Speaker 1: Oh hey, it's the banana peel in your purse because
Speaker 1: you can't find a trash can Alleyward. And this is ologies.
Speaker 1: This is a podcast about things this week crossword puzzles,
Speaker 1: really crossword puzzles. There's anology for this, Hell yeah, there
Speaker 1: is so. An enigmatologist is someone who studies and writes
Speaker 1: word or math or logic puzzles, and enigma comes from
Speaker 1: the Greek word for a dark saying or riddle or
Speaker 1: a tale, and enigmatology. It's a real discipline. It's a
Speaker 1: real thing. It was found in nineteen seventy four by
Speaker 1: a guy named Will Schwartz, who created his own major
Speaker 1: in puzzles at Indiana University. And that guy, Will Schwartz
Speaker 1: is now the head of the New York Times Crossword
Speaker 1: And this guest has been a friend for years. He's
Speaker 1: always been a friend who was cooler than me, smarter
Speaker 1: than me by a long shot, and capable of pulling
Speaker 1: acts of extreme evil with the gifts he has, but
Speaker 1: is actually a really solid dude. And he graduated from
Speaker 1: Harvard University, little place named Harvard, where he did a
Speaker 1: thesis on magic and has written crosswords for The New
Speaker 1: York Times since two thousand and six, and he also
Speaker 1: launched this interactive one man show called The Enigmatist, which
Speaker 1: just had a run last year at the Geffen Playhouse
Speaker 1: in LA and I caught the show, and I've wanted
Speaker 1: to have him on for years, but we were both
Speaker 1: traveling and I was taking care of my dad this summer,
Speaker 1: so we just met up at his home in the
Speaker 1: Winding Hills above Hollywood and we posted up in his
Speaker 1: living room. But before we get to the conversation, a
Speaker 1: quick thanks to everyone at Patreon. Hi, thanks for supporting
Speaker 1: the show at cost a dollar or more a month,
Speaker 1: and you can submit questions that is at patreon dot com.
Speaker 1: Slash Ologies Merch is also available at ologiesmerch dot com,
Speaker 1: including some brand new Spirit of Health or Goblin Damned
Speaker 1: merch inspired by the Vamprology episodes, So get yourself some
Speaker 1: of that. And thanks to everyone who is subscribing and
Speaker 1: rating and reviewing. I read all the reviews in this
Speaker 1: recent one by Kansas just got Geyer, who wrote, I've
Speaker 1: been listening to this every day while I clean houses
Speaker 1: for my job, and I'm learning so much. I love it.
Speaker 1: It's making me consider switching up my major to do
Speaker 1: some ecology alongside animation. Who knows, but anyway, thank you
Speaker 1: for the show. It truly takes my job from tedious
Speaker 1: to tantalizing. Thank you, Kansas just got gayer. And also
Speaker 1: congrats to Kansas on having you there because you seem cool. Okay,
Speaker 1: onto the conversation with magician, puzzle maker, puzzle solver, speaker, performer, brainiac,
Speaker 1: friend and enigmatologist David Kwang. You to check your bike
Speaker 1: is if you can say, I love that you have
Speaker 1: a Rubik's cube going already.
Speaker 2: I'm David Quong. He him.
Speaker 1: I've known you for quite some time yeah, years, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this episode.
Speaker 2: We've made at the Magic Castle, right.
Speaker 1: We did meet it the Magic Castle. Holy shit, I forgot.
Speaker 1: How hard is it to become a magician at the
Speaker 1: Magic Castle.
Speaker 2: It's quite prestigious. There are a lot of people that
Speaker 2: aspire to come to la and perform there for a week,
Speaker 2: and you have to audition your material and then there
Speaker 2: are the magician members and you do have to do
Speaker 2: a fifteen minute or three trick routine to a committee
Speaker 2: to be accepted as a magician member.
Speaker 1: Okay, so quick aside, The Magic Castle is a restaurant
Speaker 1: and a private club in the hills right above the
Speaker 1: Hollywood Walk of Fame, and it was built in nineteen
Speaker 1: oh nine, and it has turrets and stained glass and
Speaker 1: a dress code involving sport coats and you can only
Speaker 1: get in through a personal invite from a magician. And
Speaker 1: inside it's red carpet and brass fixtures. Dinner smells like
Speaker 1: gravy there, and there are magic shows happening in little
Speaker 1: theaters and corners all over the place. It's truly surreal.
Speaker 1: And David has been an approved and esteemed member for
Speaker 1: thirteen years. So yes, there is a semi secret cabal
Speaker 1: of Hollywood magicians and he is one of them. Which
Speaker 1: came first for you magic or puzzles.
Speaker 2: Magic came first, at least the home videos show me
Speaker 2: doing things when I was about six seven years old.
