The Puzzler with A.J. JacobsHello, 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 Tungsten Filament in your puzzle light bulb. I'm your host, A J. Jacobs. I'm here as always with Chief Puzzle Officer Greg Puliska. First of all, thanks to Shri Kumar for that intro phrase. Second of all, it is an exciting day Greg, as you.
Know, it's very exciting back to using tungsten filament light bulbs to begin with.
That is right there. But even more, we are going to take listeners inside the puzzle lambs the puzzle lab.
We have sound effects of like the elevator going down or wherever it is.
Yes, well, the puzzle lab has no a restricted area. Usually only Greg's down there. Sometimes I visit, but everyone's going down today.
Come on in people, Yeah, excellent. Well, we want to give you a peek at how our puzzles are made.
Right. We want to show you the puzzle bunsen burners, the puzzle centrifuges.
Show you the parts of speech being dissected in the petri dishes.
That's right. We want you to take a tour, and we've got three stops. We've got okay, we've got first, we're going to do the listener Feedback area of the Puzzle Lab. This is where we monitor all listener feedback and process it in the most puzzly way possible.
Yep. And then we have the breaking Puzzle News area of the lab, where there's a newsticker that just spits out a ribbon of paper on any and all puzzle related news. It's very old school. We could use Google, but no, we just have a little newsticker that spits this thing out. We will give you some highlights of whatever we've caught in the news and do an original puzzle.
I love it. And then we're going to finish up with We're going to go to the counter the what would you call it, lu like a counter a sterilecare.
It's got some centrifusions and petri dishes, and.
That's where we created this week's puzzles, the one we gave our wonderful guest, Faith Saley, and we're gonna we're gonna dissect those puzzles and show you some surprising elements. So let's get started. The first stop on the tour the listener feedback section of the lab. And look who we have here. We have Andrea Schoenberg associate puzzler monitoring the email, the social media, the Ham Radio for all feedback positive or negative from our listeners. What did you pick up this week.
Andrea, Well, several listeners took you to task about the I Love Lucy pregnancy thing.
Okay, all right, yes this I made a mistake. I made a mistake in our Julie Bowen episodes. And as penance for my mistake, you know the rules of the puzzle law. I have to write a short puzzle to give to you, Greg, But before I do, i'll.
That's how we get so many puzzles. We make so many mistakes. We have to just keep generating puzzles.
That's it. It is our it is it is our fate. Before I give you the puzzle. The quick background Julie Bowen, wonderful actress on Modern Family. So we were doing a sitcom theme puzzle and I mentioned that I love Lucy the sitcom. Yeah, CBS was not did not allow Lucille Ball to be pregnant. Well that is not true obviously because she had a kid on the show, but they did not allow her to say the word pregnant. That's what I meant to say, the word pregnant was too dirty for CBS, so they said words like in expecting, Lucy is expecting?
Does it didn't even make any sense? Does it?
That pregnancy is like so naughty? Is it?
Meaning like there's a baby coming and it's not that it's going to be coming out of your body, it's going to be delivered magically at the door, because that.
I must be it. Yeah, they're expectinggnant. Pregnant implies there's some bodies that is pregnanty that which is so gross, so gross expecting. All right, well this made me as part of my penance, I dived into the archives of the Puzzle Lab and to look at what else was taboo in early television and it was crazy And one of my favorite examples, and this is a quiz for you, Greg and anyone else, do you know what phrase caused a huge scandal in nineteen sixty such a huge phrase that the host of the Tonight Show at the time quit because he was not allowed to say this phrase was So.
It wasn't Johnny Carson. It was like Jack Parr was Jack jackpar and he said French kiss.
Not in this case, maybe that was a hull. I have no idea.
Oh I'm trying. I'm trying not to look at the script. I'm trying to just it.
Yes, it was a good guess. No, No, The phrase was w C. The w C like as in water closet.
But which is like already a euphemism.
Already a crazy euphemism, like a water closet. You don't go to the band, you don't well bathroom.
Urinate in there, right, we wouldn't say urinate a defecate.
Oh, my goodness, no, so, but this is crazy. So he told this very tame and kind of you know, dad like joke about w C water closet, and and the joke was that it was mixed up with w C for wayside champe chapel, which is which is like another obscure word. We don't use a small chapel on the side of her road. And the joke was, Oh, this lady asked if there was a w C near her hotel room, a bathroom near her hotel room, and the guy said there was a WC a wayside chapel nine miles away that held two hundred and twenty nine people and open only on Sundays. So that was hilarious In nineteen sixty. Anyway, So as penance for my I Love Lucy mistake, I made a quick WC puzzle, okay, sort of to celebrate that. We hear the puzzler can say WC and haven't mean anything. We want anything.
