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The Puzzler, Part One: The Crossword Moral Panic · Ridiculous History

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  Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
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  Speaker 1: the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much
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  Speaker 1: for tuning in. Let's give it up for our super producer,
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  Speaker 1: mister Max Williams. Mister Max White Suit Williams.
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: Oh my god, we gotta just tell the to find
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: folks at home.
• 0:41
  Speaker 3: I'm remote. You guys are in the same building.
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: I feel sense of fun and that's well exactly, that's right,
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: that's true. But you guys are in the same physical,
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: larger space. And you said you got to see this
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: thing that Max has got going on. I'm like, is
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: it going to be underwhelming? Because it was underwhelming, I'm
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: going to be mad. And boy howdy, he blasted into
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: the room, just blazing in the suit, this white, shining suit.
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: I had to squint, you know, on my computer screen,
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: almost overtook.
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  Speaker 3: My whole field of vision. It's a real thing to behold.
• 1:10
  Speaker 4: Man.
• 1:10
  Speaker 3: You've been talking about it on the podcast for months now.
• 1:13
  Speaker 4: Well, see, I've been waiting to wear it, and there
• 1:16
  Speaker 4: was some reason, like like last time I recorded, I
• 1:18
  Speaker 4: was like I had to go do some asswords. I'm like, okay,
• 1:20
  Speaker 4: wearing a full white suit is not a good idea
• 1:23
  Speaker 4: right now. But I'm also wearing a green tie and
• 1:27
  Speaker 4: a red shirt. It is a holiday company going on
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  Speaker 4: right now, that bed.
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  Speaker 1: And being red, green, color blind as I am. I
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  Speaker 1: didn't know that until you told me. Oh wow, it's
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: a day of surprises for us. I'll wear my white
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  Speaker 1: suit next time. Max and Solidaria, I'm been bowling. You're
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: Nold Brown, and we have a very we have a
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  Speaker 1: very special week ahead. I can't remember if I mentioned
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  Speaker 1: it on air before, but I was very, very lucky
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  Speaker 1: to meet a literary hero of mine quite recently on
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  Speaker 1: the on the podcas cast the Puzzler.
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  Speaker 2: And to be confused with the quistor not to be
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: confused with the Quist equally diabolical, but more gently diabolical.
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  Speaker 1: Yes, we are expanding the Ridiculous universe today, because, folks,
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  Speaker 1: we are over the moon to welcome a special guest
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  Speaker 1: this week, the journalist, author lecturer, a prolific writer of
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  Speaker 1: amazing books like The Know It All and The Year
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: of Living Biblically, a personal favorite of my Ridiculous historians,
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  Speaker 1: Please join us at welcoming mister A. J.
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  Speaker 5: Jacobs, Well, thank are you kidding? This as an honor
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  Speaker 5: you are my podcast heroes, so right back at and
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  Speaker 5: we loved having Ben on the show, and Noel, we
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  Speaker 5: are going to recruit you. You are going to be
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  Speaker 5: in the hot seat soon.
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  Speaker 3: I'm so here for it.
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  Speaker 1: A Jay.
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  Speaker 2: I was aware of you obviously from various appearances on
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  Speaker 2: NPR and you know, talking about your incredible work and research.
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: But you were one of the first guests of another
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: podcast that I worked on for a while, movie Crush.
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  Speaker 5: I love that movie.
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  Speaker 2: I wasn't on those episodes. I was on the mini
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  Speaker 2: Crush episodes where Chuck and I would just kind of
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  Speaker 2: post mortem some of the interviews. But you were one
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  Speaker 2: of the very first guests of that show, and I
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  Speaker 2: engineered that. I don't think we actually spoke, but that was.
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: What was your movie?
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  Speaker 3: Again, by the.
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  Speaker 5: Way, it was a Clockwork Orange?
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  Speaker 3: Oh it was.
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  Speaker 5: I wanted to do A Groundhog's Day because that, but
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  Speaker 5: someone else had taken it and a Clockwork Orange. I
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  Speaker 5: had mixed feelings about it because I loved it when
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  Speaker 5: I was a high schooler and now I look at
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  Speaker 5: it as a father, an old man, and I was like,
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  Speaker 5: you know what.
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  Speaker 1: Though, it would have been pretty pretty meta and epic
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  Speaker 1: if you went on and did groundhog Day, and people
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  Speaker 1: just came on, like on every six months someone did
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  Speaker 1: groundhog Day. Idea, it's just fun.
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  Speaker 2: I think I maybe was just having like a brain fart,
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  Speaker 2: but I heard you as saying a groundhog's Day as
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  Speaker 2: though it were there's a clockwork orange and a groundhog
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  Speaker 2: dog's day. What if we did a mashup of those two,
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  Speaker 2: what would that be like, Charlie Kaufman, ease your heart outs.
