Hello, Puzzlers! 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 form fitting lab coat in your sexy doctor Frankenstein costume. I'm your host, Aja Jacobson. I'm here, of course, with Chief Puzzle Officer Greg Plea's go welcome Greg.
Thank you. Aj. I am not wearing a form fitting lab coat because I am not in the puzzle lab. I've come up from the puzzle lab to do this with you.
Well, thank you. We are grateful that you have emerged. And it is an exciting day because it's a as you know, hallo yeno, and yeah, it's a spooky day and we are leaning into it. We have a special Halloween episode of the Puzzler filled with jump scares for your brain metaphorical jump scares, not actual, And we have two puzzles. We love it so much. I wrote one for you, you wrote one for me, and I thought maybe we could start with puzzle number one.
Well if by definition it will be puzzle number one when we go. When it goes first, do you spell Halloween with a little apostrophe in it?
I don't, but I'm going to start because why not make life more complicated?
More complicated? That sounds again the new Yorker would do right. The worker likes to put the little diacritical marks diarysses over like cooperation. Yeah, maybe they would do Halloween as you pronounced it.
It sounds appropriately pretentious for them.
Yes, Miriam Webster does allow the less common hollow e apostrophe een as I'm excellent.
All right, Well, from now on, people watch out for that. But that has very little to do with my puzzle, which I'm tentatively calling OPO sweets I composites, but with sweets with treats and the bad got it opposite. It's a little stretch, but.
I imagined, like the political rooms where they prepare, you know, the content against their opponents, right, oppositions are in the oppos suite.
That is an alternative puzzle that I may give on election day.
Who knows. I Like, Now, when you say you're tentatively calling it this, does that mean after we record you're going to secretly go back and change the whole thing?
Or yeah, I just don't like to. I don't want to commit until I have to, which I guess I did.
I guess I just did. Yeah, that's that's the point right there.
All right, Well, regardless the backstory of this puzzle is that this year Halloween falls on the same day as opposite Day, So this year all the candy names are the opposite of what they usually are called. So for instance, okay, one candy is called and scarce. That would be in reality good and plenty. Normally it would be good and plenty.
I thought there really was a thing called opposite day, and I was like, that's also, wait, Halloween is always October thirty. First, there's an opposite day. That's that's like a movable feast, you know, it's like it is.
Yes, it's on the lunar calendar. That's why opposite Well, in my in my apartment, we had opposite Day. Whenever my kids would say they hate me, I would say, oh, it's opposite day, thank you. All right, So I'm gonna give you the opposite day name of the candy, and you tell me the real candy. So the first candy is called salt mommy.
Oh, very good, very good. I like that. Certainly, the opposite of mommy is daddy. And you're saying the opposite of salt is sugar. Sugar Daddy sugar day.
Yeah, it's opposite ish enough, I thought this one I think is unassailable. The candy is called idiots.
Idiots. There's the first thing I thought of, which is not what you want, is lemonheads, which is not really I think that would probably be a synonym for idiot. You call someone a lemonhead, right. Also being in now you're talking about those little rolls of candy called Smarties, exactly.
Well, it's funny you brought up lemonheads because I was considering airheads, which is sort of you already have a built in opposite with Smarties and airheads.
Yeah, oh, very good. I should have thought of that too. Do you know when I was a kid, we took swimming lessons at a pool where they gave you Smarties as a reward at the end of the lasting, and so.
You like that.
Well, in my mind, smarties are forever chlorine soaked, right, because there was no way to eat them by the pool and not get them wet. And so I eat Smarties, I feel like there's something wrong when they're dry. They need to like soaked in a little chlorinated water for me to.
Yeah, you need the chlorine flavor, lemon strawberry chlorine.
And the feeling of achievement. Yes, go ahead and give me the next one.
All right, I got a few more. This one is called jocks, just like that jocks.
Jocks. So jocks are are you know? Oh?
Oh?
Got it was just jocks are the athletes in school? You know? The breakfast club icons, the jock and the other characters in that include the nerd these nerds.
Exactly. I was thinking sort of the eighties iconic jocks versus merd.
Club jocks and nerds. Yes, exactly, exactly.
By the way, I looked all these candies up, just to make sure they still exist in My favorite description ever of how a candy is made is a quote from a maker of nerds who said, we start off with a sugar crystal, and we just keep coating it with more sugar. There that's the secrets nerds secret. Yeah, don't tell.
It's It's like the Puzzler podcast. We start out with puzzles and we just keep coating them with more.
Puzzles, more delicious puzzles. All right, few more. We got death squanderers, little dark ones, death squanderers.
I want that candy. Death squanderers. High kids, welcome to maya my trigger treat. Here's your death squanderers. Sounds terrifying. That, of course, is going to be life savers.
Exactly exactly, all right, how about sad farmers. Sad farmers another candy I want?
They're the sad farmers like these little gummy things in the shape of a you know, it's like a man or a woman with a pitchfork, and they're they kind of tilt over slowly.
They're not Yeah, that don't makes sense.
Sad farmers.
They're sad. It's not an easy business. And here's a hint.