It certainly doesn't have to mean wayside, chapel or water closet.
Right we are. This is First Amendment stuff. This is beautiful free speech.
So these are real things that have the initials WC.
That's okay. Now these are all actual phrases. So this, this WC is where you might find well preserved pinos and mayor Low's.
That would be the wine cellar.
That's the WC I'm thinking of.
Very nice.
This WC is a job category that includes lawyers, accountants, other executives.
Oh oh, that's so funny. My first guess was going to be working class. But then you said what you said, and I realized you mean white collar.
That's exactly it is interesting, working class in white coum. How about a WC that might feature stories on a polar vortex or even a bomb cyclone.
A bomb cyclone, right, that would be the Weather Channel exactly.
All right? Two more, this WC includes such cities as Seattle, Santa Cruz, and San Diego and other cities that don't start with S.
Right, but the ones you all described are on the west coast of the United States host exactly.
And then finally, these wc's might include such words as feather, welter, band, middle, light, heavy, heavy, Right.
Well, I was clever the way you did that, because this is you know, in the puzzle lab, we don't want to do the giveaways. First your feather, which could be anything, welter kind of. I don't know what else is welter except a weight class. Those are all weight classes.
That's it, weightfulass boxing, and bantam. I mean, it's very creative, very creative names. It's nice that they have that.
Is that because you used to weigh as much as a rooster?
Oh?
I don't know, bantam a little tiny fighter ways as much as now it means something else, I'm sure.
Well, it's interesting because when I googled it, at least nowadays, there is no men's bantam weight according to my very casual googling, and bantam if bantam is a rooster, which is male. It's all very confusing, but it is.
It is derived from bantam chickens according to my reference works here.
All right, very good, So chickens bantams don't have to be roosters. They can also be right there.
Here's me any chickens that weigh as much as a certain boxer.
All right, fair enough, now it all makes sense, clear as day. All right, that was stop number one, stop number two. This is the news ticker the ribbon coming out of with all the puzzle related news, and Greg, you've been monitoring it.
There a wash in ticker tape over here. But I do have breaking news. We're going to go back to the London Times, our favorite crypt source for cryptic puzzle news. They have lifted a long standing rule that only that only one living person could be mentioned in their cryptics, and that's the reigning monarch. That has been the practice in British cryptics that the only living person who can be mentioned is the is the current monarch, and they have changed that policy. They made an announcement that they would quote exercise caution in avoiding topical references that could prove controversial. They would allow living people other than the monarch to be mentioned.
Oh my god, well, I'm all a twitter. This is like wow, well this is a sea change. The fact is I worry for them.
Nobody noticed that first. But then one puzzle setter, which is what they call the people who make the puzzles. The setter included letterman Assonge as in Julian Assange and Swift in one of one of their puzzles.
All three of them, all three of them.
God, And that wasn't Jonathan Swift, the very dead writer. It was Taylor Swift, the very living contemporary person. Now they got some reader mail as a result.
Well, sure, I mean that is bold, that is like, oh.
Right, very bold. One person wrote in a bad change. This is a bad change that will not bring in new, younger sobs. It will only degrade the quality and integrity of your cryptics. It's a slippery slope.
Oh my god. Yeah, we are halfway down that slow Oh my god, you're.
Gonna let anybody in. And then another one dismissed Juliana's Assage as not famous, not British, and not dead.
All right, well, I possibly, I would.
Say, also possibly controversial, Like if you were controversial, I wouldn't go straight for Julian Assan just first choice exactly?
Uh interesting, all right?
And There was one more quote in the article. Someone wrote in and said, in my very humble opinion, all of the living people in today's Crossword are ridiculously famous, and I was glad to see them. But changes like this should be gentle and slow, or you're risked losing your core audience before you've attracted.
A new one.
I love it sore here on the puzzler, we are going to mention some living famous British people. So if that's gonna freak you out, you can, you know, stop listening now. But if you're okay with that, keep listening.
This is I mean, this is the most hilariously British tweet controversy I think that has ever existed.
Right, Well, look they had a tradition. I'm fascinated. I've done British cryptics for a long time. I didn't even notice that only the living monarch was mentioned. So look, I decided I was inspired by this. I thought, let me write some cryptic clues that clue living famous British people.
