The Puzzler with A.J. JacobsHello, Puzzlers! Today, A.J. and Greg give you a little peek behind the curtain and take you on a tour of the Puzzle Lab.
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 AI” 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, puzzle alers, Welcome to the Puzzler Podcast. Let's start with a quick puzzle. It is about the phrase my two cents, as in, this is my opinion, my two cents. The first known printed use of my two cents was in an article in the New Jersey Star Ledger in eighteen ninety five. So my question to you, Greg and puzzlers at home, how much would those two cents be worth in today's money? How much is two cents from eighteen ninety five inflation adjusted for twenty twenty five? The answer and more puzzling goodness after the break, Hello puzzlers, Welcome back to the Puzzler Podcast the White Smoke after your successful Puzzler Enclave, Thank you Andrea for that intro line. I'm your host, AJ Jacobs, and I'm here with chief puzzle Officer Greg Plisk. Of course, Greg. Before the break, we talked about the phrase my two cents, my two cents worth, first recorded in eighteen ninety five in the New Jersey Star Ledger. So my question to you was how much would those two cents be worth in today's inflation adjusted dollars? How much is an opinion from eighteen ninety five?
Worth.
Some people's opinions are still only worth two cents. You're not going to name any names. I'm just gonna say sometimes like your opinion wasn't worth But I love that we still use that, right, I still say, here's my two cents, here's my little bit of an opinion. But back then that was a bigger amount relatively than it is now. So our opinions still get worth less and less, I guess anyway, your question, So in two cents eighteen ninety five today, this is why I do a puzzle show and not an economics show. It is two dollars. I'm gonna say it's gone up whatever that is, to one hundred times two dollars.
Yeah, inflation is not as bad as you think real.
Yeah it No, it's the value of our opinions is better.
Oh that's true, very good.
Inflation is not that bad. Well, I you know, I don't know. I heard in the last election that inflation was terrible.
Oh yeah it was. But for opinions, two cents in eighteen ninety five today would be worth about seventy six cents now.
Seventy six cents.
That's how much your opinion is worth now?
Or some people, I'm gonna start saying that. Anyway, here's my seventy six cents.
And I do love inflation adjusted stuff like The six million Dollar Man was a TV show in the nineteen seventies, nineteen.
Seventy three, one of my favorites.
He would be worth forty four million. He'd be a forty four million dollar man. Wow, do you make it today? Yeah? Now, there's a reason I bring all of this up, which I will reveal at the end of the episode. But first, let me tell you about the theme of today's puzzle, which is the United States Constitution and the very same. We are doing this theme for two reasons. One, it's quite timely. There is a lot going on with the Constitution right now, some controversial things. And the second, perhaps more important reason, my book The Year of Living Constitutionally comes out in paperback this week, and if you want to understand what's happening with current events, I humbly recommend The Year of Living Constitutionally, which for me was a crash course in the issues playing out now.
Well, I second that recommendation, and so does The Economist, which called it one of the best books of the year.
Thank you for mentioning that Greg, that is right. They called it funny and illuminating. The hardcover came out last year.
Do you still carry your musket? I saw a lot of pictures of you with the musket. Are you still carrying it?
I still have the musket, but I do not bear it a lot.
But you have the constitutional right to bear it.
I do, absolutely. And for those who don't know, the premise of my book was that I tried to understand all these constitutional issues by getting into the mindset and lifestyle of the founding fathers. So I carried a musket, I quartered a soldier. I wrote the book with a quill pen. I talked to dozens of constitutional experts, and it was fascinating because democracy is a puzzle. So anyway, that's a good segue to puzzles today, Greg and Andrea, I'm going to give you a puzzle where I give you two crazy facts about the Constitution and you have to tell me which one is a real crazy fact and which one is a fake crazy fact.
Are you ready sure?
Excellent? The first set of facts. Now, the background is James Madison did not want the First Amendment to be about freedom of speech. He liked that one, but he had it lower on the list. Instead, he proposed another amendment that never passed. That all is true. So here's the puzzle. If James Madison's true first amendment had passed, which would be true today, we would have six thousand people in Congress, or we would have fifty justices on the Supreme Court. Did James Madison want six thousand people in Congress or fifty justices on the Supreme Court.
I can handle a few more justices on the Supreme Court, but it's true, I don't think we need six thousand members of Congress. So even more important than freedom of speech, James Madison said we should have. So I'm going to say it's the members of Congress.
Want You are saying correctly, yes.