Speaker 2: I think every kid has that phase thinking a magic
Speaker 2: trick set. And then puzzles came from my mother, who
Speaker 2: is the history of professor. So there was this love
Speaker 2: for word games and scrabble oh triple word Score. And
Speaker 2: then it wasn't until much later in life where I
Speaker 2: decided to fuse those two things together. So in twenty
Speaker 2: ten I threw a thirtieth birthday for myself. That tells
Speaker 2: you how old I am. And I and through a
Speaker 2: party at the Magic Castle and decided I wanted to
Speaker 2: do a trick for everybody, and I came up with
Speaker 2: this Crosser puzzle routine that has become my signature effect
Speaker 2: ever since.
Speaker 1: It's absolutely mind blowing. I watched you perform this at
Speaker 1: the Geffen, and I think about it often. I still
Speaker 1: am like, how did he do it?
Speaker 2: So?
Speaker 1: I saw his one man show, The Enigmatist last winter
Speaker 1: during its run at the Geffen, and it was the
Speaker 1: most intellectually engaging live show I've ever been to Puzzles
Speaker 1: on puzzles on puzzles for the audience to solve, and
Speaker 1: it was thrilling to learn I sucked so bad at them.
Speaker 1: But David has talked about puzzles and magic publicly before,
Speaker 1: during his twenty fourteen TED talk.
Speaker 2: Puzzles and Magic. I work in what most people think
Speaker 2: are two distinct fields, but I believe they are the same.
Speaker 2: I am both a magician and a New York Times
Speaker 2: Crossford puzzle constructor, which basically means I've taken the world's
Speaker 2: two nerdiest hobbies and combined them into one career. There's
Speaker 2: a great tradition of puzzles and magic overlapping. A lot
Speaker 2: of the books from the turn of the last century.
Speaker 2: The magic books have a puzzle section, and then there
Speaker 2: are famous magicians that Martin Gardner and the mathematicians or mathemagicians,
Speaker 2: if you will, that feature the overlap of numbers and
Speaker 2: probability and data and shuffling playing cards, and there's a
Speaker 2: great tradition in it. For me, it was more that
Speaker 2: the light bulb turned on that I could distinguish myself,
Speaker 2: differentiate myself from everybody else in the field by doing
Speaker 2: a different type of magic.
Speaker 1: Have you ever gotten drunk and accidentally told someone how
Speaker 1: it works?
Speaker 2: Not? Really, it depends what it is. I'll say this,
Speaker 2: My approach to magic is already one that's fairly transparent.
Speaker 2: The show that you saw at the Geffen, The Enigmatist
Speaker 2: starts with me revealing how a trick works. I put
Speaker 2: up on the screen that saw a Lady in Half
Speaker 2: trick from nineteen twenty one. And I'm not out to
Speaker 2: ruin anyone's magic show, but I enjoy describing the principles
Speaker 2: of allusion to people and putting forth that it's all
Speaker 2: tricks it's all misdirection, and it's a puzzle for you
Speaker 2: to figure out. And I don't pretend to have superpowers,
Speaker 2: and I think that is what makes me a little
Speaker 2: bit different than most magicians that on some level are
Speaker 2: pretending to channel the powers from beyond. But there are
Speaker 2: a there's a small sect of magicians that acknowledge right
Speaker 2: up front that it's all tricks. Penn and Teller famously
Speaker 2: for decades, have been doing that. So you didn't read
Speaker 2: my mind, just that No, there's no such thing.
Speaker 1: It's absolutely lies. We did a trick a trick. All
Speaker 1: that stuff is true.
Speaker 2: And you get some real mechanics and practitioners of sleight
Speaker 2: of hand who also say, none of this is real.
Speaker 2: I'm just a step ahead of you, and that can
Speaker 2: be very entertaining.
Speaker 1: When it comes to making crossword puzzles. Obviously you must
Speaker 1: have been very good at it. You did it from
Speaker 1: a young age. I imagine who writes these? How many
Speaker 1: people are writing crossword puzzles versus who's doing them. I
Speaker 1: feel like I didn't even think about crossword puzzles being
Speaker 1: written by someone until I met you. I got sort
Speaker 1: of just figured they were just birthed from a stone somewhere.
Speaker 1: How did you start?
Speaker 2: Okay, Well, my love for word games and competitive scrabble,
Speaker 2: and it's no surprise that I've found crossword construction known
Speaker 2: as cruciverbialism m HM, or a cruciverbalist is one who
Speaker 2: constructs crosswords, so crusa meaning cross like crucifix and verbal
Speaker 2: meaning word like that. I started just after college, so
Speaker 2: I've been doing it about twenty years. I had a
Speaker 2: friend Kevin Chosett, who showed me the ropes and we've
Speaker 2: collaborated on a number of puzzles. The New York Times
Speaker 2: and most other publications are freelance. Anyone can mail one
Speaker 2: in and if you're listening to this and you're encouraged
Speaker 2: to do so, reach out and I'm happy to give
Speaker 2: you a few tips. It's gotten much more competitive now
Speaker 2: that in the pandemic it exploded. Yeah, so the New
Speaker 2: York Times, it used to be like you would have
Speaker 2: to wait six months to hear back. They may still
Speaker 2: say that, but I just know that they're getting dozens
Speaker 2: and dozens a day. And yeah, we're in a golden
Speaker 2: age of puzzles. There are a lot of independent crossword
Speaker 2: resources now, crossword publications, New Yorker has one. I think
Speaker 2: New York Magazine has one. The browser, they're all over
Speaker 2: the place. A lot of indie blogs feature them, so
Speaker 2: a lot of places to submit your puzzles.
