Can You Solve These Puzzles with Me and A.J.?

[00:00:06] People love solving puzzles. First off, it's like a challenge to yourself. Here's an intriguing thing. Can I solve it? And a puzzle has to be done just right. Like if it's too hard, you lose interest. If it's too easy, you lose interest.

[00:00:19] So puzzles are like this fascinating form of entertainment that has existed for thousands of years. And I think I like puzzles also for two other reasons. One is, I feel like it exercises my brain.

[00:00:32] So the more puzzles I solve, the more I could, I don't know, avoid eventual dementia or whatever. I don't know if that's true or not. I don't know if there's any evidence of that, but it feels like I'm exercising my brain.

[00:00:44] Number two, I think I'm insecure. I want to think of myself as smart. I want other people to think I'm smart. And so doing puzzles is a way for me to see that I'm smart.

[00:00:57] I think part of that is the reason why I play chess too. Like chess is viewed throughout culture as this intelligent thing. You have to be intelligent to play chess. I can assure you, having known a lot of chess players, that is the opposite of true.

[00:01:11] I know some chess players that are very much not smart. And I also know my own intelligence is greatly in question when I do puzzles.

[00:01:22] I'm not really as good at them as I would like to be. I don't know. So I'm fascinated by the whole issue of puzzles.

[00:01:28] And of course we've had on AJ Jacobs before to talk about puzzles. He wrote a book called The Puzzler and where he explores the world, finding the most interesting puzzles. It's a fascinating book. You should read it. But now he has started a podcast called The Puzzler.

[00:01:44] So he's coming on today. He's got a bunch of puzzles for me, which I hope they're audio puzzles. So even if you're driving in your car at the gym, listen and see if you can solve the puzzles.

[00:01:54] And at the end of this episode we release... So each one of AJ's puzzler podcast episodes are seven minutes. So at the end of this podcast, we have two never before released episodes of AJ's puzzles. One with Ken Jennings, who's the highest paid winner on the show Jeopardy.

[00:02:17] He's great at solving puzzles and he co-hosts one of the episodes with AJ or several episodes with AJ. Another one, the co-host is Baratunde Thurston, who co-hosts with AJ on another episode. But he's also the founding editor of Puck and host of the PBS series American Outdoors.

[00:02:32] And he was on The Daily Show. They have many fascinating challenging puzzles in those. So while you're listening, try to solve them and you'll be able to hear firsthand what AJ's puzzler podcast is like.

[00:02:43] So you could decide if you want to listen to more of those episodes on his feed. And again, I hope you enjoy, solve the puzzles and have fun with this. I'm not James Altucher and I'm not James Altucher. So it was killing me.

[00:03:22] So I basically don't have any time except I don't pee, I don't brush my teeth in about three months, which I guess is good because that's what they did. You're following my hygiene standards. Yeah. You're my hero in that way.

[00:03:35] So I'm going to do an AJ style book like I won't brush my teeth or shower for a year. And this is what happened.

[00:03:43] You do things like read the Encyclopedia Britannica in a year or follow the Constitution literally for a year and I don't shower for a year. That's the difference. I did that in 2020 actually. I just never wrote a book about it.

[00:03:58] But you know, though, it's an interesting thing about the way you write and the way I write in the sense that, and I'm having this difficulty right now with the current project I'm on.

[00:04:07] I always write about things that happened to me in the past and how I kind of got through them like, oh, I went broke and this is how I got through it.

[00:04:15] Actually a lot of it was me going broke again and again and writing new books about how I got through it. Or I had to learn something really fast and this is how I did it.

[00:04:24] But so I can write about the past and it's very quick to do that because I just have to remember what happened to me. Right. But you write about, you say to yourself, okay, I am going to create the world's largest family reunion a year from now.

[00:04:39] And then you have all these amazing experiences. You go on an adventure and you write about that. So it does your process takes years. Yeah, it is. It is a terrible idea that I had to do this kind of book because it is so time consuming.

[00:04:55] I should, I should do what you do right about the past, right about my childhood, right about all my failures. I love that. No, but I'm following your. Oh yeah. Now you're new. What is your new project? What is it?

[00:05:09] Well, and my listeners are furthest quite a bit, but I'll be brief where in the 90s I was a tournament ranked chess master. Sure. And that was very difficult.

[00:05:22] It took me a lot of time and effort and energy, but I had to balance that with starting a business and starting a family and blah, blah, blah.

[00:05:28] But I had then stopped for 25 years and now I've started playing in tournaments again with the quest to go even beyond my ranking from before. And like, I've experienced something like an AJ style experience where I've had like these amazing adventures all over the world now.

[00:05:47] Like I've had dinner with the world chess champion. I've just was in Amsterdam observing this amazing tournament of former world champions. I've, I've been all over the place on this adventure.

[00:05:59] I've taken lessons from the world memory champion because my memory is not as good now that I'm a little older. I've talked to sports psychologists, nutritionists, sleep specialists.

[00:06:10] All these things have happened to me in the past year or so that I've been doing this and it's a, it's a hard and then of course I've been documenting it and writing a book. I love, I love the hard kind of book to write.

