From time to time on the weekends, we’ll be bringing you some of our recent favorite episodes. Enjoy your weekend, and we’ll be back with a brand new puzzle on Monday!
Hello, Puzzlers! Puzzling with us today: sports reporter, writer, and podcast host, Charlotte Wilder!
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, and welcome to the Puzzler Weekend, where we bring you some of our favorite episodes from the vaults for your weekend listening. This weekend, some of you may be watching the NBA Playoffs. Now I'm a little sad that the Cleveland Cavaliers were eliminated, and not just because my son goes to college in Cleveland, Ghost Spartans, but because I wanted them to face the Mavericks in the finals, so it would be MAVs versus Calves. And then if the MAVs scored more in the first twenty four minutes in the Calves in the second, journalists could say MAVs and Calves split halves. That would be exciting to me, but that dream will have to wait another year. In the meantime, this was all a roundabout way for me to introduce our episode with Charlotte Wilder called Random Fandom. Charlotte is a hilarious NBA commentator and this puzzle is about sports rhymes, so please enjoy. Hello, puzzlers, Welcome to the Puzzler, the podcast of interest in your felony puzzle investigation. I'm your host, AJ Jacobs, and today's guest is the wonderful Charlotte Wilder. She's a sports writer and host of the show Oddball, which Charlotte describes as the weirdest NBA show available in the media. Welcome Charlotte, thank you so much.
Aj.
Yes, the stranger and wild things we talk about for Metal Lark Media, it's always an adventure.
Well, I do I have a sports related question to open things up, which is is puzzling a sport?
Yes, I don't even need to think about that one. Puzzling is one thousand percent a sport. You know, named myself the Arbiter of Sports a long time ago, and I had a whole rubric of things that made something sports are not sports, which now I cannot even remember unless I go look up the old article. But I do remember that number seven was does it feel like sports? And that that can override absolutely any of the other criteria.
So I am honored to be on the show.
I'm a huge fan, love listening, and I think that it is so far in the arena of sports that I'm actually surprised you had to ask me age.
Well, I just wanted to make sure since you're the expert. I mean, I am a member of the twenty nineteen USA Jigsaw Puzzle Championship US team. So I consider that a sport. We came in second to last and embarrassed our country, So it wasn't that's incredible.
Listen as long as you're in the arena.
Thank you.
I think puzzling. You know it's not true, but I mean it.
We had a great time, and you Andre, you are a puzzler, right. You said you emailed me that you like what you like the spelling big connection. You were just doing connections, like to limber up to do?
Is that right before I came on here.
I had saved myself connections today to do right before we started recording, to get the puzzle neurons firing.
Yeah, I have.
It's sort of I guess you could call it an obsession.
I don't really know what else you would call it.
I do the crossword every day, I do connections every day, and then I do Letterbox every day, which is not as.
Popular a puzzle.
Dark course. Yeah.
Well, and to make it even harder on myself to tell you, you know, everybody listening, how I really am.
I do it every day. My dad and I do this, and we have to.
Do letterboxed in two words wow, because there's always a two word solution, and they'll say, like yeah, they'll say solve in six words, but you can always get it in two. And I've wasted I've wasted easily four hours a day before trying to like not not doing everything I should be doing because I'm, you know, one word away from the elusive two words solve.
Well, that's why you got to listen to the Puzzler podcast. We're only like ten minutes and we've got one for you. Are you ready, Charlotte, I'm so ready.
Aj.
It's called random fandom, and the answers are going to be a two word rhyming phrase like random fandom, and one of those words is always going to be the name of a sport like baseball 'or puzzling. I guess now that we know that it's an official sport, all right, here we go. This is what you might call a big stunning surprise, like when the US women's team was eliminated early in last year's World Cup.
You know, I know it immediately, but to give I'm going to give listeners a second. I was so nervous that the first one you gave me I was gonna have absolutely no idea, but I'm pretty sure, AJ, that's a soccer shocker.
That is a soccer shocker exactly. And yeah, I am using the American word for soccer because I don't know some people might want to say, I try to find a football rhyme like that is hard football groupball. Yeah, it's not. All right, You're right, you did it. Uh, thank you, nicely done. All right, this next one, this is what it's called when you are riding on a horse. You're holding a mallet, but you're the only one playing.
Oh poor thing.
I mean, assuming you don't have any friends who can join you on horseback.
