Hello, Puzzlers! Puzzling with us today: longtime Simpsons writer and producer and author of What Am I Doing Here?, Mike Reiss!
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, Puzzlers, Welcome to the Puzzler Podcast, The Woe in the Middle of your Keanu Reeves Puzzle Movie. I'm your host, AJ Jacobs, and I'm here with our guests, the great Mike Grease, longtime writer for The Simpsons and author of the new book What Am I Doing here? A Simpsons writer visits the World's Hellhole? So you don't have to welcome Mike.
Thank you, great to be here.
Delighted to have you.
Mike.
When I interviewed you for my book, you told me you have a compulsion to find anagrams in any word. You see. You have anagram itis.
Yes I do. Yeah, I cannot help it.
So like if you see a stop sign, you rearrange the letters to pots or whatever.
Pots and posts and ops and all those. Yeah.
See, you already did it faster than me.
Uh.
And you've told me some great ones you've come up with. Well, one that I always remember is you told me that you went to go see a what was it, an Oscar Wild play?
It was an Old Coward play.
And we walked out of the play and I said to my wife, Noel Coward is no Oscar Wild. And for some reason that sentence just stuck in my head and I didn't know why. And then the next day I wrote it down and I realized the first half of the sentence is an anagram of the second half. Noel Coward is no Oscar Wild, And you know, it just tumbled out of me. But the idea that my anagram brain was going, hey there's something there is really shocked me.
I never forgot it. And you've snuck quite a few anagrams into The Simpsons, if I'm not mistaken.
You know they the Simpsons, I think has had more anagrams than any other show because there's no real competition. But that was it, you know, we and we did one where I think early on we had a danger sign and then Peace comes to the world and they rearranged danger to garden.
And then like.
Thirty years later, we needed a similar joke and we wound up changing garden to danger.
Oh you know, that's a good that's a good little east And of.
Course the fans busted out, So you did that already. It's like thirty years ago. You can't get away with anything with these guys.
But you did the opposite. It was closing the loop. Yeah, okay, Yeah, that's what you did it on purpose? Well, what about you told me in the very first episode you tried to get Bart and Brett as a as an anagram.
Yes, you know it was funny. It actually is in the show where.
In the first episode I ever wrote, where mister Burns is meeting the Simpsons fam and his little note cards, which, by the way, just for Simpsons fans. It was something we took from Ronald Reagan, and that was our initial conception of mister Burns. He was going to be very genial and doddering, like really Ronald Reagan. So he's going, oh, here's little Lisa, he's looking at cards and Marge and here's little bratte Bart and Bart says that's not my name, man, and Homer goes, shut up, Bratt. But we made that joke, and then Matt Groening said, you know that was the intent. It was part of his naming Bart Bart is that it was a n anagram of Brett.
Oh, I didn't know. That's interesting. Yes, And when did mister Burns turn evil? How did that happen?
It was funny.
What was happening was in that first season, several of us were writing episodes independently, so we wrote him genial and then someone else wrote him evil and I guess, as always in life, evil one.
Out or interesting to watch the evil? Yeah unfortunately? All right, Well, moving onto our puzzle. This is an anagram based puzzle written by our Chief puzzle Officer, Greg Pliska. Anagrams, as you know, are when you rearrange the letters in a word, so like kat becomes act. But this is a next level anagram and one that you are familiar with because it is used in the National Puzzlers League in their puzzle magazine, The Enigma, and it is called a letter bank. So a letter bank is when you rearrange the letters, but you can use the letters more than once. So for instance, if the word is nest, you can rearrange it and add as many t's and ends as you want and get Tennessee. Or if it's the word is law and you're trying to get a city in Washington State, it would lead to wa al right, So that is the letter bank. And our twist is that we have made every letter bank out of a Simpsons character name. So we're going to give you the name of the character as part of the clue for the longer word. So for instance, well this is not for instance, this is the puzzle. I'm not even going to get you for instance.
All right, you ready, I think so.
This is where Homer, when he was a student went at the start of each school day.