[00:06:22] I know I'm telling you, but I'm very proud of you. That's exciting. That's very inspiring for middle-aged people like me that you're back in the game like the rookie. What was that? Maybe it was a Dennis Quaid movie.

[00:06:35] No, it was a Robert Redford, the natural, the Robert Redford movie. Oh, that Dennis Quaid also Dennis Quaid also. Yeah. Where he was a pitcher who knows, but it's a good genre. It's a good genre old people and going back.

[00:06:47] Maybe even the Rodney Dangerfield back to school like where you go back to college. But like, let me ask you a question. Let's say I'm so I'm assuming I am going to accomplish the goal of my quest.

[00:07:00] But part of what's been interesting is that the quest itself as you know creates lots of adventures. But what if you don't, like what if you didn't have the world's largest family reunion?

[00:07:10] Would you be able to write a book or what if you didn't weren't able to read the full Encyclopedia Britannica? Would you be able to write a book? You know, you've had all these quests.

[00:07:21] What if you don't, you have adventures, but what if you don't reach the final outcome? Yeah. Well, you know this thing which I know you don't agree with 100% and neither do I, but it is a lot about the journey, not all about the journey, but the goal.

[00:07:37] So and the more problems you encounter, the more conflict no one wants to see you succeed. So imagine if you succeeded in your goal in like a week, that is a terrible book. So you want to have pain and suffering. You want the readers to enjoy the torture.

[00:07:54] But to answer your question, you can always accomplish something. So for instance, I'm writing a book now, The Year of Living Constitutionally. And one of the... And that means you take regular bowel movements or what does that mean? I don't discuss that in the book.

[00:08:10] Because you know your constitution is... Sure, no. Very well done. Very well done. Now this is, I'm trying to express my constitutional rights in the most original way possible using the technology of 1789. So I have a musket that I like to bear and carry around New York.

[00:08:28] I quartered some soldiers and I expressed my free speech by writing pamphlets and handing them out. So I'm having a great time. But one of the goals is to bring back the election cake, which was a back in the day in the 1700s. Elections were a party.

[00:08:49] Like people looked forward to them. You'd go and there was election cake, a lot of rum, a lot of rum punch. I love this idea. So I'm trying to bring that back. And my goal is to get someone in every one of the 50 states

[00:09:04] to make an election cake on this coming election. And I've got like about 46 states. So I may not get to 50, but there's always ways... Like I can always say, listen, in the Constitution it only says you have to have three quarters of the state legislature's pass an amendment.

[00:09:25] So I have way past three quarters. So I won in that way. So you can always figure out a way to adjust your goal. So you've reframed what winning means in this case. Exactly. I mean, that's our job. We can do that. We're the writers.

[00:09:42] Who's going to say no? So I do want to ask you a lot more about the Constitution one if that's okay. Because I know you're working on it and we'll of course do another podcast when the book comes out. But I have so many questions.

[00:09:53] And I do want to ask you about your current podcast, The Puzzler based on your last book, which was you flying around the world for a year, doing all the most amazing puzzles and learning about the most amazing, crazy puzzles. And now you're doing a podcast about it.

[00:10:06] I love your last book because puzzles are a passion of mine, i.e. chess puzzles as an example. We had a chapter on chess puzzles as you know. Yeah, my friend Cyrus Lactawalla. Yeah, and Gary Kasparov. Gary Kasparov, another friend of mine. So another guest on this podcast.

[00:10:22] But one example of quote unquote went like, when I was a kid, I was the New Jersey Junior Champion. Right? And now I'm the Georgia Senior Champion. So I am the champion for all people above the age of 50 in Georgia.

[00:10:42] And then when I played in the national tournament, I did very well. So like against older people, I'm better than I ever was. Yeah, you're a champion. That's the key. I mean, I do love it. We tend to slice and dice so much.

[00:10:57] Like, I mean, this one, the new podcast, The Puzzler, which I'm very excited about. We got a note from Apple Podcast that we were number one in the leisure category. My life-drawn dream, I fulfilled because I beat the guys from Duck Dynasty, you know, those hunting guys.

[00:11:20] So we beat them out in the leisure category. Oh, they were the top podcast in the leisure category. Yeah. So the way the Apple algorithm works is it's not necessarily how many downloads you had that week. It's how many new subscribers you had.

[00:11:34] So beginning podcasts tend to rise very quickly to number one. I'm not downgraded. There's many leisure podcasts. There's two million podcasts out there. There's many leisure ones. You were number one out of all of them. So that's great. But what also tells me what you just said

[00:11:50] is that Duck Dynasty continuously adds new subscribers if they're constantly at number one. Oh, interesting. All right. Like why are they, how are they adding new subscribers? Like is that show still going on even? I don't know. Well now that gives me even more fuel to crush them

[00:12:07] in the long term. So you've got to take them off that pedestal. So we got to see where you are next week, the week after. We got to help you continue adding new subscribers. Yes, please subscribe so I can beat Duck Dynasty.

[00:12:20] And you've had on like Ken Jennings, you've had on all these people to help you with puzzles. What are some of the fun puzzles that you've done on the podcast? And also I love the fact that it's a seven minute podcast. It is exactly.