Speaker 1: But what do you think of the word enigmatology. Yes,
Speaker 1: from an anymological standpoint.
Speaker 2: That sentence was very hard to say, thank you. Enigmatology
Speaker 2: From an etymological enigmatology was coined, I believe by Will Schwartz,
Speaker 2: or at least he made it famous because he went
Speaker 2: to college at Indiana University and created this major for himself.
Speaker 2: So we all bow to the great puzzle guru, Will Schwartz.
Speaker 2: He's a lovely guy. He's been a friend and a
Speaker 2: mentor for years. And enigmatology is the study of puzzles.
Speaker 2: I took a page out of that book and I
Speaker 2: combined enigma and enigmatology with an ist type of word,
Speaker 2: like a hypnotist, an illusionist, a mentalist, and I came
Speaker 2: up with the enigmatist.
Speaker 1: It's perfect.
Speaker 2: I mean.
Speaker 1: Also, I love that someone who constructs crossword puzzles can
Speaker 1: just make up words if they want. That's one thing
Speaker 1: I've learned here.
Speaker 2: We made a crucive verbalist, and it's in some dictionaries
Speaker 2: been not all.
Speaker 1: There's no rule. Well, if you're writing them, or maybe
Speaker 1: you're just solving them, or maybe you're intimidated by them.
Speaker 1: Do you ever look into the neuroscience of puzzles and
Speaker 1: magic and why our brains want to solve things?
Speaker 2: Sure? What I consider often is that we are wired
Speaker 2: to solve problems. And I think that the first people
Speaker 2: had to figure out how to get their food. And
Speaker 2: if you go left, you'll avoid the saber tooth tiger,
Speaker 2: and if you go right, you'll be able to cross
Speaker 2: the river by knocking a tree over and using it
Speaker 2: as a bridge. It's these puzzles are are we figure
Speaker 2: things out to survive. So I think it goes back
Speaker 2: to the beginning of time and it helps us make
Speaker 2: order out of chaos. Another way to look at recreational
Speaker 2: puzzles is that I'm not sure I entirely agree with that,
Speaker 2: but I'll say it anyway. I've heard some people put
Speaker 2: forth that puzzles are kind of like pain, Like you
Speaker 2: are subjecting your brain to this chatchallenge and it's stressful,
Speaker 2: and you work at it, and you work at it
Speaker 2: and you work at it, and finally you solve it.
Speaker 2: You have that enormous release, this AHA moment of a
Speaker 2: triumphed I figured it out, and there's a basic human
Speaker 2: need to overcome adversity like that.
Speaker 1: For some light reading on this, you can crack open
Speaker 1: the Journal of Human Brain Mappings, August twenty eighteen edition
Speaker 1: for the study titled Ultra High Field fMRI Insights on
Speaker 1: Insight Neural Correlates of the AHA Moment, which took a
Speaker 1: bunch of German volunteers willing to get stuffed into a
Speaker 1: functional MRI machine while doing word puzzles, and they were
Speaker 1: given simple tasks try to figure out what word connects
Speaker 1: three other words like house, bark an apple. What's the
Speaker 1: common word okay, tree treehouse, tree, bark, apple tree. So
Speaker 1: when the volunteers figured it out, they were to press
Speaker 1: a button and then the fMRI was like a brain
Speaker 1: paparazzi flashing going off seeing what's happening. And the researchers
Speaker 1: found that no matter the level of difficulty, that solving
Speaker 1: the puzzle caused robust subcortical activity changes in the bilateral
Speaker 1: thalmis hippocampus and the dopein emergenic mid brain comprising ventral
Speaker 1: attagamental area nucleus, accumbans and cudate nucleus. What the fuck
Speaker 1: does that mean? It means your brain gets tickled and
Speaker 1: then you release dopamine and it feels so nice. So yes,
Speaker 1: we like overcoming adversity, especially in a way that is
Speaker 1: low stakes. You know. It's not like I'm trying to
Speaker 1: jump between buildings for I'm like, figured out the word all.
Speaker 1: A triumphantday is all I need. Maybe when it starts
Speaker 1: with a crossword puzzle, and I'm going to admit that
Speaker 1: I fucking suck at crossword puzzles, And it's one of
Speaker 1: those things that I don't know why I'm bad at it.
Speaker 1: I like bananagrams, I like wordle I suck it scrabble,
Speaker 1: but I have so much trivia and facts in my mind.
Speaker 1: But when it comes to crossword puzzles, I just stare
Speaker 1: blankly at them and I don't know why, and I'm
Speaker 1: ashamed of it.
Speaker 2: No, don't be ashamed of it.
Speaker 1: Why are you so good at it? How do you.