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  Speaker 1: I like that, ye clockwork groundhog. You know that's that's
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  Speaker 1: very good. We'll keep dropping it.
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  Speaker 2: But equally excited to be here, can't wait to be
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  Speaker 2: in said hot seat. And I think today, you know,
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  Speaker 2: we talked about what we might discuss, and you just
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  Speaker 2: had so many possibilities that you sent our way, and
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  Speaker 2: we ended up going with sort of a general topic
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  Speaker 2: area that actually ends up being quite apropos some of
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  Speaker 2: the recent episodes that we've done.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, let's do it this way, let's do it this aging.
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  Speaker 1: Uh So, tell us about the puzzler because we've been
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  Speaker 1: throwing this around, right, we've been throwing the phrase around.
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  Speaker 1: We talked about the podcast, but what is the puzzler
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  Speaker 1: and how does it inform what you're going to teach
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  Speaker 1: Nola and Max and I today.
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  Speaker 5: Well, the Puzzler right now is an iHeart podcast and
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  Speaker 5: it's a daily it's short. We have a celebrity guest
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  Speaker 5: on and we do a fun little word game with
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  Speaker 5: them and the audience can listen along. And Ben was
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  Speaker 5: a recent guest, and we always try to tailor it,
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  Speaker 5: so we had a ridiculous history theme. Puzzle was one
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  Speaker 5: for Ben, so it was sort of ridiculously misunderstood history.
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  Speaker 5: So if it was a guy who had heard of
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  Speaker 5: historical events but didn't hadn't read them, hadn't listened to
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  Speaker 5: this podcast, so he would say, like this event, I
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  Speaker 5: think it's about a croissant array and a glass of
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  Speaker 5: red wine going around in a circle, and oh, thank you.
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  Speaker 5: And then the answer, which which Ben got, was oh,
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  Speaker 5: that's the French Revolution, So it's always a yes. He
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  Speaker 5: did very well. Ben was a star.
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  Speaker 1: Say that because we're here, well.
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  Speaker 5: We give no money, so I have to be nice
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  Speaker 5: with the praise.
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  Speaker 3: Better than money. You know.
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  Speaker 2: It's funny that, like in this age of wordle and
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  Speaker 2: all the wordle adjacent things that honestly there's so many
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  Speaker 2: of them now that make my head spin. Ben and
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  Speaker 2: I recently discussed this really anachronistic one that guessing like
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  Speaker 2: gross domestic product of various countries.
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  Speaker 3: What's that one called exportal or.
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  Speaker 1: It's cradle and it's from the OECD, and it's uh.
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  Speaker 1: I think there's something tricky about tradele. This is what
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  Speaker 1: makes it an interesting puzzle. There's something tricky about it
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  Speaker 1: because all of the like you said, Noli, you have
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  Speaker 1: to guess the exports, guess a country based on exports
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  Speaker 1: and imports. However, what the OECD classifies as a country
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  Speaker 1: is kind of like the aspirational list of what investors
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  Speaker 1: wish was a country, like the British version islands not
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  Speaker 1: a country. Sorry guys, all this to say.
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  Speaker 2: Ben, that's one that I immediately when it was you know,
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  Speaker 2: revealed to me or shown to me, I was like,
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  Speaker 2: this is so not my wheelhouse and I wouldn't even
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  Speaker 2: know where to start.
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  Speaker 3: But Ben will be at this, and sure enough you were.
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  Speaker 3: So I just have to ask a j when I'm
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  Speaker 3: on the show. Please, no export based the puzzles.
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  Speaker 1: Now, whole plan. We all know so much about music.
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  Speaker 2: I do know a lot on music, but that's good,
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  Speaker 2: not so much about countries and their various imports and exports.
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  Speaker 2: So again, you know, in this era where puzzles have
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  Speaker 2: really become this you know craze in and of themselves.
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  Speaker 3: I mean it's.
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  Speaker 2: Like a very old craze, but it's sort of back
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  Speaker 2: in vogue with all these New York Times apps in
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  Speaker 2: such you know, ways of passing the time on the train.
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  Speaker 2: We thought it might be fun, or really, you thought
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  Speaker 2: it might be fun to talk about some of the
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  Speaker 2: history of puzzle crazes, you know, throughout throughout time exactly.
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  Speaker 5: And I love, I love these puzzle crazes because there
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  Speaker 5: have been wordles from the eighteenth century, nineteenth century and uh,
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  Speaker 5: and it's really it is like a tulip mania. People
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  Speaker 5: just get obsessed. And I also love the element where
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  Speaker 5: there's always a moral panic. There's always preachers saying, oh
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  Speaker 5: the people are parents are ignoring their kids and doing
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  Speaker 5: jigsaw puzzles and.