[00:12:33] It's like a little amuse-bouche, a little treat. And by the way, you are going to come on, I hope, right? You'll be a lot. Of course. All right. So we'll set that up later. But yeah, the podcast very short daily.

[00:12:47] And the idea is that every day I do a fun, original audio puzzle with a celebrity guest like Ken Jennings or Mo Raca. And listeners get to play along and they love beating the celebrity by the way. So that's a good lesson. That is such a fun idea.

[00:13:07] So we've had, we do lots of different kinds of puzzles, new puzzles, all original. But well, I'll give you an example of one that we came up with. It's called, it's sort of an audio rebus. So let me give you an example. Ready? Yeah.

[00:13:24] I'm going to say a word in a certain way, like a certain tone of voice or an accent maybe. And if you combine that word and the way I said it, you're going to get a phrase, a two word phrase. So for instance, it's easier in its house.

[00:13:37] If I said tide, that would be, the answer is rising tide because the tide is rising. Oh my God. Okay, do another one. It sounds like I'm going to be really bad at this one because I had no idea.

[00:13:52] I was trying to figure out what accent is that, that we did that, but you're a rising in tone. It depends partly on my acting abilities, which are not the strongest, but I have been able to communicate. Okay. We'll try this one. Dressing, a dull resting. French dressing.

[00:14:08] French dressing. See? That's good enough. My accent, you got, what about this one? Chairs. Chairs. I'm singing the word chairs. I know. So musical chairs. Musical chairs. You got it. You want one a little harder, like a little one? Yeah, yeah. Let's do a hard one. All right.

[00:14:32] Here's one. Haar, ted. So that's H-E-A-R-T-E-D. So the word is hearted, but it's hard, ted. So you are not, your heart is not intact. Your heart is... A broken heart. Broken hearted. Exactly. Yeah, broken hearted. So there you go. You gave me a lot of hints there.

[00:15:00] One more without any hints. And let me give me some space to... Yeah, okay. No, you're right because people do like to hear, like you struggle. I mean, I realize that. And I've got to resist giving people the answer too quickly. All right, well what about hospitality?

[00:15:21] Southern hospitality. All right, now you've got it. What about this one? Last one. Ramadan or Yom Khabar? Chinese takeout. You're doing word association? Because it's like fast food that Jews do on a holiday. Oh, that's good. Yeah, you're right. Well if I had said food...

[00:15:47] But on Ramadan though they fast, and on Yom Khabar they fast. So it doesn't quite work for those two holidays you chose. Well, that was it. You got it. I give you fully... It was Ramadan fast or Yom Khabar fast. But fast food actually works very well

[00:16:00] if I had said like, yeah, I should have said like, yeah. For Christmas. Yeah. Yeah, so that's just one of them. But yeah, we're having... You were doing like anagrams in one of them? Yeah, we have anagrams which... How do you present that audio in an audio way?

[00:16:20] Well it is interesting, yeah. I mean we tell the guests to get out a pencil. Most of ours don't need a pencil. But here I'll give you an example. Like this is... I'm going to give you an anagram of a job.

[00:16:32] We did one where it was all jobs. So if it is... I'm going to give you an anagram and you have to rearrange the letters to get a job that is described by these words. So moon... Now let me ask you a question. As people are doing these,

[00:16:49] are they writing down the letters so they remember or...? Sometimes. 90% Okay, I'll try it without writing down. Yeah, 90% are totally audio. You don't need to write them down. 95. Okay. Moon-starrer. So moon-starrer. What is a job where you stare at the moon? Moon-starrer.

[00:17:09] And then it's an anagram of a phrase, moon-starrer? Yeah, it's an anagram of moon-starrer. Astronomer. Astronomer. Exactly. You got it. Do another one. You want another? Sorry, I love these. I love that you love them. Alright well what about bag manager?

[00:17:44] Bag manager, someone who has to hoist a lot of bags, throw them around. I don't know what kind of person... And the bags are kind of smelly sometimes, leaking. Oh, bag manager, garbage man. Garbage man, exactly. What about this one you?

[00:18:04] This one is something this job might say and you and I have dealt with a lot of these over the years. They might say... Strawl. That's a good one. No, this is redo it. Redo it. You've written how many books? So you've dealt with quite a few...

[00:18:33] Oh editor. Editor, exactly. How did you describe that on the podcast? Did you say someone who helps you with your writing? Yeah. I've dealt with so many different types of people. It was hard for me to find the job. That's true.

[00:18:49] What really was the first thing they came to mind. You definitely have dealt with that. Well, I think... I mean what we do is we really tailor the puzzles to the guest. So we had Ken Jennings on this week,

[00:19:03] as Ken Jennings and we had a whole bunch of... We had one which was audio quality. Audio quiz of game show sound effects. So we would play him an actual game show sound effect. Like... And he would have to say what game show that was. That was...

[00:19:23] Oh, that was Jeopardy. That was family. Well you know how it could be Jeopardy. I'm not... Oh no actually it's not Jeopardy because there's no sound. They just say no, I'm sorry. Oh wait but... Well they do let do. There are sound effects. They're like...

