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. Lick cucumber, cream cheese sandwich at your puzzle high t. I'm your host, A J. Jacobs, and let's start with a quick puzzle. This week we had the big movie star Joseph Gordon Levitt as our guests. So here's a Hollywood related puzzle. Name the award winning actress whose first name sounds like a diacritical mark. And by diacritical mark, I'm talking about those weird symbols you see over the letters in some foreign languages, like those two dots over the U in Motley crue and over the O. I believe they had two umlots. But the answer is not umlock clooney. So what is the real answer? Find out after the break. Welcome back to the Puzzler. I'm AJ Jacobs and I am here as always with Chief puzzle Officer Greg Plisko.
Welcome Greg, Thanks Aj. I have a question our diacritical marks only above or can they be below?
Good point? They can be below. I believe certalla.
That is below.
That's the under the sea. To make it pronounce it with with a soft.
Soft sea right. And this of course is the actress Circumflex Jones.
That's her circumlex. I'm thinking circumflex Sweeney.
I thought, oh, well, that's the thing. They got a couple of circumplex oscar winners.
And it's hard to which it is not, But do you know who it is? I figure you might know.
You know, I'm running through diacritical marks. I had the carrot and the bum laud, of course, and the diary.
It's a Spanish. It's a Spanish diacritical mark.
Uh, till day, till day, Swinton.
Till the swinton. It is that little squiggly thing over the end.
Yeah, that makes it an and let's be clear in the Spanish alpha. But those are two different letters, the n and the ny a.
Oh right, there are two different letters.
So the one with the tilda is a different letter.
So it is, but it does make it pronounce It's pronounced like pinada, pinata, pinata, or if it were till the till day swinton, it would be swing.
She had the I love when you do accents.
Thank you. Uh. Well, anyway, we have no more diacritical marks in today's episode, but we do have a tour inside the puzzle Lab, which is something we do on Fridays, we're going to the lab or Tory work bench where the puzzles are created. We've got some breaking puzzle news at the puzzle News ticker, Greg. I believe you had a puzzle that you enjoyed the news, but we didn't have time with.
The great thing about having all the fun guests we have is that we can come up with tons of different puzzle ideas for everyone, and we sit down and we look at you know, you and me and Andrea and our producers say hey, we've got these twelve puzzle ideas. We got to pick the three that we're going to use. So I had this one for Joseph Gordon Levitt, whose initials are jg L. And this is all the answers are words or phrases that have those letters in order inside of them. Okay, J yeah, but with letters yeah, other letters can be in between. I don't think there's any words that have jgl right in the row. Maybe the when you go to see the taj mahal, the glow around it is the taj glow that would have jg l ah.
So these are not necessarily phrases, you might say.
No, these are real. These are real words and phrases. They're dictionary words or encyclopedia phrases. These are real. That's why there's none that have j next to each other. No, taj Glow.
Can I call in my co sOliver Andrea Schoenberg to help me.
Absolutely, you are. Andrea is always welcome. She makes us all better.
Very good. Welcome Andrea, welcome, Thank you.
I will give you. The example I was going to use was for the book The Puzzler. This is the type of international competition that you and your family entered and spoiler alert did not lose, did not come in last?
Right, we did not. We came in second to last. Yeah, well, I know it's Jigsaw, so then we need an l She saw.
It was the for the whole world, right, or Global Jigsaw World Championship.
Thank you, Andrea. Yeah, oh I just Jigsaw puzzle. Okay, that makes sense, all right, it was I was trying to make it fancy, but Jigsaw puzzle j g L parte.
Now, the extra twist for these is that I'm cluing them all with reference to Joseph Gordon Levit.
Oh, that is an extra twist. I wish she could. I hope he's listening Joe Jordon Lovett, you'll enjoy this.
All right.
This is a tropical forest location that you might have seen in g I Joe, The Rise of Cobra.
Well I got oh, well, I got a word that has all of them?
Good?
Is it just one word that is.
Just one word? Yeah?
Jungle, jungle?
Exactly all right, exactly right. Yes, these are not complicated words. These are all straightforward. No taj glow in any of these.
Great, okay, jungle, We're on all right.
This is a word that means related to marriage, as in the Joseph Gordon Levitt film Holy Matrimony, M congugal, Yes, conjugal, cogal. Conjugal means related to marriage absolutely as you as in the term conjugal visit when you're your partner is had to visit you.
In prison, which is not allowed in California. For if you've killed a family member, as I learned from reading the Wikipedia Menendez brother.
That seems fair.
That is just extra added bonus content.
Kill a family member, you don't get a conjugal visit, that's correct. Wow. If you kill your spouse, you definitely don't get a conjugal vision.
And then it's like a double no note.
Definitely not happening, all right. This is an adverb for how the lead villain in Dark Knight might say something, Oh, oh.
