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Crosswords episode, perhaps? · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey,
0:11
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh. There's shuck and
0:15
Speaker 1: this is Stuff you Should Know for one seven letters.
0:23
Speaker 1: I'm really excited about this one because you and I
0:26
Speaker 1: chatted recently, I think, probably on our super secret trip,
0:30
Speaker 1: our research trip out west, about my new crossword passion,
0:36
Speaker 1: which started I don't know sometime in twenty twenty two,
0:40
Speaker 1: where I started dabbling in the New York Times Crossword
0:44
Speaker 1: for the first time, doing Monday Tuesday ish. I would
0:49
Speaker 1: try Wednesdays, and then I was like, I wouldn't even
0:51
Speaker 1: try anything past that because I knew they got progressively harder,
0:54
Speaker 1: and I wasn't, you know, I was just sort of
0:56
Speaker 1: learning the language of crosswords, which is a thing we'll
0:59
Speaker 1: talk about, yeah, And then I was like, you know what,
1:02
Speaker 1: I'm gonna try these other ones, and before you know it,
1:04
Speaker 1: I'm doing all seven days. Oh really like and finishing
1:08
Speaker 1: them with my little cheats, which we'll talk about as well.
1:12
Speaker 1: Oh that's pretty cool, man. Saturday's too, huh. Saturday's too.
1:17
Speaker 1: And I love doing it so so much. It has
1:20
Speaker 1: really added a lot of like happiness in my life.
1:23
Speaker 1: I really really enjoy it. Man, do some crosswords. Take
1:27
Speaker 1: a good nap, drink some tomorrow. You got to figure
1:29
Speaker 1: it out. It's all coming up, chuck. So the New
1:32
Speaker 1: York Times, he just said, it's all coming up, Chuck.
1:36
Speaker 1: The New York Times is probably the most at least iconic,
1:40
Speaker 1: if not well known, in the United States, at least
1:42
Speaker 1: crossword puzzle in the whole country. Sure. One thing I
1:46
Speaker 1: didn't know, Olivia helps us with this is that The
1:48
Speaker 1: New York Times was actually the last metropolitan newspaper by
1:53
Speaker 1: far to start running their own crossword puzzle. Yeah, because
1:57
Speaker 1: for a good twenty year the New York Times just
2:02
Speaker 1: looked down. It's knows that crosswords is a brainless fad
2:06
Speaker 1: that would surely and ever any day now, and it
2:10
Speaker 1: just never didn't. They finally caved, and then you know,
2:13
Speaker 1: sixty eighty years later, something like that sing about eighty
2:18
Speaker 1: years Wow, that's crazy. Um, it's now like the number
2:22
Speaker 1: one crossword puzzle of all time ever the paper of record. Yeah,
2:27
Speaker 1: so should we talk about the inventor of the word
2:32
Speaker 1: cross Yeah, that's what it was called at first. His
2:36
Speaker 1: name was he was a brit and he was an immigrant. Well,
2:41
Speaker 1: he was a British immigrant. What does that mean? He
2:43
Speaker 1: was an immigrant to the United States from Great Britain,
2:46
Speaker 1: from Liverpool to be specific. All right, I get it now.
2:50
Speaker 1: His name is Arthur Wynn, with two ends and one
2:53
Speaker 1: y and any in a W. And he there were
2:58
Speaker 1: some we didn't go over the prehistory of crosswords, but
3:02
Speaker 1: there had been sort of crossword like word puzzles for
3:06
Speaker 1: hundreds and thousands of years in some cases. And when
3:10
Speaker 1: was probably pretty familiar with these, and he managed what
3:13
Speaker 1: was called the Fun section of New York World that
3:16
Speaker 1: had puzzles and jokes and things like that. And then
3:19
Speaker 1: finally in nineteen thirteen, he said, in our Christmas edition
3:22
Speaker 1: this year, I've created a puzzle called a word cross
3:26
Speaker 1: that was shaped like a diamond, had no blacked out squares,
3:30
Speaker 1: and had you know, sort of crossword clues like we
3:33
Speaker 1: would recognize them today. Yeah, I mean, it was essentially
3:36
Speaker 1: a crossword. He just got the name wrong. He got
3:39
Speaker 1: it the name swapped, well, he got it right. Who
3:43
Speaker 1: got it wrong but ended up being right was an
3:46
Speaker 1: illustrator who accidentally swapped those words. And it was cross
3:51
Speaker 1: dash word capital C, capital W. Yeah, and that name
3:54
Speaker 1: stuck in it eventually just they said, let's quit with
3:58
Speaker 1: a little dash in the middle, and let's go ahead,
4:00
Speaker 1: make it one word yep. And Wynn was like, hey,
4:03
Speaker 1: this is actually starting to get kind of popular within
4:06
Speaker 1: just a few months, and he went to the publishers
4:09
Speaker 1: of the world and said, hey, we should probably patent this.
4:13
Speaker 1: And the world said, do you know how much it
4:15
Speaker 1: cost to patent something these days? One hundred dollars. Get
4:18
Speaker 1: out of my office and did not ever patent the crossword.
4:21
Speaker 1: And I think that was actually a really it was
4:23
Speaker 1: a bad move on the world's part, but I think
4:25
Speaker 1: it was really great for the world. The world, you know, yeah, yeah, totally.
4:31
Speaker 1: That would be very strange if crosswords were patented. Yeah,
4:34
Speaker 1: I don't think that they would be anywhere near as
4:36
Speaker 1: prevalent as they are now. So in that sense, the
4:39
Speaker 1: publishers of the world gave us all a pretty neat present,
4:43
Speaker 1: and we are going to give you a pretty neat
4:44
Speaker 1: present by introducing you to a woman named Margaret Petherbridge.
4:50
Speaker 1: This was at the time Arthur Winn's secretary, and he said, hey,
4:54
Speaker 1: you know, you're pretty sharp, why don't you take this
4:57
Speaker 1: job over? And it turned out she had a real
5:00
Speaker 1: knack for not only creating crosswords, but kind of codifying
5:06
Speaker 1: what crosswords were and sort of the rules of crosswords.
5:10
Speaker 1: She was the earliest one to sort of put in
5:13
Speaker 1: place these rules like, hey, you should have a separate
5:16
Speaker 1: list for a cross and for down, and you shouldn't
5:19
Speaker 1: have any unchecked boxes, which is a square that's only
5:22
Speaker 1: part of one word, like it should all tie together. Yeah,
5:25
Speaker 1: and very early on, I think if she didn't add
5:28
Speaker 1: the black squares, which are called blanks, the squares you
5:31
Speaker 1: actually fill in, they're called lights, she helps standardize them
5:36
Speaker 1: because very quickly they if you look at a crossroad.
5:39
Speaker 1: I never knew this before until we started researching this.
5:42
Speaker 1: If you look at all the blanks, the blacks, the squares,
5:46
Speaker 1: they're symmetrical. If you look at the left side and
5:49
Speaker 1: the right side, they're mirror images of one another. And
5:51
Speaker 1: you can turn it on its side and the top
5:53
Speaker 1: and the bottom or mirror images of one another. And
5:56
Speaker 1: I was like, why, how does that help anything? And
5:58
Speaker 1: apparently they just decided, I think, if it wasn't Margaret
6:02
Speaker 1: Pether Bridget with somebody she was friends with early on,
6:05
Speaker 1: that symmetry is just beautiful, so make it symmetrical. Well,
6:09
Speaker 1: they're not always like that they are. I mean, I'm
6:13
Speaker 1: looking at Today's and it's not symmetrical. No, I spent
6:17
Speaker 1: so much time trying to find like something that undermined that,
6:20
Speaker 1: and I didn't like. I was like, oh, it's it
6:23
Speaker 1: is symmetrical. That's symmetrical. Holy cow, that's symmetrical. Did you
6:26
Speaker 1: look at any crossword puzzles? I like, yes, I looked
6:28
Speaker 1: at crossword puzzles. Apparently I didn't look at the one
6:31
Speaker 1: from today, though. Well, Today's not. It has a great
6:34
Speaker 1: deal of symmetry now that I'm looking at it, and
6:36
Speaker 1: this is something I've never noticed. But for instance, I'm
6:40
Speaker 1: looking at one which on the right side is an
6:43
Speaker 1: L and on the other side it's an L. The
6:47
Speaker 1: bottom square of that L. Okay, so it's it's not
6:52
Speaker 1: quite symmetrical, but it is kind of symmetrical in some parts.