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  Speaker 1: It's ruined homes.
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  Speaker 5: Seriously, The New York Times covered crossword puzzles like the
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  Speaker 5: crack epidemic in the eighties.
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  Speaker 1: Are you serious?
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  Speaker 5: Yeah, they were like, this is a you know, it's
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  Speaker 5: causing prison riots, parents, our father husbands are murdering their
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  Speaker 5: wives over crossword arguments. There was Olympic stars were not
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  Speaker 5: training because they were distracted by crossword puzzles. This was
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  Speaker 5: in the twenties and thirties, and yeah, it was just
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  Speaker 5: hilarious to read.
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  Speaker 3: New York Times did eventually come around to crossword puzzles.
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  Speaker 5: Exactly that they did. Yes, they did decide to buckle
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  Speaker 5: to and actually, maybe that's a good segue, let's start.
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  Speaker 5: That was one of the crazes I wanted to talk
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  Speaker 5: about was the crossword craze of the teens and twenties.
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  Speaker 5: The first crossword appeared in nineteen thirteen in the New
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  Speaker 5: York World newspaper. Wait, the first one in the world,
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  Speaker 5: the first one ever? Wow, I know I thought it
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  Speaker 5: would be older, but I thought it would be older too.
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  Speaker 5: That's crazy, Uh, And it was. It was actually called
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  Speaker 5: word cross at the time, and then they changed it
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  Speaker 5: later because of a typographical error. So sometimes mistakes are good.
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  Speaker 5: I always tell my kids and I will say it
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  Speaker 5: was the first, but it was. It also kind of sucked.
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  Speaker 5: It was not a good crossword puzzle. It was the
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  Speaker 5: the clues were all really obscure, Like the fiber of
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  Speaker 5: the Gomuti palm was ten down and he got it.
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  Speaker 3: Oh no, no, I couldn't possibly. Yeah, I wouldn't even
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  Speaker 3: hazard to guess. Ben.
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  Speaker 6: How about you, Well, I'll give you that the way
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  Speaker 6: they do it, the way they would do it now,
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  Speaker 6: is much better, which is Homer Simpson outburst three dollars.
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  Speaker 1: Oh there it is.
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  Speaker 2: I was just gonna ask, and not to interrupt, you know,
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  Speaker 2: the did the original word crosses or crosswords or whatever
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  Speaker 2: come from the kind of rudimentary, sort of across stick
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  Speaker 2: poem form at all?
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  Speaker 3: Was there any connection to that?
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  Speaker 5: Yes, there were sort of these proto crosswords, so it
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  Speaker 5: didn't come out of nowhere. The inventor is this guy,
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  Speaker 5: a British bloke named Arthur Wynn, and he says that
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  Speaker 5: he was inspired by things like the magic squares, which
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  Speaker 5: I don't know if you've ever seen, but they have
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  Speaker 5: numbers or letters that you've read crosswords and down it
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  Speaker 5: has the same words crossed down. So he had some inspiration.
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  Speaker 5: But this was considered the first actual one, and despite
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  Speaker 5: it kind of being lame, it really became this mania,
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  Speaker 5: and every newspaper started printing him except for the New
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  Speaker 5: York Times, as we said, and there was a Broadway
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  Speaker 5: musical about crosswords. There was a hit song, Well, I
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  Speaker 5: know you're a musician, so I'm sure you know this
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  Speaker 5: great work crossword Mama. You puzzle me, but Papa's gonna
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  Speaker 5: figure you out.
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  Speaker 1: I love it.
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  Speaker 3: Wow, got there, beautiful song.
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  Speaker 2: I'm wondering though, because New York Times obviously got a
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  Speaker 2: reputation as being like one of the more difficult cross wars.
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  Speaker 2: Is kind of a more illustrious crossward, like if you
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  Speaker 2: do it in pen then you're a real, you know,
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  Speaker 2: a smart person. Do you think they held out because
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  Speaker 2: they thought it was beneath them, and then they finally decide,
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  Speaker 2: you know what, if we're gonna get into this crossword game,
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  Speaker 2: we're gonna be the best on the block.
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  Speaker 1: They looked askance at it right like in the beginning,
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  Speaker 1: because they were kind of the high falluting sort of
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  Speaker 1: paper of note for the fair metropolis, and so maybe
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  Speaker 1: crosswords for a time were considered sort of like tabloid
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  Speaker 1: esque or sort of lower class.
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  Speaker 5: Absolutely, that's exactly what they were. It was frivolous, It
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  Speaker 5: was nothing. They they didn't print comics and they still don't. Uh.
