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Puzzling with us today: host of "The Allusionist" podcast, Helen Zaltzman!
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, where you can swipe right and find your puzzle match. I am your host, A J. Jacobs, and I am here with today's guest, the wonderful Helen Saltzman, host of the Illusionist podcast. That's all Usionist and it's a wonderful podcast about language.
Welcome, Helen, thrilled to be here, AJ, thank you for having me.
I've listened to your show, so I know you recently attended the scripts National Spelling Bee. Yes, I want to talk to you about that, but I first want to give you a puzzle related to that. And this is the actual spelling Bee you see on TV with the kids spelling incredibly hard words, not the spelling Bee puzzle in the New York Times. Do you know that? Do you play the Spelling Bee in the New York Times?
But I don't very much, gotcha? But I should. It seems like the kind of thing I would enjoy. I think it's because I have my daily word puzzles that suck up a lot of my morning time, and to add another one would be.
It is that's exactly. Yeah. I feel that they're introducing too many and you got to make time for the Puzzler podcast. Which ones do you play in the morning? By the way, I.
Do a little round of duel Engo, and then I do Black Crossword and I do squaddle.
Oh.
Interesting, then it's time for lunch.
Wow. Well we had Juliana Pache from Black Crosswords on our show, so I'm delighted to hear.
You do it. Yeah, she's she's not She's great.
All right, Well, this is not a spelling bee. This is more like a spelling f oh, because I am going to spell words in the worst, most incorrect, but still sensical way, and you're gonna have to guess the word with hints from me, so the most sensical okay, because well, the most famous example of intentionally crazy spelling, which you probably covered in The Illusionist, is goate ghoti, which spells.
George Bernard Shaw being a tricky tricky exactly.
He was a spelling reformer and he thought we need to get rid of this crazy spelling. So he's going to demonstrate how crazy it was because it spells fish. If you take the gh from tough and the O from women and the ti from nation, you've got go t but you pronounce it fish. Uh. And by the way, according to one source I saw it, he was a spelling reformer, but he is incorrectly credited with it. It's some other spelling reformer, but I'm sure he endorsed it. All right, So that's the premise. It's it's sort of a two part puzzle. The first part is I'm going to give you a crazy spelling and you have to figure out the word and then and you're gonna need hints because it's it's crazy, it's it's it sounds really hard. Yeah, it's going to be hard, but in a fun way. And then once you get it, I want to work out with you what are the words that I based on. So if go t were the answer, then we could you can figure out that the g H is from tough and the F sound and the e is from women, et cetera. And also i'll clue you on that one. So it is a tough puzzle. But I know you're up for it. You are Helen, you are the illusionist. Here we go. Are you ready?
No?
But yes, okay, that's what I want to hear.
All right.
Here, your first word is spelled p t a u x p t a u x so It might be pronounced patalus, but it is not. In this case, it is pronounced what might pt aux be it is I'll give you a clue. It is a part of the body. It is towards the bottom of the body.
Okay, so I'm thinking pt like in pterodactyl. Maybe yes, and I think it may be a silent X. Y would toe?
It is a toe exactly that. I mean, look at that. You said you were worried, but did that that did not give you much trouble.
The pterodactyl guided me through And.
That was the exact example. I was coming to terror and faux pa was the x fa u x. But it's pronounced foe, So p t a u x is an alternate spelling of toe. All right, you're on.
Your waye you have a need one.
Yeah, I'm hoping to start a whole new genre of writing where people just fell in the worst possible way. All right, you're ready for your second Yeah, all right, I'm emboldened. Excellent. What would this be? Perhaps sp w O s p w O. And this is a place where you might find a lot of animals. It's somewhere you might have gone as a young person.
I have an idea of where I might.
Find throw it out, but I want it.
I mean, I'm thinking zoo, but I can't make it fit you.
You thought correct, but let's make it fit. Let's go backwards, all right. So, well, the w O you might be able to get the ooh sound. The w O is is from a number two, Yes two, so t w o. The w O is pronounced ooh. Now the SP is a little trickier. The SP is from a fruit happens to be my favorite fruit, which I know doesn't help you. It is a small red fruit that you might get for dessert.
I'm getting it, getting it out. So in the middle of raspberry.
Egg exactly raspberry, So that is. I mean, it's crazy, but it's true. Raspberry is spelled raspberry, but no one says raspberry. They say raspberry. So SP actually spells z so SP from raspberry z and wl ooh, so you get z ooh zoo spwl spell zoo. Nailed it.
I would put ten dollars on you. Hearing from one renegade after this who insist that they do say raspberry.