Great, all right, I'm excited.
You know, and if they're good, maybe they'll borrow them for the London Times.
Even though you know I am I am staunchly opposed. But I am going to make an exception.
You're going to make an exception for the puzzler. And you know, these are cryptic clues. They're tricky, but I think I think we'll get them. All right, here's your first one, Bob ran sonogram revealing virgin VIP.
Oh my goodness. All right, well let's break it down. First, ay it again?
First it again, Bob bob Ran sonogram revealing virgin VIP.
Got it interesting? So in this little scenario, it's like a virgin birth. It's like a little.
That's the idea of the surface sense, right, that's how you write these exciting This sounds like we've got a sonogram like you might do for a pregnant or expecting mother, as we say, and this reveals that she's a virgin.
God im all right, well, oh I think I got I got something. Because virgin VIP, I'm thinking British Virgin Airlines, Richard Branson. So I'm thinking Richard Branson is the answer somehow, But then I have to backtrack and figure out her name Branson and then so maybe there's an anagram again.
So what was she just hidden inside? Sonogram? B R a N s O N is right in that.
I gotcha okay perfect well good so I got it. I got half of it, but then I got the whole thing.
Well done, good thinking. All right, here's another one on the radio. A valley girl singer.
Okay on on the radio. A valley girl singer yep on the radio. Well, sometimes those are like AM and FM. Is that anything? No?
No on the radio is a common trope in cryptics that indicates something.
Oh, it's like sound. It's a voice sound thing.
It's a phonetic thing. Yeah, use on the radio to indicate that you're giving a phonetic I.
See, all right, So what was the next phrase after? On the radio?
A valley girl singer?
All right? So a valley girl might be. So that might something that sounds like a valley girl singer. Oh boy, it's five letters.
You're going forward?
All right? On the radio, a valley girl singer.
Now, and I will say. Another thing that's often done in cryptic clues is you try to obscure where the clue breaks into two parts, right, because one part is just a definition. The other part is the wordplay part.
Right, So a valley might be something that sounds like a valley. Who is a girl singer? So that's Adele.
Adele is a valley and.
Boy, didn't we recently discuss on the puzzler. It's like a deal or a.
Dude that would also be a valley. It could work both ways.
Dale is also a valley. There you go.
Nice, Well, let me do I do one or two more of these?
Of course?
Sure? How about this one? Actors graide lies tangled?
All right? Well, tangled often means like the anagram.
Mix it up and let me tell you. The answer is five letters and four letters, so it's a full name.
Four all right, Well say the whole thing again.
Actors braid Lies tangled?
Well, it could be braid Lies is the one that's tangled. And if I count up b R, A, I, D, does that work?
Yeah? Yes, that's this is how you solve these. You say, oh, tangled means anagram, and look there are nine letters there. So if I can anagram those nine letters, get the name of an actor. That's five letters and four letters.
All right. So now I just have to do an anagram of braid Lies on the radio, and it is you write it down. I've got to think of a well, let it. Maybe I'll just think of British actors I know who who don't have long names. And there it's a male actor, Daniel Craig, five.
Letters and four letters. He was in The Wire, the TV show. That's how he became known, and he's been in a ton of films since then. He's in the Marvel Universe.
Wait, was he the guy in the affair that my wife likes? That guy?
No? No, he's a black actor. First name starts.
With I exactly Alba.
When you're solving this in a crossword, you might get the first letter from the crossings and then it unlocks it for you.
And yes, he's got a great anagrammable name, so many, so many vowels.
I did do another. I had another anagram one, uh, which was which is cigar denial confused? James Bond.
Wow, that's impressive. So cigar denial confused. I'm guessing that it's cigar denial. It's not a phrasey hear a lot, So that's if you mix those up. And then James Bond, well, that's the Daniel Krag. Yeah, that's the Daniel cigar denial.
Yeah all right, so good job on those. You got them all good ish. Yeah. Look, cryptic clues on done you know, just over a podcast are hard because a lot of them depend upon seeing the words and also on the crossings. Right, you start filling in the grid and you get some letters, and it's easier that way, so you get full credit for that.
All right, I'll take it. I will take it. I don't feel condescended to I feel good. And finally, though that was just stop number two, we have one final stop before the tour is over.
The puzzle dissection counter.