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  Speaker 5: New York World was sort of this tabloid the newspaper. Uh,
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  Speaker 5: the phrase yellow journalism comes from it because they had
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  Speaker 5: a common strip called the Yellow Kid. And uh, but yes,
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  Speaker 5: they they finally buckled. It took a world war for
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  Speaker 5: the New York Times to buckle. It was World War
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  Speaker 5: two a week and a half after Pearl Harbor. There's
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  Speaker 5: an internal memo that says, you know what, people need
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  Speaker 5: a little distraction. Uh there might be blackouts, was was
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  Speaker 5: what he said. So this, so that is when they
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  Speaker 5: and like you, you said no, They said, you know what,
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  Speaker 5: We're just gonna be the best at what we do.
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  Speaker 5: And so they did and they and they hired this
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  Speaker 5: woman who was who was really good at she's sort
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  Speaker 5: of reformed. She's a legend in the crossword community, Margaret
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  Speaker 5: Petheridge ferrr and she h a great name. And she
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  Speaker 5: made them symmetrical. She got rid of the mistakes the
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  Speaker 5: two letter words. So it did become the market leader
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  Speaker 5: and it still is.
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  Speaker 2: And then yeah, there's a there's a craft to it.
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  Speaker 2: There's a flow and like a sort of an esthetic
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  Speaker 2: to a good crossword that is in and of itself,
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  Speaker 2: something to kind of enjoy.
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  Speaker 3: Right.
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  Speaker 1: That leads to Yeah, that leads to one of my
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  Speaker 1: questions was is this person, the one who sort of
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  Speaker 1: codified the coded language of crossword clues, like everybody knows
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  Speaker 1: these certain tricks. If something is abbreviated in the clue,
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  Speaker 1: then the answer is going to be abbreviated.
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  Speaker 5: You know what I'm talking about. Yeah, no, I she
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  Speaker 5: did a little of that. What's interesting, though, is they
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  Speaker 5: those first crossword puzzles were very trivia oriented and so
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  Speaker 5: they weren't clever. Like to me, a good crossword puzzle
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  Speaker 5: now is it's all about wordplay and anagrams. That's kind
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  Speaker 5: I like. And Will Schwartz introduced he's the current New
• 13:46
  Speaker 5: York Times gedder, and he introduced a lot of that.
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  Speaker 5: You have his favorite clue if you ask him, of
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  Speaker 5: all time. It seems good to me. I wouldn't say
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  Speaker 5: it's my favorite, but it was. It turns into another story,
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  Speaker 5: was the clue. And it's a two word phrase, a
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  Speaker 5: long phrase, spiral staircase. So it turns pretty good. Yeah,
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  Speaker 5: there's some levels there, there are levels. Yeah, two levels.
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  Speaker 5: Nicely done, thank you sir. But yes, so that that
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  Speaker 5: only came out later. And actually it's the British who
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  Speaker 5: who really were into the wordplay, and Americans they they
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  Speaker 5: look down on Americans. They were like those those crosswords
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  Speaker 5: are too easy.
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  Speaker 1: And so now the crossword has become a normalized thing
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  Speaker 1: here in Atlanta. For a long time there was a
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  Speaker 1: paper called Creative Loafing and it was the Goldilocks Zone
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: of crosswords. If People Magazine is too easy and the
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: infamous Sunday New York Times is too difficult, then you
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: could get together at It used to come out on
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: Thursdays here, so we would go to our local chicken
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  Speaker 1: wing place and hang out for an hour after work
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  Speaker 1: while we tried to while we would do the cross
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  Speaker 1: Usually between like two or three of us, we could
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  Speaker 1: figure it.
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  Speaker 2: Out pretty much a bit of a brain trust. Yeah, no, Ben,
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  Speaker 2: you were usually taking the lead on this. This is
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  Speaker 2: really more your thing. We were just kind of there
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  Speaker 2: for support. But you mentioned Will Schwartz as well, and
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  Speaker 2: there's I just wanted to mention it for anyone that
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  Speaker 2: wants to find out more about the craze. I haven't
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: seen this myself, but I know it's supposed to be
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: good wordplay. It's a documentary that sort of talks specifically
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: about the bit of the history and just specifically about
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: his tenure as the crossword puzzle editor for Love Marit.
• 15:29
  Speaker 5: Times, and can I just throw in one quick one
• 15:32
  Speaker 5: about the easy and hard because a few years ago
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  Speaker 5: the start of the reason I started this book and
• 15:39
  Speaker 5: podcast was a few years ago I was the answer
• 15:44
  Speaker 5: to a clue in the New York Times cross re puzzle,
• 15:47
  Speaker 5: and as a word nerd, I was like, this is
• 15:49
  Speaker 5: the best day of my life, Like, this is better.
• 15:52
  Speaker 3: Do you have it?