Yes, all right, well there are actual raspberriers. I will I will give you that just as I assume there are wedness stayers and things of that nature. But your average English speaker is a raspberry speaker. I got two more. You got it? All right? You're ready? Yes, gm u e t GM. So it might be pronounced go mud gamu it, but it is not. The first hint is that it is a month of the year gm U e T a month of the year.
How fascinating. So I'm thinking it would have to be a short month.
Yes, good call. May, Well, well you just said it one of those.
Let's stick with May for you you will not because that is correct, May exactly.
So where did the gm? Where did the M sound come from?
Did it come from Flem?
It did come from Flam, as most many things do. Sorry, don't blame me, blame the English language. And then the U e t a as a U e T is a exactly bouquet bouquet of that is not an image that I thought of or wanted. But yes, there you go. All right. G U M e T is a terrible but feasible spelling of May.
All right, you've really uncovered some shocking secrets hiding in plain sight.
That's right. I am. I am a reformer like George Bernard Shaw.
Yeah, performing it to be even more abcuse than.
It is, exactly making it, Yes, taking a bad thing and making it worse. All right, I've got one more and then I want to ask you about your experience at the spelling piece. So this last one is special for you, and it is j e O l h e I g n. Okay, I'll say that again. J e O l h e I g n. So, yeah, just break it down. What is the j? There are there are two or three things a jay can be. So there is the just sound.
Yeah, there's a y sound, right.
Or.
What is the y sound in? I'm just trying to remember. Do you remember it was?
Well, it's the kind of thing that gets people very confused, like when they don't know whether to say Kim kim jong on. Yeah, but it's not it's I believe it's.
Oh, fjord. It's in fjord. That's what with the why.
Because you seem surprised. I think it's not going.
To be that. It is not that sound, So what is the other J in? You might find an English language usually imported from another language, perhaps Spanish.
Perhaps Spanish. You say so like like that kind of sound, or J in jalapeno is ha.
Okay, so we've started with hot, so it's hot. Then e O l H e I g N. The word starts with H. I said it was special for you.
Oh wait, is it Hellen?
It is Helen. That's how I want you to sign your name from now on. You know I will because it's J as in jalapeno, e O as in jeopardy, so the jeopardy is and then l h as in lasso from the dog from Tibet so and then e A I g N as in foreign. So Helen is j e O l H e I g N. As simple as.
That, I've had such a unimaginative approach morphology. Thank you for opening up a.
Whole new my pleasure. Yes, I guess mine could be U E t U d G. Yeah, that might be age aj something like that. Well that is a nice, I feel, demonstration of how bizarre English language spelling is. And I'm sure you've done episodes on this, but I think part of it is just a mix to mishmash of all these other languages, so you get all these weird spellings, right. It was not planned, Yeah, not planned and there have been many reform movements over the years, but nothing has quite stuck. But the good part of crazy spelling is that you get to have the scripts spelling be because if everything was rationally spelled, then it would be no fun. And you went to Maryland not as a contestant, but this year as a journalist slash spectator. Tell me, how was it? What was it like?
It was really fascinating. I never could have been a contestant. It looks so hard. I didn't even know most of the words. I'd never come across them before. And some of these kids are as young as eight, and they hope what they have studied and learned thousands of words and their etymologies because they're often piecing together how a word might be spelt by asking about the roots of it. So there's a lot more going on than them just wrote memorizing spellings Exit and it was really quite mesmeriting to watch.
Well, that's what I loved. You did a great episode about it, and one of my favorite parts of the episode is you know it might be dismissed as this wrote memorization parlor trick, but I loved what one of your one of the contestants said, it's it's like a detective case. You have the language of origin, the definition, alternate pronunciations, roots, It's like witnesses at a crime scene. You have to piece it together in front of millions of people and cameras. So that is an awesome image.
Yes, it sounds so terrifying when you put it la it's difficult puzzle and then millions of people.
In commis, Oh my goodness, I know I could not, Daun. I mean I couldn't do it because of the spelling, but also because of the pressure.
Yeah, I'm terrible at spelling.
Things allowed, and they do get It's mostly for the esteem, but they do get some prize money. Did you ask the winner per chance of what they use the prize money for?
Well, because they're kids, the money isn't really such a concept to them yet. Because you age out the spelling Bee once fourteen fifteen, and I interviewed last year's champion and runner up. The runner up gets twenty five grand the championhip's fifty grand, and I said, was the prize money motivating at all? They said, no, I wasn't even thinking about it because you have so many things to get through. Before you get to that. That that just seems like a kind of fiction. And then they were like, what what do you do with fifty grand when you're fourteen? I never actually, yeah, so I imagine a lot of them put it away for college or something like that.