[00:19:37] But he is an amazing puzzler as you can imagine. Yeah, yeah. So it was hard to stump him but we did stump him on a couple of those which was very exciting. We did another one that was a geography game because he's a big geography head. And that...

[00:19:53] There's no way he could lose a geography. Oh my God. It was crazy. It was crazy. Like yeah, one puzzle involved the capital of Armenia and it was just like no problem. Yerevan. Wow good for you. That is good. That wasn't the actual puzzle because that's just trivia.

[00:20:12] I was just talking to someone from Armenia like literally 20 minutes before this podcast started. Is that how you got Yerevan? And he was telling me some... We were talking about Israel and stuff so then we got to... What he's dealing with geopolitically

[00:20:27] so Yerevan came up in the conversation. I love it. Look at that. It's our German Shepherd. I am the... Hello German Shepherd. We are in the middle of a podcast but that is our German Shepherd. You remember we did a good or bad episode about dogs.

[00:20:47] Yes, and I probably was on the side of bad. Sure exactly. So what happened? Well I was overpowered by everybody else in the family who wanted a dog and if you have kind of like a... let's say house in the country

[00:21:01] nobody will rob you if you have a dog. Interesting. Because dogs will kill you. And so like after... Did you know after the Charles Manson thing in LA in 1969 or whenever it was... Like you couldn't even buy a dog because everybody was trying to...

[00:21:18] Because apparently the Manson family did try to get into some houses where there were dogs and they couldn't because the dogs will kill you. And so everybody started buying dogs after the Manson family did the charantheit murders and all that.

[00:21:33] So the supply of dogs went to zero in LA and the price of dogs went way up. That is interesting. Now that would not work with my dog because she would just roll over and splay her legs and try to get a tummy rub from the intruder.

[00:21:46] Like Jay walked in a couple days ago and the dog hadn't remembered Jay and he was barking... That was pretty ferocious Jay, right? Like you were scared for a moment. Yeah a little bit but I also know him and I know that he knows me too.

[00:22:02] Yeah, you were confident that once he saw you and smelled you and stuff that you would be... When Jay was just at the door this is the loudest bark. It sounds like you're about to get killed by a waffle. So like the growl on the bark.

[00:22:15] Well I did, I think come out on the side that dogs are genuinely... I've actually become radicalized. I think they are not just good but extremely good. I think that there should be a government program where you are given a free dog at birth. And that would...

[00:22:35] Well you might be right. I mean I watched how John, my stepson trained this dog and it really taught him about a lot about... The whole aspect of training the dog is very complicated and disciplined and also dogs for a million and a half years evolved with hominids.

[00:22:54] Basically various human species and we kind of like evolved together. One of my favorite cartoons I don't remember who wrote it but it was a picture of a wolf by a fire, a caveman fire and he's like, well I'm going to get closer and get a little meat.

[00:23:13] What could go wrong? Cut to the next panel. It's one of those poodles in Japan that have been shaved into cubes. Have you ever seen those? No. And they are just the weirdest looking... Oh my God. They are just the most beautiful

[00:23:30] and the most beautiful in the world. And it is in cubes and it is just no dignity for these dogs whatsoever. Because that's just like a cosmetic thing as opposed to like, let's say you have a cute dog like a French poodle.

[00:23:44] That's evolved to be a cute dog for some reason. Like what was a French poodle evolved for? Oh and this is our... Oh yeah. ...hacka-two. Lulu can you talk? Can you say hi AJ? He gets a little shy. He's shy. She doesn't like to be on a podcast.

[00:24:05] She knows she's on camera, yeah. So she doesn't know what... She's a little tongue tied, literally. That is funny. No, she doesn't want to kiss. Look at you. You got a laminagerie there. I know. That is the new James Altucher. I did not see coming.

[00:24:20] The Dr. Doolittle phase. So tell me... Okay wait, one more puzzle and then it's on to constitutions. Excellent. Oh yeah, let me... I got some good ones for you. Okay, how about this? This is a puzzle we came up with where it's based on a character

[00:24:35] named Guy Who Hasn't Seen a Move. Guy who enthusiastically describes movies he has not seen based on the title. So that's the whole puzzle. So for instance if this guy says, oh man there's this movie coming out or this movie that I heard about

[00:24:51] it's got Jerry Seinfeld's Zany Neighbor and he clones himself and then the two clones... Craver versus Craver. Exactly. You miss the dark ending where I say the clones have a fight to the death and miss martial arts battle. But yes, you got it.

[00:25:08] All right, I'll give you another couple. What about... Oh man, I hear there's this great movie about the Las Vegas football team and their search for Noah's boat from the Bible which has gone missing. I wouldn't know the Las Vegas football... I mean, maybe I would.

[00:25:24] I don't think Las Vegas has a football team, do they? They do. It moved. It moved from Oakland. Oh, Raiders of the Lost Ark. Raiders of the Lost Ark. Exactly. All right, one more. One more. A hard one. How about... Oh really? Okay. How about this one?

[00:25:40] This is about... The premise of this movie, it's really cool. The 33rd president of the United States comes in third in a horse race. So the 33rd resident, who was right after FDR, took over from FDR and then immediately entered a horse race and he came in third.