The puzzle dissection counter is very That is exactly where we're gonna go. And you had one that you wanted to dissect. We had the Lovely Faith Sale as our guest this week, and you did a puzzle. It was a sort of a letter edition puzzle.
Yes, it was called Sale's Saline, right, where you took a surname and inserted a letter to get another word God. We include the combination and look, part of what makes clues for puzzles good, right, is that they make some sense and their pithy, right, they don't go on too long, and they lead to an answer that's not too ridiculous. So I think for Sale Saline it was something about what she uses in her contact language lenses. I don't know if Faith even wears contacts, but you could imagine it being a pretty thing that would be in her house. Another one that she that we had was every breath you take, he plucks one of these on his base, and that, of.
Course was stings strings.
Strings, again, very concise, and of course Sting is a bass player who has strings on his base, so it works out nicely.
And it allowed us to talk about how creepy and stockery songs used to be.
Some still are, some still are. So there were some I rejected because I thought they were too convoluted or weird sounding. Like the shortstop sometimes called the King of New York fittingly had this entertaining personage when he sat on his throne.
I think I got it though.
You got it? Okay, good, But it feels like this long rambling clue. Right, you should never say that on the podcast.
Go ahead, Well we just did. Well, I'm guessing it is Jeter, Derek Jeter, shortstop, and these would be his gestures.
Gesture's gesture gestures.
Yeah, he's gestures. That's a tough one. That's tough one.
And it just felt too clunky to use. Right, you were except with you exactly.
I'm very forgiving this one.
The clue I think is conc The answer is just weird. And I actually love the the two answers. I love the answer words, the way one becomes the other when you insert a letter Actor, Sydney becomes even more sharp.
Oh that is good. That is good. I mean, I'm guessing it is. I don't know a lot of Sydney's, so Sydney Poitiers and then point tier pointier, And I love that because of the way it changes the pronunciation. You know, it's the point tyer.
It's a very cool. You answer one letter and it totally changes the pronunciation. It just like conceptually, I think what he becomes more.
Sharp quaier pointier. He was a sharp guy.
Fair true?
Uh well there now, Greg, before we go, before we leave this puzzle, lamb, did you have an extra credit for the folks at home?
Did yes? From our Living British Cryptic Clue Puzzle Famous Living British People cryptic Clues. I have one more than I'm gonna give you for extra credit. Actor has blue mandible according to Reverend Spooner, and it's four letters and three letters actor has blue mandible. According to Reverend Spooner.
Now that is just a crazy collection of words. And for those who are not cryptic people, which I wasn't until like a year ago, Spooner, we maybe should just tip us off into what is a spooner?
Is sure if it's just a kind of helpful hint. Reverend Spooner was the namesake of the spoonerism, where you take a two word phrase and you swap the initial sounds to get a new two word phrase.
Right, Like, what's an example?
Like I knew you were going to say, and I'm the only one that comes to mind is the answer to the puzzle? The kluyd just gave you. No examples are like like runny babbit instead of bunny rabbit. Okay, very good, right, crushing blow instead of blushing crow, or blushing crow rather instead of crushing blow. The Oxford don and priest William Archibald Spooner apparently spoke this way right.
His famous the one I remember him saying was when he introduced the their queer old Dean instead of dear old queen. That was that's a classic. That was the original spoonerism. I believe well. Thank you everyone. Come back on Monday for the answer to that, and in the meantime for your puzzling needs, check out the Instagram feed Hello Puzzlers, where we post lots of original puzzles and other good stuff and we will meet to hear Monday for more puzzling puzzles. Le will puzzle you puzzlingly.
Hey puzzlers, it's Greg Pliska up from the Puzzle Lab with the extra credit answer from our previous show. AJ and I played a game I called supersize it, where I took a person or a thing that has a unit of measurement as part of its name and supersized it into another unit of measurement. Your extra credit clue was the poet who wrote the two thousand cantos. Well, the poet who's known for writing canto's is Ezra Pound, but if he wrote two thousand of them, his name would be Ezra Ton. We're having a ton of fun here at the Puzzler, and we hope you are too. Thanks for playing along with the team here at the Puzzler with Aj Jacobs. I'm Greg Pliska, You're 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 Averragan and Brittany Brown of Roulette Productions, with production support from Claire Bidegar Curtis. Our associate producer is Andrea Schoenberg. A Puzzler with Aj Jacobs is a co production with New House Ideas and is distributed by Optics ad Haters, No rearrange those letters. 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,