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  Speaker 5: Of course, But here's the twist. The twist is my
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  Speaker 5: brother in law. Then I was on out nine, but
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  Speaker 5: my brother in law sent me a very brother in
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  Speaker 5: law email the next day He's like, congrats, but you
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  Speaker 5: should know you're in the Saturday puzzle, and the Saturday
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  Speaker 5: is the puzzle. All the answers are totally obscure, like
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  Speaker 5: like you know the palm of the Gomo Ti tree
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  Speaker 5: and h and so his point was.
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  Speaker 3: The implication that you're a deep cut, the deepest cut.
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  Speaker 5: I am so obscure, no one knows who I am.
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  Speaker 5: This is not accomplished. Hard. I think you should.
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  Speaker 1: I think you should leave a like partially completed versions
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  Speaker 1: of the crossword around for your kids and let them
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  Speaker 1: discover it for themselves.
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  Speaker 5: Also, the only one that they would get wouldn't be me.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, what a brother in law thing to Jujo.
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  Speaker 2: Just send an email about this first of all, and
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: the most backhanded of compliments, that is, I hope he's okay.
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: I want to shout out. I want to shout out
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  Speaker 1: one of the many books that you have written, a
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  Speaker 1: and one that informs your expertise in our conversation before
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  Speaker 1: we move to the next puzzle. You are the author
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: of not just the podcast, but the book The Puzzler,
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  Speaker 1: One Man's Quest to solve the most baffling puzzles ever,
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  Speaker 1: from crosswords to jigsaws to the meaning of life.
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  Speaker 5: That's it a very humble title.
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: And I have one tiny thing to add more pose
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  Speaker 2: it here before we move on. How come there hasn't
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: been a movie about a crossword puzzle related serial killer.
• 17:30
  Speaker 3: I leave it with you, I leave it with the
• 17:32
  Speaker 3: group as there not if there isn't there, there should
• 17:35
  Speaker 3: be anything. I haven't seen it. I want to find
• 17:38
  Speaker 3: out what it is.
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: I must be thinking it like a mini series. Okay, yes,
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: that's a good call. No, we'll have to look into that.
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: But let's say a j makes the film. Before we
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: get to it, we have another puzzle that I don't
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: know about you, guys, Maxwell, but this was brand new
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: to me. I have never heard of the Masquerade.
• 18:00
  Speaker 5: Range, yet this one I endured up because I actually
• 18:10
  Speaker 5: got caught up in it a little because I'm older
• 18:12
  Speaker 5: than you guys, So I was this was published. It
• 18:16
  Speaker 5: was a book. It was a book published in nineteen
• 18:18
  Speaker 5: seventy nine in the UK, and it was called Masquerade
• 18:23
  Speaker 5: and the Artists. It was an illustrated book and there's
• 18:26
  Speaker 5: gorgeous illustrations and they contained clues to a buried treasure
• 18:32
  Speaker 5: in the UK. An actual it was a rabbit, a
• 18:35
  Speaker 5: gold and gem encrusted rabbit, buried somewhere in England. And
• 18:39
  Speaker 5: people went bananas like there were thousands of treasure hunters
• 18:43
  Speaker 5: and they dug up yards and gardens. They just created chaos.
• 18:48
  Speaker 5: They the artist Kit Williams, he received death threats and
• 18:54
  Speaker 5: in the middle of the night three am visits from
• 18:56
  Speaker 5: people covered in mud. People were arrested, they had to
• 18:59
  Speaker 5: be rescued from cliffs, and so it was just a
• 19:03
  Speaker 5: mania and I loved I never went to England, but
• 19:06
  Speaker 5: I spent you know, hours looking at these, uh these
• 19:10
  Speaker 5: illustrations for clues, which of course I never cracked.
• 19:15
  Speaker 3: The golden hair.
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: The gold hair absolutely new to me, and I mean, honestly,
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: even the concept seems very novel, because at first I
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: was going to ask, like, were people just taking it
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: too seriously? But no, there was a thing, there was
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: an object of of whatever this this narrative.
• 19:31
  Speaker 5: It was, and it was you know, it was insured
• 19:34
  Speaker 5: for a couple hundred thousand dollars, so it was a
• 19:36
  Speaker 5: real thing, and actually it spawned all of these other there.
• 19:41
  Speaker 5: It's a genre called armchair treasure hunts.
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: Oh, like that guy in the US right, Well.
• 19:46
  Speaker 5: There's the secret was a famous one where they're twelve
• 19:50
  Speaker 5: treasures buried throughout North America and only three of them
• 19:53
  Speaker 5: have been found. So people are still obsessed on Like
• 19:56
  Speaker 5: you go on these these websites, you know, and people
• 20:00
  Speaker 5: are man like they are. They've got all these theories,
• 20:05
  Speaker 5: they've got all these and they get very angry at
• 20:08
  Speaker 5: the other one for having a different theory that the masquerade.
