Absolutely love it all right. We got a few more rumors inadmissible evidence in court. People talking outside your window.
Uh okay, I might have it, I might have it. It is. These are all things that you hear past tense heard hurdle.
It's I want to go a little farther than that. Yeah, say it again, rumors and people talking outside your window or the key here.
Oh okay, I got all right, So I got half credit because I missed the first part.
Over heard overhurdle exactly.
I would play that.
That'd be a game. We'd play that. Yeah, sure, a pocket protector glasses and a subscription to the Puzzler podcast.
You know that was the one I ruined. But yes, and we mean that. I subscribe to the Puzzler podcast, as does Greg. So it's no, we are not casting aspersions. We are proud nerds.
So nerd nerdle exactly exactly. And you know the seguees right into the last one, drunken speech like gotto notes and casting aspersions.
Look at that. It's like in those old game shows when you said the magic word and I would get right.
And it just pays back and you bet your life with gratch marks. It has nothing to do with gratchro marks though.
So that one I believe I had it, and now I've forgotten.
Drunken speech, legato notes and casting aspersions.
Right, I guess I should answer sort of stal.
Slurtle, It's exactly right, yes, Slurtle, Well done, you got them.
All, Thank you, Greg. Excellent puzzle. Excellent puzzle. And it was medium hard but not too hard. It didn't make me seem too dumb getting me warmed up, all right, love it all right?
Well done?
That was fun. Hello puzzlers, and welcome to the Puzzler Podcast The Tablespoon of Starch in your Puzzle, Load of laundry linens. I am your host, AJ Jacobs, and I am here at the beautiful iHeart Studios, and we are live, well not really live. We are recording with Greg Pliska, your chief puzzle officer.
Hello Greg, Hello Aj. We we're live in the sense that we are in the same room instead of on zoom.
That's kind of what I meant. Thank you for clarify.
iHeart Studios. I'm confused about the starch. You put starch in your laundry.
Well, according to the Internet, I should if you want, like nice and stiff.
Like some little corn starch or that's.
What it said. That's yeah, it's not eating it. It's not for edible laundry to make it crisp. Crisp.
Yeah, it's like you would start your shirts back in the day when we wore shirts instead of T shirts and shorts and things like that.
Some people like a crisp on comfortable cloth. I am not one of them.
No, you prefer your organza. As we recall. Well, today today we're having cryptic Clue Class great in which if people don't want to participat in class, you can get a hall pass and go down the hall. But those of us who are here to play, we're going to talk about We've done a series of these on different ways that clues are written for Crypto crosswords.
And cryptic crosswords are the British crosswords that are super tricky.
Super tricky, super fun well and traditionally, especially in the American version of cryptics, but even in the British the clue has two parts. It's got like a regular definition, just like a crossword clue, and then it's got some wordplay part, got it. And in this case the wordplay is all going to be charades like we do sometimes where you take a word and divide it into components and then clue each of those components.
Ah, okay, okay, because sometimes the wordplay is anagrams.
Sometimes it's those we did some hidden ones where there's a phrase with the word hit it inside it. In this case, it's just charade. So the clue is going to give you a definition for the answer and then the parts, you know, definitions for parts of God, yeah, I mean I can give you. I give you an example.
I would love an example.
Uh, military headquarters costume party is a kind of sporting event.
Oh my goodness, okay, military headquarter.
So yeah, I'll work this one through. It's the example, right, military headquarters costume party is a kind of sporting event. So you split the clue into two parts. Kind of sporting event is the straight clue, right, So you're looking for a kind of sporting event, and then this is the charade part Military headquarters costume party. Right, A military headquarters is a base and a costume party is a ball. So base is a kind of sporting event. Very clever, okay, right, And typically in cryptics, also get the length of the answer, so you would know that that's an eight letter answer you're looking for.
So are you going to give us?
Yeah, length to like that. But we'll work through these. The key is always looking for where's the straight definition either the beginning of the end right, and then the rest is just the word right.
Well, I like that you're on my side or pretending to.
