The Puzzler with A.J. JacobsHello, Puzzlers! Puzzling with us today: actor and podcaster, Joshua Malina!
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, puzzlers, Welcome to the Puzzler Podcast. Let's start with a quick puzzle. Our guest today is actor Josh Malina, who is not only a talented actor, but he also has a highly anagrammable last name, meaning you can rearrange the letters to create lots of good stuff, as he pointed out last time, so he scooped us on this. But uh, he pointed out, Malina M A L I N A can be rearranged to the word animal. So that is the only actor I know whose last name rearranges to animal. However, there are some other act celebrities, notable people who's.
Just just in. I think I'm anal am I wrong?
I think that. Wow, that is breaking news. Veris and would you consider that an accurate statement? Are you an anal No?
I think I'm Uh there's type well, I was thinking more like type A type R.
Yeah, I'm not.
I'm not organized or meticulous or particularly good at anything you've done.
You've done pretty well for yourself being a type are Uh. So there's some type A in there somewhere.
Uh.
But yes, so Josh, who you just heard, is the only uh person I know with an animal anagram in his last name. However, there are many celebrities whose last names anagram to a type of animal a species of animal. For instance, actress Lena Olin O l I n her last name becomes lion. Josh is shaking his head, nod in his head.
You know, I got it.
Well, you can try these other ones. This will be good. Okay, all right, here are a couple of animals, and you can tell me what famous person also has a last name with those same animals. Sometimes there's more than one person. We've got four, which is eel. That's e E L. Second, Harper Lee. Sorry, oh he's doing it?
Are you supposed to We'll wait till the end.
We'll wait till the end. But yes, it was Harperley or Bruce Lee or Angley. All right, this one's you have to You have to say in your say it in your inside voice, interior.
Voice, thoughts, not words. Shot, that's it.
Uh deer as in d E E R and horse h O R s E. And finally, this is a tough one, suggested by Julie my wife bear b e A R. So come back after the messages for the answers and more puzzling goodness. Hello, Puzzlers, Welcome back to the Puzzler Podcast. The Clear t s a pre check global entry in your puzzle airport. Before the break, we asked Josh, our guest uh and you listeners about anagrams of famous people's last names that when rearranged spell animals. We had E E L Eel, which, as Josh pointed out, anagram's the last name to Harper Lee. What about dear d E E r Any theories on that, Josh?
Any of the famous reads Robert Reid?
Yes, mister Brady, I think uh dating almost as cool.
As as as.
Uh Donna Reid? What about Yeah, Donna Reid. I'm dating myself now that's even before my time. What about horse h O R s E.
Anything coming to go with another old man's choice? Dinah sho nice one.
There's a slightly less old man's choice, which is Paulis.
Yes.
And we also had Bear b E A R the animal bear. Anyone come to mind? That would be Lily rob r Abe, the actress Lily Robbed Julie suggested it a tough one. She's known for her American horror story appearances, and she received a Tony nomination for the Merchant of Venice. Congratulations, Lily Rob. Now, the reason this all came up is because, as I mentioned, Josh Molina is our guest. Anagrams to animal, but he is so much more than an anagram. He is a great actor, and.
I'm not an animal. I'm a human being exactly.
He is a human being and award winning human being. He is. He's been on West Wing, Scandal, The Leopold Stocked, the Broadway Show, so much more. Thank you for returning for one last show, Josh, Thanks for having you. We are delighted. Now, Josh, I did listen. When I was researching you, I found out that you graduated from a very prestigious school, bartending school.
Yes I did.
I did.
I put in two weeks that I wish I remember the name of it. I probably have the diploma on my wall somewhere, but yes, two weeks in New York City to train as a bartender.
And you worked as a bartender a little.
I worked as a bartender at the Broadway Theater where Leniz was playing. It's the lowest form of bartending job because you essentially worked for fifteen minutes during intermission. It's not an exalted calling as a bartender. And then I worked in the back bar of a restaurant in Manhattan, and I was so green that occasionally the waiters are coming with their drink orders and I have to bend down behind the bar and flipped through my index cards that I'd made.
I was like, what's a salty dog again? Do you know?
I remember?
I feel like it's grapefruit?
Hold on, because that was one.
See whether I'm right.
Yes, you're right, vodka grapefruit.
I've still got it. You get yeah, kids, get that education because it will do you well for the rest of your life.
Nicely done on the salty dog. And by the way, when you say that's the lowest form, that sounds like the highest form of bartending. Having to work fifteen minutes.
I guess. But the remuneration is not icy.
Yeah, the chips would not be idea right, all right? Well, because of your vast knowledge of salty dogs and.
Other drinks, Yes, here we go.