Speaker 2: Start with Monday? That's the easiest day of the week,
Speaker 2: easiest day of the week. Everyone can do a Monday puzzle.
Speaker 1: Everyone in air quotes Onday.
Speaker 2: Okay, the new York times. It gets harder throughout the week.
Speaker 2: Monday through Thursday are themed puzzles. Thursdays when it gets
Speaker 2: really tricky, things are upside down and multiple letters in
Speaker 2: a square and it gets really devious. Friday and Saturday
Speaker 2: are themeless, big open grids. They're much harder, and Sunday
Speaker 2: goes back to being a themed puzzle. It's sort of
Speaker 2: an extra big Thursday, but start with Monday. Everybody can
Speaker 2: do it, and don't be so hard on yourself, because
Speaker 2: the crossword constructor's goal is to fool you to some extent,
Speaker 2: is to hold back the reveal as long as possible
Speaker 2: so that when you get to it, you have this
Speaker 2: aha moment and again you have this like explosion of
Speaker 2: oh my god, I'm smart. I figured it out. And
Speaker 2: this is why I think there's so much in common
Speaker 2: between puzzles of magic, because a good puzzle misdirects you
Speaker 2: and you think something else is going on and there's
Speaker 2: a twist to it, and then finally you figure it out.
Speaker 2: And the clues are meant to be deceptive as well.
Speaker 2: They purposely use wordplay to mess with your brain, and
Speaker 2: you get better than when you see those patterns. When
Speaker 2: you start to expect that. So every time I see
Speaker 2: the word hero, I'm immediately thinking this is probably about
Speaker 2: sub sandwich, and not every time I. And I just
Speaker 2: learned this over time. You know, if I when I
Speaker 2: see cream, for example, I immediately know the answer is trio.
Speaker 2: Eric Clapton's group was cream.
Speaker 1: Oh my god.
Speaker 2: Right, it has nothing to do with what you put
Speaker 2: in your coffee. So there's these quick little triggers where
Speaker 2: I remember it's pattern recognition. And the people that win
Speaker 2: the crossword tournaments every year for speed right, the American
Speaker 2: cross Puzzle Tournament in a handful of others, the people
Speaker 2: that win those are usually math and music people. Really,
Speaker 2: it's not a verbal thing you are writing down letters,
Speaker 2: but it is. It's data driven. It is recall. It's
Speaker 2: pattern recognition.
Speaker 1: What kind of patterns are in there?
Speaker 2: Well, I think it's it's not so much visual patterns.
Speaker 2: If you see a S Senna V, then you're already
Speaker 2: thinking Sven or Svelt or you know. Right, it's quick
Speaker 2: recall from the clues, and it's not being misdirected by
Speaker 2: that first layer that's meant to see view. It's cutting
Speaker 2: through that and it's knowing exactly what they're getting to.
Speaker 1: When you're at a gathering or a cocktail party or
Speaker 1: something and it comes up that you write crossword puzzles,
Speaker 1: do you instantly have a rapport with someone if they're like,
Speaker 1: I do it every day.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it happens all the time, and more often than not.
Speaker 2: It's my grandmother does it every single day in pen
Speaker 2: she does not. No pencil allowed and I, you know,
Speaker 2: I say respects. You know that's an og solver.
Speaker 1: Do you use a pencil or a pen.
Speaker 2: I pretty much all computer now, just for ease, though
Speaker 2: for variety puzzles, cryptic puzzles and things from puzzle hunts,
Speaker 2: which we can talk about in a second. I am
Speaker 2: now using my iPad and the digital pencil because there's
Speaker 2: a lot to keep track of and you're using various colors,
Speaker 2: and things are hidden all over the place.
Speaker 1: And what is a cryptic puzzle?
Speaker 2: So a cryptic crossword is it's the British Dial and
Speaker 2: I think it's the most sophisticated word puzzle out there
Speaker 2: and it consists of every clue, consists of diabolical word play.
Speaker 2: The word play, the hint that unlocks the answer is
Speaker 2: right in front of you, hidden within that sentence.
Speaker 1: So cryptic crosswords news to me. I had never even
Speaker 1: heard of them, and they're more popular in the UK,
Speaker 1: where they originated. But typically the answer is hidden in
Speaker 1: the clue. Like one example I found in a Guardian article.
Speaker 1: The clue is cooking equipment taken back from airis I tormented?
Speaker 1: So taken back from indicates it's backwards, and hidden in
Speaker 1: the words aris I tormented backwards is the word rotisseri.
Speaker 1: What I kept looking for cryptic crossword examples. I even
Speaker 1: resorted to getting asked deep in the Wikipedia page for
Speaker 1: crypto crosswords, and I just have to share this one
Speaker 1: clue example. Okay, so the clue is very sad unfinished
Speaker 1: story about rising smoke. What's the answer? Fuck if I know,
Speaker 1: But very sad unfinished story about rising smoke is broken down? Lastly,
Speaker 1: you ready for this? Very sad is the definition Unfinished
Speaker 1: story gives TL, which is the word tale with one
Speaker 1: letter missing because it's unfinished. Rising smoke gives the word
Speaker 1: ragic because cigar is a smoke and this is a
Speaker 1: down clue, so rising indicates that cigar should be written backwards.
