Hello, Puzzlers! AJ has a new book coming out! You can pre-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.
Subscribe to The Puzzler podcast wherever you get your podcasts!
"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 Three Cherries in a Row in your puzzle slot machine. I'm your host, A J. Jacobs, and we are in the middle of a very special week which is all about US history and the Constitution, not that you have to know about either. And it's an honor, Thank you very much Puzzler producers and Greg. It's in honor of my new book, The Year of Living Constitutionally, which comes out this week. Huzza. And I'm very excited about it. I hope you like it too. It's available at all bookshopps, not shoppies, books shops right. And it's about my quest to try to live by the literal meaning of the Constitution, muskets and quill pens and all to try to discover how we should treat the constants and how we can save America.
Hello Greg, Well, Hello Aj. I'm glad. Should I read more reviews today? Do we have reviews?
I do have more, but I'm.
Always happy to do it. I'm excited. I'm What I'm excited about is that once this week is over, I'm allowed to get my own copy of the book and read it.
That's exactly right, Yes, I didn't want to no spoilers for you. So there is lots in the book that has nothing to do with the puzzles. And in fact, some of our puzzles have are just loosely affiliated, yeah, with.
The Constitution exactly. Well, this one is more less than loosely affiliated, because I know that the book is a deep dive into the Constitution, but I bet you haven't learned everything.
That is for sure. In fact, that was a big what My favorite founding father, Ben Franklin, was very big on the older he got, the less certain he was of his own opinions. So if I mess this puzzle up, I'm just following, just.
Following exactly, And what could be what could be better? Well, this is about a little known alternative part of the Constitution called the Bill of Mites. Okay, right. It was a set of amendments like the framers thought they might use, each of which rhymes coincidentally with something from the amendments and the actual Bill of Rights.
I love it all right, I didn't know about this.
This is an educational show for everyone exactly. But for example, if I told you that the first amendment of the Bill of Mites includes the right to sunbathe, build sand castles, and wade into the surf anywhere you want. That would be known as freedom of It would be freedom of beach.
Oh, freedom of beach.
Of speech, it's always going to rhyme with something in one of the amountments. Right, So the right to sunbathe is freedom of beach.
And I do know that Ben Franklin again would air base, which is what he called when you got nude and stood in front of a window to let the air wash over him, which he thought was healthy.
So there is also something nobody wanted to think about this morning, Ben Franklin. Nude was all right, but freedom of beach for Ben Franklin and everyone, All right, here's your first one. Also included in the first Amendment is this right allowing urban birds the opportunity to do pilates and other workout routines.
Oh freedom. Oh wait, now I'm confused, because exercise exercise of religion, free exercise of religion is in the free exercise.
But if it's birds, it's rhyming with that urban birds in particular.
Oh, freedom exercise of pigeons.
Free exercise of the pigeons. I love it all the exercise they want fair enough.
That sounds listen, I think I think that right is in play.
All right, here's the next one. The eighth Amendment includes protection against this extreme weather.
All protection against extreme weather. Okay, Cruel and unusual punishments is in I believe.
And you also can't set excessive.
A veil, excessive bail, excessive.
Hair, excessive hail, exactly.
Excessive all that. Yes, I wish we could have an amendment against that, but that's a tough one to control.
It's hard to control. I wish I could say, look out the window now, that same pigeon is being pelted giant hail. But it's not true. All right. The third Amendment deals with this process, the division of instant coffee into four equal parts.
Okay, well, I'm thinking the third Amendment is about that you do not have to quarter soldiers without your consent, and in this case quartering men providing a housing for them, because that was a huge pro problem in the Revolution before the Revolutionary Wars, that the British would run and they'd eat you out of house and home. And by the way, I did as part of my living constitutionally, I did provide quarters. I consented to provide quarters. We had a soldier living with us for a.
Fewtures, someone you knew or just a random He was a.
Friend of a friend of a friend, and my wife was a little confused.
It says, you.
Don't have to, but if you consent to, why not? Why not? It seemed like a nice thing to do. They were very into hospitality, all right.
So ordering, not quartering soldiering instant coffee into four equal parts ordering.
I'm thinking instant coffee is Sanka quartering?
You know I should I said instant, but I guess they make all kinds of coffee.
Maxwell House, I'm thinking one of the Starbucks. Wait, so it rhymes with soldiers.
It rhymes with soldiers. Yes, the quartering of folders, which I apologize to foldiers. They don't make just instant coffee, all kinds of great coffee, which would be happy to advertise on our podcast.
And by the way, coffee is a more American beverage than tea because people, after the taxes on tea and the Boston Tea Party, it was considered more patriotic to drink coffee. But you are a tea drinker.
