The Puzzler with A.J. JacobsHello, Puzzlers! Puzzling with us today: crossword constructor Brendan Emmett Quigley! Check out his new game for The Boston Globe: Align!
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 AI” 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.
Oh a, puzzlers, let's start with a quick puzzle. Today's puzzle is actually a sound puzzle, a mystery sound. Can you identify what the following sound is? So there you go the answer and more puzzling goodness after the break. Hello puzzlers, and welcome back to the Puzzler Podcast, The Charizard ex and your Pokemon Puzzle deck.
Whoa deep cut? Okay, yeah, well not a deep cut. So everybody knows Pokemon.
Everyone loves Pokemon. I'm your host, A J. Jacobs, and I am here with Pokemon hating chief. I just don't know Pokemon agnostic chief puzzle. I'm sorry, You're right, all right, that's right Greg. Before the break, we played a mystery sound, and I think you are familiar because our guests.
That is a hundred monkeys writing the works of Shakespeare.
There one hundred very smart monkeys.
Monkeys. No, that is the Boston Typewriter Orchestra.
That is correct, which is as you might have guessed, and orchestra whose instruments are typewriters.
And they're in Boston, and then it's.
In Boston, correct, and it is probably the premier typewriter orchestra in the world. I can go out on a limb and say that, and it just so happens that our guest is a member of that orchestra. And in his spare time he also makes awesome puzzles. He is a legend in the puzzling old He has written dozens of New York Times crossword puzzles, He has authored over thirty books, and he has a new very fun daily word puzzle at The Boston Globe Boston Globe dot com called a line A l I g N. Please welcome Brendan emit quickly.
Thanks for having me. Guys, so we want to.
Talk about your puzzle, and Greg has a puzzle that he's gonna give you in just a minute. But first I want to mention that you are a prominent character in the book The Puzzler by Greg Correct plus Guy and AJ Jacobs.
Yeah.
Indeed, so you are my guide in the chapter on British style crossword puzzles called cryptics, which you love because they are heavy on the wordplay. And my favorite part is you introduced me to one cryptic puzzle from the Spectator newspaper. Yep, that was so hard. You described it with sex several phrases, including colonoscopy, orgon transplant, and a hair shirt.
Yeah, those all scanned. So how did you decide to reach out to me for the cryptic one. I'm like, as American as it gets. I know, I like it. I enjoy solving them, and I've sold a few to the Times of London. But I mean, like, there's so many there's so many other people who would have been better, like you know, guys through that field. I mean, I'm honored by the way, don't get me wrong. It's just sort of curious because.
Well two things. First of all, I don't think anyone else would have used colonoscopy, organ transplant, and hairshirt, so I think I did right that way. Secondly, I just called you to talk puzzles and we happen to turn to cryptics, and that's how it happened. Uh. Now, your puzzles, by the way, have been mentioned on episodes of The Colbert Report and Jeopardy, so I'm curious. I saw that on.
Your website some other I think, like, yeah, some football there was one reference.
Well what were your mentions on those two shows?
I can't remember the Colbert one, but I'm pretty sure I had put in truthiness which was some neologism that he had coined and I put it in a puzzle, and I think someone brought it to his attention and he mentioned it.
You know.
Of course he called out Will Schortz, not me. So that's like a recurring theme, is that it's almost never Will.
I love Will to death.
He's awesome, but Will blocks the sun for a lot of us puzzle people. You know, like whenever people talk about puzzles, they go like, oh, Will Shortz, he's the guy who makes all the crotch er. Well, no, but his name's up there. So but anyway, so Steven I think called him out. And Jeopardy again they reached out to Will. They said, hey, can we use some clues and answers from across or it? And he's like, yeah, that'd be great, And he chose my puzzle and he read some of the clues and some of the answers. Of course, once again he didn't mention my name. We're seeing a theme here. One time that.
My name was mentioned was I had made a puzzle.
Will was had the idea during the couple of years back to pair celebrities with regular contributors at the times. So I made one with John Lithgow and he went on Fallon to talk about the Crown or for something more important than talking about crosswords. But Jimmy mentioned, hey, it looks like you just wrote across and John was like, oh yeah, I made a puzzle with Brandon mc quigley and.
Jimmy Fallon didn't know what to do with it. No one in the audience knew what to do with it.