And my reasoning is that whatever it is he was doing, it was something proportional. So was saying we should have X number of people for each state or for each and that would lead to six thousand I did. I don't buy that. He said the Supreme Court should have fifty people on it, So I think that's the proportional represent is the key here.
You are correct, that is exactly true he thought, and no one thought America would grow that much. So he said that we needed more congress people, poor congressman back then per capita, so by today's population we would have six thousand. I do think we need more people in Congress, but six thousand might be a little unwieldy. All right, well done, You're one for one. The second one is which of these facts is true? The nineteenth Amendment, the right of women to vote, passed only because the mother of a Tennessee politician wrote him a pun filled note. Or the most recent amendment, the twenty seventh Amendment, was passed because a congressman was trying to prove something to his ex girlfriend.
Ha wait, what is the twenty seventh Amendment?
That one says that congress cannot have a raise a salary raise during their current term. And it was nineteen ninety one it passed.
So I'm going to go with that one. I'm going to go with the congressman proving to his ex girlfriend or his girlfriend that you know what I no, no, I'm not in this for the money. I'm going to vote for this thing.
Woo, I got you, all right? Thank god. It doesn't have an awesome but I got him. The nineteenth of vend is the true story, A crazy, wild story. I tell it in the book, but you can read it elsewhere about a hero named Phoebe Byrne, the mother of a Tennessee legislature and the nineteenth Amendment had to be passed by three quarters of the states legislatures, and it came down to Tennessee. If Tennessee said no, women would not have the right to vote. Came down to one vote, a swing vote Harry Burn. His mom put a note in his pocket that said, be a good boy and vote for women to have the vote. And she would have been good on the puzzler because she used the punch she talked about. Don't be a rat vote for ratification. A lover he thank you, baby, love it hero to us. All all right, next one, this one is about executive orders. Executive orders. All right, I'm going to give you two alleged executive orders, and you tell me which is the real one. First, William Howard Tafts gave an executive order that the White House chef can only use ingredients from the United States or territories including Guam. So he was like a lokivore. First locovore or national.
Vote issue is I mean, Guam is not so local, but it is part of the right.
Or was it that Woodrow Wilson said that people could not hunt animals in the Panama Canal Zone by torchlight, that that would be illegal. Which one of those is.
An actual That's so interesting. I mean, yeah, it's really not fair. Tracking down, you know, canal zone deer with a flashlight not fair at all. So I'm going to go with that one, going to go with Woodrow Wilson.
You would be correct. You would make a great president, Greg because that is an actual executive order. And apparently he was upset that people were hunting animals by towards light, so they would they would panic and come towards the light and then they would shoot him. He thought this was unfair, so he passed that. I want to bring up executive orders because they are a big part of my book. George Washerman signed eight executive orders in his eight years as president, and since then it has just ballooned. We have got hundreds both Democrats and Republicans, and Trump has just gone executive order manic he is. Oh, and in fact, it's very timely because Saturday Night Live just did a funny little riff this past weekend on executive orders from Trump, you know, not real ones, including this one.
This order will make the New York Times connections game easier, and it's about time. Every time it's like, how the hell was I going to get that fourth one? You know, the purplect one. Uh, it's always like units of measurement, plush, the letterqueue or types of beans minus the concept of love. What the hell does any of that mean?
So I love that because I do think that executive orders are not really American, or at least not what the founding fathers intended. The president was supposed to have much less power, Congress was supposed to be first among equals, and in fact, some of the founders hated the idea of a single president. One of them said it was the fetus of monarchy and that their power would just grow and grow. And I think that's exactly what's happening. But I loved in the book, I talked about how the Constitution you can see it in one of two ways. You can see it as the big bang of democracy, or or as an elitist text meant to keep people down. And it's it depends on your framing, and there are elements of both in the Constitution. But I love Frederick Douglas's framing because he said that he saw the Constitution as a promissory note, like he looked at the glass half full. He said, it talked about liberty, inequality, but America did not live up to those ideals. And it's our job to make America live up to those ideals.
So we keep trying. We keep trying. We're getting that aspirational.
We take steps back though sometimes.
I feel that there.
Yeah, all right, well, Levy, And with the reason that I brought up my two cents in the beginning, and that is because the Constitution is it's a very interesting document. In some parts, it's like really specific, like you know, instructions for ike or something. It's like, you know, the president cannot be has to be thirty five years old. Like that's pretty specific. Yeah, but there's a lot that is very vague, like due process or everyone is entitled toss What does due process mean? And this is both a bug and a feature of the Constitution, because you could say it's a feature because that way we can evolve. So due process includes women and people of color, but at the same time, it is vague, so people in power can distort it to mean whatever they wanted to mean absolutely.
