"Friday Farrago" w/ A.J. & Greg

Published Oct 25, 2024, 8:00 AM

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.

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, Buzzlers, Welcome to the Buzzler Podcast, The Saffron Rice in your Puzzle PIEA. I am your host, A J. Jacobson. I am here as always with Chief Puzzle Officer Greg Pliska. Welcome, Greg, delighted.

Thank you, thank you. I you know, it is nice to be here, and I love how I feel like all of our episodes now are starting with food related things. Just makes me hungry every time we start.

Yes, and it's partly because, as you know, today is Friday Farragos, Yes, which began as a food mixture I think, and farrago. Of course it means the same as poepri, but it starts on an AFS, so we had to go with Friday Farrago where it has taken off as we know. And as always, this episode's act with nutritious puzzle goodness. We got listener letters, we got bonus puzzles. But let's start with some breaking puzzle news with our segment Lukewarm off the Presses.

This this news is so lukewarm, it's not even news. It's not really news. But as I was thinking about, what, you know, what what news do we have this October? I thought, well, let's let's talk for a minute about the fact that it is October, right, October, Yes, which is weird because October is the tenth month of the year. But Octo is the prefix that means eighth.

That is weird that someone counted wrong.

Someone is going on with that, and you probably know because you write. You read the encyclopedia once.

I have a vague recollection, but.

You make it. Maybe you've maybe you're working on a book where you're going to live by the old Roman months. Oh, I would see how that goes.

You know, which I like? Are the French Revolution months?

Those are good thermidore.

Door, that's nice fruit. I like that, you know.

Yeah, yes, there's some actually beautiful artwork around those too that I've seen. I have to those because are all evocative of you know images. Right, we should have lived during the French Revolution until we had our heads cut off, we would have had a great time.

There were down sides, they were downsides, but yeah, the months were much nicer, more blessed.

The year of living revolutionarily when you at the end of it, you just get your head chopped off and report on what that's like.

Yeah, that would be uh good career move for sure.

Career move. Well, here's the thing in the old Roman calendar. And I'm going to condense this a bunch because we're not a Roman calendar podcast, and people can absolutely correct us or go to your you know, go dig and read more about this. But there were basically ten months, and it sort of evolved I guess, from the Lunar calendar, which have from the Babylonian calendar. But the issue was it had three hundred and.

Four days, oh yeah, and short, and what.

I understand from the Encyclopedia Britannic is that they just ignored the other sixty one days. They were sort of like a gap in the calendar.

Oh was it like the the purs or whatever.

That's what I was thinking of. It's like there's no month now, so you can do whatever you want. But they you know, so the names were, you know, October, November, September, October, November, December all related.

Because December DC is ten right, right, Yeah, it made sense.

They had names for you know, other gods and Juno. They had quin Tillis and sextilis also as months.

Oh really fifth and sixth.

And then at some point somebody said, hey, let's add two more months, and that was sometime around four hundred and fifty BC. They sorted evolving closer to what we have, but it was still a mess. The year was still too many. It was about ten days too short. So things would get weird if you went around a couple of years. Suddenly, you know, summer is creeping to the you know, later and later, and so then they would add an extra month just for the hell of it. That they called mercedonious. Oh, and that would just it was sort of like, you know, a leap day. It was a whole like a leap month, a leap month.

I like it.

And the last bit I learned that I thought was fascinating because the rulers that were in charge of the calendar had the authority to alter it, and if they wanted to stay in term longer, or they wanted someone else out of office sooner, they could just say, oh, guess what, we're skipping this month. Oh, that's brilliant, right, Or guess what, you know, the inauguration is going to be in January, but we're adding a month just before that called Marcendonius.

Get let's not give anyone any ideas. Let's keep that to ourselves. That is fascinating. So I will say one last thing on the Roman calendar is I do not like the fact I'm born in March because it's named after Mars, the god of war. I'm not a big fan of war. I just think, if PA, what's wrong with packs bunch of months?