I like to pretend to be on your side. Also, as a celebration of summer, all of these answers are going to be things associated with summertime. Okay, fun, So all right, your first one taxi available for vacation accommodation and it's a five letter answer.
Okay, So taxi available.
For what was vacation accommodation?
So I'm guessing that vacation accommodation is the straight.
Yep, yep, very good. And I'll also add that four is just a linking word stuck in the middle. Okay, sometimes they have these extra words. You can ignore that. So anyway, go on, why did you think vacation accommodation was the.
Well, because taxi I think went immediately to cab and I'm like that's a good that's a good syllable. So wait, what was the middle part.
Taxi available for vacation accommodation. Okay, five letters.
So cab well, cab in is a vacation accommodation but available in Oh, I guess if you're in here available?
Yeah, the doctor is in. The doctor is available. Perfect, well done, See you got these?
I am wiping my brown with really.
Got one hundred. We should stop right there. Thanks for playing. Now come on, all right, we do some more. Here the chief puzzle officer yell for summer dessert.
Okay, here the chief puzzle officer yell for summer dessert.
Yes, and it's a two words, three letter word and a six and a five letter word, three letter word and a five letter word.
Oh, okay, a three letter because I was hoping for a four letter word.
Because correct, I'm going to get some four letter words. I see, because the chief is a.
Chief puzzle officer. Wait, I'm gonna I need to hear it again. I should have written.
Here the chief puzzle officer yell for summer dessert. All right.
Well, I'm guessing summer dessert is the straight ahead.
Yep, yep, it's three letters and five letters. The other thing I will tell you is by putting here in there that usually indicates it's finetic. So where the other one was spelling the words cab and the letters for in, this one's going to be the sound of the words matters.
Got it all right? Well, I think I reverse engineered it. I guess a summer dessert. That's three and five letters. But now let me try to figure out.
Why why that works? Right, So it's here the chief puzzle officer yell.
Oh, I scream because I very clever. Scream very good, so I scream even ice cream?
There it is? Yeah, good one all right? Here from the sublime to the ridiculous. Turd large in body of water?
Turd large in body of water?
Yes, as it happens in the summer. Sometimes it's a four letter word you're looking for.
Of course it is uh okay, well, I'm guessing body of water is the straight ahead blow. So, and a four letter one is there's lake, there's poo oh. Yeah, there it.
Is turd large in body of water?
So pooh? Would I like how you laugh at pooh?
It's automatically funny, and.
L is often for large, like on a T shirt. So pooh l uh and pool pool exactly? Very good?
Oh good? We should do if we should do some more of these. Here we go, react to the heat in Southwest Gorge.
Mmmm, okay, react to the heat in south Gorge.
Yes, and it's five letters.
Okay, Oh, I think I got it. Okay, very clever, very clever. I thought react to the heat might be because I'm thinking summer like that is something, and so southwest is often sw right straight up and gorge. Of course, I always thinking you wanted me to think of the sort of.
The canyon, grand Canyon or something, right, But no, it also means.
Oh, yes, you are very tricky. It also means to eat so s w eat or.
Sweat sweat to react to the heat. Brilliantly done, and brilliantly explained that you should do crossword class all the time.
Thank you for my gold star.
You've done so well. We're gonna do two more, all right, gold rush in a summer.
Month, okay, okay, okay.
And it's six letters.
Well, well, the good thing is there are only three yes, fair or maybe three and a half September count Well.
Technically it probably goes, but we think of yeah, there are three months we think of as the summer months.
So I was thinking July no, June. No, but August starts with au, which is the chemical symbol for gold.
Goal.
Yeah, so and what was the.
Middle gold rush in a summer month?
Interesting? So gushed, I guess is a synonym for rush.
Like a gust of wind. Could be a rush of wind.
Oh, very so. But it also, I mean, it's such a the clue itself is actually makes sense as a which is the art of it.
That is the art of good crypto clues, is that what we call the surface sense makes sense. Right, gold rush in a summer month sounds like a thing you could actually say. It's not too absurd, it's not crazy. Similar react to the heat in a southwest gorge. That feels like, yeah, you could do that.