6:58
Speaker 1: I'm so sick of this stupid conversation. Are you looking
7:00
Speaker 1: at the Today's yet? I can't. I don't have my
7:03
Speaker 1: log in right now, so well, i'll take a screenshot.
7:06
Speaker 1: I'll take your word for it. Man, all right. I'm
7:08
Speaker 1: just so bummed though, because you thought that was like
7:10
Speaker 1: the fact of the show. It was one of them
7:13
Speaker 1: for sure, and now it turned out to be the
7:14
Speaker 1: incorrect fact of the show. Well, let's move on to
7:17
Speaker 1: the nineteen twenties, when a young company called Simon and
7:21
Speaker 1: Schuster said, Richard Simond's aunt, I think, said, hey, these
7:26
Speaker 1: crosswords a lot of fun. You guys should package He's
7:28
Speaker 1: together in a book, because your book company. And so
7:31
Speaker 1: they hired Margaret Petherbridge, codifier of rules and master crossword designer,
7:38
Speaker 1: to put this book together. And she got a couple
7:40
Speaker 1: of other editors from the world and said, all right,
7:43
Speaker 1: let's get to work on this thing. It'll come out
7:46
Speaker 1: in nineteen twenty four. It will come with a free
7:47
Speaker 1: pencil and a racer, which is super cute. Yeah, and
7:50
Speaker 1: sold one hundred and twenty three thousand copies in that
7:53
Speaker 1: first year. Yeah, and that one rants or did so
7:56
Speaker 1: well that they released a second edition, in a third edition,
8:00
Speaker 1: all within the same year, and all combined, those three
8:02
Speaker 1: editions by Christmas time had sold more than a quarter
8:06
Speaker 1: of a million copies. For a fledgling publishing house. That's
8:11
Speaker 1: a pretty big thing. But also they were very smart,
8:13
Speaker 1: Simon and Schuster. They created the Amateur Crossword Puzzle League
8:18
Speaker 1: of America to basically help promote crossword doing solving, I
8:23
Speaker 1: guess is what they call it, in order to help
8:26
Speaker 1: sell more books. And it worked. Actually, it became a
8:30
Speaker 1: legitimate thing. They started standardizing crosswords as well. Oh hold on,
8:34
Speaker 1: you know what I think I'm wrong? I just sent
8:37
Speaker 1: you yes, yes, So it's a mirror image in a way.
8:44
Speaker 1: It's it's not I thought everything would correspond directly across
8:47
Speaker 1: from one another, but it also works diagonally, So I
8:52
Speaker 1: see what you mean. It is symmetrical if you include
8:57
Speaker 1: the diagonal. So if you look in the tipe bright corner,
9:00
Speaker 1: the bottom left corner should be the mirror image of that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
9:05
Speaker 1: it's symmetrical. They're all symmetrical. It's insane because it makes
9:09
Speaker 1: it so much harder. Oh man, I'm so glad we
9:11
Speaker 1: solved that for you, because thank you, dumb when I
9:16
Speaker 1: was dumb, No, you didn't make me feel dumb. Mind. Well,
9:18
Speaker 1: I kept looking at it and I was like, how
9:20
Speaker 1: can parts of it be symmetrical? That didn't make any sense, right,
9:23
Speaker 1: But I was looking for like a direct flip. It's
9:27
Speaker 1: hard to explain how my brain was looking at This
9:29
Speaker 1: is a rare in show correction for one of us
9:33
Speaker 1: against the other. Right. Um. So oh yeah. Back to
9:37
Speaker 1: the Amateur Crossword Puzzle League of America. Yes, um, which
9:40
Speaker 1: sounds like they were all wearing capes while they totally
9:43
Speaker 1: did um. But they had some rules like, um, no
9:47
Speaker 1: part of the puzzle can be completely cut off from
9:50
Speaker 1: the rest. Sure, so you can't use black squares to
9:52
Speaker 1: just make an island of one grid. Um. You also
9:56
Speaker 1: can't use tons of black squares. Uh. They actually is,
10:00
Speaker 1: we'll see, make it easier to create a crossword because
10:04
Speaker 1: using black squares breaks up the stuff so you don't
10:06
Speaker 1: have to come up with So a typical I think
10:09
Speaker 1: New York Times crossword is fifteen across and fifteen down,
10:13
Speaker 1: So if you didn't use black squares, you would have
10:16
Speaker 1: to come up with fifteen fifteen letter words. So no,
10:21
Speaker 1: I guess thirty fifteen letter words, which would be really
10:25
Speaker 1: really hard because they'd also all have to interact. So
10:27
Speaker 1: they use these black squares to kind of break things
10:29
Speaker 1: up and make it a little easier on themselves, to
10:32
Speaker 1: shorten the letters and words and stuff like that. But
10:35
Speaker 1: the Amateur Crossword Puzzle League of America said, Okay, no
10:39
Speaker 1: more than one sixth of all the squares can be
10:41
Speaker 1: blacks can be the black squares, because after that you're
10:45
Speaker 1: really just kind of making a lame crossword. Yeah, and
10:48
Speaker 1: I want to take another stab at correcting you, Oh no,
10:53
Speaker 1: or to maybe clear up when you say fifteen across
10:56
Speaker 1: and fifteen downs, that's fifteen lines, not fifteen clues, right,
11:02
Speaker 1: But there's also fifteen spaces right total I'm saying. And
11:07
Speaker 1: if there weren't any blacked out blanks, you would have
11:10
Speaker 1: a fifteen letter word across at the top, a fifteen
11:13
Speaker 1: letter word below that, a fifteen letter word below that,
11:15
Speaker 1: and then from up vertically there'd be that have to
11:19
Speaker 1: make a note its owned fifteen letter word, and so
11:21
Speaker 1: on and so forth. So yeah, it'd be fifteen across
11:25
Speaker 1: in fifteen down, right. I just want to make sure
11:28
Speaker 1: people knew you didn't mean fifteen across clues in fifteen
11:31
Speaker 1: down clues. There's fifteen lines vertically, in fifteen lines horizontally,
11:37
Speaker 1: and on each line there can be as many as
11:40
Speaker 1: you know, four words, no, no, four clues, Okay, but
11:46
Speaker 1: that's if you have black blank squares. If you didn't
11:49
Speaker 1: have blank right, But if you didn't, you'd have to
11:52
Speaker 1: come up with fifteen letter words, any of them that
11:55
Speaker 1: all interactive with one another. That's what I'm saying. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
11:58
Speaker 1: I get it. But it sounded are we really talking
12:01
Speaker 1: about this, man, this is a brainbuster of an episode.
12:03
Speaker 1: I wasn't expecting this when you were talking about it. Initially,
12:06
Speaker 1: it sounded like you were saying, there were fifteen acrosses
12:09
Speaker 1: in fifteen downs. Yes, if you didn't have black squares,
12:14
Speaker 1: there would be right, but there, that's not a crossword,
12:18
Speaker 1: right right, agreed. But the thing is is you could
12:21
Speaker 1: keep adding more and more black squares to make it
12:23
Speaker 1: easier on yourself, the puzzle constructor. And if you why,
12:28
Speaker 1: because they're shorter words. Yeah, it makes shorter words. It
12:31
Speaker 1: makes it easier to come up with words that interact
12:33
Speaker 1: and intersect with one another. And I disagree. They said, well,
12:38
Speaker 1: you should take it up with the crossword puzzle constructors
12:41
Speaker 1: because they say it makes it easier. Oh really, Because
12:44
Speaker 1: I've begun working on constructing my own, that's sort of
12:47
Speaker 1: the giveaway. And I found that having a good long
12:51
Speaker 1: word is a real benefit. Okay, yeah, it definitely can be.
12:55
Speaker 1: But imagine having to come up with thirty fifteen letter
12:58
Speaker 1: words that all interact with one another. That's not a
13:01
Speaker 1: crossword though. That's my whole point. Okay, forget it. The
13:04
Speaker 1: other thing, the other way to look at it, Chuck,
13:06
Speaker 1: is that to show off crossword constructors use as few
13:10
Speaker 1: blanks as possible. Yeah, so then get those longer words.
13:16
Speaker 1: That's fine. Well, yes, we'll agree to that. Short words
13:19
Speaker 1: you're challenging. I think you're thinking of a word search.
13:21
Speaker 1: No I'm not. I know what I'm talking about. Will
13:25
Speaker 1: Schwartz please come to our aid and settle this once
13:28
Speaker 1: and for all. Oh well, ironically, I think we've been
13:32
Speaker 1: saying the same thing, just in different ways. I think.
