The Puzzler with A.J. JacobsHello, Puzzlers! AJ has a new book out! You can order "The Year of Living Constitutionally" right now!.
Puzzling with us today: center for the Toronto Raptors and puzzle lover, Jakob Poeltl! Check out his daily NBA player guessing game Poeltl!
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, it's AJ. Before today's puzzling puzzle, a quick announcement, if you are in the New York area, come see us live. The Puzzler is doing a night of puzzling on Wednesday, May twenty ninth at the Midnight Theater in New York. We did one of these shows a few months ago and it was a blast, So if you come, you'll get plenty of puzzles, jokes, jests, prizes, audience participation, more puzzles. Chief Puzzle Officer Greg Pliskel will be there special guest Faith Sailing, So please go to the puzzler dot com to get tickets. We've also put a link in the show notes and we hope to see there. Thanks. Hello puzzlers, Welcome to the Puzzler Podcast, the number one hit on your local puzzle FM station. I am your host, AJ Jacobs, and today's guest is the great Yakov Pertol, a superstar and center for the Toronto rafters and puzzle fan. Welcome, Jakob, Thank you very much.
How you doing.
We are good and we're excited to have you today. I want to talk just a little bit about accents and pronunciation your As we mentioned last episode, your name is spelled differently than it is pronounced. It's at least in English it's p oe lt l, but pronounced pardle. What is the worst mispronunciation you've ever heard of your own name?
Oh?
Man, there's been so many I tend to forget, but POULETTI I think I've heard, uh that one.
That's Italian come up?
Sounds like pasta.
Yeah, getting to the Italian realm here, I mean.
Yeah, Like I said, there's been so many.
Well, all right, well we will we will stick with pearl. And is it it's pronounced that way? Because I think in the original spelling, which is jerreman in there is uh umlots Is that right?
Make? Make? Which is so?
Which brought up a question should we be saying for Motley Cruz, is it really Mertley Kru.
Well, you're gonna have to You're gonna have to ask them about it. I don't know if they have German roots.
Yeah, I know it was. They seem to throw around umlots and uh and names like hergan Durs. That's that's the one that there is. Well, anyway, I could talk about umlotz all day, but this puzzle is not about umlotz. This is about a different kind of foreign pronunciation, specifically Canadian pronunciation. Because you play for the Toronto Raptors, you played there before, you've lived there a couple of years. Have you adopted any of the Canadian accent?
I mean, I think you'd have to ask other people, but I'm sure.
How do you say boot?
About?
Are you in a boot?
We'll say about I don't say a book. Well, I think for the most part it's still very American, but yeah.
Maybe maybe a couple more years you're there. Yeah, yeah, Well I looked it up. I didn't know it has a name, Canadian raising. It's when you uh change the ow to an ooh. And so that is the theme of our puzzle. So I'm going to give you a clue and the answer is going to be a word that an American will have the ow sound, but you, since you are playing for the Raptors, have to answer it.
Oh.
So if I said the clue is when all the lights go out in Ottawa, that is not a blackout, that is a black oot. So you have to say black call it it's a boot time.
I'll give my my best Canadian accent, hopefully I don't embarrass myself.
Well, they the Canadians are not right, They're not they want Uh this is where the Toronto Blue Jays hang out in between innings.
The dug oats.
Yeah, that's it. The oot. Uh what about a pig in Quebec might look for truffles with this body part?
Oh would that be the.
Yes?
That is it the snoot? What about this one's a little trigger. If you're driving your car to Tim Horton's Coffee Donuts, you might if you might encounter this instead of a stop sign or a traffic light, you might do a.
Maybe a round of boats.
Yes, around a moot around about roat something somewhere in there in that valley.
All right.
Lastly we have this is a cabbage based dish that you might put on top of Canadian hot dogs.
Mm hmm.
Interesting fermented. I feel I believe it's fermented.
Not a big hot talk guy. I was speaking relish.
I think it's actually German. I think it's a German Uh.
Oh, okay, no, I think I got it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I wasn't thinking cabbage. It's probably sour.
Kraut, Yes, sour krout, sour cruit, sour cruit to get the full To get the full points, you have to do sour cruit. Yes, well you did great, yack alf you are practically Canadian. I really I feel it like you are. I appreciate you can pass.
You almost stumped me with that last one.
Good.
Yeah, it was too easy. You did fantan. Where can people find more?
Uh?
Yaka purdle?
Well?
Uh, the the only thing I got is this a puzzle game that I'm involved in, which is called Perle, actually named named after me. It's an NBA guessing game, kind of similar to Wirdle, which is where the name comes from. And yeah, it's a it's a daily challenge for an NBA guessing game. You're guessing different NBA players and you're getting close and closer with clues.
So yeah, if people want to check that out, I think it's a lot of fun.
If you know a little bit about basketball, it's it's a great, great way to get your day started in the morning.
It is great. And it's yeah, you guess the player and then it tells you do you have the right conference or team or is.
Exactly It's a similar with the gray green and then yellow hints like when you're close, you get a yellow. If you got it right on the dot, you get the green, and if you're so far away it stays great out.
So yeah, and it is a lovely puzzle coincidence that your name rhymes with wordles. Yeah, wordle and purdle exactly.
All right.
So before we wrap up, a little extra credit for the puzzlers at home. This is the disease that you might get if you eat too much rich Canadian food, perhaps Montreal smoked meat. You have too much Montreal smoked me, you might get this. Oh, before we go, one other thing, I want to thank miss Haley Folman, who is a teacher for Bartlett and South Elgin High schools in Illinois, and her high school class. Miss Fulman made the Puzzler podcast a morning activity for her students and she said they killed it. So thank you, Miss Fullman. Thank you to students and everyone listening. Please subscribe, rate us, and come back tomorrow for more puzzling puzzles that will puzzle you puzzlingly.
Hey, puzzlers, it's your chief puzzle Officer, Greg Pliska here up from the Puzzle Lab with the extra credit from our previous show. We played b Ball recall with Jakub Pearl. The clue we gave you was, this is where the Houston basketball team keeps its wallets and keys. We're looking for two rhyming words, and those, of course, are the Rockets' pockets. So put a rocket in your pocket and shoot on. Back to the Puzzler Podcast tomorrow