No, I'm not a tea drinker.
Don't.
How dare you someone in the.
Somebody that's not me? I'm a coffee guy. What do you think this CuPy? Is this? This coffee? Come could sponsor our podcast?
That's right.
If they did, I'd tell you what it is. They haven't, so I'm not all right.
Uh.
The sixth Amendment covers a lot of things regarding court cases, as well as this right to move quickly through the supermarket, a.
Right to well, the real one, I believe is a right to a speedy trial. So this would be a right to a speedy eye.
A right to a speedy aisle. Now my question, and I'm sure this is in the book, like, what did speedy mean back then?
Well, that is the big question. What that is one of the many issues that I explore. What do these words mean back then? I'm not sure what speedy I mean. It was a much slower time, so speedy might have been months. I do know cruel and unusual punishment, which is in also in the Bill of Rights. At the time, they considered pillory the pillar where you stick your hand stocks. Yeah, yeah, oh, I learned there is a difference between stocks and pillary. I believe stocks have your feet in as well, and pillary is just the head and the.
God, so stocks would be cruel and unusual. Pillary is not fine. As long as your feet are free, you're fine.
But yeah, that was considered. So if you're a full on originalist, Scalia said Scalia himself. Antonin Scalia said that if you are a hardcore originalist, you might have to accept that that is not cruel or unusual according to the Constitution. So it's a fast which which of course not even Scalia thought was a good idea. He did not want to go back to the.
Hilary stocks in the pillory. But in pursuit of your book, you had the kids pillaried on a regular basis when they did something.
I actually I pillaried myself for five minutes as part, just to see what it was like.
But well, fortunately here on the Puzzler podcast, we don't pillary anyone. Nice. Great, Well that's that's what I got for you.
Those were great, Those were great. Those were great additions to the Bill of Rights. And by the way, there was a big debate over what should be said in the Bill of Rights, and some people who opposed the Constitution wanted a lot more rice to be spelled out so much maybe the right to free beach, so much so that Noah Webster, who was one of the affiliated with the Founding Fathers, he was very snarky and he wrote this thing, what's next? Is there gonna are they gonna demand the right to sleep on your back as well as your side? So I said, look him up in the dictionary and you'll find under starkey that I like that. But yes, that was lovely. I love it. Do you have a extra credit?
I do?
I do have an extra credit. This one is has got actually got two rhymes in it. Two words in the original are rhymed with to get the answer here. It's about the fourth Amendment of the Bill of Mights. It protects people against two things, really turbulent subway rides and uncalled for vacation.
I actually don't know it. I'll have to think about it, but I love that well. In addition, there's one more right that I would like to offer listeners to take advantage of, which is a special offer for puzzler listeners that I wrote a lot of the book and many letters with a quill pen and original inc because I was trying to live in the eighteenth century. And I would love to write a nameplate, a book plate so that you can stick on your book with your name and a little greeting from me with a quill pen. If you are interested, please go to the puzzler dot com website that's THT puzzler dot com and scroll to the bottom of the page where it says contact Puzzler headquarters with a box for messages. If you put in your name and your snail mail address there, I will write you a personalized book plate with my goose quill pen and send it off to you via snail mail within a couple of fortnights. But with that I will say adieu. And I think they said.
That back then in France they did.
Yeah, Well, Jefferson loved the US a Francophile, so he probably said. And please subscribe to the Puzzler podcast and buy the book if you like. I thought. I I'm happy with it. I think you might like it. And we will meet you here tomorrow for more puzzling puzzles that will puzzle you puzzlingly.
Hello puzzlers, this is Chief puzzle Officer Greg Pliska here with the extra credit answer from our previous episode. We did fact or fiction Constitution edition, and your extra credit was which of these is not an actual part of the Constitution, the power to appoint government sanctioned pirates or the power to regulate hot air balloons. And if you get it right, I meant to say, we will send you your very own pirate or hot air balloon. The correct answer, the one that is part of the Constitution is the power to appoint government sanctioned pirates. And down here in the puzzle lab, I invited aj to come down to the lab to explain this a little bit.
Yes, well, it's good to be here. It's much more luxurious than I thought.
So Yes.
In the Article one, section eight of the Constitution, Congress has provided power to grant letters of mark and reprisal, which is basically government sanctioned piracy. The politer word is privateering. But the idea was during the Revolution US did not have much of a navy, so they outsourced it. If you had a fishing boat, you could put cannons on and go out and capture British boats and keep the sherry and the uniforms whatever they had. And without that we would not have a country. Because we privateers captured about two thousand British vessels during the Constitution, so thank you privateers.
All right, well done everyone, and we'll see you here again next time.