I don't even know what you want for me.
That's the puzzle. We want to baffle you. So all right, the letter bank. The bank is Homer.
Homer Homer. Okay, sir, Homer is.
The letter bank. And you've got to use letters in Homer as many times as you want to find a place where he might have gone at the start of his school day.
And now I know, And the answer is Homer.
Homeroom okay, now you got it. Now we're in the clear. All right. This is where Bart's fourth grade teacher, Edna. So that's the letter bank. Edna crab Apple might live if it is a street with no exit.
Oh, she would live on a dead end.
All right, now you're in all right here, Yes, of course it's Krabopple.
It's Edna Krabopple.
Again, one of those built in jokes that the idea was her name is Krabopple. But none of the kids ever figure out to make fun of her by calling her crab.
So they are not good at word games.
That's correct.
Interesting, So I'm mispronounced. Did I say crab Apple?
I meant you said crab.
That's embarrassing.
Have you seen the show?
Oh man, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. We have Lindsey Hoffman on who is our producer and resident Simpson's expert. Apologies, Lindsay that was embarrassing.
All right.
How about this one? This one's with the Letterbank Marge. This is a big business deal where Marge might join together several companies, like if she were perhaps a corporate lawyer.
I think that would be a mega merger.
That was fast. That was very fast, by the way. All right, two more we've got. This is a simple one. Not simple, but sure. This is bart Or Bratt. If he went to visit a world capital, he might go too.
Oh, I guess you would go to the capital of Morocco.
Robot exactly, which I assume maybe you've been to.
I have been there. Yeah, Morocco.
For anyone who wants to be a world traveler like me, start with Morocco because it's super exact and yet very safe and tourist friendly. Just it's literally like walking into the Arabian Nights. I got off the plane and saw a snake charmer.
Really yeah?
Wow? All right, So last one this is Nelson. This is based on Nelson the Bully, and we're hoping one day he might get his come upance and have his schnas removed, in which case he would be.
He would be noseless.
Yeah, that was fast.
That was definitely he would suffer from noselessness.
Exactly, he would be noseless. All right, well there you go, you did it.
Wow, Well that was fun. I enjoyed that.
Yeah, we redeemed it. It took a rough start. But then, so where should people enjoy more of your work, Mike Greece.
Well, they may have had their fill of me by this point, but they can listen to my podcast.
What Am I Doing Here? Or they can buy the book.
It's a perfect Christmas book, and that you can order it, get it, read it, and then rewrap it and give it to someone else. What the book is called, What Am I Doing Here? Is big and colorful and full of pictures.
So do you think that other books are less regiftable? This is a particularly regiftable book.
I feel like it's particularly regiftable.
I wanted to put that on the cover and they say.
Okay, very good. Well, before we wrap up, as always, for all of you puzzlers at home, here is your extra credit puzzle. This is a letter Bank. This one's a little harder if I didn't mention that this was written by our chief puzzle Officer, Greg Plisko. So it's based on the Letterbank Skinner. As in Principal Skinner, a school prank comes with a certain amount of this, seeing as Principal Skinner might catch you. All right, find out what it is when you tune in tomorrow, and please don't forget to subscribe, and also tell your friends and rate and all that stuff. Oh and also puzzler dot com. Don't forget about puzzler dot com. That's all your puzzling needs right there. And we will meet you here tomorrow for more puzzling puzzles that will puzzle you puzzlingly.
Hello puzzlers, Greg Pliska here, your chief puzzle officer, ready to give you the extra credit From our last episode, we played Uniting Nations with Mike Reese. In this puzzle, there's a blank in the clue that needs to be filled in with the name of one of the nations in the world to make a sensible sentence. Your extra credit clue was, if you're going to make beer, you'll need some hops, some blank, a lot of water, and a fermentor. And of course the country that belongs in there is Malta. Split into the words malt and uh so it reads you're going to need some hops, some malt, a lot of water, and a fermentor. I hope you got that one. And if you're in Malta right now, I hope you're listening. Thanks for playing.