Speaker 1: Ragic about in the clue means that the letters of
Speaker 1: tl The unfinished story should be put on either side
Speaker 1: of ragic, giving the answer tragical. So very sad unfinished
Speaker 1: story about rising smoke gives you tragical. And I'm like,
Speaker 1: I have enough problems in my life. I don't need
Speaker 1: cryptic crosswords, but some people love them. David later emailed
Speaker 1: me a cryptic crossword clue example, saying Ologi's host from
Speaker 1: a wild wild area, and after a few minutes I
Speaker 1: experienced robust subcortical activity changes in the bilateral thalmis hippocampus
Speaker 1: and the dopamergenic mid brain. Because the first wild indicates
Speaker 1: it will be an anagram because it's wild, and a
Speaker 1: wild area is an anagram for Alleyward. So cryptics the
Speaker 1: Russian nesting dolls of puzzles.
Speaker 2: But it's anagrams. It's words hidden between other words. It's
Speaker 2: words going backward. The New York Times runs one about
Speaker 2: a month now. And then there are brilliant, brilliant puzzle
Speaker 2: makers that are members of the National Puzzlers League, And
Speaker 2: I think Mark Halpin is my favorite puzzle designer. He
Speaker 2: makes the most beautiful puzzles. This past Labor Day, I
Speaker 2: just solved his annual Labor Day puzzle hunt. It's like
Speaker 2: a holiday for me. I do it with my friend
Speaker 2: Craig Mason, the screenwriter and producer, and we block out
Speaker 2: the world and spend the entire long weekend solving his
Speaker 2: puzzle hunt. And what a puzzle hunt is is it's
Speaker 2: many puzzles, ten puzzles, say, where every single answer is
Speaker 2: then funneled in to the final puzzle, which is the
Speaker 2: meta puzzle to reveal the final ultimate answer.
Speaker 1: Oh so Mark Alvin, just a side note, has a
Speaker 1: ton of puzzles on his website and what He's also
Speaker 1: an accomplished stage designer and an associate professor of stage
Speaker 1: design at the University of Cincinnati. Mark pick a lane
Speaker 1: be excellent at one thing only, please leave some accomplishments
Speaker 1: for the rest of us. Okay, have dare, But yes,
Speaker 1: he makes extraordinarily complex and really challenging puzzles within puzzles
Speaker 1: within puzzles. And do you feel like those meta puzzles,
Speaker 1: these mega these cryptic ones, these very hard ones. Do
Speaker 1: you feel like simpler ones like wordle have been a
Speaker 1: gateway for people in the last couple of years.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, gateway is the right term for it. I always
Speaker 2: say that the mini crossword for the New York Times
Speaker 2: is the gateway drug to the big one, and it's
Speaker 2: very successful. And these things that just take a couple
Speaker 2: of minutes are putting puzzle in the hands of millions
Speaker 2: of people. I do Wordle every morning. You do.
Speaker 1: I was wondering what you thought of it because it's
Speaker 1: so simple compared to other puzzles. But is there something
Speaker 1: in that simplicity that you just can do it while
Speaker 1: you are putting in your contact lenses or whatever, while
Speaker 1: I'm on the toilet.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's It's brilliant. Josh Wardle created Wordle. He
Speaker 2: took it. He took an old format mastermind, and there's
Speaker 2: a few other board games, but he he made it
Speaker 2: so clean and simple and digestible, and the social sharing
Speaker 2: of it is really what caused it to take to
Speaker 2: spread like wildfire.
Speaker 1: Okay, so real quick. In case you don't know this
Speaker 1: origin story of Wordle, a software engineer named Jason Wordle
Speaker 1: created this game because his partner loves word games, and
Speaker 1: on November one, twenty twenty one, there were ninety daily users.
Speaker 1: By Christmas, there were three hundred thousand, and by the
Speaker 1: end of January twenty twenty two ten million people were
Speaker 1: playing daily, so Ward sold wordle that month in January,
Speaker 1: He's like, I'm out, I don't want to manage this
Speaker 1: for a few million bucks to the New York Times
Speaker 1: and we all play it every day still on my family,
Speaker 1: text threat and your podgram. Fancy Nancy has excelled for
Speaker 1: years at words with friends, and naturally she kicks her
Speaker 1: asses at word ale. Do you do the same opening
Speaker 1: one every time or do you just think of a
Speaker 1: five letter word that comes in your head.
Speaker 2: I change it because I get bored. Yeah. A lot
Speaker 2: of people like audio audio.
Speaker 1: I've never tried that. I tried a twall. Rogue is
Speaker 1: a good one.
Speaker 2: I can get those vowels out audio sa r e
Speaker 2: sore sarri is a like a type of a hawk
Speaker 2: or something, a bird. I don't really know, but it works. SI.
Speaker 2: A lot of people like raise.