Uh.
Can I ask a question, of course, when they said thirty five years old, do you think they meant that as an absolute number or was it meant to be like a percentage of life expectancy? That is that it should be much higher. Right, It's like the two cents becoming whatever it became, thirty five should now be fifty.
Right. That is such a good I mean, that is the why I brought it up. That is exactly a fascinating question. They did want the president to be old because they wanted the president to have achieved things on his own, so it couldn't be the twenty two year old son of a current president.
Very good, right, And again, looking at all the monarchy and trying to change not have that system where hey, we've got a twelve year old who becomes king because he's next in line.
Right, should it be age adjusted? And similarly, should it be inflation adjusted? Because there is a dollar amount in the Constitution in the seventh Amendment says that you aren't entitled to a trial by jury if the damage is twenty dollars or more so, the question is like, in the beginning, what would you say the twenty dollars in seventeen ninety one would be worth ninety one?
You were allowed a jury trial if the damages is in a civil case. If the damages you received were twenty dollars, then you got a jury trial exactly. So what do you think nowadays? What would twenty dollars from then be worth today? Yeah, I'm going to say it's oh, two thousand dollars.
All right, a little a little over, but not crazy. It would be about six hundred and fifty one dollars today.
A little over order, but you know, like three time and a half times over. Sure, Thank you Jen, generous, Thank you Jen.
Yeah, so that would be interesting. I feel if they put in a little asterisk in the Constitution inflation adjustede, like they do with those movie grosses on the internet.
They would have I've had to know inflation was coming. Well.
Of course they did well, they did, They dealt with inflation, they hated it. But I do think it speaks of the larger issue. How much should we evolve the meaning of the language in the Constitution? How much should the meaning stay same and stable. The right to bear arms? Does that mean only muskets and cannons or does it mean all arms? So these are fascinating issues. I try to present both sides. I am more on the side of the living Constitution, as you can see when you read the book. But I do try to present the cases for both sides. But I loved it and it's a very fascinating and I think a bit of an alarming time in our nation's history.
Do you still have the hat? You still have the tricorn hat?
I do, Thank god.
I've got several tricorn hats, and I am a big fan. I still do wear them around the house occasionally. I don't, as I say, I don't bear muskets around the house, but I do wear my tricorn hat.
If I remember correct, you did quarter a soldier in your house?
Thank you? Yes, I did. One of my favorite experiences I had.
Amendment says that that the government you can't be forced to do so, that's right.
This was the second Amendment.
You have to consent.
The second Amendment very high up said that you have to consent as a homeowner to allow a soldier to stay over. And this was because it was a big deal. Then the British had sort of been taken over people's houses with their soldiers unwilling.
So you had to ask a soldier to ask you if he or she could stay with you, right, because it wasn't enough for you to say would you come stay with me? Because the whole then you'd already consented. So you hear the soldier had to say, hey, Aj, can I stay with you? And you said yes, I consent, and then it won't Yeah.
Basically that I mean I knew I had the right to kick him out at any time, okay, so he had to be honest behavior. That was where sort of my constitutional rights played a part. I could have woken him at three in the morning and be like get out of here, and constitutionally he had to get out. Well, thank you everybody. I hope you enjoy the show, and if you have a chance to check out the book, it's The Year of Living Constitutionally by AJ Jacobs.
Before we go, I wanted to alert the puzzler legions to an awesome puzzle designed by a friend of ours. It's called Pandora's Legacy, an epic jigsaw puzzle adventure, and I was lucky enough to test it out early because my friend Alex Rosenthal helped create it. It's from the folks at ted Ed and it's this gorgeous jigsaw puzzle about Greek myths. But the jigsaw puzzle itself contains clues to a bunch of other puzzles of all kinds, so it's sort of like an escape room in a box. My son, Zane and and I did it. It was a blast. You can order it on Kickstarter. It's called Pandora's Legacy. I just checked it out on Kickstarter. It's a huge hit, more than five thousand backers. Highly recommended, and of course we will see you hear them next time 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 Kliska, your chief puzzle Officer. Our executive producers are Neelie Lohman and Adam Neuhause 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 Therapist Coda No No, No No No Rearrange those Letters distribute 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,