13:34
Speaker 1: So Two, we need Jerry here to to interpret for us. Yeah,
13:38
Speaker 1: Jerry's not here today. That's why we're fighting. Let's finish
13:41
Speaker 1: this is as bad as our fights get. We should
13:45
Speaker 1: finish this part, I think before we go on and
13:48
Speaker 1: take a break. And that is when things got hot
13:52
Speaker 1: in the crossword community. Was the nineteen twenties in the
13:55
Speaker 1: United States, and it was a like a big d
14:00
Speaker 1: such that there were people that came out and said, hey,
14:03
Speaker 1: these cross It was sort of like these jazz cigarettes
14:05
Speaker 1: are ruining our culture, Like these jazz puzzles are ruining
14:10
Speaker 1: things because people are just spending all their time doing
14:12
Speaker 1: crossword puzzles. Uh, there was and in the in the
14:16
Speaker 1: UK there was in nineteen twenty four a headline from
14:19
Speaker 1: the Tamworth Herald that said crossword puzzles it should be
14:24
Speaker 1: a colon and enslaved America. And they were talking about
14:28
Speaker 1: how like men are wasted, it was a sinful waste
14:30
Speaker 1: of time, and that it was a fad that would vanish. Yeah,
14:35
Speaker 1: that was the New York Times that called this sinful
14:37
Speaker 1: waste of time. So yeah, there was a real like
14:39
Speaker 1: if you were if you consider yourself an intellectual, you
14:42
Speaker 1: definitely look down on crosswords in the twenties because it
14:45
Speaker 1: was just such a huge popular pop culture sensation. Yeah,
14:48
Speaker 1: there was a song that was called crossword Mama. You
14:51
Speaker 1: puzzle me demand in parentheses, but Papa is going to
14:54
Speaker 1: figure you out. It's like vaguely intimidating, it is it is.
14:58
Speaker 1: So it was like it was a really big deal.
15:00
Speaker 1: But um, yeah, as much as the New York Times
15:02
Speaker 1: and some of the other um of the tongue clucking
15:06
Speaker 1: set wished m crosswords didn't go anywhere. They just became
15:10
Speaker 1: more and more popular and eventually they did catch on.
15:13
Speaker 1: In Britain, Chuck, they have their own version called Cryptic Crosswords.
15:16
Speaker 1: Did you see anything about that? Yeah? The Cryptics are
15:20
Speaker 1: like the New York Times Crossword will have a handful
15:23
Speaker 1: of clues that are sort of deal more and they're
15:29
Speaker 1: more clever. There's more word word play, there's puns. They
15:32
Speaker 1: try to throw you off track, and apparently these in
15:35
Speaker 1: Britain are that's all they are. They are and they're
15:39
Speaker 1: really tough. They have really different rules than American ones.
15:42
Speaker 1: So one an example, I think whatsoever a clue. A
15:47
Speaker 1: clue was artist's phone hacked by terrible woman and the
15:52
Speaker 1: answer is Chagal who is an artist. But the reason
15:55
Speaker 1: Chigal is the answer is because in the middle of
15:58
Speaker 1: Chigal there's the word hag And if you take the
16:01
Speaker 1: word hag out of chical, you have call, which references
16:04
Speaker 1: a phone. Wow. Yeah, like my brain just melted out
16:08
Speaker 1: of my ear a little bit. Yeah. My deal with
16:10
Speaker 1: the New York Times is I I love a good
16:14
Speaker 1: clever clue like that. That's that I can figure out. Yeah,
16:19
Speaker 1: there's the best. I saw a friend American Crossroad. I
16:22
Speaker 1: don't know who wrote it, but it was it brings
16:25
Speaker 1: The clue was it brings out the child in you,
16:28
Speaker 1: and the answer was labor. M that's good. That's the
16:32
Speaker 1: that's sort of they have those routinely, Like, that's what
16:35
Speaker 1: I'm talking about. That's a good example of a really good,
16:38
Speaker 1: clever but gettable thing. You know, I really thought I
16:42
Speaker 1: was going to get a better response out of you
16:44
Speaker 1: than that for that one. Yeah, it's a great one.
16:46
Speaker 1: It brings out a child in you, labor like you
16:49
Speaker 1: just gave birth to a child. Yeah, but those are
16:52
Speaker 1: there were two or three of those in almost every
16:54
Speaker 1: puzzle I know that, but that one is particularly We
16:57
Speaker 1: need to start this episode over all, right, let's think
16:59
Speaker 1: of break and we'll go hatch this out. We'll be
17:02
Speaker 1: right back, all right. So we mentioned that the New
17:27
Speaker 1: York Times finally got their crossword puzzle years and years
17:30
Speaker 1: after they were all the rage in the twenties. And
17:32
Speaker 1: it was when we entered World War two. Enter once again.
17:37
Speaker 1: Margaret Petherbridge, now Margaret Ferrar said, wrote a letter to
17:42
Speaker 1: the New York Times, is you know what we're going
17:44
Speaker 1: into war? It's impossible too, and this is a real quote.
17:48
Speaker 1: You can't think of your troubles while solving a crossword,
17:51
Speaker 1: so like this, this is going to be a big
17:53
Speaker 1: distraction for everyone during this tough time. And the New
17:56
Speaker 1: York Times said, you know what, I think you're right,
17:58
Speaker 1: and why don't we hire you to do it and
18:01
Speaker 1: you can be our editor? And she said, I'd be
18:03
Speaker 1: happy to do that for twenty seven years, right, man.
18:05
Speaker 1: This was nineteen forty two, I think that they brought
18:09
Speaker 1: her on board. And Margaret Petheridge Ferrar had been or
18:13
Speaker 1: Petherbridge had been um a like involved in the crossword
18:18
Speaker 1: world since the beginning, since they were invented, and so
18:22
Speaker 1: who else would you bring on as the first editor
18:24
Speaker 1: of the New York Times Crossword? Yeah? And she did
18:28
Speaker 1: it for twenty seven years, like you said, which is
18:30
Speaker 1: eclipsed in time only by the current crossword editor, Real Shortz,
18:34
Speaker 1: who's been doing it for like, I think thirty something years,
18:37
Speaker 1: thirty two maybe. But yet she had a really huge
18:43
Speaker 1: impact on crosswords, and that's something I think a lot
18:47
Speaker 1: of people overlook. The impact that crosswords have on society
18:54
Speaker 1: and culture is really like under the radar, but it
18:58
Speaker 1: is really significant because what you choose as words and
19:03
Speaker 1: clues and the way that you put things has a
19:06
Speaker 1: there's millions of people all experiencing that same that that
19:11
Speaker 1: same puzzle, and so it's like you're planning seeds and
19:15
Speaker 1: millions of people's heads, and those millions of people go
19:17
Speaker 1: on to talk and interact and it has a really huge,
19:20
Speaker 1: far reaching effect, way more than you'd think of, Especially
19:24
Speaker 1: the New York Times crossword. Yeah, there's something that I
19:26
Speaker 1: realized what there's is that, uh, And I was just
19:29
Speaker 1: naive because I didn't know much about it and I
19:31
Speaker 1: hadn't seen the documentary wordplay at that point. Have you
19:33
Speaker 1: seen it yet? Yeah, it's great, but there's a real
19:36
Speaker 1: community around it. And once I started doing it. Um.