• 20:12
  Speaker 5: Just to close that loop, that one was solved three
• 20:15
  Speaker 5: years later. It was buried in beneath the statue a
• 20:22
  Speaker 5: statue of Catherine of Aragon, of the Queen, and in
• 20:26
  Speaker 5: a town called Bedford, and it was buried underneath the
• 20:29
  Speaker 5: tip of a shadow cast at noon on the equinox.
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, that's just so.
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: It is like spe was there a bit of a
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: scandal though that maybe there were some accusations of cheating.
• 20:42
  Speaker 5: Yes, and not just accusation. It was the guy who
• 20:45
  Speaker 5: solved it did cheat. He got inside information from the
• 20:49
  Speaker 5: ex girlfriend of the artist. And the artists are super
• 20:52
  Speaker 5: bummed out. Uh. They the official winners were. These were
• 20:56
  Speaker 5: these two physics teachers who actually solved it for real,
• 20:59
  Speaker 5: but they didn't get the They didn't get the rabbit.
• 21:02
  Speaker 5: The cheater got the rabbit. So but yes, it was, Uh,
• 21:07
  Speaker 5: it was despite the scandal at the end, enormously influential.
• 21:12
  Speaker 5: You might have also, I don't know if you. I
• 21:13
  Speaker 5: don't think you've done an episode on Forest Fen. That's
• 21:16
  Speaker 5: a famous treasure hunt.
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: That's who I was thinking. That's what I was thinking about. Yeah,
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: and that also with the Armchair treasure Hunt a j
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: What I find fascinating about these is that this led
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: to conspiracy theorists. Of course, like in the Forest Fen
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: case and the Secret case and in the Golden Hair case,
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: weren't there some people who were like, there's something up
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: with this official story there's.
• 21:43
  Speaker 5: More exactly that was. I mean, this is a hint
• 21:46
  Speaker 5: into the human mind because people, even years after it
• 21:52
  Speaker 5: had been found, they were like, no, my my theory
• 21:56
  Speaker 5: is correct. It really is here. It's really under the
• 21:59
  Speaker 5: you know, the Tower of London, or you know that
• 22:04
  Speaker 5: people just get so attached to their theory that they
• 22:09
  Speaker 5: just cannot switch gears.
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: Open your eyes, sheeple. The hair is still out there.
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: It's still out there.
• 22:15
  Speaker 5: Go dig up some yards in England. But luckily no
• 22:19
  Speaker 5: one died during the Masquerade hunt. But Forrest Fenn, this
• 22:23
  Speaker 5: was a treasure buried in the Rockies and I think
• 22:26
  Speaker 5: it was twenty ten about and he had a book
• 22:29
  Speaker 5: with clues to it, and five people died while searching
• 22:32
  Speaker 5: for that treasure.
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: So would you argue that maybe there's you know, you
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: got to be really careful with this kind of stuff.
• 22:39
  Speaker 5: No, just go ahead and just go nuts, you know
• 22:42
  Speaker 5: what I mean, just jump off cliffs.
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: And at what point does it become intriguing enough to
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: spawn that kind of devotion and obsession? Like, you know,
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: not anybody has the chops to pull something like this off,
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: because it requires enough notoriety, a b. It has to
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: be cleverly constructed to have enough people that don't just
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: aren't just able to solve it instantly, like are there
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: any elements that you see and stuff like this, because
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: I'd really never heard of this, and now I want
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: to find out more about what makes a good one
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: of these sort of real world mystery kind of treasure
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: hunt things.
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: Well, Finn had a poem. I loved the poem, right,
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: And I guess the idea is that you can play
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: along at home, right, you get you get pieces, and
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: there's this maddening thing about the human need for pattern recognition. Right,
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: That's that's my armchair guess because I was obsessed with
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: a Finn situation for a while and that was kind
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: of sad when it was found.
• 23:40
  Speaker 5: Did you go out and look for it?
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: I did. I did not go out and look for it,
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: but my friends, I spent probably a little too much
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: time on those forums. I was thinking, I'm never gonna
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: find it, but I want to learn about it, and
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: I would literally make popcorn and then go online and
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: read various Yeah, I would read various like subreddits. So
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: I came in very late in the game. This was
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: like twenty fifteen, twenty sixteen.
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: And I guess my question can really apply to any
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: of these crazes or like, you know, what makes something
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: you know, of enough interest that enough people are going
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: to be involved, but difficult enough that people aren't gonna
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: be able to solve that. That injects a certain amount
• 24:23
  Speaker 2: of competition, a certain amount of kind of you know,
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: sportsmanised ship, and like it creates sort of a community,
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: whether it be crossword puzzles, these real life treasure hunts,
• 24:32
  Speaker 2: or you know, other types of puzzles that we're going
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: to get into. Do you have any thoughts about, like
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: what what makes these things kind of catch the public imagination?