[00:26:03] Okay, don't say anything. And then I'd also drop the atomic bomb. So that's someone describing that movie? Right. Okay, let me see. The 33rd president I might not know this movie. enters a horse race. I think you know it. Okay, hold on. Who dropped the atomic bomb?

[00:26:22] Did you see Oppenheimer? Yeah, yeah, no, I know Truman. Okay, so Truman. Right. And if you come in third in a horse race, you're not winning, you are not placing you are... I don't know actually. You're not placing your... What is it? Win place.

[00:26:41] Oh, I don't even know. The Truman, Jim Carrey. The Truman show. Yeah, okay. The Truman show. You gave me so many hints. That one I would not have done. I got the Truman part instantly, but I would not have done it. I thought you were a gambler.

[00:26:53] That's interesting. You just never did horse gambling. No, I never did horse gambling at all. Never played the ponies. All right. So yeah, I love doing these and I just feel... I've made the pitch before on your show. Puzzles are not trivial. They're good for you.

[00:27:10] They're good for teaching you how to think. They're good for waking your brain up. So that is the pitch. It's like just five minutes someone wrote and like a review, it's like, you know, a caffeine hit of joy. And I love that description.

[00:27:25] Well, every morning do you have a puzzle routine you do every day? Like a lot of people do... Like I do word all every day from The New York Times. I do. I am actually not a wordler. I do the New York Times crossword puzzle.

[00:27:37] I do spelling bee, which annoys me. I do spelling bee. Yeah. I hate that I am addicted to it, but I can't stop. And I also try the connections. I do connections. Connections is hard. Yeah. It is like, it can be hard. Like especially if you don't know

[00:27:52] like your NHL hockey teams yesterday. Yeah. Like I feel... Here's why I don't like connections or crossword puzzles. It's because I feel like you need some cultural IQ to solve a lot of these. I will say though, the best crossword puzzles are not about

[00:28:10] what is the capital of Bulgaria. Although you happen to know what the capital of Armenia is. Sophia is a capital of Bulgaria. You are good with your capitals. The best one, the crossword puzzles in my opinion are the ones which are all about

[00:28:24] word play and like a little trick. It's almost like a magic trick. Like a misdirect. So like if you ask Will Schwartz, the editor in The New York Times crossword is what's his favorite clue ever? The one that was AJ Jacobs. That should be his favorite.

[00:28:45] That was a real crossword puzzle. That was, I was in the cross one down. It was the highlight of my life. But he said something like this turns into another story and the answer is spiral staircase. So it's all about... That's beautiful. So yeah.

[00:29:04] I mean it's not my favorite. I think it's good but that type is the one I like. I like that because you could appreciate the artistry to create that clue and that answer. But if it's just like what's the capital of Bulgaria? That's boring to me.

[00:29:19] Like okay, either I know it or I don't. And if you don't know it then you got to figure out everything around it. But what if you don't know those... And connections, there's some skill to it too because you got to make sure they try to trick you.

[00:29:33] A word could be in two categories. You have to kind of figure the whole thing out before you start guessing. But I like wordle because the anagram aspect. So it's just... You just have to... It's just like yes, you have to have a decent vocabulary

[00:29:50] but none of the words are that fancy. It's only five letters. And so you have to use a lot of logical thinking to figure it out. That's true. I will say, I mean English in one sense is a terrible language because the pronunciation and spelling is so nuts.

[00:30:08] Yeah. There are basically 44 sounds in the English language. So like... Because there's more than just the letters. There's also shh and things like that. So there are 44 sounds but there are over 1,000 ways to spell those 44 sounds. Wow. Which is insane and terrible and worse than most other languages.

[00:30:31] So just like the O-U-G-H can be pronounced through tough cough like 100 different ways. Well, it's funny you say that. I was just thinking of the sound, the F sound. So that could be O-U-G-H or it could be the letter F or it could be P-H. Oh yeah.

[00:30:51] Have you ever seen the famous rebus? It's G-H-O-T-I. You say what is that and it is... Have you seen that? It's fish. I've seen the word but I don't know what it means. G-H is from fish. I mean from tough so you get F

[00:31:09] and then the O is from women so you get the I and then the T-I is from like, you know, nation so you get the shh. So fish. So it's a terrible language in some ways but the one upside is it is great for puzzles.

[00:31:26] So thank God for the crazy, crazy spelling. Right. Like if we were just a Latin language then everybody just has to like break it down to Latin and figure it all out. Right. Esperanto is the least fun language for puzzles ever.

[00:31:38] I mean, I often wish that we had in some ways Esperanto as the world language. I think in some ways it would be a better world but it would suck for the puzzlers. When you were a kid did you try to learn Esperanto?

[00:31:53] I feel like every kid has made an attempt to learn Esperanto. I did learn like, yeah, basically like 10 words. What about you? Yeah, like 10 words and then it was for a half a millisecond. I tried to learn it. I actually started a book all about language

[00:32:08] and maybe I'll go back to it but there's been some fascinating attempts at like an ideal utopian language. One of them I liked, I would think it was in the 1940s was to get rid of nouns because nouns are very pigeonholing and bad for...