19:39
Speaker 1: I think I told you that Hodgeman and I were
19:43
Speaker 1: talking on the phone about something else and the crossword
19:45
Speaker 1: came up, and he had been doing it. He's he's
19:47
Speaker 1: a big words guy, no surprise, and does play scrabble
19:51
Speaker 1: with his wife and for years and years and decades,
19:55
Speaker 1: and so he's long done the New York Times. And
19:59
Speaker 1: I was like, oh cool, and we started talking about it,
20:01
Speaker 1: and I was so new to it. I was super excited,
20:04
Speaker 1: and I think that sort of rebbed his motor a
20:07
Speaker 1: little bit because I was, you know, I was a
20:09
Speaker 1: new guy that was like, thought it was the coolest
20:10
Speaker 1: thing ever. And so we started texting a lot about it,
20:14
Speaker 1: and then our friend Ben Harrison of the Greatest Gen Podcasts,
20:18
Speaker 1: Ben does it. So all of a sudden, I've got
20:21
Speaker 1: all these people like colleagues and other podcasters that we
20:23
Speaker 1: like text each other hints or you know. John was like, man,
20:27
Speaker 1: text me if you don't know a thing, and I
20:29
Speaker 1: was like, well, I could just look it up, and
20:31
Speaker 1: he said, text me. It's more fun. And I was like, right,
20:34
Speaker 1: there's a community here, yeah, and about it. I can
20:38
Speaker 1: just go lock myself in the basement with a candle
20:40
Speaker 1: and look it up. And I wasn't saying I shouldn't
20:43
Speaker 1: get in touch with you about it, but it's like,
20:45
Speaker 1: why would I bug you about it? And he was like, no,
20:47
Speaker 1: bug me. That's the whole point is it's like it
20:49
Speaker 1: can be a social thing even though it's a generally
20:51
Speaker 1: a solo pursuit. Absolutely, So Margaret for our kind of
20:57
Speaker 1: like coming to our live podcast shows. Huh yeah. So
21:01
Speaker 1: Margaret fer Our, she retired in I think nineteen sixty
21:05
Speaker 1: nine and a guy named Will Wang took over. And
21:08
Speaker 1: Will Wang um he had a huge impact on the
21:12
Speaker 1: crossword as well. He had a great sense of humor
21:15
Speaker 1: and so he got into that word play. Those puns
21:18
Speaker 1: kind of like a diversions, like making you think it
21:22
Speaker 1: was it's one thing when it's really another, the use
21:24
Speaker 1: of a word that's got to be a will whanger.
21:31
Speaker 1: He was replaced after eight years. He moved on and
21:35
Speaker 1: by a guy named Eugene te Moleska, and he was
21:38
Speaker 1: the editor from seventy seven to ninety three. And he's
21:41
Speaker 1: the one that I think a lot of people our
21:44
Speaker 1: age who don't like crosswords think of when they think
21:48
Speaker 1: of how much they don't like crosswords, because he was
21:51
Speaker 1: really being into opera, a former school superintendent, he knew Latin,
21:56
Speaker 1: and he expected the crossword puzzlers, the solvers, I say,
22:00
Speaker 1: to have the same like background in education and tastes
22:03
Speaker 1: that he did. And a lot of people don't, you know,
22:06
Speaker 1: like it's not like you have to hate opera, but
22:09
Speaker 1: if you don't really like opera, you're probably not at
22:12
Speaker 1: all into opera, you know what I mean. There's it's
22:14
Speaker 1: not like I'm kind of into opera thing, you know
22:17
Speaker 1: what I mean? And to expect everybody else to understand
22:20
Speaker 1: the clue that that you know, wordplay about you know,
22:23
Speaker 1: and some opera that it's not. I don't know. I
22:27
Speaker 1: just get the impression that the approachability of it really
22:32
Speaker 1: bottlenecked under Molaska. Yeah. And the one thing that John
22:36
Speaker 1: and I agree on is like, and this is true
22:38
Speaker 1: when we've designed our trivia games that we used to
22:40
Speaker 1: do or pub trivia, is that the best clues in trivia,
22:45
Speaker 1: we believe and in crosswords are ones that you can
22:47
Speaker 1: probably kind of figure out and even if you don't
22:50
Speaker 1: know the answer, and the worst ones are you know,
22:54
Speaker 1: this person wrote this book or this opera, and you're like, well,
22:57
Speaker 1: if you don't know it, you don't know it. It's
22:59
Speaker 1: a lot more fun to try and test your brain
23:02
Speaker 1: into seeing if you can kind of figure it out.
23:04
Speaker 1: And eventually you'll do that by getting other letters that
23:07
Speaker 1: intersect with that word, of course. But if if it's
23:11
Speaker 1: just like I don't know, it's kind of lazy to me.
23:13
Speaker 1: To me to be like, you know, just name this
23:17
Speaker 1: person who start in this movie. Yeah, lazy is a
23:20
Speaker 1: good way to put it. But on the other hand,
23:22
Speaker 1: like the converse of it is like you just really
23:26
Speaker 1: touched on an important thing of cross words, and that
23:29
Speaker 1: they are approachable and they do something to your brain
23:31
Speaker 1: that taps into a part of your mind and your
23:36
Speaker 1: intellect that's not just wrote memory, that where you can
23:40
Speaker 1: combine different things that don't seem to be at all combined,
23:43
Speaker 1: and it just makes it a really like pleasurable thing.
23:45
Speaker 1: A lot of people compare, especially the British version, crypto
23:49
Speaker 1: crosswords to reading like a miniature murder mystery and when
23:54
Speaker 1: you figure out who it was, it turns out you
23:56
Speaker 1: were right, your suspect was the one who did it.
23:59
Speaker 1: That that feeling of like I knew it. That same
24:01
Speaker 1: thing can come from like every single clue almost of
24:04
Speaker 1: a really well written crossword, and it's kind of the
24:07
Speaker 1: same thing where there's this discovery and you you also
24:10
Speaker 1: have that kind of rush of accomplishment for having figured
24:13
Speaker 1: it out without just knowing a fact that you learned
24:17
Speaker 1: in school. I think that was a really important point
24:19
Speaker 1: you made. Yeah, but also it's not you can have
24:23
Speaker 1: I wouldn't want to go all cryptic like a good
24:25
Speaker 1: crossword total And it's has a mix of both because
24:28
Speaker 1: it's also nice when you do know something and it's
24:31
Speaker 1: you know this man let voices carry and you know
24:37
Speaker 1: it's amy, you know what I mean? Did you get
24:40
Speaker 1: that one? I did? It was pretty good. But would
24:42
Speaker 1: you just made that one up? Wouldn't you have to?
24:45
Speaker 1: It's good chuck, but think about it, you're gonna have
24:47
Speaker 1: to fess up and make it two ends. Well. Sure,
24:52
Speaker 1: so that's a huge giveaway too, but that's part of
24:54
Speaker 1: the cheekiness of it. Yeah, no, I'm with you. But
24:57
Speaker 1: sometimes it literally just says this person started and whatever. Movie. Right.
25:04
Speaker 1: So there's one other one I want to give a
25:06
Speaker 1: cryptic crossworth that just blows my char So that clue
25:11
Speaker 1: is lineage and the answer is eagle. Can you figure
25:16
Speaker 1: it out? Well, I mean I know it because you
25:20
Speaker 1: this is something that I read. We'll pretend like you
25:22
Speaker 1: just figured it out and share it. No, how about
25:25
Speaker 1: you ask the audience, well, audience, do you know no? No,
25:29
Speaker 1: Well I'll tell you. It turns out that lineage can
25:32
Speaker 1: also be read as L in eg eage. Well, if
25:37
Speaker 1: you put L in eage, you get eagle. Yeah, I
25:41
Speaker 1: mean those are tough, man, That is really tough. You
25:44
Speaker 1: have to be so thoroughly British to be like, yes,
25:47
Speaker 1: I totally am tapping into this. Yeah, it's just it's
25:51
Speaker 1: just a different way of doing it, but it's the
25:53
Speaker 1: same thing, and I think it's neat that everybody's got
25:55
Speaker 1: their own way. Yeah. My Actually, let me amend that
25:58
Speaker 1: my least favorite clues and I will bail on a
26:01
Speaker 1: puzzle altogether. If the theme and we'll talk about the
26:04
Speaker 1: fact that they have themes in a minute, But if
26:06
Speaker 1: the theme is it's just you have to misspell this
26:09
Speaker 1: word in order for it to be right. I hate those. Yeah,
26:14
Speaker 1: you're like, if it's not a duke is a hazard theme,
26:16
Speaker 1: I don't want to have anything to do with that crossword.
26:19
Speaker 1: Back to will Schartz in the timeline of editors, because
26:22
Speaker 1: like you said, there's only been one, two, three, four, Yeah,
26:28
Speaker 1: I mean it's a good gig that, like the least
26:31
Speaker 1: tenard was what eight years, yeah, Will Wing. So it
26:34
Speaker 1: seems like a job that people like because they keep
26:37
Speaker 1: doing it forever. But Schwartz has been there for thirty years.
26:41
Speaker 1: There was no full time staff there besides himself when
26:43
Speaker 1: he came on, just a part time assistant, and he
26:48
Speaker 1: changed that had somewhat of a staff. All of a
26:50
Speaker 1: sudden he added the buyeline, which is a big deal.
26:53
Speaker 1: When you go to your daily puzzle. You see who
26:55
Speaker 1: wrote it and who constructed it, which is kind of cool.
26:59
Speaker 1: And before that there was no biolin at all. And
27:03
Speaker 1: then he said, you know what, we should also get
27:05
Speaker 1: like clues that like talked about people of color and
27:08
Speaker 1: talked about different types of cultures and more diversity overall.
