Hello, Puzzlers! Puzzling with us today: host of "Nobody Listens to Paula Poundstone," Paula Poundstone!
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, Puzzler is welcome to the Puzzler Podcast. The soothing alo Vera sent in your puzzling hand sanitizer. I am your host, AJ Jacobs, and I am here with today's guest, legendary Paula Poundstone, podcaster, author, comedian. Nobody listens to Paula Poundstone is the name of her show, but it is not true, because everybody does. Welcome Paula.
Well, thank you so much. I've you know, I think on my you know, on my resume, I'm gonna have to put, you know, puzzler heavy hitter.
Oh yeah, no, you approved it. You approved it. You you You've lowered our expectations at the beginning, only to blow them away. So thank you for that, Paula. In addition to your comedy and writing and podcast, you also voiced a character in Inside Out and Inside Out Too, and the character was forgetter. Paula, I believe is that right's correctly? And you are in charge of getting rid of memories? By the way, are you forgetful yourself? How is your memory?
I actually, my long term memory I think is very good. Although the thing about long term memory is that there's often no one there to refute it, but my short term memory not so good.
Well, we'll see. We will see about that. This is a puzzle inspired by inside out and what we do is we're going to take words and turn them inside out, so we reverse them. So if we have a word like lap lap, we're going to reverse it to get pal pa l. And in the puzzle world, there's actually names for this type of puzzle there. Some are called it, some call it reverse a grams or semi palindromes, because palindromes are when you take a word and reverse it. This is Lewis Carroll called these semordinal lap because that's palindromes in reverse. So he was very meta. He was already doing reverse palindromes. So that is the It's easier than it sounds, Paula. But the idea is, we're going to give you a clue with two blanks. One of the blanks is a word and the other is that word spelled backwards. So what's an example, Chief Puzzle Officer, Greg, Well.
You know, I actually I think the example should be if you want the Chippendale's Dancer to sit in your blank, you need to you need to say, come sit here, blank, got it.
So you're going with the lap and the pal.
I was going with lap and Pal and bringing back and doing a little callback to Chippendale's because I feel like we could get them to sponsor the show if.
We mentioned, Oh, I can't you know what, I can't think of one of you without thinking of the other, the puzzler and Chippendale's. Absolutely to Peter Butter.
And Jelly that first.
Yeah, and you know, you know, there's there's a point in any young man's life where they have to decide, you know, which of the two, right, Yeah.
It's a fork in the road, Puzzling or Chippindale's.
Yeah. I mean they're not diversion, they're not wildly divergent, but you know, but there does you know if you've gone along a singular path for a long time heading towards you know, either or And now there's that day where is it Chippendale's or is it the puzzler?
Exactly? You summed it up. Thank you, well, Greg, Do you have some I have?
Fortunately, I have some more examples of this kind of puzzle, So let's play love it all right? When he stepped in blank poop on the street, he concluded that there is no blank.
Oh, when he stepped in dog poop, he knew for sure there was no god.
Exactly.
Yeah, this is I think that's part of the John Paul Sark biography.
I think, yeah, no, no, there's a lot of depth to that. By the way, if there's any young listeners, of which I'm sure there are, there was a time where you didn't have to clean up your dog waste. Then cities started to have what they call pooper Scooper laws. But prior to that, many of us questioned whether there was a god because you often stepped in dogways.
Yeah, you have seen an uprise in religiosity, I think because of the law.
Yeah. Well, you know who enforces that law. The guy who enforced is that law is the pooper Scooper trooper. I know it's a wrong episode, exactly, Yes, all right, a hiker kicked over the beaver's blank, which made the beaver very blank.
Oh, the hiker kicked over the beaver's damn, which made the beaver is very mad.
Yes.
When she's feeling blank out, she eats a lot of cake pie and other blank oh ah cake, Yeah, it's a longer wind. When she was feeling blank out. She eats a lot of cake, pie and other blank. Ah, they all fall into the same category on the menu. Cake and pie are all are examples of this bigger category your.
Menu, what you might have after a meal?
Are these more? Is this a bigger Is this a bigger word than the other ones?
Yes, it's a longer word than the other ones.
Oh, when she's feeling stressed out dessert?
Yes, wow.
Okay, you know what, Now that I've been exposed to the possibility of longer ones shorter ones, it doesn't matter. I can do either one. You just whatever you want. I'm ready for anything.
I'll just go down the order they are on the page. I found the smoking gun in his desk blank, which means I can turn him in and collect the blank money. Uh.
Oh uh, you found the smoking gun in his in his drawer, and now you're going to get the reward.
Yes, exactly, very good, all right. A good teacher supports his blank even when they make mistakes or blank.
Hmm.
And one of these is actually a two word answer.
Uh, his class when they make mistakes or slack.
It's not that's very nicely, nicely done. It it's another word for students it supports his blank even when they make mistakes or.
Blank, oh, pupils, even when they slip up.
Yes, very good. Oh god, you're in like graduate school.
Yeah yeah, I'm getting in whatever, this is.
All right?
I got a few more for you, all right. No matter how much you hate slicing a shot in blank, you shouldn't blank yourself with your clubs.
