Hello, Puzzlers! This week, we're gifting you a grab bag of puzzles from some of our favorite guests. Today: tech journalist and host of "Hard Fork," Kevin Roose!
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 powerful gust in your puzzle sales. I am your host, AJ Jacobs In. Today's guest is the great Kevin Russ, technology columnists for The New York Times, host of the podcast Hard Fork, and of course, most importantly, one time intern of me. AJ Jacobs. Welcome, Kevin.
Thank you, good to be here.
Kevin. Are you I don't even remember. Are you a puzzler at all? Like crossword?
I am? Yeah.
I grew up in a puzzling family, and my grandfather would do the New York Times Crossford puzzle regularly, and so I grew up sort of watching and learning at his feet. And yeah, I do the Crossford puzzle. I usually start on about Thursday, try to.
Do it through the weekend.
And I still do it like the old fashioned way in pen on paper.
Wow, there were a lot of flexes there. You got the pen and you got the weekend.
I don't have that many skills, AJ, So so I have to flex about the crossword puzzle.
A little bit.
But I thought it was great.
My brother is so much better than me. He does the cryptic crosswords.
Have you done that?
Yes?
Yep?
Crazy I'm not smart enough for that, So you have to if you want a the real puzzler, you have to interview my brother.
All right, all right, I am a fan of his, I've met him before. Well, today we are not doing crossword. We're doing another kind of puzzle that we like. Here the puzzler called the dit Lloyd. And have you heard of that?
No, it is.
It's a classic puzzle that combines words and numbers. So dit Lloyd is a phrase that is clued using only numbers and abbreviations. So, for instance, if I said five two hundred eighty f in an M, so that is a clue for two hundred and eighty feet in a mile, which is crazy that that is the number of feet in a mile, like I mean, get with a metric system. Come on, sorry, sorry, America, I love you. All right, you're ready.
Wait, you just wrote a whole book about the Constitution and American exceptionalism. You have to defend our crazy imperial system.
I'd love most of it's US, and literally I think it's three countries still use this. It's Liberia, the United States, and one other I can't remember. So anyway, have about three s and yo, three s and yo. It's sort of a. It's it's a in the same genre as four B and you get to take a base. So if it's three.
And three strikes and you're out.
Three strikes and you're out, exactly, what about G is one p I and ninety nine.
Pp genius is ninety nine percent? No is one percent inspiration or ninety nine percent perspiration?
Is that how you got it?
You got it, You worked through it with your perspiration. Uh. I think it's well, if it were like five percent inspiration and ninety nine percent perspiration, then I think you. I think it's Toomas. I looked on Quote Inspector, Quote Detective. It's Thomas Edison. But it is sort of like the ten thousand hours rule. I feel it's like a precursor to that. It's like ten thousand hr as we would say here, what about a P is W one thousand W?
A picture is worth a thousand words.
Exactly, which, as we know, is no longer true.
That's true.
It is you can just deep fake? Is that that you can?
That's where I was going. Yeah, it's very disturbing. Have you been deep faked?
Like?
Is there a picture of you making out with Michelle ob.
Yeah, I want to just assert for the record that that did not happen. Any pictures you may see to the contrary.
Yeah.
Actually, I deep faked myself back in twenty eighteen for a New York Times story. I was the first person to write about deep fakes in the paper, and so I had an engineer deep fake me into Ryan Gosling so like replace his face with mine, which is very disappointing for Ryan Gosling fans. And it took like many hours and we had to like boot up some cloud service to do this, and now it's just you can just do it all in an app.
So it's got And what were you doing as Ryan Gosling? What was your were you like?
I was on a talk show? He basically just this.
This guy took a clip of Ryan Gosling and replaced you know, his face with mine. And this was very early deep pics, so they didn't look that good. And then there was one of who's the guy in Jurassic Park? The new one Chris Chris Pratt. Yeah, so they did me on on Chris Pratt and I was sort of holding the dinosaurs back in Jurassic Park. So yeah, that was that was my first ever time being deep faked.
Love it all right, we got two more and then we're out. You ready, the five s R? The five s R. And I'll give you it's as a father of a young child, this is something you might invoke. The five second rule exactly. Are you a believer in the five second rule?
That's where you that's where you say you have five seconds to stop hitting the dog or whatever.
What's the five oh? Oh oh the food on the floor.
Okay, you took it in a very dark direction.
No, I was thinking about how parents like count down, you know, they'll say like five four.
That was That was what was used on me as a kid. Yeah, I believe.
I'm actually I've become a food safety truther since having a kid because I believe in way more than five seconds.
Really yeah hours.
Yeah, basically, if you can't see the dirt or mold or anything, if there's no visible sign of spoilage, I'll eat it.
Interesting, well, there is that hygiene hypothesis that all our kids should be like licking the sidewalk because that building.
I'm telling you, I believe in this.
I know you are not a member of this particular tribe because you are a germopholk. But I believe in the maximum exposure to germs and and that's how you build your immune system.
But I could be wrong, all right, but he does vaccinate his kids.
People, that's true.
That's true, all right. How about last one is a the wn aighty.
D around the World in eighty Days.
He got It, He Got It, which was the famous book I believe nineteenth century, yeah, or maybe early twentieth century. But my favorite part about it is that Nellie Bly, pioneering journalist, actually did go around the world in eighty days after the book came out as sort of a very early stunt journalist, and she wrote about all of her eighty days. Did you ever read Nellie? You know Nelly Bly, right.
I do? I do? I Yeah.
A hero to stunt journalists everywhere exactly, and she was very committed to the bit. As we would say now, she got herself committed to a mental institution to write about the sort of awful conditions inside one of these hospitals.
I believe is the same person.
I'm thinking out, Oh, that's it, that's it. I mean, yeah, that one wasn't as funny, but she was. She was. Yeah, she was a hero. I mean that one actually resulted in reforms. She was great and I can't recommend her enough. So Nellie Blide, people, she's our great, great spiritual, great, great journalistic, great great grandmother. All right, well, Kevin, we have loved having you here.
Oh this is the best.
Thank you, Oh my pleasure.
I'm inspired by these short episodes. You know, we tape for an eternity and you know, it's just it's good to have a nice short snack.
You could save a lot of time. How would the New York Times feel if you got.
So you can't do as many ad breaks on a short episode?
Is the problem?
So good point, good point. So anyway, I think your podcast is just perfect, so no need to change it.
Thank you.
And before we wrap up and say goodbye to Kevin, we have a puzzle extra credit for those at home. Actually, I'm going to give you two one W on a U and three W on a T, one W on a U and three W one the tea. So come back tomorrow and we will tell you the answer. And also you might want to check out on Instagram at Hello puzzlers, and we'll see you there tomorrow for more puzzling puzzles that will puzzle you puzzlingly.
Hey Puzzlers, Chief Puzzle Officer Greg pluska Hair with the extra credit answer. From our previous show, we played a spelling bee with Helen Saltzman where we played around with the quirky English pronunciation of.
Certain sets of letters.
We gave you the extra credit clue LUCC that of course spells rich using the L from colonel, the you from busy, and the CC from cappuccino. I hope you had a rich day, a rich cappuccino, and kept.
Busy with your friendly colonel.
Join us here tomorrow out for more puzzles