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah?
• 24:41
  Speaker 5: I think there a couple of factors. One is just lock.
• 24:44
  Speaker 5: It's like tulip mania, something just blows up and reaches
• 24:47
  Speaker 5: a tipping point. Another is a lot of these manias
• 24:50
  Speaker 5: seem to happen during Like the Jigsaw puzzle mania was
• 24:54
  Speaker 5: during the depression, a wordle was during the pandemic, So
• 24:59
  Speaker 5: there's a little of that going on. They asked, that
• 25:06
  Speaker 5: is a puzzle with no real answer exactly that is,
• 25:10
  Speaker 5: but it's the same. That's another cause is, like you said,
• 25:14
  Speaker 5: we are wired to look for patterns, whether or not
• 25:17
  Speaker 5: they exist, So this is a very deep I mean
• 25:20
  Speaker 5: the first puzzle, of course, was you know, who do
• 25:23
  Speaker 5: I mat with? Who do how do I eat?
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: You know?
• 25:25
  Speaker 5: So, so it's all of the same and uh and
• 25:28
  Speaker 5: so we have a very deep need for this and uh.
• 25:31
  Speaker 5: And puzzles just satisfy that that aha instinct that we
• 25:36
  Speaker 5: that we are wired to look for. And I love them.
• 25:39
  Speaker 5: I mean, I think they have a dark side. Like
• 25:41
  Speaker 5: you say, QAnon is kind of a big puzzle, But
• 25:44
  Speaker 5: on the other hand, I think that there are wonderful
• 25:48
  Speaker 5: They're like a way to train your minds. And here's
• 25:51
  Speaker 5: a little though this is I tried a little wisdom
• 25:54
  Speaker 5: for my kids. Quincy Jones as a saying, he says,
• 25:58
  Speaker 5: I don't have problems. I have puzzles in my life.
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: Oh that's beautiful.
• 26:03
  Speaker 5: Yeah, he reframes life as a series of puzzle This
• 26:06
  Speaker 5: is much more pleasant.
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: But also as a record producer, you know, as a
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: music producer, when you're in the studio with an artist,
• 26:13
  Speaker 2: it's a series of problems that you're trying to solve creatively,
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: you know. So, I mean, I think that's what he's
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: referring to in a lot of ways too, is how
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: do I figure out how to get these pieces to
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: fit together, get these elements to work together harmoniously, because,
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: like you know, as a sort of fair weather armchair
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: music producer myself, that is part of the fun is
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: figuring out how to get these disparate elements to kind
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: of play nice together.
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: And I want to go back to the point you
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: raise about jigsaw puzzles, AJ, because there is there is
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: one guy that you spoke to pretty recently who might
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: be one of the few people who likes jigsaw puzzles
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: more than you. I'm thinking about Roy Wood Junior.
• 26:52
  Speaker 5: Oh. Yes, he's a huge fan, and he's he's a
• 26:55
  Speaker 5: great comedian, but he does jigsaws and he he glues
• 26:59
  Speaker 5: him to get other and uh and puts them on
• 27:01
  Speaker 5: his wall, which I think some people do. When I
• 27:04
  Speaker 5: went into this book, I was actually not a huge
• 27:07
  Speaker 5: big jigsaw fan. I have converted. I actually really I
• 27:11
  Speaker 5: converted so much that for the book, I competed as
• 27:14
  Speaker 5: with my family as Team USA in the World Jigsaw
• 27:18
  Speaker 5: Puzzle Championships, and we sucked so hard.
• 27:23
  Speaker 3: It's a very specific skill set.
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: I heard you talk about this on public radio not
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: too too long ago.
• 27:29
  Speaker 5: We came in second to last. We were just an
• 27:31
  Speaker 5: embarrassment to our country, and they were every you know,
• 27:34
  Speaker 5: Hungary was ahead of us, Turkey, you name it, the Russians.
• 27:38
  Speaker 5: The Russians one so fast. There were rumors of, you know,
• 27:45
  Speaker 5: of performance enhancing. So juicy juicy.
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: The puzzle, Hi Max jumping in here.
• 27:51
  Speaker 3: What does juicing in jigsaw?
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: Puzzle jigsaw juicy, let's call it jigsaw juicy, jigsaw jy.
• 27:56
  Speaker 5: Sorry about the sirens. Wait, I'm guessing it. You know
• 28:01
  Speaker 5: it was adderall.
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: They did.