Speaker 1: Oh, raise is a good one. So a sore means
Speaker 1: a young hawk or a falcon, which is great if
Speaker 1: you're just a fledgling wordler. And I think you're right
Speaker 1: that the social ass inspect is part of puzzles, and
Speaker 1: you know, being in a cafe and seeing someone doing
Speaker 1: the same crossword puzzle that you might be doing that
Speaker 1: sort of shared misery and delight. Yeah, you know what
Speaker 1: about scrabble? How ruthless are you? Do you win by
Speaker 1: just hundreds of points?
Speaker 2: No, I'm pretty good and I can beat the average player,
Speaker 2: but at a at a tournament, I would get destroyed
Speaker 2: because it comes down to what you've memorized, how much
Speaker 2: of the dictionary you know, and they know all of it.
Speaker 2: And that's talk about a real pattern recognition game. I
Speaker 2: know my two letter words, my threes, I think most
Speaker 2: of the fours. You got to know your vowel dumps,
Speaker 2: your words that have a cube, I know you. I
Speaker 2: know all a lot of those.
Speaker 1: According to scrabblewordfinder dot org, there are forty seven acceptable
Speaker 1: scrabble words that have a cue but no you, and
Speaker 1: a few of them are chi qi, like the Chinese
Speaker 1: energy for eleven points. There's quite a leaf that's chewed
Speaker 1: as a stimulant or made into tea, And there's chin
Speaker 1: qin the Chinese dynasty that build a great wall. And
Speaker 1: in scrabble, there are also these things called bingo words.
Speaker 1: And when you use all seven of your letters, you
Speaker 1: get a fifty point bonus reward. And there's this one
Speaker 1: nationally ranked scrabble champion named Mark Abodi, who recommends looking
Speaker 1: for prefix and suffix letters like un or pre or
Speaker 1: adding st or ng two shorter words like bingoing, for example,
Speaker 1: which is eight letters. But you get the point. So yes,
Speaker 1: some is strategy and skill and some is just memorizing
Speaker 1: lists and learning to scrabble as a verb to speak
Speaker 1: and scrabble.
Speaker 2: For those of you that want to play scrabble, learn
Speaker 2: those one hundred or maybe it's up to one o
Speaker 2: four two letter words and you will double your score.
Speaker 1: What are some of them?
Speaker 2: Well, it starts with aa ah ah, which is rough
Speaker 2: sindery lava, oh my god, and goes all the way
Speaker 2: down to za za, which is pizza, which ruined the
Speaker 2: game of scrabble.
Speaker 1: Oh is that? Even if? How is?
Speaker 2: I don't know because somebody Brooklyn said I'm gonna go
Speaker 2: get some za, and if.
Speaker 1: He came with it, I feel like, in like four
Speaker 1: people on Twitter said it in twenty thirteen or something.
Speaker 1: You know, I am incorrect. The word za is a
Speaker 1: form of casual truncation known as clipped slang, and za
Speaker 1: has been around since the late nineteen sixties. So this
Speaker 1: one's on the boomers, but it's had Scrabble's official approval
Speaker 1: since two thousand and six. I mean, how often are
Speaker 1: they having to change the scrabble Dic Shery to be.
Speaker 2: Like, fine, I think it's every four years or so.
Speaker 2: Then yeah, so it's a big holiday when they when
Speaker 2: they announced the new words.
Speaker 1: Can I ask you questions from listeners? Yeah, okay they
Speaker 1: I just want to get into it because they had
Speaker 1: great ones. Okay, some very specific and some wanting strategies.
Speaker 1: But before we solve your puzzling queries, let's first send
Speaker 1: some cash money to a cause of David's choice. And
Speaker 1: David told me that he frequently performs magic for children's
Speaker 1: hospitals via this great program called Lollipop Theater. It's a
Speaker 1: five h one c three organization that brings movies to
Speaker 1: pediatric boards, as well as a music program, entertainment themed
Speaker 1: arts and crafts, activities, and of course magicians if David
Speaker 1: is around, so to learn more about them, you can
Speaker 1: go to Lollipoptheater dot org, which is linked in the
Speaker 1: show notes. And that donation was magically made possible by
Speaker 1: sponsors of the show. Okay, let's get a clue and
Speaker 1: answer some questions. Okay, I thought this is a great question.
Speaker 1: Someone whose name is ms Palindrome and Stephanie Leski, they
Speaker 1: wanted to know those games where the first word that
Speaker 1: jumps out with you is the word that is supposed
Speaker 1: to tell you something about your psyche? Are those accurate?
Speaker 1: You know when you look at like a word search
Speaker 1: and then suddenly you're like, oh, those are those three
Speaker 1: words I noticed.
Speaker 2: I don't think they're accurate. But you're also talking to
Speaker 2: a magician who is a Magician's are the great skeptics,
Speaker 2: So we kind of know how all the tricks work,
Speaker 2: which is why we don't believe in psychics and fortune tellers.
Speaker 2: If that worked for you, go for it. People get
Speaker 2: a lot of answers and piece out of consulting things
Speaker 2: like that. But for me, I'm aware of the tricks.