Exactly? Well, here's what I thought, you know, I thought, what we need to do is make up some fake etymologies for the months that we uh, you know that we that we don't know the enomologies that are not a miracle, right, So I'm going to give you a clue to the fake etymology, and you tell me which months this is. Love it?

Okay, all right, I'm on board.

So this month is named for the middle daughter on The Brady Bunch because it commemorates middle children everywhere.

I think I got it. I think I got it because that's Julie, my wife's favor for TV show, or am the middle daughter? And it would be January.

January exactly, that's what that month was named for. Now, actually it's named for the two headed Roman god of doors.

Janus, because I always heard, yeah, looking one head's looking back in the past and one head's looking at the future.

I don't know if that's the passage into the new year. What about the month when everyone receives precious precious stones?

Oh, precious stones, all right, gems. I mean my son is named Jasper, so that came to mind. But it's not that, not Jane Stone. Oh well, I guess jewel, jewel, jeweling, July jee jewel jewel. Yeah, it makes sense.

I buy it.

I buy it.

Uh. What about the month when Lucy pulls the football away from Charlie Brown again?

Oh? What did you say? Wasn't it like, yeah, Augustus August?

I mean, he says a U g h, I think August August?

Yeah, that is I feel August is more like February, Like February is a painful month and August is a delightful month.

Thanks. I was born in February, so I appreciate. But I was school on ap I was due on April Fool's Day.

So really that makes sense.

And speaking of April, I had this etymology for it. I'm not going to quiz you on it, obviously, then gave away the answer, but I thought, this is the month when primates go sit by a very small Brook.

Oh well, Ape is primates and small Brook is a real Oh real, Yes, I have seen that in crossword puzzles and nowhere else Ape.

Exactly you got so anyway, there's some months we left out. If folks have got inventive etymologies. For months we didn't talk about. We are happy to hear about those at info at info at dot com. There we go.

Well, that is a perfect segue, Greg, Okay, guess what Our second segment is a listener mail. Yes, to read our listener mail. We've got our associate puzzler, Andrea Schoenberg. Andrea, please tell us what has arrived this week.

Well, this week we have a letter from Gene Kent. It's about a ton twister.

Well, I will say this exciting there. I think tongue twister is a little bit like a tiny bit of a tongue twister. And I respect that. I respect that.

Yeah, I do have a little trouble with it.

I think that's true. It's good.

Let's try.

We're not cutting that out. It's about cutting that out that's in there.

That's the time. It's about a tongue twister. We discussed in an episode with Mike Caplan. Uh, and Gene writes, this morning's podcast was so super with comedian who was so comfortable comfortable. Oh this is this is really testing me. This is another tough one for me. Uh a comedian who was so comfortable boinging off of your quize.

He's a great boer.

This is this is a tongue twister, though, Andre the comedian who was comfortable with clues, it feels like it's really hard.

Yeah, so what does she say anything else? Does she got other?

Yes?

She continues. The tutor tutor reference is to a limerick I heard years and years ago, because Gene is a long time flute player, so she includes his limerick. A tutor who tutored the flute tried to tutor to tutors to tuote, said to the tutor, is it harder to tuot or to tutor to tutors to toot?

That isn't that is a It is a classic, and I always think it should be is it tougher to toute than harder to toote?

It's like, oh, yeah, you're right, they missed one.

The ancient people, the ancient Romans, who came up with this during their you know, sixty days of non month time were too lazy to put tougher instead of harder.

That is a great point. Well, I tried to I was inspired. I tried to look up the history of tongue twisters h and it's unclear what was the first.

One.

Sort of a related phenomenon is the shibboleth, which is in the Bible, and it's a word that is like a password because it's a word that people in your culture can say, but other people have trouble with. Shibboleth is a word in Hebrew that was about a plant, like a grain type plant, and another rival tribe was unable to pronounce it, so they were busted. I did also learn in German it's not a tongue twister, it's a tongue breaker, which seems very violent. And we also on the show discussed what was the first modern tongue twister, And the earliest one I could find was Peter Piper and that was eighteen thirteen. But maybe someone has a on one that goes farther back that they know.

