Hello, Puzzlers! Puzzling with us today: ESPN analyst and former college basketball coach and player, Jay Bilas!
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, the Free Wi Fi in your daily puzzle coffee shop. I am your host, AJ Jacobs, and today's guest is the awesome Jay billis ESPN's college basketball analyst, attorney, former player and coach at Duke University.
Welcome Jay, Thank you, Aj. Great to be with you again.
Great to have you this puzzle. I think you'll enjoy. It's all about sports team names. Do you have a couple of favorite sports team names?
I do. I grew up in Los Angeles, so my favorite is the Dodgers. I grew up an LA Dodgers fan. The Lakers, even though they're originally from Minneapolis and there are not a lot of lakes in southern California, and I grew up a big Rams fan.
Well, it's funny you say the Dodgers because also that has nothing to do with LA, because it was about dodging the subways in Brooklyn. So your two favorites have nothing to do with what they are.
Well, I dodged a lot of traffic in LA.
There you go. Well. Today's puzzle is written by Chief Puzzle Officer Greg Pliska. It's one of my favorites. So Greg, please come up from the puzzle lab and give us your wisdom.
Well, I appreciate you letting me out of the puzzle lab, but I realized it's going to be a very contentious day, Jay, because I grew up in San Francisco. Oh no, all my other team loyalties. I live in New York. Now, I'm a big Mets fan, but the forty nine ers are like etched on my heart.
So we all have our crosses to bear. Greg, I'm sorry to hear that exactly.
Well, we've certainly it's one of the great rivalries, no question, and.
I hope you too can get along enough to get through this puzzle.
I think we'll manage. We'll manage. Well. This puzzle isn't just about football teams. It's going to involve teams from all the major North American sports. And what we've done is imagined if there was an opposite world version of these teams, what the team names would be, where they're all replaced by their opposites. So, in this opposite wide world of sports, there's a California basketball team that's named for female monarchs, and they would be known as.
The you're talking about the Sacramento Monarchs. I'm sure in the WNBA, so no, no, I was.
Thinking about the Sacramento NBA team, but named for the opposite thing.
Oh, I see, we're saying Sacramento Kings, the Sacramento Peasants.
That's good. I like that as the opposite of King.
I like that.
You just go with that, the Sacramento. But I was thinking of the female monarch, so it would be the Sacramento queen queens.
I guess. Yeah, Okay, I got you even easier.
But I like peasants.
That's a good one. That's the opposite of king.
No question, no question. So in this game, I'll give you a clue to the opposite world team, and you tell us what that alternate name is. Okay, all right, here's your first one. If you want to see this team, you need to go to Anaheim or to Hell.
Be the Angels. So I guess the opposite would be the Devils, right.
That's right, the Los Angeles Devils. All right. This team is formerly of New Jersey. It's an NBA team that's interested in all of the income, not just the portion which counts as profit.
So it would be the Nets, the Brooklyn nets. What would be the opposite of net profit lost? The Brooklyn loss.
Brooklyn loss is a good one. I like that too. I was thinking, what you the opposite of net profit would be.
The gross profit? Gross profit?
Okay, right, the Brooklyn the Brooklyn grosses.
Or net deficit.
The deficits. Yeah, exactly a lot of options here.
The Brooklyn bankrupts well.
And some seasons. I think that's what they are. They're considered all right. You mentioned the WNBA earlier. Let's let's do a WNBA one. This is the team from Atlanta. They make their opponents have terrible visions in their sleep.
So it's the Atlanta dream. So the Atlanta Nightmare.
The Atlanta Nightmare. Exactly, exactly, well done. Here's another one for you. This Canadian hockey team is named for the four hundred and thirty five members of the lower House of the US Congress.
The senators Outawa senators, I guess, so would be what would that be? The voters? Oh?
Good, No, I'm thinking of the other House of Congress. So instead of the Ottawa senators, they would be what would the other So we've got one hundred senators and then we've got that other even Wackier Branch of Congress with four hundred and thirty.
Five, what would be the House of Representatives, the Ottawa Representatives.
Exactly what.
I see what you're saying.
Okay, I think Jenkins is doing some good, some good alternative answers. I think we got it great. Got to give them credit. These are not wrong answers.
There are a lot of different opposites. All right, here's your last one. This is actually there are two opposites in this in this team name. It's an American League baseball team that has very dark hand coverings.
Very dark hand coverings.
Instead of light colored foot coverings.
Oh, I see what you're saying. So it would be the Black Gloves instead of the Chicago White Sox.
Exactly, the Chicago Black Gloves on the same wavelength, they are excellently done.
That should have been the name of the infamous team that cheated.
In the Night or the nineteen nineteen World Series. That would be the they were called the Black Sox.
Yeah, yeah, give them black gloves, just to have them.
Black gloves to really go for.
Well, you did great, Jang. You know your team names. Where can people find more of your content, whether free or.
Paint well, they can always find me on ESPN, especially during the basketball season, and the mute button is handy for anybody who's heard too much of me on Twitter. I'm twitter X, I'm at j Billis and at j Billis on Instagram and TikTok.
Love it so Greg, before we leave, do you have an extra credits for the puzzlers at home?
Of course I do. I always have an extra credit before you banish me back to the Puzzle Lab. Sometimes known as America's Team, this football franchise features young women who like equestrian sports.
Well, thank you Greg, and thank you Jang and puzzlers. Please don't forget to subscribe to the Puzzler podcast and we will meet you here tomorrow for more puzzling puzzles that pullow you puzzlingly.
Hello, Puzzlers, this is Greg Pliska, your chief puzzle officer, and I'm here to give you the answer to our extra credit. On our previous show, we had Jay Billison, and in honor of his alma mater, Duke, we played a game where we clue words or phrases that had the letters d Uke hidden somewhere in them. The clue we gave you for extra credit. Is the oldest known example of this item can be found wrapped around the eighteen twenty nine book Friendship's Offering. Of course, you don't need to know Friendship's Offering or even what went on in eighteen twenty nine to recognize that the thing you might find wrapped around a book is a dust jacket, and that has the letters d UK hidden in it. Hope you all got that one, and I look forward to puzzling with you again soon.