Speaker 2: I know there are words that are positioned strategically so
Speaker 2: that you choose them. I'll just say this, I'm always
Speaker 2: looking for a word that they did not mean to
Speaker 2: hide in there. Uh huh, Like what can I find
Speaker 2: on the diagonal? Oh? I guess the word panda is.
Speaker 1: So a cursor research will deliver word puzzles that promise
Speaker 1: to predict your whole year, or your weekend, or your personality,
Speaker 1: even your hair type based on the first three words
Speaker 1: you'll see. So I am about to have a voluminous,
Speaker 1: luscious and full weekend with my hair looking hopeful and
Speaker 1: strong and genius. I took a lot of those word
Speaker 1: search tests, and I figured people were playing word search
Speaker 1: games on like Roman tablets, But nope. They emerged around
Speaker 1: the same time as the word za, around the nineteen sixties.
Speaker 1: And the inventor of word searches is kind of a
Speaker 1: point of disagreement among historians, and one guy had his
Speaker 1: puzzles ripped off by a publisher he submitted to. But
Speaker 1: others think that word searches originated from the Spanish enigmatologist
Speaker 1: Pedro oconnde Oro, who called them Soapa's de lettres or
Speaker 1: soup of letters. But did the soup have any eggs?
Speaker 1: Shelby Reardon, z Shirogaine, Kevin Wilson all use the term
Speaker 1: Easter eggs. They wanted to know, are there ever hidden
Speaker 1: Easter eggs and crosswords? You ever sneak things in there,
Speaker 1: like a little nod to your family or friends just
Speaker 1: for you, like a Wilhelm's scream. But in puzzles.
Speaker 2: I try to put family members' names in all the time,
Speaker 2: but the cardinal rule is that the puzzle has to
Speaker 2: operate as normal. So it might just be like, my
Speaker 2: mother's name is Joan, so if I have a chance
Speaker 2: to put you know, Joan of Arc in a clue,
Speaker 2: or you know, my dad's name is Tie Tai, so
Speaker 2: it might be my Tie or something. But you can't
Speaker 2: mess with something that millions of people are going to
Speaker 2: solve right now. That said, I am in cahoots with
Speaker 2: low Shorts and Will has let me hide things in
Speaker 2: the puzzle for my own purposes. My my Ted talk,
Speaker 2: if you're interested, that really changed my career. That was
Speaker 2: timed with the New York Times crossword. So when I
Speaker 2: finished the Ted Talk, I say, ladies and gentlemen, we
Speaker 2: have today's New York Times. Many of you in the
Speaker 2: first couple of rows have it underneath your seats as well.
Speaker 2: Really dig we hid them under there. See if you
Speaker 2: can fish out the newspaper and open up to the
Speaker 2: arts section, and you will find the crossword puzzle. And
Speaker 2: if you open it up, you'll see there's a hidden
Speaker 2: message in it. Now that hit message echoed what I
Speaker 2: was doing on stage, but Will made it very clear
Speaker 2: to me, this has to be a normal Wednesday puzzle. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so this is a bonus thing if people find it.
Speaker 1: You got married three months ago, did you?
Speaker 2: Nope?
Speaker 1: Nope, you didn't. Obviously you didn't propose with a puzzle.
Speaker 1: You didn't, did you? Did you try to hide anything?
Speaker 2: Right? I kept the magic and the puzzles out of it.
Speaker 2: I've helped a lot of people propose with puzzles, and
Speaker 2: I've and I've used magic tricks to help people propose.
Speaker 2: But I just I separated work from personal life.
Speaker 1: I wonder if she would have been expecting that. Does
Speaker 1: she do puzzles at all?
Speaker 2: Well? I do have to throw her off the scent
Speaker 2: all the time. Okay, My wife is very clever and
Speaker 2: she's on to me. So I am using every bit
Speaker 2: of misdirection I can to make it so she doesn't
Speaker 2: see things coming.
Speaker 1: Nice. I guess I bet you'd throw the best surprise party.
Speaker 2: When I proposed, I threw a surprise engagement party, and
Speaker 2: uh yeah, it was all set up. She didn't see
Speaker 2: it coming. It's great.
Speaker 1: It's all the misdirection. It's the excuse to get you
Speaker 1: somewhere else. That is what it all hinges on.
Speaker 2: Right, So misdirection, I'll give you a fun, little technical tidbit.
Speaker 2: There's a great Dutch magician named Tommy Wonder.
Speaker 1: Real name you know, his actual name, jacobis Maria Bemmelman.
Speaker 2: And he said that misdirection is the art of giving
Speaker 2: people something of greater interest to pay attention to.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: So, like bad misdirection in a magic show is I
Speaker 2: want you to look somewhere else. So somebody comes out
Speaker 2: on the stage with a platter full of cookwaar and
Speaker 2: they drop it on the ground and it clangs, and
Speaker 2: everybody looks over and that breaks the moment, and everybody
Speaker 2: knows that you were trying to distract them.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: But if you, if you can bake the misdirection into
Speaker 2: your routine. So if I want to steal something from
Speaker 2: my pocket, I'm going to reach up with my hand
Speaker 2: and pull a coin out of the air, a shiny coin.