And it is sweat, Yeah, sweat, exactly, love it.
Okay one ready, live with a German exclamation at the shore.
Okay, live with a German exclamation at the shore. So I'm guessing at the shore is the straight ahead clue?
Well and in fact, no, you're you're guessing right. But at isn't even at is just an extra linking word. So it's just the shore. It's a five letter answer you're looking for.
Ah, Okay, Well, now now I'm confused.
So it was live with a German exclamation at the shore.
Oh okay, it took me a second because the pronunciation is different. Pronunciation is so German exclamation. The only one I know is act is spelled a C H and then reverse engineered. So it's like what is ends with a H beach b e ah live is b A b ah.
Becomes beach brilliantly done, brilliantly well done, you're ready for the summer.
Ready to turn off my brain? That is yeah?
All right? So those are all made up wordle variants, right, But as we said at the beginning, there actually are all these variants of World I can't even say it, wordle that are really fun.
Yes, and they sort of sprouted up when wordles first came out. There was a huge boon. And I guess the news peg is that the New York Times does not like these wordle homages, or certainly not one. They don't like World World All, which yeah, a geography one, because they think it's too close and infringes the trademark. So they think. They filed a lawsuit soon.
Against that one, which is funny because there are others that are the exact same mechanism. They're the same gameplay. Ah, they have a different name right right, and those aren't getting suit.
I guess it's just yeah, it's very hard to trademark or patent.
The kind of gameplay exactly.
So what are some of your favorites?
Well, the World all is actually one of my favorites.
What do you like about it?
Well, I'm a geography not I love geography. And if you've played it, but you get to each day, you get a country outline and then you guess what country it is and what it does. I actually just played it the other day and save this. So you've got this country outline and you guess a country. So I started. I looked at this shape, which I can't possibly describe on the radio. Of course, it's shaped just like the country it is script, but I guess Zambia as my first right, kind of looks like Zambia. So it tells you. It told me that I am thirteen three hundred and eighty kilometers away.
Oh, interesting.
The country I want is to the there's a little left arrow meaning the country I'm looking for is to thirteen thousand kilometers west of Zambia. And it gives me a rating of thirty three percent. That's how close I am. So not good. So it's thirteen thousand kilometers west of Zambia.
I foolishly that's South America.
Does you are, yes, you are. You are wiser than I I put Guinea. So I just leapt across Africa, partly because I just don't know how long a kilometer is. If you said miles, I would have been fine. But kilometerated, so it was still eight thousand kilometers away.
Makes it a harder puzzle.
Then I jumped to Uruguay in South America, which is six thousand kilometers and you want to go to the northwest, jeeze. And that got me Columbia. It got a little farther you get up into Central America. I said Belize next, and that was two hundred and forty two kilometers off, very close. And the country you want is to the south west A good guess. It was actually Guatemala, southwest of Belize. And so but then the fun thing is then there are bonus rounds. So if I did that, then you get a round of guessing which the flag of the country. I think you guess the capital city, I guess the neighboring countries. So there's a it's a whole kind of deep dive into the geography of Guatemala.
Fascinating.
So I love that one.
Well, I'm gonna I chose a couple of my favorites and I'm gonna stick with the geography, okay. And there's one called Flaggle Flaggle where it's a flag and then you have to It shows you one sixth of the flag and you have to guess, based on like the partial flag, what the country is.
Does it show you like one corner?
It starts with a corner. It just like guess it opens it up more, uh huh. And I like it. I mostly like it because it gives me an excuse to relay this piece of trivia that my son Zane taught me over the weekend, which you may know, but apparently there are only two flags of of countries in the world that do not contain red, white, or blue. Only two flags in the world.
One of them is Libya or Jordan.
I don't think that's true, but I'm looking.
Oh white white, no white is on guy.
I think yeah, they have a white crescent and star.
Yeah, yeah, it's otherwise it's a green flag, right, it's just got the.