Okay, I think I got it. I was thinking Dark Knight batman's voice as like monotony, but that has none of the right letter Nope.
Joseph Gordon Levitt was in that movie, but he did not play the villain. Heath led Your played the villain.
And he might have said it jokingly.
Joking, jokingly. Yes. In fact, if he was the host of this podcast, he'd say, we'll meet you at tomorrow from more jokes that will joke you jokingly.
That's right, it sounds it does sound more threatening.
It's right. It sounds very creepy when you put it like that. All right. This is the type of bells mentioned in a song you might hear in the Joseph Gordon Levitt film The Night Before I Think I Got It.
Yeah, yeah, like jingle jingle bells.
Jingle is exactly it exactly. That's a Christmas themed movie. This is uh, this is your next clue. A hitman like Joseph's character in Looper might slice this vein to kill somebody.
Okay, I only know a couple of veins and this is one of them. Yep, jugular, the.
Jugular exactly exactly right. And to be fair, in Looper, I don't think they do much with knives. I think they're shooting each other a lot. I think there's a lot of shooting, but no knife to the throat. Last one. In the movie The Walk, Joseph played Philippe Pettit, who did this activity as a street performer in Paris before becoming a high wire artist.
Ah okay, I think I know, I think right he was.
He was known for walking between the twin towers of the World Trade Center.
But he did not do this while walking that time.
No, he doesn't.
Then I'd be impressed.
Now probably could, but he didn't.
Andrea, you want to take it.
He must have been a juggler, yes, and so he was juggling exactly, very good, excellent juggler.
Well, poor Joseph Gordon Levitt for not having been able to stay to get that, because that was terrific. I actually had one little nugget that I wanted to tell Joseph Gordon loved about, but we ran out of time, which was you know, how we discussed the eerie number of movies that he's in which had a number in the title movies and TV shows. There was five hundred Days of Summer, third Rock from the Sun, ten Things I Hate About You, and on and on, fifty to fifty. He was, actually I love Halloween, hyeah, he was. He was kind of weirded out, which I love. So one thing I thought of doing was movie math. So math problems using movie titles? WHOA now I did. The problem was I only came up with one halfway decent one, So I thought it doesn't might make but I want to give it to you now, all right, are you ready this one?
Okay?
You might want to use it.
Seems like it's sort of like Dit Lloyd's but in a you know, in a weird alternate universe.
Okay, all right, So take a serial killer movie with Brad pitt yep and multiply it by a Jackie Robinson biopic. Okay, so I think we can let people along the ride. So serial Killer movie.
Was that was seven and spilled s E seven E n yep.
Right, but we don't include that. Then Jackie Robinson biopic was.
Well, it's got to be his number forty two.
That's exactly what So seven times.
Times forty two only one that two hundred and ninety.
Four, two hundred ninety four, all right, So add to two hundred ninety four and this keeps going. He's going, keeps going. So add to two hundred ninety four and Evan rachel Wood movie, and what do you get? She plays a teenager, so it's the age that she plays.
I don't know it.
Was critically acclaimed.
I'm sure it was. I'm sure it was the best thing Evan rachel would did except for Westworld.
It was call well, what's a teenager?
Sixteen lower seventeen, fourteen lower thirteen.
Thirteen thirteen, two hundred ninety four plus thirteen, where are we at?
Three hundred and seven?
You got it? Three hundred seven. Now subtract a Bo Derek movie. Oh that's got to be ten, that's right, So three out seven minus ten two ninety seven exactly all right. Now take a Jentle and Jason Straithen movie.
Oh right, and the number, and now.
Add multiply that by three and add that to your total.
Wait the number their movie is nine, No, it is twelve, sixteen twenty four four one seven two.
Wait you said something down there.
Seven one, one one, So I'm taking one and I'm multiplying it by three and adding it to this. Yeah, so that gives me three hundred.
Three hundred, which is stars.
Brad Pitt I don't know. So, No, who's in three hundred? No, that guy, Gerard Butler.
It is Gerard Butler.
It's all about the Battle of Thermopylae or something like that, isn't it. It's about some ancient battle the Spartans.
I am Sparka. So there it is. Onto stop number two. This is where we have the Puzzle Lab News ticker, where we monitor all media for important puzzle related news. The breaking news this week or this month anyway. Is there's a new puzzle book that I liked, and it's called Puzzle Me Twice by Alex Bellows, a British puzzle writer. Oh I love Alex bell Okay, good. So the subtitle is gives It gives you a sense seventy simple puzzles that almost everyone gets wrong. And it's just that it's simple puzzles that are really counterintuitive, just to show the dangers of trusting your gut. Yes, So I really liked it and I thought i'd give you, you and Andrea and our listeners, just a couple of examples in which state is the most easterly point in the United States of America. In which state is the most easterly point in the US? Great question, right, So the options are Florida, Hawaii, Maine, or Alaska.
Right, I'm going to say it might be Alaska.