I always wonder if tongue twisters have any relation to the story of Demosthenes, right he was the orator used to speak with pebbles in his mouth or something to make his speech more clear.

Right, and he became a great orator, and he was. And by the way, that again demos the knees is a tongue twist like that was a cruel thing of his mother to do, is to name him Demosthenes when you have a difficult time pronouncing things. I see, which I always thought was also a cruel linguistic joke, that the the word glottal stop glottle stop is a linguistic phenomenon where you it's the cockney accent uses it sometimes where you don't pronounce the the middle t like bottle. So people who have a glottal stop cannot pronounce glottle stop.

Stop.

Yeah, they do pronounce it, They just pronounce stop, right, I should not judge glottal stops. They might be just as wonderful as the glotts.

Some native English speakers say the language sadly glottal stop.

All right, Well, with that important uh news out of the way, we have our final segment, which is bonus puzzles. Got to handle the too clever by half clues that we were not able to use on the during the week with our wonderful guest, David Kwang, the magician and puzzle maker.

He just made them disappear while we are in the puzzle.

Very nice. Yes, So what have we got in this area?

Well, even before we get into that, I want to just clarify one thing because I used the phrase kissing cousin or the and then I react to you. I thought I said this, or maybe you said it, but I reacted to it as if it was a negative thing, like some sort of incestuous thing. And that's not what that phrase means at all. It's an expression etymology is not totally clear, but seems to be the Southern United States, maybe in the nineteen forties, denoting the relatives who you're close enough to that you would kiss them in salutation.

I see. So it's very platonic. Yeah, platonic.

Actually it's a nice.

Hugging cousins, not kissing cousins.

You you don't even talk to you on the street. That's a whole different kind of cousin. Kisses who are like you, they're they're really part of them in the you know, the nuclear family there, you kiss them in salutation because you're so close to them. So it's a nice thing.

All right. Well, as I wrote in my book, it's all relative. Everyone on earth is a cousin, so we are all kissing cousins. So so anyway, yes, we thank you for clarifying. So, yes, do we have any I won't say leftovers, because they are that that is a very negative ring to it. Would I prefer? Yeah, are there any so spicy? We didn't have time for them on the time time a spicy?

There were a couple from the hocus Pocus puzzle, uh, which which you gave to David, where uh, you take a word and you change the first letter to a P and get a new word right right, because it was that fictional magician you made up who was turning everything into starting with a p.

Oh, So I did I wrote that puzzle, and I guess I did have one extra that I didn't use. But then Greg the overachieving puzzle puzzle.

Here in the lab, I gotta do something.

He wrote, He wrote additional ones just for today. I'll give you the one that we didn't get to use, which was this magician turned soup and a sandwich into a type of booze. So so it's you take a word and then you insert a p at the beginning, you take off the first lunch to punch lunch into punch. So, but what else have we got in the these I don't know, these I don't know. Again, they're blacked out so on.

This sum and I have to say I stray maid from the brief a little bit because I think yours were all object becomes another object, right, And I found some fun ones. This one is a word that means to treat roughly. Treat roughly becomes a notable part of Oklahoma.

Oh wow, okay? And is the part of Oklahoma the part with the p yes, yes, all right, well prairie?

Is that a part of no think of the shape of the state.

Of oh manhandle the panhandle? It I like that. Okay, that's good fun fact. I was just watching Oklahoma with my mother, the musical and nice. It's very disturbing. This the poor Judd is dead is one of the darkest things I've ever seen in a musical.

You were watching it to kind of cheer yourselves up, and then yeah, judge, it's just so yeah.

Well it's wrong. And he's supposed to be the good guy.