Oh, here's it's happy I want.
It's not that, but it is a.
Synonym about those happy Well, here.
Here I have a hint of what I was doing yesterday. Watch it maybe a couple days ago, watching Oklahoma and the farmer and the contman to be friends. So it's not cowman.
But cowboy rustler going was right, a rodeo wrangler rider.
You got them almost all. Well, how about this I wasn't a good hint then, farmer, jolly hint.
I just had to work my way through it. Jolly ranchers. I was sad farmers. I really want my kids coming home this year with some sad farmers and some some of those other ones some death squanderers.
Yeah, well, I don't know if you do. You remember wacky packs.
Our entire pantry was covered. Those were the wackybacks, were the ones that came with like parody food stickers, right right, This is.
Sort of a wacky packs feel to it.
Yeah, our entire pantry was covered with those stickers. My mother was the most patient woman in the world. Clearly, she just let us stick them on the inside doors of the pantry. They were everywhere. We loved those.
That is great. A couple more we got skid Row. This is a candy bar called skid Row.
Yes, so the opposite skid Row is kind of where the down and out folks end up. It's the opposite of easy Street. No, well it is, but that's not the that's not a candy what is it? Easy street? Easy money?
Well, no, you're in the right area. But I'm thinking I tried to think, what's the opposite of the fanciest street?
Park Avenue even fancier. Nothing's fancier than Park Avenue.
It is that it's just a little than Avenue.
Fifth Avenue, Right, Fifth Avenue is the actual candy bar. Park Avenue is not a candy bar. That's the problem with that answer.
All right, I got let's say two more one dashes, dashes. It's a little trick.
Yeah, you got it. We actually have we have We have pages and pages of these in our cupboard right now. The giant we have, the giant ones. They usually the tiny or tiny little dots.
Dots exactly, although I'm thinking of two different things.
Candy dots are like on a piece of paper, they're little drops of colored sugar. But there's another candy that's like gum drops or something.
Right, well, it's just called dots. Yeah right, yeah, I know what you mean. Well, the dots are sort of the ones that you get at the movie theater, and then yours are paper dots or candy. I know what you mean.
But there sugar on sugar, dropped onto paper and covered with sugar.
Is that deligious?
Giving away the recipe?
All right, I've got one last one, which is so obscure and absurd that I could not resist it. So here with that disclaimer, Hakeem and ad Lie. Hakeem and ad Lie. So break it down.
I don't need to break it down.
You got it already.
I'm pretty sure I know what you're going for, Well, here's why you said, Hakeem and Adlai, And I thought, well, it's another candy. That's two names, right, So I immediately thought of what I think is the right answer, and then I and then I thought, well ad Lie Stevenson probably ran against Dwight Eisenhower exactly Ike and hakem Elijah was a rival of Michael Jordan's.
So I was thinking that is interesting. I was say, thinking Hockeyen Jeffries, who is the House the leader of the Democrats in the House. And Mike Johnson. So I stuck with the politics.
But you've got back the Constitution book, so you would naturally go there instead of the sports reference. But either way, it's Mike and Ike.
It works. Mike and Ike and uh and I also, this one is so hard. I don't I'm not even gonna but later and now, later and.
Now now and later there it is there exactly. So well, you have an extra credit.
I do. I do have an extra credit. We I had one of them was gonna be uh, lemonheads like lime feet or some lime tails. But I think I'll try this. It's a little trough, it's a little tough, but what about this truths truths. So there you have it. That is. It's a tough one. But I'm I think, yeah, so that's my puzzle.
That's a good one. I am in our family. I'm not the sweets lover. I'm the savory lover. I'm the salty guy. So that puzzle did not make me crave anything.
Well, I'm impressed with your knowledge, if not for someone who doesn't love sweets, very impressed.
Well, we have them in the house. I just you know, I'm except for one, the peanut butter cup whatever brand I am Daddy's. That's like gold to me. I can't stop. I can't. It's like crack. I gotta have it.
There are other I only know of Reese's, though they I guess they're Yeah.
There's you know, every the Whole Foods brand or whatever. I don't want. I didn't want to give the plug to Reese's without them buying ads. You know, So good point. But Reese's, if you're listening, I'd be happy to do a long ad about how much smarter they make us.
And by the way, I love Trader Joe's skirting around as a copy right like Scandinavia and swimmers instead.
Of swimming fish. There's yeah, that's a puzzle right there, the trader Joe's name for things.
All right, So I am now ready to do the opposite of the puzzle. I am ready to try to solve your puzzle. Well, they have not seen I don't know anything.
Nothing about it. Well, it's a trick or treat puzzle, appropriate, yesh. Yeah, every answer is a made up phrase that rhymes with trick or treat.
Oh okay, made up?
Okay, right, and just like the original, the first sound of the word pairs will be the same, right, Trick and treat both start with the t r sound.
Oh okay, oh okay.
All right.
Here, I'll give you the example, which is, do you tell the kids at your door you're not feeling well or invite them to take a chair? Okay, that would be sick or sat right exactly. So it's all like that.