You are correct. The reason is there's an island, one of the Aleutian Islands, Okay, that does cross that one one hundred eightieth meridian, and that's the line that divides the world into eastern and western hemispheres. Somewhat arbitrarily, of course, So officially part of Alaska is in the eastern hemisphere. So if you around the other way, right, if you're using that definition, it is the farthest east relative to the wrestling country main of course, has the most easterly point. And the whole idea is we have the behavioral economics talks about we have the reflex brain like system one, and then the more thoughtful part of the brain system two. So these puzzles are like they're like big love it for your system one, all right, last one, quickly, if you take a random word from the English language, is it more likely that this word begins with the letter K or has K in the third position? So do you think there are more words that begin with K or have K in the third position? So your gut might say what gut might say.
I might just say it's in the third position, because god, K at the beginning seems like a relatively small set of words.
Interesting, Well, you're in You're in the minority. Because this was actually in a famous experiment by Nobel Prize winners Conomen and Taverski. Okay, they said, most people say K is more common in the first position because we think in alphabetize kangaroo, kitchen, kitten. We've always had these heuristics, but in fact, it is more likely it's in the third position. In fact, with the word likely, there's an example. Yeah, right, and I'm asking a.
Question, Yeah exactly.
But anyway, the availability heuristic, that's the official name of this fallacy, because we just our mind goes the easiest examples.
Got it. We can immediately think of a bunch of words that start with K. We don't immediately think of a bunch of fk in the third position. Chris, I get it.
All right. We are ready for our final stop. Listener feedback. Yes, Andrea has been monitoring all the channel's email, Instagram, Western Union telegrams for listener feedback, and we do have one that we got just today from a listener who heard our question about NFL team names and the Vikings.
So what is vikings? So many great Vikings in that one, right.
We mentioned in the show we mentioned you've are the boneless, odd, the deep minded and cigarette snake in the eye raged Narson. Uh and Zeke said, what did he say? We forgot? Andrea, Uh, yeah.
You gave us a list of other interesting Viking names like thor Gear the.
Clumsy Okay, not so nice, kind of kind of a snarky yeah.
I stein the foul fart foul fout, Yes.
Very immature of these Vikings, these Biking.
Wait, does he have a brother named like Spend the sweet fart?
Great question, we don't know.
Checking.
Here's another good one, Oliver the child sparer.
The child spar well, I mean it's I guess it's nice. But the fact that you have to specify that this Viking did spare children?
Right?
Not great?
Why was he putting children in danger in the first place? Right? There is where we're going here.
Right, great point?
Anyone else, Yes, this one's very appropriate. Veimond the word master.
Oh he's a puzzle or guest.
Yeah, we have him actually tied up in the puzzle lab.
Don't let him out much, by the way, quick, quickly before we go. I looked up. I was like, snake in the eye. I was like, did he get bit in the eye?
No.
He was a ninth century Viking Danish king who had a mark in his eye that looked like the oro boros, you know, the snake fighting its own tail. And last fun Viking name fact, Odd the deep Minded. I said, I use the pronoun he when describing this Viking in the puzzle, and I misgendered this Viking Odd the deep minded is a woman or identifies as a woman. So yeah, I was that's on me. I am sorry. Odd the deep.
Mind, Odd in all your descendants.
Right, Odd and all the odd kids. Well, yes, those are some excellent crazy names. Thank you, Zeke, and thank you for listening Puzzlers. If you have thirty seconds, please go rate the puzzler on your favorite podcast platform because it makes a huge difference in helping people find us. And we'll meet you here tomorrow for more puzzling puzzles. They will puzzle you puzzlingly.
Hello, puzzlers, it's Greg Pliska, your chief puzzle officer, here with the extra credit answer. From our previous episode. We did a couple of games. AJ played one with me where he did literal football teams by giving you an example of the players on that team. And his clue for you was the players are named Dolan, O'Connor, and Richelieu, and that, of course is the Saint Louis Cardinals. Those are all famous cardinals, Cardinal Dolan, Cardinal O'Connor, and Cardinal Richelieu. The well from the France, from France, from the French, not the Revolution, I don't think, but the time of the Three Musketeers. That I played a game with AJ about the phonetics, which who switches one sound in a two word phrase from one word to the other to get a new two word phrase. And your extra critic clue was this a device you might use when posting to Instagram turns into doing something embarrassing that makes you look bad like you might when posting on Instagram, And that, of course the device is a cell phone. And when you do something embarrassing like that that makes you look bad. It is a self own, So cell phone and self own are your answers. Thanks for playing with us, and we'll see you here tomorrow for more puzzling puzzles that will puzzle you puzzlingly. 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 Averragan 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 Therapist Coda No No, No No No, Rearrange those letters 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 where wherever you get your books and puzzlers. For all your puzzling needs, go visit the puzzler dot com. See you there,