[00:32:30] For instance, if you say like, you know, that person's... Russell Crowell is an asshole. That's not really true. He can be an asshole. He acts in an assholeic way in certain situations. Right, but you're saying he's not actually one. He's not literally one. Well, that's true too.

[00:32:50] Or even just a jerk. But it's the idea is you don't want to label someone with a noun because once they become that label then they live up to it. Well, so what you're really saying is don't have adjectives.

[00:33:06] So and if you think about it, like that's what you're saying. Because in that case asshole or jerk was an adjective. No, no, he is an asshole. You can say he was acting in an assholeic way, which I guess is more of an adverb.

[00:33:23] But yes, you want to mostly change it to verbs, so not adjectives, not nouns. It was a very verb based language. So what you are doing right now is what you focus on as opposed to painting someone with that brush. I also like...

[00:33:40] Then tones become a lot more important. So some languages do have a lot of tones in them, like Hebrew being one of them. So where the way you say something changes the meaning. Right, exactly. Yeah, Chinese I know, which I know very little about.

[00:33:57] Yeah, and different African languages with the clicks. But that's interesting. I will tell you. I love linguistics, which I think plays part in why I love the word puzzle so much. Can I tell you my favorite fact that I still remember from my... Of course.

[00:34:15] All right, and I don't know, you might want to believe this out. But anyway, some languages, not a lot. Some have what are called infixes. Infixes are like suffixes and prefixes, but they're in the middle of the word. Suffix at the end, prefix,

[00:34:30] and it changes the meaning of the word. So like it might be something that pluralizes the word, but it's in the middle. English has one infix and only one, and that infix is... Wait, wait, hold on. Let me try to...

[00:34:46] I don't think I could guess it, but I don't know. Well, I did give you a hint when I said you might need to bleep it. All right, tell me. Because it's an intensifier, meaning it makes it more intense. Oh, the word fuck. Yeah, in fucking credible,

[00:35:06] on fucking believable, al-a-fucking-bama. That is literally our only... So there are all these quirks of the English language that we just take for granted. That is fascinating. So, why didn't you finish that book? I don't know. Oh, you know why? Because my publisher was like, no, that's too...

[00:35:27] That's too interl... No one wants to read that. Yeah, it's like a linguistics book. Exactly. So maybe I'll figure out a way to do it. Such a fun interview with AJ, and now keep the podcast on because we're releasing two never-before-heard episodes of The Puzzler.

[00:35:49] There's seven minutes each. Try to solve the puzzles in AJ's new podcast episodes. Here they are.

[00:36:34] Welcome, Ken. Thank you for having me, AJ. Ken and I, I'm proud to say, have known each other a long time. I interviewed you when you were on your first Jeopardy streak and I had just written a book where I read the Encyclopedia.

[00:36:49] You, at the time, asked me what I remembered from the Encyclopedia and I thought it was a good idea to do that. And I thought, well, you, at the time, asked me what I remembered from the Encyclopedia and I am very excited that it stuck with you,

[00:37:08] the main fact that I have taken away. I still think and talk about this. Opossums have 13 nipples. You read millions of words and this is... A few other things did. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, opossum is a funny word. I like the word opossum

[00:37:26] and, you know, nipple was also hard to forget. So, and 13, it had all of the elements. It's got everything. Got everything. Well, one of my favorite books, you've written several books, one of my favorite books you wrote is called Map Head

[00:37:41] and it is about your obsession with maps. And I still remember some of your favorite places from that book like Hibbert's Gore, Maine. Do you remember Hibbert's Gore, Maine? Population. Oh, yeah, it's only one person, right? And as a result, the census data for Hibbert's Gore, Maine

[00:38:01] actually tells you everything about that person because they publish averages. So you can find out what her income is, what her age is. She's been docked by the Census Bureau. That is unfortunate. She needs to get at least one other person so she can average it out.

[00:38:17] Well, in honor of Map Head, this puzzle is about geography. And it is called Putting the Pan in Panama. So every answer is going to contain the name of a country as well as a word consisting of the first three letters

[00:38:33] of that country, or three or four letters in some cases. So for instance, if the clue is I got a massage and a seaweed wrap in Madrid. The solution might be I went to a spa in Spain. There you go.

[00:38:50] I wish I could count that, but that was the sample one. But these next ones are fully for accreditation. Well, I hope they all have the capital in them because I studied those for Jeopardy back in the day. Oh, nice.

[00:39:05] And you still think you've got all of the capitals in there? Probably. I mean, I'm a pretty big map nerd. Like when I say I studied, I mean like I was six years old, like reading the Atlas for fun. So hopefully it stuck with me.

[00:39:16] The post 1990 stuff, all the post Soviet stuff. Maybe I don't know because I was interesting. All right. We'll see. We will see. I think there is a couple of capitals. The first one is I bought some lingerie for my wife at Copacabana Beach.

[00:39:35] Copacabana as Barry Manilow taught us is in Rio, I think that would be Brazil. So it's bra and Brazil. There it is. He doesn't have any trouble. I kind of figured. All right. What about this one? This one is a little pop culture.