27:14
Speaker 1: I'll also add brand names, which is something they never
27:16
Speaker 1: did before. Yeah, for sure, to just really kind of
27:19
Speaker 1: opened it up. He definitely did. He also started publishing
27:23
Speaker 1: from a lot of different people too, including teenagers. I
27:26
Speaker 1: think up to the Shorts era, only I think like
27:30
Speaker 1: sixteen teenagers had ever been published in the New York Times,
27:35
Speaker 1: And since he's been there, I think it's like sixty
27:38
Speaker 1: four now now that was six teenagers. Six teenagers. It's
27:43
Speaker 1: even less than I thought before. Yeah, six, and then
27:47
Speaker 1: during his tenure forty six. Wow, So I really cool.
27:50
Speaker 1: Screwed the pooch on that one, but the gist was
27:53
Speaker 1: still correct. One thing that is also correct is they
27:58
Speaker 1: do get progressively harder, and I was sort of wrong
28:02
Speaker 1: when I first started doing and I thought Sunday was
28:03
Speaker 1: the hardest. They get more intellectually challenging Monday through Saturday,
28:09
Speaker 1: and then Sunday's sort of like a midweek level, but
28:12
Speaker 1: it's just larger. That's what I saw about one hundred
28:14
Speaker 1: and forty clues. Usually, yeah, it's it's not lines. I know,
28:20
Speaker 1: not lines. It's not what I meant. Here's let's do
28:23
Speaker 1: this great example that Livia gave, because this is another
28:27
Speaker 1: kind of fun head teaser, brain teaser. So the clue sandwich,
28:32
Speaker 1: often given a twist, might be the Saturday clue for oreo,
28:37
Speaker 1: whereas the Monday version might just be Nibisco sandwich cookie.
28:41
Speaker 1: I saw that they start out easy on Monday and
28:44
Speaker 1: then get increasingly harder day by day because they assumed
28:49
Speaker 1: that the crossword solvers out there were still recuperating from
28:53
Speaker 1: the weekend morning, and that they were getting sharper and
28:56
Speaker 1: sharper as the days went on. And then you on Monday,
28:59
Speaker 1: you get to just blaze through one. No, no, like
29:01
Speaker 1: you're still hungover on Monday. So they made it easy
29:04
Speaker 1: on you, That's what I'm saying. And you get to
29:05
Speaker 1: blaze through it in ten minutes and feel good about
29:07
Speaker 1: yourself again, right exactly, and then throw up from having
29:10
Speaker 1: to focus on the little tiny print for an hour.
29:14
Speaker 1: But just to explain in case you don't do them
29:16
Speaker 1: at all, and you're like, I don't get the oreo thing.
29:18
Speaker 1: Sandwich often given a twist. People often twist the oreo apart.
29:21
Speaker 1: It is a cookie sandwich, and as Libya astutely points out,
29:26
Speaker 1: that also satisfies what you see a lot in crosswords,
29:29
Speaker 1: which is the short word with a lot of vowels,
29:35
Speaker 1: like once a week, Enya the New Age artist. Enya
29:38
Speaker 1: is a clue. She's never been She's been topical for
29:42
Speaker 1: thirty something years because of her name. It's really funny,
29:45
Speaker 1: and they're different ways of like describing the clue or whatever,
29:50
Speaker 1: but it's it's very funny. It's always like this this
29:53
Speaker 1: new ager or something like that, and so I see it,
29:55
Speaker 1: there's Enya. Yeah. Yeah, that's another thing too that I
29:58
Speaker 1: think you kind of referenced earliers. You know, you start
30:01
Speaker 1: to get a feel for the language of cross words,
30:04
Speaker 1: and sometimes some clues are virtually the same as others.
30:06
Speaker 1: There's only so many ways you can describe ye, So yeah,
30:10
Speaker 1: that'll start popping up, especially if it's a vowel heavy
30:14
Speaker 1: heavy word. We should talk about themes a little bit
30:17
Speaker 1: more though, right, sure, Well, they're themed. A lot of times,
30:22
Speaker 1: not always, but it seems like out of the seven days,
30:26
Speaker 1: I would say three or four of them are usually
30:28
Speaker 1: themed at least, and that is when there would be
30:31
Speaker 1: like it's usually like four or five of the clues
30:36
Speaker 1: have a theme, and then there would be an additional
30:38
Speaker 1: one that says blank blank blank is a clue and
30:42
Speaker 1: that it will say or a great clue to the answers,
30:48
Speaker 1: you know, four or seventeen, sixteen, and twenty four, So
30:52
Speaker 1: it'll it'll be a clue plus an additional thing that
30:55
Speaker 1: sort of helped describe what the theme might be. Like
31:00
Speaker 1: the theme the answer might be doubles, and that is
31:03
Speaker 1: also the theme of the other ones that you you know,
31:05
Speaker 1: hopefully got by that point. One of the other things
31:08
Speaker 1: I saw that make theme crosswords popular, especially among constructors,
31:13
Speaker 1: is that the theme answers are usually multi lettered see
31:16
Speaker 1: ten letters, and that's a big long string of consonants
31:21
Speaker 1: and vowels that you can use to branch other words
31:25
Speaker 1: off of the intersect with. So you'll have four or
31:28
Speaker 1: five theme words. So you've got four or five ten
31:32
Speaker 1: letter words right off the bat, but you don't have
31:35
Speaker 1: to come up with thirty fifteen letter words. So it's
31:39
Speaker 1: much more advantageous. Yeah, and like the example Olivia gave
31:43
Speaker 1: of a theme, they're very This is very typical winner
31:47
Speaker 1: of a preparing contest would be best sheller. And so
31:52
Speaker 1: the theme ends up being adding an h in other
31:55
Speaker 1: common terms to make it a different term. So, in
31:58
Speaker 1: other words, instead of best seller, it's sheller. Another one
32:01
Speaker 1: in that same theme would be Lothario's line in a
32:04
Speaker 1: single spar pick up sticks instead of pick up sticks.
32:09
Speaker 1: So themes like that I really enjoy. But the themes
32:12
Speaker 1: I don't like, or like I said, when it's like
32:14
Speaker 1: this is the word misspelled or something. Okay, thank gotcha. Okay,
32:20
Speaker 1: I'm getting on my crossword soapbox a little. I say,
32:24
Speaker 1: we take our second break and then come back and
32:26
Speaker 1: talk about how people out there who are like I
32:28
Speaker 1: like hearing about these crosswords. I'm gonna go try one.
32:31
Speaker 1: Wait wait, wait, because we're about to inform you how
32:34
Speaker 1: to solve them more efficiently, starting in just a minute
32:39
Speaker 1: or two after this moment, So the New York Times
33:06
Speaker 1: went so full bore into um, which is, by the way,
33:11
Speaker 1: is not sexual, kind of like balls out into crosswords
33:16
Speaker 1: that they actually have a crossword column, not just a crossword.
33:20
Speaker 1: They have a columnist dedicated to writing about crosswords. Yeah,
33:24
Speaker 1: her name's currently deb Amlin. Well that's probably always going
33:28
Speaker 1: to be her name from now on, but I'm saying
33:30
Speaker 1: the current columnists is named deb Amlin. Sure, and she's
33:33
Speaker 1: at the New York Times, and she's got some tips
33:37
Speaker 1: that she maintains that are they're pretty good if you
33:40
Speaker 1: want to start out learning how to kind of basically
33:43
Speaker 1: solve a crossword a little faster than you might have
33:45
Speaker 1: on your own. Yeah, for sure. And by the way,
33:48
Speaker 1: there are lots of fun blogs outside the New York
33:51
Speaker 1: Times too that that write kind of funny takedowns of
33:54
Speaker 1: the day's puzzle. Nice. But Amlin says to start by
33:59
Speaker 1: scanning for an the answers you definitely know for sure, Right,
34:03
Speaker 1: it's a good way to start. Yeah, take a guess sometimes,
34:07
Speaker 1: but use your racer, of course, I do mind on
34:09
Speaker 1: the app online version. And then once you get like
34:14
Speaker 1: the intersecting words, more things will reveal themselves. So it's
34:17
Speaker 1: fine to take a guess because you can go back
34:19
Speaker 1: and redo the word once you've realized that you were wrong.