We have a We have a puzzle that is about cocktails. It's called sock Fails, And what it is is it's about a bar where they have tons of type but they did not hire a copy editor for their menu, so they have a lot of mixed brinks instead of fixed brinks. So I'm I give you the name of the typo written item, and you have to tell me what is the real drink. Now, we're gonna start with the sort of the introductory round where it's the first letter of these drinks and they usually have two words. The first letter is the one that's wrong.
So you're easing us into this game.
You got to ease in exactly, all right? Are you ready?
So?
What about a bum and joke? A bum and joke.
I think that's going to be a.
Rum and coke exactly, you got it. What about a demon prop? Demon prop?
Mm hmm. I think that would be a lemon drop.
Exactly, a lemon drop. And we're not going to ask you what's in it, but you may know.
Yeah, please don't.
You've got to dropping goodbye pre done in a bottle.
Oh there that's an easy one. Also, very good at tomics.
Very good? All right? How about a mob toy mob toy.
The classic cocktail, the rob Roy.
Exactly Rob Roy. How about we go with a lusty fail, A lusty fail.
Sure, no idea what's in it? But I do recall a rusty.
Now exactly, and it's Scotch, whiskey and drambooi in case in case any.
I'm sure we covered it in my two weeks exactly. I should still know.
So did you actually have to make all of the drinks as the final exam or just run?
Yeah?
My memory is that there is instruction and then eventually there was a Now make me this drink and do it correctly, and do it in a certain amount of time in order to get your your covetant certificately having passed the course.
Now did you do any like Flare bartending, like Tom Cruise?
No, I never got I never reach that level. You were lucky if you got the ingredients you ordered. Forget about them being dazzlingly assembled in front of you.
All right, What about a fake comb, A fake comb, A little bit of a tricky one fake comb? The first letters are different. This one you probably didn't make because it's not a very sophisticated drink. It is and it doesn't rhyme. Neither word rhymes with fake or comb.
Interesting A sack bomb, I would have been going. So that's the kind of thing I fixated. I would have been looking for the rhyme. I needed you. I needed you on my shoulder to help me.
As I said in an earlier episode, I don't naturally go to.
Lateral ways and thinking. I'm very literal. So I see the word, I know it's going to run. I have to open my brain up to other possibilities when I.
Gave well, you opened it successfully, So congrats, but you're gonna have to keep it open because we're going to round two. That's a little bit trickier where the typos could come anywhere in the two words. They could be the first letter, the last letter, somewhere in the middle. So what about is it a single letter your gun letter per word?
Just one letter per type of gotcha?
One one typo per word. Yes, they're very strict about that when they make their typos. Uh, gun and topic, gun and topic.
Okay, the aforementioned.
The aforementioned exactly because the U the I becomes a U and the end becomes a P. Gun and topic. I didn't change and to ant, but you got the idea. How about man tan man.
Tan man tan would be the type of verb of a my tie.
That is correct, my tie. How about broody Marx, that's like Carl Marx, M a r X and broody. So it's an unhappy room in which I think Carl Marx was probably brooding quite a bit. I'm guessing.
Uh that's a tough one, bloody Mary.
Exactly, not too tough, not too tough. Oh and here was silty dig, which was salty dog, but you dog. You already mentioned that this one's a little a little PG thirteen or rated R. All right, so yes, Apollo, but it's you know, it's just biology folks, semen and sever semen and sever h.
Yeah, that's a seven and.
Seven exactly, a seven and seven, which is seagrim seven crown and seven up.
Uh, yeah, that was easy enough to remember, that's.
Right, Yeah, I mean seven up. They are. They are lucky that I got there. How about uh, whisker soup. Whisker soup so w h I s k e r and so.
Must be whiskey sour exactly, all right.
How about this one I am proud of. This is a blank and wand blank and wan, which is one spelled w a n thank you, Yes, blank b l a n k and one w A n.
Is.
It's with I'm gonna let I'm gonna let it sit. I'm gonna let it sit just because you've been cruising seeing the words.
I should be able to get this blank.
And one blank and wan.
I give up. I've taken two more.
All right, Well it is two colors like blank and wan, but they are.
Too black and tan. I actually like to drink a black and tan Guinness. It's Guinness with usually harp or another logger on top.
Exactly.
It has to be assembled by a real crafts person to be done well.
Right, there are ten should have gotten it.
No, no, no, there's plenty of excuses. And by the way, yeah, that is that's a hard one as a bartender, I imagine, because it's like the tequila sunrise. It's the layers you got to do.
That's exactly right. And I just remember I went with my podcast. We did a live event or two live events in Dublin, and so we drank a lot of well I.
Shouldn't say WESHI doesn't trigger.
I drank a lot of guinness and I was that weird, ugly American tourist because it takes a while to pour a guinness properly, and I would keep reaching for it, and the bartenders were like, hang on, it's the poor you let it settled, and I had to. I had to ease into it, as with my puzzling, and I had to learn patience.