[00:39:49] I passed the legal exam in a Rihanna's country of birth. I passed the legal exam. He's nodding his head. See, like I'm used to this on Jeopardy. You're already parsing when you're talking. So as you're talking about the law,

[00:40:02] I'm like what are three letter words related to the law? LSAT is not going to start any countries, but BAR those are the first three letters in Barbados where Rihanna is from. Oh my God. Exactly. Well, should I just read the first like three words of the clue

[00:40:17] and then you can answer? I don't know if I'm, I don't usually request more difficulty. But yeah, I mean, if you want to stop before the country doesn't see it, I can read your mind. Oh, okay. All right. That'll be interesting.

[00:40:29] I replenished my vital energy in vital energy in the Andes. In the Andes. Well, that makes it a little easier. Oh, I was spelling chi with a Q and I didn't have it. So it's chi and chile. There you go. Yes, I might have the more anglicized spelling.

[00:40:50] So bad on me. That's my bad. Well, it could have been China also. There's two CHI countries. That's true. That's true. Yes. So replenished my chi. Chi is the eastern energy in chile. All right. Couple more. You're doing as expected pretty good. All right. Here is a capital.

[00:41:11] We got a capital. I snapped my ulna in Yerevan. I snapped my ulna in Yerevan. Oh, ulna. Yeah, Yerevan's the capital of Armenia. And the ulna is a bone in your, what? Your upper arm. Arm and armina. Arm and armina. Exactly. All right. Lower arm, right?

[00:41:30] I said upper but maybe it's lower. It is. I was going to correct you, but I then thought... You're allowed to correct me? Well, it was going to be an Easter egg for the listeners. There's nothing people like more than finding a podcast,

[00:41:41] a host or guest in a mistake. It will make their whole day. They're yelling at the car radio right now. Well, we'll insert some mistakes just for their pleasure. All right. Final one. I did some planet gazing in the Bikini Atoll. The planet gazing in the Bikini Atoll.

[00:42:01] Planet gazing. Now, I did mention, I hope, it's either three or four letters. It's not always three. Oh, I see. Mars is four letters. You did mention that. So the Bikini Atoll must be in the Marshall Islands, which I didn't know. I learned something today, AJ.

[00:42:16] Oh my God. This is huge. This is huge. All right. Well, I feel I've done my job then. Apostems have 13 nipples and the Bikini Atoll is in the Marshall Islands. Well, Ken, you did not do so bad as expected. You did great.

[00:42:32] If we had cash prizes, we would give you one. Wait, there aren't cash prizes? You get our esteem. This is like the first year they let pro basketball guys in the Olympics. And they're like, what? I'm not getting a check for this. It's true.

[00:42:49] You are the equivalent of a pro basketball player. So where can people find more Ken Jennings content if they want, which they should. Our 100 places to see after you die is just kind of a fun, though travel guide for different persons of the afterlife

[00:43:05] all the way from the ancient Babylonians and Egyptians all the way up through TV's The Good Place, Theme Park Rides, comic books, video games. And it's on sale wherever books are sold. Independent bookstores, evil e-retailers. It's everywhere, AJ. It's a great book.

[00:43:23] I loved it and I learned a ton, including Hell with 1L. Not Hell with 2L. Norse Hell. They couldn't afford the second out. That's how threadbare Viking culture was. They had to save those Elms. All right, well before we wrap up as always,

[00:43:36] there's an extra credit puzzle for those at home. Actually, I'll give them to you. I got E. Coli from some undercooked sourbrotten. And how about this one? I got into a bit of a sticky wicket at the Bob Marley Museum. So puzzlers, please don't forget

[00:43:58] to subscribe to the Puzzler Podcast and I'll meet you here tomorrow for more puzzling puzzles that will puzzle you puzzlingly. Hello, puzzlers! Welcome to the Puzzler Podcast, the emotional running-to-the-airport scene in your puzzle-romantic comedy. I'm your host, AJ Jacobs, and I am here with our guest, The Great,

[00:44:42] Baratunde Thurston, writer and host of many, many things, including How To Citizen, the podcast right here on iHeart. Welcome, Baratunde. Hello, AJ. Thank you so much for having me. I'm looking forward to not embarrassing myself. Yes, we will keep the embarrassment to a minimum.

[00:45:05] It's usually me who embarrasses myself. But I actually don't know. I've read a lot about you, but are you a puzzle fan at all? Crosswords, jigsaw, word puzzles, anything like that? Nothing consistently. I've had bouts, phases of puzzledom. COVID was a big puzzle phase, of course.

[00:45:25] As we were all held hostage by ourselves in our homes, I still have a puzzle on our dining table. We've been working on it. My wife and I for six months, and we actually have guests coming over this weekend, and we need to finish it

[00:45:40] because other people need to sit at the table. This is going to help me get in a puzzle frame of mind so that I can finish the puzzle in my life, which is soon to get in the way of me living my life. We are here to help.