So these are alternative holidays where you actually do something besides trick or treat.
I've included these as choices you might face when a when a bunch of kids show up at your door, just like with you know, a trick or treat, right, although it could be it could be what they say when they come to the door too. But I've cleared what You have a choice? Which do you do for the kids? Love it?
All right, I'm all right.
Do you do you give the kids at your door a TV remote or a football shoe? Oh?
Oh, okay, well I think I got it. But uh, well I think the football shoe is a cleat yep, and so that would be click or cleat.
Exactly, exactly, well done. Yeah, yeah, you know it's not an exact synonym. A TV remote is not a click, but that's the Well, if.
You're in a hurry, if you're in a hurry and don't have time to say clicker, then you're going to say click. And we are busy people.
Yeah, doing puzzles. Do you show them a movie? Or enlist them in the navy? Oh?
I like that?
Yeah, I like that to the kids, right, you got it?
That would be an ultimate trick to enlist them in the navy.
Flick or fleet? Right or fleet? You let it. Your kids show up at someone's door to you know, to get some candy, and suddenly there shanghaied and sent off to work in the in the navy exactly.
It's like the children's crusade.
Yeah, yes, exactly, exactly, all right. Do you send them down to the little stream behind your farm or send them to a Greek island?
Okay, good? I was thinking little streams and that was because I know you've used real recently. Yes, it was like, it's not real.
It is crick or crete crete exactly, crik or creak?
So wait, is crick just a mispronunciation of creek, but it is.
A Yeah, it's a it's a kind of countryfiede creek. I think the I think the definition in Merriam Webster is literally a you know, a creek in the country or something like that as a god.
So there's not a creek and a creek, it's just there's I think.
There's just two different ways of saying this, but they are. It is spelled differently. It is spelled crick, all right. It could also been a crick in your neck, but that was harder clue. All right, So the kids are at your door. Do you play them satisfaction or paradise by the dashboard lights?
Oh?
Man, no, this one, I'm all right. That is well satisfaction rolling stone mac yes, mac make or meat or meat or meat meat loaf exactly.
All right, do you give them a Jonas brother or some whiskey without ice?
Okay, yeah, I was going through. I only know one Jonas brother, but thankful I know that whiskey is neat when it has no way, So Nick or neat?
Nick Jonas or neat. Yes, and I hope you're not giving the kids the whiskey. That's all I got to say. I hope you have Nick Jonas just behind the door. You bring them out and say hey, Happy Halloween, and then you go on. My first Halloween that I can remember, we lived in an apartment in California, and we went down the hall to like very few people we knew. I must have been three or four years old, and I went down the hall and this woman. I said, trick or treat And the woman put an apple in my bag and she closed the door. And I turned to my mom. I said that was a trick.
That was a trick.
I was like, that's not a treat.
And did it have a razor blade in it?
No, this is back in. That would be more innocent. You know, that's all urban legends.
Right There has never I think, no.
Evidence ever happening. It's all kids.
If you get fruits in your bag, then feel free to just chow down. Chowdown.
Yeah right, but don't don't sue us if something bad happened.
Exactly I was saying, and I'm like, oh, oh wait, what if? Uh well, anyway I got I would love it.
Yeah, yeah, a few more. Do you snap a quick photo or introduce them to the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana?
Oh, pick or Pete pick or Pete exactly?
Yes, exactly. You got a whole bunch of celebrities right behind the door. You're just pulling them out. You got Nick Jonas, you got Mick Jagger, you got Pete boota judge. Do you light a candle or harvest some grain?
Oh wait, now that I thought I had it, hold on harvest or wick? Or oh it is wick or wheat?
Wick or wheat? Exactly the candle, second, the wheat. All right, I'll give you one more of these. Do you give them a spotted British dessert or an insect repellent?
Okay, I think I got it, And you could have gone many directions with that first clue. I could have, but I appreciate you keeping it family friendly for the puzzlers at home.
That would be Dick or deet dick or deep exactly?
Do you have an extra credit?
I do have an extra credit. It does not involve be fat. Do you give them a baby farm animal or a Konami code?
Mm?
I'm glad you saved that for them, because I actually don't think I know.
Save some tricky ones for the people.
Yeah, well, lovely, lovely puzzle. It was a treat and a trick at the same time. So thank you. Have a great Halloween, a razor blade free Halloween, and.
It's a dark enjoy your death, squanderers.
And if you like the show, please check out our instagram feet, which is that Hello Puzzlers, and we post original puzzles and other stumps and we'll meet you here tomorrow for more puzzling puzzles that will puzzle you puzzlingly.
Hey puzzlers, it's Greg Pliska here. We had Jordan Carlos on to play do you all speak Texan? And I'm here to give you the extra credit answer from that episode. In this episode, we gave you a bunch of Texan idioms and you had to fill in the blank to finish them, or rather Jordan, did we gave you the extra credit? And it was this, It's so hot? The hens are blank? What are those hens doing? Yes, they are laying hard boiled eggs.
Well, I hope you're keeping cool and eating hard boiled eggs or whatever else you like while you listen to the puzzler