34:22
Speaker 1: Another one she suggests is yours and Hodgeman's method working
34:26
Speaker 1: with another person. Yeah, via text or in person can
34:30
Speaker 1: be fun. Over the breakfast table. Sure, if you get stuck,
34:34
Speaker 1: just take a break. You don't have to finish this thing.
34:36
Speaker 1: It's not a competition, like you can walk away from
34:39
Speaker 1: it and come back. And oftentimes you'll do that kind
34:41
Speaker 1: of unconscious thinking, almost like sleeping on it without sleeping,
34:45
Speaker 1: and these things that just seemed totally impenetrable will suddenly
34:49
Speaker 1: seem clear to you with fresh eyes. That happens almost
34:52
Speaker 1: every time I do that. It's it's And I told
34:55
Speaker 1: Hodgeman that and he went, yeah, that's a documented phenomenon
34:59
Speaker 1: that happens. Yeah. Another one is that it's and this
35:03
Speaker 1: is very controversial, but everyone has their own way of
35:06
Speaker 1: doing it. There's no right way of doing it. There
35:08
Speaker 1: are some purists, I'm sure that do not cheat at all,
35:11
Speaker 1: and if they don't finish it, I guess they just
35:14
Speaker 1: don't finish it. I like to finish it. So here's
35:17
Speaker 1: what I do. I will do all my acrosses first,
35:21
Speaker 1: and then I'll do a check and it tells you
35:24
Speaker 1: what you've gotten wrong. Then I do all the downs,
35:27
Speaker 1: and then I do a check. Because I don't want
35:29
Speaker 1: to spend it. I don't have a like hours and
35:32
Speaker 1: hours a day to work on these things, and I
35:34
Speaker 1: want to finish them, so, like, I don't want to
35:36
Speaker 1: spend a lot of time trying to figure out something
35:38
Speaker 1: and drive myself crazy if I've gotten the A cross
35:41
Speaker 1: word wrong to begin with, because then you're just throwing
35:45
Speaker 1: yourself off. So I do a check one check down,
35:48
Speaker 1: one check across, And that's the only sort of cheats
35:50
Speaker 1: I'll use most times. Unless I'm just really stuck at
35:53
Speaker 1: the end and i can't get the last couple. Then
35:55
Speaker 1: I'll cheat, and I'll be like, all right, you know,
35:57
Speaker 1: because what you're doing is you're learning something. If you're
36:00
Speaker 1: if you're stopping three quarters of the way through because
36:03
Speaker 1: you like you refuse to cheat, then you might be
36:06
Speaker 1: missing out and learning something cool. So or you know,
36:09
Speaker 1: solve it your own way. If you want to be
36:11
Speaker 1: a purist and just not finish it, that's fine too.
36:14
Speaker 1: So um, I think that's great words of advice, Chuck. Yeah.
36:17
Speaker 1: Some other ones I saw are so when you're looking
36:21
Speaker 1: at the clue, the plurality of it. If the plurality
36:27
Speaker 1: if the clue is plural rather than singular, the answer
36:30
Speaker 1: has to be plural, So in that sense, if you
36:32
Speaker 1: see something that has a plural clue, you can just
36:34
Speaker 1: go ahead and add an S at the end right um.
36:37
Speaker 1: Same with tense, so if if the clue is past tense,
36:40
Speaker 1: you can add an eed right at the bottom of
36:42
Speaker 1: them of the the answer um. And that's a great
36:46
Speaker 1: way to fill up a couple of squares right off
36:48
Speaker 1: the bat too. And as you fill in other ones,
36:51
Speaker 1: say that are going across, and you're filling down answers
36:55
Speaker 1: with s's and eds, that stuff's going to fill up
36:58
Speaker 1: a lot faster and become clear. Yeah, we talked about
37:01
Speaker 1: the language of cross words, which you just sort of
37:04
Speaker 1: get more familiar with as you do them. Partner Whenever
37:07
Speaker 1: you see the word partner in there, it's usually linking
37:10
Speaker 1: words together. So the example that Livia gave was a
37:14
Speaker 1: partner of live. The answer would be learned because you
37:17
Speaker 1: usually here live and learn stuff like that one. They
37:21
Speaker 1: also will abbreviate words, but they say that they're abbreviating it,
37:25
Speaker 1: So like following the clue, it will be say abbr
37:29
Speaker 1: period or for short or in brief, or they'll actually
37:33
Speaker 1: put an abbreviation in the clue. So a clue of
37:37
Speaker 1: elephant group, as in GRP, the answer a GOOP because
37:42
Speaker 1: that's an abbreviation of Grand Old Party and the elephant
37:45
Speaker 1: group is the abbreviated group GRP. Does that make sense, Yeah,
37:50
Speaker 1: but not all abbreviations, like it's usually if it's something abbreviated,
37:54
Speaker 1: that usually isn't like group was abbreviated. If you see oh,
37:59
Speaker 1: good point, like what Libya put down is a great example.
38:01
Speaker 1: If you see VIP, that doesn't necessarily mean that the
38:04
Speaker 1: answer is going to be an abbreviation because VP is common. Yeah,
38:08
Speaker 1: people don't typically abbreviate group. Right. You'll also very rarely
38:15
Speaker 1: see the same word twice in a single crossword. Yeah,
38:19
Speaker 1: it's it's considered bad form among crossword constructors. Constructors also
38:24
Speaker 1: frequently give you fill in the blank clues as a gimme.
38:28
Speaker 1: So there's a blank and then the second word or
38:31
Speaker 1: something like that in a clue makes it probably pretty
38:35
Speaker 1: easy to figure out based on the number of letters.
38:39
Speaker 1: That's when you can start with. And then also I
38:41
Speaker 1: saw that you should start at the bottom right because
38:46
Speaker 1: the premises that constructors typically will start at the top
38:50
Speaker 1: left and by the time they make it to the
38:53
Speaker 1: bottom right, which is the end of the puzzle. They're
38:55
Speaker 1: they're tired and they've stopped being quite as clever, so
38:57
Speaker 1: you can figure out the clues in the bottom right easier. Yeah,
39:00
Speaker 1: I'd start with one and one. That's how I do it. Okay, Uh,
39:04
Speaker 1: there's some other fun ones, and I wish I would
39:06
Speaker 1: have looked up an example. But one that you see
39:08
Speaker 1: every single day is like, uh, word preceding, you know,
39:15
Speaker 1: cat and basket and it'll be a word that you
39:17
Speaker 1: often see linked up before cat in basket That isn't
39:21
Speaker 1: one because I can't think of one. Play cat in
39:23
Speaker 1: basket case, cat cat case in basket case. Okay, but
39:28
Speaker 1: that would be uh not proceeding. But yeah, um, so
39:31
Speaker 1: they'll do that a lot. Here's some things that I
39:33
Speaker 1: didn't know, which now I'm going to be better at. Um. Well,
39:37
Speaker 1: I did know this. If it's a question mark at
39:39
Speaker 1: the end of the clue, that usually means is probably
39:42
Speaker 1: a pun or some kind of wordplay, Like current events
39:47
Speaker 1: is really current events, so tides because tides have currents,
39:51
Speaker 1: it's an event. Yeah, then you're like, what's the fifth
39:55
Speaker 1: letter for well, and a lot of times the obvious
39:58
Speaker 1: answer that's wrong. We'll have the same. If they're really good,
40:01
Speaker 1: they'll have the same number of letters. Right, So you're like,
40:03
Speaker 1: it has to be news. It fits, yeah, exactly. But
40:06
Speaker 1: the ones I did not know was that if it's
40:09
Speaker 1: in a quote, then the answer is a synonym for
40:13
Speaker 1: a spoken phrase. And I sort of knew it was
40:16
Speaker 1: sort of like that, but I didn't know it was
40:17
Speaker 1: always like that. And then if it's in brackets, and
40:20
Speaker 1: I didn't know this at all. I never knew what
40:21
Speaker 1: the brackets meant. The brackets usually mean that the answer
40:25
Speaker 1: is nonverbal, right, like the example Olivia gives us, that's painful.
40:31
Speaker 1: In brackets, the answer might be grimace. Right. I didn't
40:36
Speaker 1: know the brackets one either. The thing I like about
40:39
Speaker 1: the quotes one is it's intuitive, Like I didn't know
40:42
Speaker 1: that that was a convention, but I know that I've
40:44
Speaker 1: figured that out, you know, plenty of times doing cross
40:47
Speaker 1: words to seeing those quotes. It just it's a really
40:49
Speaker 1: great convention, I think. And then the heteronyms, these are
40:53
Speaker 1: my favorite. These are the really clever ones where it's
40:57
Speaker 1: something that can be pronounced in two different ways and
41:00
Speaker 1: you're intuitively led down a path to believe it's one,
41:04
Speaker 1: and it's really the other. Um. So, the example that
41:07
Speaker 1: Livia found was kitchen drawer. So you're trying to think of, like,
41:10
Speaker 1: what's kitchen drawer? What could it be? What could it be?