Oh no, you are you were well. I will say that you are very patient in that you pranks I feel require patients because you cannot like ruin the punchline. And that's why I'm not good at pranks. I can't but you.
That is true.
Like revenge and borsh, they are best served cold exactly.
Remind me what a couple of your pranks were. I know a prank that was played on you by Jimmy Kimmel that.
Was the biggest of all time, proving that people who are pranksters themselves are no less scullible than the people upon whom they pread.
Yeah, and that was just since we're on it, you want to remind people.
They got me so bad.
Well, after years of pranking my castmates on Scandal, often with the help of Jimmy Kimmel as an accomplist, they got back to me horribly, but we did. This was an idea I had titched to sort of promote the show, like we should drop in on people watching the show that are having Scandal parties and hey, some actors from the show are there, so when it and this is the kind of long ball they played. They did it once and it aired a Good Morning America with Tony and I can't remember another the actors, and then they're like, it is your idea, you got to do the next one. And I showed up and one of the producers said to me, Okay, you're gonna go in there. It's a nice couple and their mom, and here's a confetti canon that you'll do the confetti canon and it'll surprise them. And I didn't really want to do it, but I was like, okay. I grabbed the convetti and we barged in. I was with Katie Low's also on the show. I did the confetti canon, and the older woman whom I thought was their mother, it turns out they were all actors, and I was getting set up started to have some sort of cardiac discomfort and as if I had scared her and now she was having a cardiac event.
I fell for it completely.
Next thing I knew, we stopped filming these I heard an ambulance.
I was living by her, trying to cover my ass.
If I can't say that or Cya by saying they gave me the canon I didn't want.
To do, just trying to cover myself legally.
And then the paramedic runs in and it's Jimmy Pimmel and they grabbed me and they stick me in the gurney and they bring me outside, and then there was a fire truck on the driveway that hit me with the hose I fell for it a hook line and sinker and yeah, yeah.
You can find it on you.
You were very nice though, You're very nice to the ailing woman. You were very careful well.
Having triggered what I thought was potentially fatal heart attack, I thought it could be as calming as possible in your final moments.
And what was one prank you did that?
I mean nothing nearly that bad.
One thing I did do that Jimmy helped me with was I told the rest of the cast that I wanted them to record happy Birthday readings for Jimmy, and I had pre written them, so I'll just do it with my phone and just say this, And I got them all to do it. But we had Jimmy his writing staff and I worked out what the messages would be so that we could recut them into things that were not flattering to the speaker. So you know, made Bellamy Young say I'm an unbearable vegan, and I went on the show and they we just cut them all so that they were all saying these horrible and we're.
Some of them were actually legitimately mad.
That is odd. Well, I know you also have a nice prank war with Bradley Whitford from Yes.
Yes, that is a long long brewing, well not brewing, it's on. That's been a long standing feud.
Well, I love all sorts of things to each other.
When I did read Twitter, I love reading your tweets at Bradley Whitford, and he got you with when he wrote an episode of West Wing which.
He wrote an episode of West Wing in which my character Will Bailey doesn't want to go out and do a press conference where he's going to have to get some misinformation to pretend he doesn't know something, and he has my character say I can't act. I'm a terrible actor, and so he literally created the sublot just to make me say that I can't act on television, which hat tip is one of the great friends.
That is good. Well, I love that you're a good sport about being pranked as well as pranking. All right, we'll end with just have a one more before we go. Okay, this is a brand of beer, and again, don't try to rhyme. The rhyming won't work dog equip So if you have a dog and you try to equip it, Oh, you got it.
I believe I've got it. I think we've got.
Exactly dozekies the Mexican beer. Well, fantastic. Thank you for puzzling with us and having well, we'll have to have you come back. I do have an extra credit for the tipplers at home, and that is punk lazy. It has two letters changed somewhere in each of those words, one in punk and one in lazy. And we will end there. Uh if you uh, If you have time after the show, check out our Instagram feed at Hello Puzzlers, where we post original puzzles and other fun stuff. And we'll meet you here tomorrow, sadly without Josh, but there will be more puzzling puzzles that will puzzle you puzzling.
Hey, puzzlers, it's Greg Pliska up from the Puzzle Lab with the extra credit answer from our previous episode. We did some Audio Connections with Josh Molina and we gave you this extra credit clue. These three songs.
It's like a hungle.
Sometimes it makes me wonder how I keep them going.
Hello, I'm out of PI, don Shine to go, Paul ont of my Chaine.
Asspent on you, and that is correct.
Those were the Message by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious five Payphone by Maroon five, and ABC by the Jackson Five. I always feel like ABC is a good puzzler themed song anyway because of the letters. But you've surely picked up the connection by now. Those are all bands with the word five in their names. And we are so glad that you're here playing this and every other puzzle with this And we'll see her next time for some more puzzling puzzles that will puzzle you puzzlingly