Sing those guys, we're not afraid to get deep. They were not afraid to get deep. This is Fennel okay by another name, and this magician turns it into a puppet who becomes a real boy.

All right, well I know the puppet who becomes a real boy. That part I can solve, which is Pinocchio. So I just have to back solve it. Something in Occhio becomes Pinocchio. So it's this is not Reduccio, it's not. Why don't we go through the letters, right Reinocchio, Dinocchio. I don't.

If you go, you'll get there sooner. Well, I don't know if you know the word. That's partly why this wasn't ready for front to see.

Dinocchio's Finocchio. I feel it's Finocchio.

You're right, it's Finocchio.

That sounds Italian.

It's very my Italian. My mother, who is of Italian descent, was of Italian descent, used to give us Finocchio around the dinner table, and it was delicious. And I always, as a kid would remark that Finocchio and Pinocchio rhymed.

So that's a good one.

It's the real boy. And here's my last one, which I think is I had fun when I noticed it. This position takes the the act of passing out as if from Stendall syndrome, and it turns it into the thing that makes you pass out from Stendall syndrome.

Wow, okay, of course, if you don't.

Know what Stendall syndrome is in.

Your I might be. I know that I've heard of it, because it's not the Florence syndrome where you see so much.

Yeah, yeah, it is. That's it. That's it. Yes, for good, you.

See so much beauty that you are gobsmacked, you are amazed, you pass out, flabbergasted, you faint.

Yes, oh, paint to faint, yeah, painting and fainting.

Painting and fainting, all right.

Fainting into a painting anyway, that was a fun.

That is good. So yes, and well what through me is Stendahal has non sound Italian, but I guess he was a he read wow.

A good, great question. That name soon no Germanic. But he was hanging around Florence noticing everybody passing out on the street and came up with a name for it, or maybe he himself experienced it.

I feel that that disease is not quite as prevalent as maybe it was then, like it always. I love reading about Stravinsky when he debuted Right of Spring or Rights of Spring, and there was a there was a riot in the audience because it was so new and unexpected. These atonal sounds like. You don't get riots in the audience that at symphonies anymore. And it's a sad thing.

Yeah, I agree, I agree, I will say once I get There's a great book called a Lexicon of Popular Invective by Nicholas linimps now in the premiere of and I wrote an opera years ago, and when it was premiered, the conductor gave me this book as an opening night gift because it's filled with bad reviews of everybody from you know, from Stravinsky to this. Beethoven is in there, Gershwin is in there, bad reviews from everybody over the years. There for everybody. So if you're in good cabins, you get a bad review.

It happens to the best of us. All right, well, well done. I hope everyone here listening had stem well. I don't hope. I hope they don't think, especially if they're driving.

Modern there's a modern syndrome modern syndrome is from listening to too many great podcasts.

Right, yeah, over the driveway moment, there's that. That's a modern It is.

A great moment. Yeah, and PR talks about that all the time. Right, You don't get out of your car because you want to hear the end of the story exactly.

So we hope you are right now sitting in your drive But now you're free to go in your house because we are done. All I have to say is just check out our Instagram feed at Hello puzzlers, and we'll meet you here Monday for more puzzling puzzles. I will puzzle you puzzlingly.

Hey puzzlers, it's Greg Pliska. You're chief Puzzle Officer, and I'm here with the extra credit answer. From our previous episode, AJ and I played a game called Mopehead Moped, where every answer is two words that spell the same way but are pronounced differently, like polish and polish. His extra credit clue for you was an ancient soccer cheer. Now you've got to put an accent on part of this. You've got to pronounce them very differently, and you got to remember that this is a more old time way to say old. The answer is all olayl el e with an accent olay OLDA to you for playing along with us here at the Puzzler and we will see you here again 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 Newhouse 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 Pastor Hide's Kat 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 Your 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,

The Puzzler with A.J. Jacobs

Finally, your daily puzzle fix—in audio form! Every day, New York Times bestselling author A.J. Jaco 
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