Golf or floor you slicing a shot in golf, you shouldn't flog yourself with your clubs.
Absolutely not.
I mean, it's a basic safety tip that's right on the wall of the class. You know. I'll tell you something.
I dislike golf so much that I would say, go ahead and flog go ahead. It's just a stupid game. It's not a sport anyways.
It's a game.
It's not a sport. It's a game.
I'm a fan of mini golf, man, nothing wrong with mini golf, right, you have no moral objection to that?
Well.
I used to work as a caddy at a miniature golf of course.
That's an easy job.
That's nice, all right. Here's another one.
Are you so blank that you believe blank water was not bottled in France? Are you so blank that you believe.
Shoot, okay, wait, yuh, it's a it's.
A brand of water.
That is in fact bottled in France.
It is okay, I wasn't sure if it was.
Well, are you so blank that you believe it wasn't? I don't know. Oh oh shoop? What was there?
Perrier water?
Was that one? But then I don't know that was one, but that this wouldn't reverse No, that wouldn't.
No.
Okay, uh uh what's the other?
Is there?
Uh?
Are you so.
Gosh?
I have no idea.
I don't know. Well, so someone who is who is uh innocent and believes that?
Are you so naive? You don't think Evon was battled?
Yeah?
Exactly exactly, you got it? That was lovely. Yeah, I actually was naive. I thought it was like because like Hagandash is made in New Jersey, even though it sounds Swedish or Norwegian, So I was like, Evian's probably the same, but I just looked it up. He's right, Yeah.
I find it hard to believe that natural spring water uh is necessarily all that pure. If there's a plastics bottling plant right beside the natural spring, I find it hard to believe it hasn't been a little bit tainted after over time.
Fair point. It's a fair point, right, Well.
That's why we love New York.
Why why do we love New York?
New York? Oh, our water comes from the mountains and it's you know.
It's the secret to New York bagels and New York pizza. Allegedly. Allegedly, but we like to pretended.
What what I love is that I think it's up to the ninth floor in a building. It is gravity that makes our water pressure because the aqueduct from which the water comes is higher than my apartment. So the gravity that pushes that water all the way down from the aqueduct under the city and up into the building.
Wow. So it's like a white water. It's like it's going.
Oh it's yeah, it comes.
You open the tap and you get knocked backwards.
Wow.
I had no idea gravity on our wach. I never thought about it either. Yeah, I assume.
Welcome to the puzzle where we make you think about things you never thought about.
Yeah, this is eye opening.
To Paula, do you have three more minutes? Because we wanted to ask you. We love that you were an inside out and inside out too, and it made us think about emotions, and I wanted to ask you go through a couple of these emotions and ask what sparks these emotions, like joy, I'll give you. I'll give you one from my own life that I got yesterday, which was I got joy from watching weird Olympic sports, including whitewater kayaking and speed climbing, where they clambered up the wall like it's crazy.
I saw a few seconds of each of those. By the way, when they come okay, you know what looks like a punching bag that hangs down in the whitewater course. It looks like a punching bag supposed to do.
Yeah, so one of them. I think the green one you have to go to one side or the other of but the red one you have to go all the way around. But you if you just get under it and rotate your body, you know, around it, that counts. I think it's just where your upper body has to go.
But I love watching that because they.
Get caught up in there and they don't make it around the thing, and then the other one knocks them out, and it's brilliant.
It's a great sport.
Yeah, yeah, it's very like American ninja warriors. I feel.
Yeah, I couldn't figure out quite what they were doing. I mean I could tell that they were going down a river of some sort. I don't think it really is a river, right, it's some sort of man made waterway, but I couldn't exactly.
It's a man made Yeah, it's a human build thing.
They seem to be having a good time, and that's what's important.
Yeah, you know what, So if we're going to talk about Olympic sports, my wife and I watched the finals of women surfing, and the craziest part about it was that the announcers never explained what was going on. And it's like a forty five minute thing. The two women go out there and they sit for forty five minutes waiting for the right waves, and the announcers never explained, as they should have treated us like we'd never seen it before.
But they didn't.
They just went on about you know what these women did when they were kids, and their friend Zach and Luke, Oh my heavens, you know they were.
At surfer dudes. They centered a little stoned.
We were like, what, but explain that's going on.
The interviews in the Color commentary have are really not good. All I want to see is the sport, and I certainly don't want to see somebody right after their sport interviewed. It's just you know, their heart is still jumping in and out of their uniform. And even someone Biles tweeted the other day, please stop asking what's next. I feel the same kind of a question is that you just did this amazing, amazing thing, and now someone's going, yeah, okay, what are you going to do next? Like, could they not ask for just a few seconds in that it was amazing? And I tweeted, dear Olympic reporters, just to save you some time. It feels great to win, Okay, you know what gives me joy? Speaking of winning, I just was on vacation in Massachusetts and we played a lot of ping pong, which is one of my favorite things in the world, and and I played well. That that was the joyous part. I actually played well.
I haven't played around a long teams.
Yeah, it was very exciting. I feel like my vision came back temporarily just to allow me to win a game or two while I was on vacation, and then I went back to seeing badly.