He's like, Wow, that's a great name, and then they moved on to something much more interesting.
So before we get to Greg's puzzle, I did want to bring up your new puzzle for the Boston Globe called A Line, and thank you describe it for folks.
Well, So it's the Globe last year started a puzzle page to like a lot of other newspapers globally, and A Line is their first original game. It's basically like a mini crossroad with a jigsaw combination. There's no clues to it. I've sort of locked in letters in the puzzle and then all the rest are sort of scrambled up and it's up to you to sort of put them back together so that you have five words reading across, five different ones reading down and that's basically it.
I actually opened up Today's on my computer.
What do you got, Greg, Well, so it's a.
Five by five grid, right, and the letters in the middle, like the one of the diagonals, are all locked into place, along with a few others. And then there's a bunch of circles with letters on them that are kind of floating around. They all have a single letter, one has two letters in it, and you know, I look at it, I go what am I supposed to do? Then I realized, like, right across the middle, we have a movable letter, so a blank, and then we have pH I and then another blank. So we need a five letter word that has phi in the middle of it, and AJ. You can think of one, can't you?
A five letter word with phi aphid ah.
Or aphid is how I pronounce it, but either way. So I dragged the A in there, and I dragged the D over there, and boom, it very satisfyingly flashes orange and those lock in too. So now AJ, coming down the middle, we have b h O right in the center with a blank in front and a blank at the end.
Oh okay, I think I know that.
Would you put there?
This is this is how I feel about aphids or aphids, I abhor them.
It fits into place. It's very exciting, and so then you continue like that, look at what's satisfying about it? And I don't know if you do it on mobile, if it vibrates, but when you lock them into place, it all goes flashes and locks those letters, and it's very satisfying and it feels like you can do it methodically, work your way through it without it feeling right now. It doesn't feel too easy or too hard. It feels like, oh I made some progress. I can keep playing around with this.
It is excellent dopamine inducing. So thank you, Brandon, No, thank you.
We wanted to try to make something that would be approachable sort of in that mid spot.
Well that's great. Well, people should definitely check out the game. But in the meantime, we also make puzzles here at the Puzzler, and Greg has created one just for you. So, Greg, what do you got?
This is a puzzle based upon your initials b EQ back as you are known known by and basically I've found words or phrases that contain those three letters in a row. Okay, and I'm going to give you a clue to that word or phrase that somehow includes you in it, and then you give me the answer her.
All right, let's do it.
That's you know, not complicated, and there's not a lot of these in the world. B EQ as an uncommon letter combination. So you know, I don't even want to give an example. We're just going to die right in. So this is what you might say to a noisy audience at a Boston typewriter orchestra concert.
Let me think, should you please be louder? Because is it's worth listening to you? No, it's the Yeah, it's the opposite. Okay, that would be be quiet.
Be quiet, exactly exactly. How about the verb for when you leave something to someone in your will?
Okay, so okay, listeners, I'm giving you a couple of seconds here, and that would be bequeath.
Bequeath Yes, very good, very good? All right. When you have a cookout, you use this alternate spelling I made.
I made this in a crossroad for the New York Times, and I'm just like a complete fool. I thought, I, honest to God, when I made it, thought that that was how you normally spell it.
Right.
A lot of restaurants use this spelling.
And every everyone was like, why on earth did you use? Why did you spell barbecue with a Q? You know it's in the C.
And I'm like, oh Jesus, you're right, Oh well I've catched that check. Yeah, it's great.
You know, it's got your initials hidden in it and a lot of restaurants. It's an alternate spelling that people do.
Is it. I guess I don't.
Know with hyphens, you know, bar BQ and come down to oh.
Yeah, sure yeah when it's when they when they phonetically spell it out, for sure, yeah, but like like B A R B E.
Q U E I. Anyway, it was a fit of madness from everyone that.
It worked out. This is a less common word. But if you lived within five to fifteen degrees latitude north or south, you'd be in this kind of zone that I don't know, not a tropical zone.
Oh, sub equatorial equatorial boom, very good.
Nice, okay, go on, all right, all right, I have a tu about this one. This is a part of speech that the word months is in this sentence. We have waited months for the new Brendan Emmett Quigley Crossword book, So months in that sentence is not a word that normally modest modifies a verb, but it's like one. So therefore it is this. This is a dictionary nature phrase.