Well, no, it's got green. There is another one that.
Has about Jamaica green right.
Wow, that's impressively look at that. And it's the official interpretation is the sun. The land is green, the sun is yellow, and the people are strong and creative. So there you go. And the other one I think might be a little more of a challenge. Mauritania Morotina.
I'm a big I said geography, not. I used. I play sporkle all the time, you know, the sporkle. Yeah, and I tried. I got really good at it, and all the countries and their capitals, and I thought, I'm going to learn every flag in the world. It's impossible.
It's just someone must be No, I'm.
Sure people can do it. It's just there's no way to with countries. Right. If you're looking at a you know, the outline of South America, you've got a good sense of what the eleven or so countries could be there, right, right, and so you can you can. It's easier to memorize that stuff because there's contextual clues. Whereas the flags. Why, like you just said, there's a reason why Jamaica is those colors, right, But even those reasons don't help you remember the flags because they're they're so.
Well, isn't there a crossover? Isn't there a flag which has the silhouette of the country on it?
I think the flag of Cypress might Cyprus.
Yeah, Cypress might.
Have its silhouete on it. I think the United Nations flag might have.
Oh yeah, no, Cypress does exactly.
Right, So there there are some you can remember. Barbados is the one with the trident on it, because Barbados barbed is the main Barbados comes from the same root as the word for barbed uh, and so the trident.
Wow.
So there there are some you can remember because of that. But then you got which which red, blue and white configuration? Is this one exactly?
And then the Scandinavian countries are all the same.
Just like across with different colors.
All right, great, what's your next?
Well, going back to kind of the the original word word guessing, do you know absurdle? I do?
Absurdle is the it was on my long list? Yeah, so tell.
Well it's it's it's played just like wordle. You guess a five letter word. But what the algorithm does is find the word that is most distant from what you guessed, so the target is always changing. Right, So you guess something and it it. It eliminates all the words that could possibly be made with the letters you guessed, but you know and then it, and then you keep guessing to try to pin it down, and eventually you do. You can. You can do it in five or six guesses. Often if you instead of trying to guess the same letter a lot, you always want to guess new letters to eliminate them from the possibilities. Right.
That is such an interesting genre of puzzle where the answer changes, the goal is always moving. I'm trying to think if there are other examples of that.
There probably are, right, but it feels not very fair, really, But it's surprisingly At first it sounds absurd, absurd that you'll just never be able to get it, But in fact, when you make a guess, it'll tell you none or one of those letters is in the word, which means you've now eliminated some letters. And you just keep eliminating letters and eventually you're pinned down to something. Got it, whatever it might be.
I had on my list, and these are not actually my favorite, but I just I think that it is a funny rule of technology that whatever the technology is, it is always going to turn no very quickly. Like that, that's the internet is for porn. So we have lootle and we have sweared ale, which are both the same idea, like naughty words.
Yeah, yeah, I would agree. I wouldn't put those on my favorites, but they are fun that they came up with. Well, similarly on the list of not my favorite, but funny that it exists. You know, letter letteral, what's that? It's a guess a letter. It's absurd, It's ridiculous. You just have twenty six tries to get a letter and you put one in there. No, not on my favorite list, Give me another one that's on your favorite list.
Well. I am a movie fan, as listeners might know. So there are a ton of movie wordle like games. There's there's one that's kind of newish in I think it's in Vulture.
Yeah, in New York New York magazine, right Vulture, Yeah, Vulture a spinoff of New Yorker as it.
Is, I think so. Yeah, And this is a movie grid game, so they will give you a grid with here I'm looking up. Oh yeah, so it's a grid and you have on the top it'll have things like in Today's we've got city or state in the title, three or more words in the title, and then down the side you might have actor Sarah Jessica Parker or Owen Wilson. So the idea is you have to match the fill in the grid sort of like.
So you need a movie with a food in the title that has Sarah Jessica Parker in it or whatever.
I'm trying to think of that.
Such a thing exists. I just made it up quickly.