41:13
Speaker 1: And the answer is a roma. So it's not kitchen drawer,
41:16
Speaker 1: but a kitchen drawer, as in the aroma draws you
41:20
Speaker 1: into the kitchen. It's such a great one. I know,
41:22
Speaker 1: I love that stuff. Not as good as labor, but
41:24
Speaker 1: still pretty good. Okay, so you said you're trying your
41:27
Speaker 1: hand at constructing puzzles. How's it going. Well? I mean,
41:30
Speaker 1: I've I've started the idea of trying. I'm trying to
41:34
Speaker 1: find a partner, asked Hodgeman, and he sort of didn't
41:37
Speaker 1: say anything back. So I think that was a soft bass. Yeah.
41:40
Speaker 1: Ben seemed a little more into it. And I wanted
41:44
Speaker 1: to see if I could get stuff. You should know
41:45
Speaker 1: when there as a clue, because obviously that would be
41:47
Speaker 1: another bucketless thing for us. That would be great. Oh yeah, man,
41:50
Speaker 1: can you imagine? Yeah, it'd be cool. Um so, uh,
41:54
Speaker 1: the The New York Times actually deb ammon Um wrote
41:58
Speaker 1: a or am and sorry. She hosted a blog post,
42:03
Speaker 1: a four or five part blog post that is really
42:06
Speaker 1: in depth that where she interviewed the people who actually
42:10
Speaker 1: edit and create the New York Times crosswords and how
42:14
Speaker 1: they do it. And it is not at all created
42:17
Speaker 1: the way that I thought they were created. Did you
42:19
Speaker 1: see that at all? I haven't looked at that yet.
42:21
Speaker 1: It's it's on my list because I know it's going
42:23
Speaker 1: to inform my process, but I've I've been kind of waiting.
42:26
Speaker 1: Is there like a I kind of thought there might
42:28
Speaker 1: be programs that help you sort of lay it out.
42:31
Speaker 1: They mentioned that they do use programs to kind of
42:33
Speaker 1: basically create grids and stuff like that more easily, but
42:37
Speaker 1: they don't use things like auto phil which will just
42:40
Speaker 1: populate it with words and then come up with suggested
42:44
Speaker 1: like clues or anything like that. They come up with
42:46
Speaker 1: them themselves, which you would hope with the New York
42:48
Speaker 1: Times crossword puzzle. But the way that they create this,
42:52
Speaker 1: and I think it's like almost like an assembly line
42:56
Speaker 1: if it's done the way the blog posts suggests, where
42:59
Speaker 1: one team will come up with the theme and they'll
43:02
Speaker 1: come up with the answers the words for that theme. Okay,
43:06
Speaker 1: so let's say you have five five different words that
43:09
Speaker 1: are the theme answers, and then that's it, they hand
43:13
Speaker 1: it off to the next people. The next people will
43:14
Speaker 1: create the grid and they have to figure out where
43:17
Speaker 1: to put those five theme answers in there. And once
43:21
Speaker 1: they have that done and they got they have the
43:23
Speaker 1: black squares in there and everything like that, they hand
43:26
Speaker 1: it off to the people who populate the grid with words. Um,
43:29
Speaker 1: you want to avoid three letter words. You want to
43:33
Speaker 1: definitely no more than no less than three three right, Um.
43:39
Speaker 1: So it's actually kind of hard to come up with
43:42
Speaker 1: words that are interesting, right, because those are your answers.
43:45
Speaker 1: And then after that, after the whole thing's been populated,
43:49
Speaker 1: they hand it off to the people who write the
43:51
Speaker 1: clues based on the words in the grids. The deposite
43:57
Speaker 1: of solving it. When you say day, though, do you
43:59
Speaker 1: mean is this when The New York Times is doing
44:02
Speaker 1: their own So yes, that's my impression. I think for
44:05
Speaker 1: the most part, if you write, if you create, sorry,
44:09
Speaker 1: construct your own crossword, you're doing every step of this.
44:12
Speaker 1: I don't know if they broke it down into teams
44:15
Speaker 1: of two to make sure that everybody was interviewed in this,
44:18
Speaker 1: or if they really do it assembly line style, and
44:20
Speaker 1: a team of two will create the theme. A team
44:22
Speaker 1: of two will create the grid, a team of three
44:24
Speaker 1: populates it with words, and a team of two does
44:27
Speaker 1: the clues, writes the clues. But it's it's really mind
44:31
Speaker 1: boggling how how it all comes together. It comes together
44:33
Speaker 1: in the opposite way that you you would solve the puzzle,
44:37
Speaker 1: which is one reason why Will Shortz. He was interviewed
44:40
Speaker 1: by Neil Conan and I Think Science Friday, where he said, like,
44:46
Speaker 1: people who are constructors are typically not good at solving
44:50
Speaker 1: the puzzles and vice versa. If you're really good at
44:51
Speaker 1: solving a puzzle, it does not mean you're gonna necessarily
44:54
Speaker 1: be good at constructing it. You know who's good at both?
44:58
Speaker 1: Who is manning the south key? Yeah? Because Manny retired
45:02
Speaker 1: from a medical practice in nineteen eighty three and got
45:06
Speaker 1: was really into it and was published in ninety four,
45:10
Speaker 1: and then since that time has created two hundred and
45:13
Speaker 1: fifty four New York Times crosswords to be the most
45:17
Speaker 1: prolific writer. I'm sorry, constructor, we keep saying that. Yeah,
45:20
Speaker 1: I know, it's tough to remember. So Will Shortz. When
45:24
Speaker 1: he started in ninety three, he was getting forty to
45:26
Speaker 1: fifty submissions of meet a week, mostly from people age
45:29
Speaker 1: fifty or over. Yeah, And as of April twenty twenty one,
45:33
Speaker 1: he started getting about two hundred submissions a week. That
45:36
Speaker 1: means two hundred different people went to the trouble of
45:39
Speaker 1: creating a crossword and sending it into the New York Times.
45:42
Speaker 1: And the age has declined tremendously to about the mid
45:46
Speaker 1: to late thirties today on average. And that's in large
45:49
Speaker 1: part because Will Shortz made a determined effort, like you
45:52
Speaker 1: were saying, to be way more inclusive in the crossword world. Yeah,
45:57
Speaker 1: and women get a little bit of a bump. I
45:59
Speaker 1: think twenty percent of submissions come from women, but about
46:03
Speaker 1: thirty percent of published puzzles or from women. And I
46:09
Speaker 1: was kind of under the impression that all of their
46:11
Speaker 1: puzzles were submitted, so I didn't know that anyone on
46:15
Speaker 1: staff was writing them. I'm curious of the breakdown there. Yeah,
46:18
Speaker 1: I am as well. I don't know, because they said
46:22
Speaker 1: that they get about two hundred submissions per week, but
46:24
Speaker 1: they're only running seven, so that means that the acceptance
46:27
Speaker 1: rate is about three to four percent, which would mean
46:30
Speaker 1: that they are accepting like they're running nothing but submissions
46:33
Speaker 1: rather than housemade ones. Yeah, this really made me pause,
46:36
Speaker 1: and I'm like, how much time do I want to
46:38
Speaker 1: put into something that I have a ninety seven percent
46:41
Speaker 1: chance of like failing. Well, you know, there's other places
46:44
Speaker 1: that run cross words aside from the Times and Pleasures
46:49
Speaker 1: would be more than happy to take us other pleasures
46:52
Speaker 1: do you derive just from having done so? I think
46:54
Speaker 1: it'd be a good even if it doesn't get published.