[00:45:53] Prime my puzzle, pump. Yeah. I thought when you said you had friends coming over, you were going to put them to work. We actually did that. We had a friend come over after drinks, and the three of us worked together and made more progress in an hour

[00:46:06] than Elizabeth and I had made in many, many, many weeks. Well, we're going to give you a puzzle. It's not a jigsaw puzzle. This puzzle is called Your Moment of Zen. It's partly in honor of your former job at The Daily Show,

[00:46:23] but mostly it's in honor of your wonderful podcast, How to Citizen. Because like the word citizen, all the answers to these clues contain the word zen. If for instance I said a baker's one of these has 13, the solution might be dozen. Exactly. Exactly. Well, that's the pronunciation.

[00:46:48] All right. Are you ready? I'm ready. All right. Clue number one. These might be made by Ricola. Oh. Ah. Okay. So first of all, I'm sorry, I have a story for everything apparently, but I used to sing that song.

[00:47:11] I was addicted to Ricola as a high school student. Not in like a substance abuse way, just in like I really appreciated not sore throats. And so my friends knew and they would even see me coming and they would sing the song. Ricola. Ricola.

[00:47:26] When it changes the key, that's the key. So you are referring to lozenges. Exactly. And first of all, I love that because I was very nervous when I wrote this. I'm too young to know those cheesy commercials, but no, not only do you know them.

[00:47:43] I'm in the sweet spot. Yeah. It was your trademark. I sang them. I'm born in 77. I've been around. Ricola is a part of my youth. Fantastic. All right. So this actress has a name derived from the Bantu word meaning to give thanks. Actress singer, some say,

[00:48:04] although my son says she's more of an actress. Okay. So Bantu word, give thanks doesn't help me much. I'm just going to always share my thought process here. Love that. Actress and ZEN being in the name. And I give thanks that she exists. I would say Zendaya. Exactly.

[00:48:24] Yes. Yeah, we are all thankful for Zendaya. Go Dune. Very appropriate name. Well done. All right. You were two to two. Okay. All right. This Disney movie, Uh-oh. according to Internet conspiracy theories, was to bury all mention of the cryogenic preservation of Walt Disney

[00:48:45] by flooding Google with a different word. What? I know. That is a crazy clue. My kids, I had a different clue and my kids are like, Yeah. No, do this one. So, okay. Um, so I'm audio and I'm trying to relate to the word. So we got Disney.

[00:49:06] So I'm thinking cartoons and Disney obsessive movies. Um, and cryo ice. So are we talking frozen? Frozen. Exactly. You got it. Great. Uh, what's the conspiracy? I'd love to know more about this. The theory is or the rumor is he was cryogenically frozen. Okay.

[00:49:26] So he's going to come out in a couple decades and start producing more movies. Uh-huh. You know what? So here's the thing about that theory. If ever there were a time for Walt Disney to come back and save his company, it would be right now. All right.

[00:49:43] Just two more. Okay. This writer, this novelist had a mini spat with Oprah Winfrey. A novelist who had a mini spat with Oprah Winfrey. Exactly. Who would have a spat with Oprah? First of all, I don't, I probably don't like this person. If you got beef with Oprah.

[00:50:05] She, yes, he's a bit controversial but super talented. It was over a book he wrote that she chose for her show. And the book was called The Corrections. And he then said some disparaging things about the Oprah Winfrey audience. Wow. Wow. This is my memory.

[00:50:31] She disinvited this person from the show but still read his book because it was, you know, separate the artist from the art. He is a national book award-winning guy. Okay. Yeah. His first name is Jonathan. Thank you. That did it because I've just heard Jonathan Franzin,

[00:50:51] Jonathan Franzin, Jonathan Franzin, and it rolls off the tongue. So thank you for that, assist. You got it. You get full credit. Yeah. It's hard to find people with names with a zen in it. All right.

[00:51:05] Last one is the part one of the clue is this was a 2022 Alyssa Milano movie that got 13% on Rotten Tomatoes or it's a word meaning bold and shameless. Hmm. Alyssa Milano 2022 low ranked movie not helping. Yes, I figured that would not be helpful.

[00:51:30] That was just sort of like throw a little pop culture in there. Yeah. No, I appreciate it and a synonym for bold, shameless. Oh, okay. Okay. Brazen. Brazen. Yes. You got it. You got five out of five. The perfect score. This is ironic.

[00:51:50] I can't think of the word that synonym. Or in this case, zinonym. Nice. Boom. Oh my God. Oh. I wish we had a cash prize for like brilliant wordplay, but we don't. I am thoroughly warmed up. This is fun. This has been fun. Well, thank you.

[00:52:14] So you did great. Where can people find more Baratunde content? People can go to this place called a website. I have one that I've had since 1999. Wow. Baratunde. I was very early. Baratunde.com is the owned and operated hub of my universe.

[00:52:36] You can also find me on digital sharecropper sites such as Instagram or whatever else owned by someone else. But mine is Baratunde.com, so you can play that. Well, thank you. I never heard that phrase, but it's brilliant. Digital sharecropper.

[00:52:53] Before we wrap up, as always, one extra credit for you puzzlers at home. This word, it contains zin and the clue is it is a procedure of mast. Procedure of mast. All right. So, as always, please don't forget to subscribe to the puzzler podcast and we'll meet here

[00:53:17] tomorrow for more puzzling puzzles that will puzzle you puzzlingly.