Yeah, so I thought that that's very clever.
The other one I wanted to mention is simantleimantle. No, it's you are guessing words and you get a ranking for how close your word is in meaning to the target word. That's good, it's impossible. But I've just opened up samantle giving a word, any.
Word, any word. I'm going to give podcast.
Podcast that's a good word. Let's see, well, podcasts similarity to the target word is negative three point eight one, which means it's very very far, like they give you hot, warm and cold than cold is far.
Pod silence is the opposite of podcast silence.
See but see they might silence, Oh that was a good. Silence gets a twelve point sixty two similarity out of one hundred cold out of one hundred.
That's not great.
It's not great. I mean, that's amazing.
What about banana, Like, if I just go, I'm.
Totally banana is thirteen point thirteen, So you've actually improved. I'm getting the still cold.
So we're gonna do this and we're gonna get it up by one point every time.
But it's like, what is so banana is banana close? It's not really, it's far. It's not as far as silence and podcasts are.
Right, so interesting? I mean, I wonder what the map of meanings is that they used and where they got that map, because.
Yeah, there's a good article about somewhere about how the whole thing works that I haven't fascinating. I don't have up in front of it, but you know it is a fascinating Why how is this meaning related to that one?
I also there is another one that I forget the exact name of, but it's sort of in the word guessing genre where they have a Wikipedia article and you have to guess.
Yes, what it's called. Yes, it's blench of words are blacked out and you try to guess the words that build in there. That is a fun one, I agree one. The last one I want to mention is subway deal. I don't know it, which I just discovered. It's obviously it's only for New Yorkers or there's a Hong Kong version too. It is. It gives you. It gives you two destinations. So travel from one hundred and sixty first Street Yankee Stadium to twenty third Street, and you use two transfers. So you guess the three subways lines you would take. Right, I'm going to take the four train, and I'm going to transfer to the A train and then the two train, and you enter that and it says the A train was right, but the other two were wrong. It's not for anyone except people who ride the subway or love the subway.
Right, Okay, that is a good one. That is good one. Do they have one for buses Maybe that's.
A bustle, yeah, bustle.
Well this is great, so check all those out. But of course you got to stick to listening to the puzzler, because you know that is we do all sorts of things like this, and oh do you have an extra credit for.
The course I do as always. The extra credit is the myth of Sisyphus rhinoceros and waiting for GOODO.
Okay, it took me a minute. It took me a minute, but I think I got it U. And whether or not you the listener, got it, you can always tune in next time to find out. And by the way, if you do have thirty seconds, maybe forty, please rate the Puzzler on your favorite podcast platform. It makes a huge difference in helping people find us. And we will meet you here tomorrow for more puzzling puzzles that won't puzzle you puzzlingly.
Hey puzzlers. Greg Pliska here up from the Puzzle Lab with the extra credit answer from our previous episode. We played the Good Bad puzzle suggested by a listener and your extra credit clue was a German spa town in heaven. And the answer, of course is good and Gooden because that famous German spa town is Bodden Bodden or Baden Baden if you say it that way. Enjoy your time at the spa and your time with the Puzzler. Thanks for playing along with the team here at The Puzzler with Aj Jacobs. I'm Greg Kliska, your chief puzzle Officer. Our executive producers are Neelie Lohman and Adam Neuhouse of New House Ideas and Lindsay Hoffman of iHeart Podcasts. The show is produced by Jody Averragan and Brittany Brown of Roulette Productions, with production support from Claire Biddegar Curtis. Our associate producer is Andrea Schoenberg. The Puzzler with Aj Jacobs is a co production with New House Ideas and is distributed by post Haste car Id Get your car Id quickly or listen to iHeart Podcasts, the real distributor of this podcast. If you want to know more about puzzling puzzles, please check out the book The Puzzler by Aj Jacobs, a history of puzzles that The New York Times called fun and funny. It features an original no puzzle hunt by yours Truly, and is available wherever you get your books and puzzlers. For all your puzzling needs, go visit the Puzzler dot com. See you there,