Though I've never heard, this is actually in the dictionary.
Actually in the dictionary.
All right.
Have you guys ever done like Frank Longo's vowel less crosswords? Yes, they're incredible, but there's always it's like one answer that's similar to this one, Greg and like because he doesn't have the vowels in it, he hold your.
Hand, so the clue. Yeah, that's that's sort of what it sounded like right there.
But that's what I'm doing.
You've held my head. I have no idea what on earth could possibly be?
You guys can work together on this. What's the word that normally modifies a verb?
Well, I was thinking, like, uh, the I'm looking for the suffix like you use with kafka. Is that? Am I in the right?
No, because that's got e s Q. You want just equsque adverb. Adverb is the first part and it's like an adverb. It functions exactly like an adverb.
Oh, so I was stuck on verbesque and I was very happy with that. I'm just going to stick with that even though something is verb verb verb equivalent.
Ver verb equivalent, adverb equivalent.
Oh, my goodness, that's a word.
That's a thing.
Yeah, I have a feeling if we were here till the heat death of the universe, I still wouldn't have.
Well, that's insane here Now I'm going to use that word every day.
Yeah, you're gonna be like, that's just an adverb equivalent. I have a couple more of more of these that are totally made up. Now, these are no relationship, actual things in the world. This is the movement for the rights of baby sheep. Uh, lamb equality, lamb equality exactly all right. This is what you ask your partner when you aren't sure what to wear. H like this tie or this tie? Should I put this dress on or that one? I'm not sure which item from my collection of clothes I should use, So I'm asking you.
How about babe, quit it I have.
That's what your partner says when they're tired of hearing you ask.
These I don't know what do you got?
When he said items from my and I thought wardrobe, wardrobe question that wardrobe questions?
Very good, very good?
Can I hit the heat Death of the Universe joke.
Yeah, always always good here.
I'm like fashion illiterate. I'm a T shirt.
So you don't have a lot of wardrobe questions. God you have the answers. Yeah, nothing. Well, when you're crawling, when you're crawling between bars in Boston, you need to have this kind of balance. Okay, another word for bar pub equilibrium maybe pub equilibrium. Yes, that's brilliantly done. Okay, so I got one more. This is a line of people waiting to get onto London's transport system.
That's that would be the tube.
Q the tube Q exactly, well done, Well done, all right, Brendan, well done. You didn't take TI the end of the heat Death of the Universe.
And we I mean you had to help me.
Well, we are thrilled to have you. Regardless, people should check out a line A L I G N at the Boston Globe. Your website is Brendan Emmett Quigley dot com. That is correct, two ms, two t's, and and before we go, I just give me how many typewriters are in the typewriter orchestra.
Current lineup has uh seven? Okay, but we've we've been up to eight. It just depends.
We're sort of like Hotel California in the sense that you know, once you become a band member, you never really leave, and so it's like, you know, if you there's like core members at any given time, but you know, certain alumni come back over the years.
So I love it.
Well, check it out on YouTube. It is gorgeous and danceable and it is Yeah, it's got a beat. And Greg, do you have an extra credit for the folks at home?
I do, I do so for the folks at home. Your extra credit clue is coins for really tiny organisms.
Coins for really tiny organisms. Okay, think about that. Thank you Greg, Thank you Brendan, Thank you listeners. And if you like the show, might I recommend our Instagram feed at Hello Puzzlers. We post original puzzles, lots of other fun stuff visual puzzles, and of course we'll meet you here tomorrow for more puzzling puzzles that will puzzle you puzzling.
Hey, Puzzlers, it's Greg Pliska up from the Puzzle alb with the extra credit from our previous episode. We had Will Pearson and Mango Hot Ticketerter here with us to play some puzzle, and we did a game called I Heartbeat, in which every answer was a word or phrase or title that had heart in it, but we changed it by putting eye in front of heart. And your extra credit clue was this, this is a David Lynch movie about untamed animals running loose at your podcast production office or at your podcast headquarters. And yes, that is the movie Wild at iHeart.
Based the course on Wild at Heart.
I hope you enjoyed it, and we'll see here tomorrow for some more puzzling puzzles that will puzzle you puzzlingly