That well, that seems, yes, a very responsible thing to do. I was trying to figure out what is the nerd equivalent of Disneyland, Like I'm going to I'm going to the Smithsonian. I don't go into the Library of Congress, and I do want let's let's talk for a couple of minutes before we end about the words themselves, because they are as you said, there's no way I could spell them, and many, if not most, I had never heard of so the year. This year's winner was a I don't know how to pronounce it absel a B s E I l.
Abseil, which the fun and round words. Because maybe I just think that's easy because in Britain you hear that bandied around because people will abseil down a building for charity. You know where you descend.
Really yeah, well interesting, I had never heard that word. I mean I looked it up and it's a synonym for repel that's what we call it. I looked at the history it started in nineteen twenty five, and I looked at some of the winning words. I mean, at first they were things that I had heard of at least, like fracas, fracas that I could do nack as in like he is a knack for music, So that one I knew kN A c K. That was, by the way, nineteen thirty two, nineteen fifty two was vignette tricky, but I still might have been able to do v I G N E T T E. But then let's talk. Let's get to some of these.
I mean what I'm going to leave that.
What was the one that, yeah, yeah, you interviewed someone who would it was, I believe Arim's aram asp. Do you do you remember what that is.
Is? I'd never heard of whatever that is.
It was, I'll tell you because he talked about it in the show. It is a mythical race of one eyed men of Scythia. I guess I don't know how to pronounce that, representing what is.
Its Scythia or I think the US has a different way of pronouncing it. But I looked it up and in British English you can get away with Scythia, so you.
Can ap all right, I'm gonna pretend I'm British, so one of a mythical race of one eyed men in Scythia, representing an ancient art as in constant strife with Griffins, because they want the gold that is guarded by the Griffins. So come on, isn't it It's very That's a nice way to say it. But then I don't even know how to pronounce some of these. Twenty twelve was gweta pens gweta pens. I didn't look it up, but do you. I'm going to look it up right now.
Guata pens absel. By the way, it's from the German down rope.
So well, there that makes sense, it does, I argue with it. What depends is to ambush, snare or trap uh. And then all right, we'll do just one more. I could do this all day. How about samo file P S A M M O P I P H I L E any ideas? What does that sound like? Samo file someone who likes psalms well sund an organism that prefers sandy soil sun sam.
I need that from the easbit books about the samiad or sand fairy.
Oh my god, there you go.
All right, But I think the thing about spelling beer is it has got more difficult over the years because the kids just get better and better at training for it, to the extent that in twenty nineteen they ran out of words they couldn't spell.
That was amazing.
H champions that year. Yea, yeah, that was. They have to pay them all fifty grands.
Well they deserve it. They deserve I mean, because these kids sometimes fit eight hour ten hours a day studying the spelling. All right, well, it was a delightful dive into the spelling b thank you for coming with me on that. And before we wrap up, we have an extra credit puzzle for those at home. I'm actually going to give you the spelling and then I'm going to give you the word, and then I would like you listeners to figure out the words that I'm using to spell it badly. So the spelling is l o ucc and it spells rich l you cc spells rich as in not poor as in has a lot of money, wealthy rich. All right, well, thank you, Helen. We have just had a delight having you on.
Thank you a it's been such a and I.
Feel we've given you a very helpful tool in that you can now start spelling your name in a better way last exactly.
You know, I have to spell out my last name all the time, so I'm glad that my first name can overtake it in difficulty.
Yeah, it's too easy, too easy. Well, thank you again, and listeners, if you have thirty seconds, please rate us, review us on your favorite podcast platform because that is so super helpful to us. And we'll meet you here tomorrow for more puzzling puzzles that will puzzle you puzzlingly.
Hey puzzlers, this is Greg Pliska here with the extra credit answer from our previous episode. We played Bedazzled Puzzle with Helen Saltzman, all about words with double z's in them, or pairs of words with double z's in them. Your extra credit clue was a fluffy bird of prey that, of course is a fuzzy buzzard. Don't let the fuzzy buzzard circle in your brain. Play the Puzzler every day. 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 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 Biddegar Curtis. Our associate producer is Andrea Schoenberg. The Puzzler with AJ Jacobs is a co production with New House Ideas and is distributed by post Haste car Id Get your car Id quickly or listen to iHeart Podcasts, the real distributor of this podcast. If you want to know more about puzzling puzzles, please check out the book The puzzle Ler 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,