That is solo polo, AJ, that.
Is solo polo. And thank you for the emotion, the poignancy you got that. Yeah, all right, what about this one? This is the national sport of Canada's head haun show, I should say national summer sport. It used to be the national sport completely but they recently changed it to the national summer sport.
Okay, head honcho. I mean immediately I go to hockey, but that's not a summer sport exactly. So I'm trying to think what else they do they do curling. That's also not a summer sport.
What does he do in Canada?
So well, I'm here for you if you need me.
I would love a hint.
All right, Well, this was invented by indigenous people of North America. Oh that's it. I'm not going to say anymore.
I know the sport. It's the head honcho.
Uh uh, Well can I say the sport.
Yeah, the sport's lacrosse, yes, exactly.
So now I'm trying to think of.
Head kahuna, the top dog, the right, the ceo. They I'm running out of synonyms.
The boss, the lacrosse boss.
Lacrosse boss. Exactly. You got it, all right? We got about two more here. This is Japanese rice wine, given to players who are on an ice rink hitting a puck.
I don't know how safe it is, but it's definitely hockey sake.
It is hockey saki exactly, although as my son pointed out, that's the American pronunciation, so it's OK. It might be yes, hockey sake. All right. Well, let me do one more than this is. This is when Bill and Hillary play with a shuttlecock, which I know sounds a little dirty, but it's not.
Yeah, well, it's a couple of Clinton's playing.
Badminton, exactly, Clinton badminton, and I learned here's a fun fact. I believe according to one source, the shuttlecock is the feather version and the birdie is the plastic version.
I've never known that you taught me something about sports.
Aj it may or may not be true. I'd say eighty percent, but that's exactly. Oh, let me do one last one because it's not totally a sport, but it is sporting related, which is this is people who work on the yacht owned by Times twenty twenty three person of the Year. Do you know who the twenty twenty three person was someone you? No, that was like twenty twenty was like you and I was like, no, this was someone who you have.
Wait twenty twenty three. Oh oh Swift, Taylor Swift. Yeah, they work on the I'm a sailor coaston to the two things, the two things I care most about it Ja Taylor Swift in sailing, and I can't That's.
Why I Well, you just said the two words in different forms. He said Taylor and.
Oh Taylor sealers.
Taylor sailors exactly.
I was like, I didn't remember that twenty twenty three was last year. I was like, that's this year, so and that's how I got confused.
But yes, it is a whole new year. And by the way, you once wrote that Taylor Swift's erastour is the best sporting event you have ever seen, And I tell me by that, what do you mean by just give me a hint?
You know, I think for me going to see Taylor Swift at an NFL stadium, I went and met life in New Jersey and I didn't realize until I walked in and there was so much joy and I felt so safe, and there were so many women, and it didn't occur to me how unsafe I regularly feel or like tense just doing my job going to sporting events or especially football games in sort of the browie culture. So it was really it was very moving to me to go to a place where I work often or have worked and see something so joyful and celebratory and feminine.
So that's what.
Also, she's on the stage for three and a half hours, So if that's not an.
ACDE, I don't know. Yeah, exactly. And you were, I mean, you were way ahead of the NFL Taylor Swift van diagram. So congrats on that. Yeah, thank you.
I think I actually tweeted in twenty twenty that Taylor Swift is sports but who's keeping track?
Nice? Well, thank you. You were wonderful and I hope that you don't resent me like your mom resents Sam Mazerski. No, those were fun, excellent. Where can people find more Charlotte Wilder content?
Oh man, Well, you could follow me on Instagram at the Wilder Things. I used to be more active on Twitter or x but now it's sort of even worse than it used to be.
But that's my social handle. You can check out Oddball every.
Weekday but Mondays on Draft Kings Network and on YouTube and occasionally I pop in on the Dan Levatard Show or Pablotry finds out great. Oh also my substack, which is the Wilder Things dot substack dot com. I would be honored if anyone listening would would subscribe.
Excellent. All right, wilet, You've got lots of options people, All right. As always, before we wrap up for the puzzlers at home, we've got an extra credit puzzle. This is a little snack that you might have while playing an indoor racket sport and puzzlers. You can get the answer to that next episode, and don't forget to subscribe to the Puzzler podcast. We'll meet you here tomorrow for more puzzling puzzles that will puzzle you puzzlingly