46:56
Speaker 1: That doesn't mean, you know, I wrote a great seventy
46:58
Speaker 1: show spec script that never did anything, but in my
47:02
Speaker 1: mind it lives as a real episode. I wrote a
47:04
Speaker 1: great Simpsons episode that it's right anything, and I love
47:07
Speaker 1: it too. Yeah, agreed. I'll tell you what people love though,
47:11
Speaker 1: is crosswords. And watch that documentary word Play, because you
47:15
Speaker 1: will see a lot of it about the American crossword
47:18
Speaker 1: puzzle tournament, which started in nineteen seventy eight. When crosswords
47:23
Speaker 1: kind of after the twenties and thirties, they didn't go
47:25
Speaker 1: away or anything, but they kind of laid a little
47:29
Speaker 1: more low until the late seventies and they really kind
47:31
Speaker 1: of picked up steam again. And the marketing director of
47:34
Speaker 1: a Marriott hotel in Stanford, Connecticut said, Hey, in the wintertime,
47:39
Speaker 1: no one's coming up here. So let's let's do a
47:41
Speaker 1: crossword puzzle tournament like an official New York Times thing,
47:45
Speaker 1: and get Will Schwartz to help us plant And they've
47:48
Speaker 1: been doing it there ever since, and it's I think
47:50
Speaker 1: it's in late March early April this year, and they
47:53
Speaker 1: get you know, close to a thousand people coming to
47:55
Speaker 1: this thing. Yeah, and you get a really good sense
47:57
Speaker 1: of what it's like in word play, like you were
48:01
Speaker 1: really a great Like if if this has been at
48:03
Speaker 1: all interesting to you this episode, go check out word Play.
48:05
Speaker 1: You will absolutely love it. Even if you're not into
48:08
Speaker 1: cross words. It's a great you know, um, social what
48:12
Speaker 1: is the word social connector bonder know, the type of
48:16
Speaker 1: documentary where it's like a little peak inside of Oh yeah,
48:20
Speaker 1: one of those, Yeah, one of those. It's worth seeing
48:23
Speaker 1: for sure. As far as the making you smarter, And
48:27
Speaker 1: this was something that you and I talked a little
48:29
Speaker 1: bit about. Like one of the reasons I started doing
48:31
Speaker 1: it is because I wasn't the impression that word games
48:35
Speaker 1: kept you from descending into dementia. And it kind of
48:39
Speaker 1: depends on the study. Some studies have sort of confirmed
48:42
Speaker 1: or at least backed it up. Some studies said there
48:46
Speaker 1: was no effect. Some studies say that it might just
48:50
Speaker 1: be the placebo effect happening. Other people say, like, these
48:55
Speaker 1: things are fine, but being like genuinely creative with your
48:58
Speaker 1: brain is better for staving off dementia. So I've read
49:03
Speaker 1: this stuff and I was a little disappointed, but I
49:05
Speaker 1: kind of figure it. It can't hurt, and it's can
49:08
Speaker 1: be a part of the recipe of keeping your brain sharp. Yeah,
49:10
Speaker 1: as far as I know, none of the studies where like,
49:12
Speaker 1: don't do crosswords, they're going to completely rot your brain. Yeah. Yeah,
49:17
Speaker 1: that one about the placebo effect I thought was pretty interesting.
49:20
Speaker 1: When they advertised the puzzle as a brain training people
49:24
Speaker 1: did better on IQ test than people who were in
49:27
Speaker 1: a control group and did the same puzzle, but it
49:30
Speaker 1: wasn't advertised as brain training. So I don't think it matters.
49:34
Speaker 1: If a placebo effect doesn't matter, it doesn't diminish it.
49:37
Speaker 1: You know, like if you can take a sugar pill
49:39
Speaker 1: and get the same result as taking a medication, like great,
49:44
Speaker 1: that's fantastic. I don't understand why everybody's always putting down
49:46
Speaker 1: the placebo effect. Yeah, that sugar pill probably didn't have
49:49
Speaker 1: side effects too. Well, it is sugar, so there's probably some.
49:53
Speaker 1: But you know, there was a study in twenty fourteen
49:55
Speaker 1: that found that if you were a crossword or scrabble
50:00
Speaker 1: it says expert, but I would even say enthusiasts, then
50:03
Speaker 1: you had a stronger working memory than the group compared,
50:08
Speaker 1: which was I think college students who had a seven
50:11
Speaker 1: hundred or better verbal on the SAT. Yeah, and apparently
50:15
Speaker 1: they're better at like VISU visuo. Can I say that right?
50:19
Speaker 1: I don't think so. I think that is right visuo
50:22
Speaker 1: spatial information and integrating verbal and visualus. Oh man, visual space.
50:29
Speaker 1: You're not gonna help me? Help you? Are you no? Vs? Information?
50:32
Speaker 1: How about that vs? Information in your short term memory? Jeez,
50:36
Speaker 1: I gotta go finish. I'm ironically pretty stumped on today's crossword,
50:40
Speaker 1: as you can tell. Oh yeah, have you been doing
50:42
Speaker 1: it while we've been talking? No, no, no, I made
50:44
Speaker 1: a little bit of time earlier, but I'll usually not
50:48
Speaker 1: do it all in one go, like the Monday through Thursday,
50:51
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, the money through Wednesday I can generally knock
50:54
Speaker 1: out pretty quick like Mondays. Sometimes you can knock those
50:57
Speaker 1: out in like eleven minutes, and that's super speed. Yeah,
51:00
Speaker 1: I've done that's my record. I think, Wow, that's impressive, man.
51:05
Speaker 1: But uh yeah. Shout out to Ben and uh John
51:07
Speaker 1: Hodgeman and Mark Gagliardi another podcasting friend who was who
51:11
Speaker 1: was an enthusiast. Nice, it's fun, fun doing this stuff.
51:15
Speaker 1: Shout out to all you constructors and solvers out there. Right. Yeah,
51:19
Speaker 1: well hope if I ever get my own byline, then
51:21
Speaker 1: you can bet stuff. You should know we'll be a clue. Awesome.
51:24
Speaker 1: I appreciate that big time. Chuck. Uh, since that is
51:28
Speaker 1: probably it, right, you got anything else? Yah? Nothing else? Well,
51:31
Speaker 1: then that means it's time for a listener mail. I'm
51:36
Speaker 1: gonna call this correction on animal stuff. Oh boy, this
51:41
Speaker 1: is from Daniel. This is a good correction too, because
51:44
Speaker 1: this feels like one of those things is just printed
51:47
Speaker 1: everywhere and everyone believes it's true. But apparently possums don't
51:50
Speaker 1: eat ticks. Yeah, okay, all right, fine, Hey guys, I'm
51:55
Speaker 1: writing because I was listening to the Possums podcast and
51:59
Speaker 1: I heard you repeat an old myth that was fact,
52:03
Speaker 1: and I wanted to set the record straight. The idea
52:05
Speaker 1: that possums eat thousands of six a year is a
52:07
Speaker 1: complete myth. It's based on a single study in which
52:10
Speaker 1: researchers placed one hundred larval ticks on many different animals,
52:15
Speaker 1: waited four days, then counted all the ones that fell off,
52:20
Speaker 1: the ones that did not fall off or assumed to
52:22
Speaker 1: have been eaten. Someone read that study assumed this was
52:25
Speaker 1: the same as the number of ticks they'd eat in
52:27
Speaker 1: the wild, and came up with the numbers that we heard.
52:30
Speaker 1: So is there anything out there that disproves it, or
52:34
Speaker 1: is this really just a critique of the quality of
52:37
Speaker 1: the study In the extrapolation Part two? Okay, more recently, guys,
52:42
Speaker 1: the study was done with possums in the wild and
52:44
Speaker 1: found no evidence that they ever eat ticks. They checked
52:49
Speaker 1: the stomach of many wild possums, couldn't find evidence of
52:52
Speaker 1: even a single tick eaten. Here's a link to an
52:55
Speaker 1: article on the study, and this is from Field and
52:59
Speaker 1: Stream mags. Then I'm not gonna argue with those guys.
53:03
Speaker 1: They carry guns. Yeah, they cover both field and stream.
53:07
Speaker 1: So just a couple of things. Number one, Daniel ruins everything. No.
53:13
Speaker 1: Number two, I still have plenty of possum pride, and
53:18
Speaker 1: it's fine. It doesn't diminish the possums one iota in
53:21
Speaker 1: my eyes. Nice try Daniel, No, I agree. I think
53:26
Speaker 1: it's like possums were great before the tick thing, so
53:33
Speaker 1: they're certainly great taking the tick thing away. Yeah, okay,
53:37
Speaker 1: fair enough. I can tell you that instagrammer is not
53:40
Speaker 1: gonna like this. Well, you know, what are you gonna do?
53:45
Speaker 1: Can't please everybody, No, you can't. If you want to
53:48
Speaker 1: be like Daniel and ruin something for us, or try
53:50
Speaker 1: to but fail at it terribly, you can do it
53:53
Speaker 1: via email to stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. Stuff
54:01
Speaker 1: you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more
54:03
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54:07
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