• 28:03
  Speaker 5: They did recommend advil because you are the way set
• 28:06
  Speaker 5: up is eight hours straight. You've got four people on
• 28:09
  Speaker 5: a team, and you have four big puzzles of like
• 28:12
  Speaker 5: two thousand pieces each, so you are standing over with
• 28:16
  Speaker 5: your back hunch for eight hours. So advil is recommended
• 28:20
  Speaker 5: and allowed. I don't know. I'm sure there's adderall and other.
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: Adderall and advil is like a jigsaw speedball in the community.
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: I would want something. I would want something that relaxes
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: you a little bit, because I feel like there would
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: be there would be a lot of pressure. And I
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: remember this story about your experience when I heard it,
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: because you had been training right and we're feeling you
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: guys are feeling pretty good about it. And there's certain
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: strategies that I think, as you said, because when I
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: was hearing this, it was a look into the mind
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: of the everyman learning to master jigsaws, and I was thinking, yeah,
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: you get the quarter pieces right, you get the edges,
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: you go like that, and apparently that is a rookie
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: move or something like that.
• 29:03
  Speaker 5: It is, it is sometimes acceptable, but it depends on
• 29:07
  Speaker 5: the puzzle. If it's a very colorful puzzle, then then
• 29:10
  Speaker 5: some of the pros go by sorting by color first
• 29:13
  Speaker 5: and then to the edges. I mean, it is hilarious
• 29:16
  Speaker 5: the amount of strategy that goes into this. And they
• 29:21
  Speaker 5: division of labor so they have an expert on the team,
• 29:23
  Speaker 5: the Russian team who's like really good at at monocrement,
• 29:27
  Speaker 5: Like if there's a blue sky, she will sort them
• 29:30
  Speaker 5: all into different shapes so that it all fits together.
• 29:33
  Speaker 5: But you know, I find that with everything, whatever it is,
• 29:36
  Speaker 5: even if it's a seemingly trivial thing, like if you
• 29:39
  Speaker 5: are at the top of Michael Jordan's and Lebron James
• 29:42
  Speaker 5: is of anything is just fascinating to watch.
• 29:45
  Speaker 2: But it's also it's not using the same I'm imagining
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: it's not using the same parts of your brain that
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: sorting out word puzzles are. Can you talk a little
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: bit about the it's obviously pattern recognition and data mining
• 29:59
  Speaker 2: slash sorting, But does it operate on the sand does
• 30:03
  Speaker 2: Does your brain require the same types of smart says
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: it does to do word puzzles or is it completely different?
• 30:09
  Speaker 5: I would say that there are some similarities between all puzzles,
• 30:14
  Speaker 5: but you're right there are. This is much more spatial.
• 30:17
  Speaker 5: I am terrible at space. Like it takes me five
• 30:20
  Speaker 5: I did not solve a rubiks cube for fifty two years,
• 30:23
  Speaker 5: like because I solved it when I was fifty two.
• 30:26
  Speaker 5: But all of them require things like being able to
• 30:31
  Speaker 5: think outside the box, which I can say because that
• 30:34
  Speaker 5: cliche comes from puzzles. Sure, it was the nine dots
• 30:39
  Speaker 5: uh puzzle and you have to connect them with four
• 30:42
  Speaker 5: pencil straight lines and you have to go outside the box.
• 30:45
  Speaker 5: So all spoiler guys, spoilers, Oh yeah, sorry, sorry for
• 30:51
  Speaker 5: spoiling that ancient puzzle. No, speaking of puzzles, we have
• 30:56
  Speaker 5: run into a puzzle situation.
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: My friend, I think, uh, I think this is a
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: two parter.
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: Oh man, it's time to pick up the pieces and
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: try our hand to putting together a second. I don't know,
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: I'm not doing very well with my puzzle metaphorce here apologize,
• 31:12
  Speaker 2: but yes, indeed, Aj is such a delight and we
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: kind of had a feeling this might happen. We did
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: have two complete topics on the docket with him, and
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: we realized that just one of them was going to
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: be a two parter.
• 31:22
  Speaker 3: So look for the next one sometime in the new year.
• 31:25
  Speaker 3: And it's a doozy as well.
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: Agreed and big, big thanks to the legendary A. J.
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: Jacobs for classing up our show. Big thanks to our
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: super producer mister Max Williams, and additional thanks to our
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: guest super producer Paul Mission Control Decade Woop Woop.
• 31:42
  Speaker 2: Alex Williams who composed this banging theme you hear before
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: your very ears. Christoph Rasciotis needs Jeff Coates here in
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: spirit and Ben last, but not least first in my heart, sir,
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: the missing Jigsaw puzzle piece to my very soul.
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: You, sir, you're the Waldo to my wares Way.
• 32:02
  Speaker 3: We'll see you next time, folks.
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts,
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.