Well, have you been watching the table tennis and the Olympics. It's hilarious because the way they served is like they hide the ball behind their their chin. It's all very mysterious.
Yeah, yeah, I saw just a few seconds.
I saw one.
Guy where the ball had gone. He let them go down sort of under the table as he was returning it, so that his opponent couldn't see what he did to it. It was still in the air, it was still in play right, and he returned it, but because it was low and it was sort of under the table, his opponent couldn't see what kind of spin was on it.
Very clever, they are good. Yeah, well that's lovely. Can I give you one more emotion and you tell me what? How about fear? What makes you? I'll tell you one thing. I was trying to come up with my own fears, and I am afraid of all the things that I should be afraid of that I don't even know about, because I went to this one conference and I learned about there are too many satellites around circling the Earth, and there they might start crashing into each other and then the economy will crash because we have no satellites. It's even got a name Kessler sind. So there's these things that I don't even know to be afraid of out there that uh, that are terrifying, like Kessler syndrome. So the anyway, that's my fear.
Right and also that you're that you're helpless to to do anything about.
Yes, I cannot help Kessler syndrome.
Uh. Right now. My number one fear is fascism.
That's a good fear I can't imagine.
And I'm doing everything that I can do to help prevent it, to help prevent not fashion, to help prevent it taking root in our country.
Fantastic, great answer.
I do that by wearing these pads that you see here.
These I wear.
I wear this protective equipment in order to prevent fascism from taking root in our country. I'm just adjusting this catcher's mask on my face. Uh, this protects me.
You're barreling through the streets with the pads on, knocking the fascists down.
Why not?
Yeah, it seems to help.
I don't have a good answer for this. I'm just afraid of heights. But I sometimes I'm just afraid of thinking about heights, Like I imagine the old World Trade Center where the windows went to the floor, and he's standing up there and I'm already scared.
Do you watch the diving?
Oh yeah, see, I.
Don't mind watching the diving. It doesn't that's not somehow, that doesn't scare me. In fact, I could probably go on the diving board and not be scared, except of making a complete.
Ass of myself.
But the edge of things, you know, being up at the top of a building, or you know, the Grand Canyon or.
Something like that.
But I feel compelled to go to the highest buildings. I go visit a city, I'm like, let's go, I mean Montreal, Let's go to the top of that Olympic Tower.
Let's see what that's like. And then halfway up, I think I'm dead. I'm screwed. Why did I do this?
Yeah, you might enjoy the Quaker village exactly?
Is it flat? Does it have no stairs? Can I just sit at bottom of it?
Yeah? I think so.
Well. Paula, we speaking of joy, We are so joyful that you joined us. You proved your puzzling chops, and you are welcome back anytime.
I you know what, I cannot wait to receive those big, huge bags of cash behind you.
That's Those are gold bars, Paula. Yeah, stamp there, Egyptian bank stamps on them. That's right.
Yeah. In case the banks fail, you will have the gold. We don't. We want you to be safe. Well before we go and say goodbye to Paula, do you have an extra credit for I do?
For the six people who listen to us for this long, they get to hear the extra credit here.
It is that.
Horrible scarf my aunt made is a real blank. I hope she unravels it and blank something else.
Oh, that's a tricky one. I only know it because I'm looking at the answer on the script. Yeah, but I don't know if I could come up with that.
It's hard.
But you have a day folks at home, and we will give you the answer tomorrow and in the meantime, Thank you again, Paula and listeners check out our Instagram feed Hello Puzzlers for more original puzzles, and we will meet you here tomorrow for more puzzling puzzles that will puzzle you puzzlingly.
Hey puzzlers, it's Greg Pliska, your chief puzzle officer, here to give you the extra credit answer from our previous episode. We had Paula poundstoned on and we played prime rhyme time, where every answer was three rhyming words. Paula came up with a whole bunch of extra ones for us and even stretched them into four and five rhyming words.
But you're extra.
It was a basic three rhyme. Here's your clue. This is guidance on how much to charge for brown, white, sticky or jasmine grain. That, of course, is your rice price advice. I'm sure Paula would have said if we gave that clue again, it would be twice rice price advice.
Nice.
Thanks for playing, and we'll catch you here next time. Thanks for playing along with the team Here at The Puzzler with AJ Jacobs, I'm Greg Pliska, your chief puzzle Officer. Our executive producers are Neelie Lohman and Adam Neuhouse of New House Ideas and Lindsay Hoffman of iHeart Podcasts. The show is produced by Jody Averrigan and Brittany Brown of Roulette Productions, with production support from Claire Bidegar Curtis. Our associate producer is Andrea Schoenberg. The Puzzler with AJ Jacobs is a co production with New House Ideas and is distributed by Chap's Diet Roast Yum Now I'm kidding. It's distributed by iHeart Podcasts.
If you want to know more about.
Puzzling puzzles, please check out the book The Puzzler by AJ Jacobs, a history of puzzles that The New York Times called fun and funny. It features an original puzzle hunt by yours truly, and is available wherever you get your books.
And puzzlers.
For all your puzzling needs, go visit the puzzler dot com. See you there,