Speaker 2: Everyone's going to look up at that and enjoy that moment,
Speaker 2: and my other hand is going for my pocket. So
Speaker 2: you're giving people something else to enjoy while you sneak
Speaker 2: the next thing. So I guess when it comes to
Speaker 2: like a surprise party, give your partner another reason to
Speaker 2: get excited about something else.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, instead of being like, oh, we got
Speaker 1: to pick up the car from the shot, we got
Speaker 1: to go pick up a bunch of dishwaar that I
Speaker 1: dropped in a parking lot. Oh that's great advice. Okay.
Speaker 1: A lot of people had questions. For sure, I will
Speaker 1: list them in and aside Looking at your Brain's Elijah Francis, Quinlan,
Speaker 1: Eli Jonathan Ruby, Bray when He's a Witch, Brandon J. Willis, Olga,
Speaker 1: Sam Moody, Becky This as Seagrass, Scientist, Grazie's Rain, Alison Mason, Leshatz,
Speaker 1: Grammond's Will Kingen, Kylie M. Smith, dantween Horn, Lannibauer, and
Speaker 1: first time question askers M and Taylor Clinton, all of
Speaker 1: whom wanted to know about brain health in Pavka thirty four.
Speaker 1: First time question asker's words are puzzle games used to
Speaker 1: help people with dementia, and Eli Jonathan wants to know
Speaker 1: do word games actually help preserve or improve cognitive abilities.
Speaker 2: I don't have a scientific answer, but I think the
Speaker 2: studies are pretty clear that it works. And I could
Speaker 2: tell you that my father just retired and he immediately
Speaker 2: started doing logic puzzles and he does them all the time,
Speaker 2: and I think it does keep the neurons firing.
Speaker 1: Okay, So I looked into this, and several studies show
Speaker 1: that doing daily puzzles can keep your melon sharp. And
Speaker 1: in twenty fourteen, there was a paper published called Association
Speaker 1: of crossword puzzle participation with memory decline in persons who
Speaker 1: developed dementia, and it found that late life crossword puzzle
Speaker 1: participation was associated with delayed onset of memory decline in
Speaker 1: people who developed dementia. And then there was a twenty
Speaker 1: nineteen study in the International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry and
Speaker 1: that reported that the frequency of word puzzle use is
Speaker 1: directly related to cognitive function in adults over the age
Speaker 1: of fifty. But these studies tend to be observational, so
Speaker 1: they can't determine the cause and effect. Can the crosswords
Speaker 1: stave off dementia? Neuroscientists think it might just be that
Speaker 1: daily puzzles keep you sharper overall, so if you do
Speaker 1: develop dementia, you'll be starting from kind of a higher
Speaker 1: cognitive baseline and the effects of dementia wouldn't be noticed
Speaker 1: for on average, two and a half years according to
Speaker 1: the Bronx twenty year Longitudinal Aging Study. So puzzles come
Speaker 1: for the dopamine, stay for the tenuous grasp on reality
Speaker 1: and all that you've ever known or love. Matt Thompson
Speaker 1: asked what are some lesser known word puzzles that we
Speaker 1: should be doing well.
Speaker 2: I have to go back again and recommend the cryptic crossword.
Speaker 2: But they are very tough and very fun and very clever.
Speaker 2: And a good puzzle makes you feel smart, right. That's
Speaker 2: That's like the mantra that comes from Will Schwartz and
Speaker 2: trickles on down to all of us, is it should
Speaker 2: be an enjoyable experience. And when you crack a good
Speaker 2: cryptic crossword, you feel really smart about yourself and you
Speaker 2: also simultaneously respect the person who came up with a
Speaker 2: clever ruse that you just overcame. So cryptic crosswords are great.
Speaker 2: We talked about wordle, but if you want more of
Speaker 2: a challenge, there's chordal and octortal, and there's even sixty fodal,
Speaker 2: which is sixty four wordles at the same time. And
Speaker 2: every morning I wake up and I guess one word
Speaker 2: in the sixty fdal to try to hit it, because
Speaker 2: I've never gotten a perfect score on that and one
Speaker 2: day I'm going to so.
Speaker 1: First time question asker Hannah Boyd, who wanted to know
Speaker 1: his favorite alternate version of wordle. Let's direct our attention
Speaker 1: to the landing page of sixtyfordal dot Au, which says
Speaker 1: six agenta quatu ortle a monstrosity perpetrated by Catherine Cowie,
Speaker 1: based on seta Chordle by Brad Bednar, based on Octordle
Speaker 1: by Kenneth Crawford, based on Quardle by freddie Meyer, based
Speaker 1: on Dortle by Glaire Mate s To's based on wordle
Speaker 1: by Josh Wardle. So I hopped on there and I
Speaker 1: tried solving all sixty four wordles at once, and after
Speaker 1: five minutes I experienced a kind of brain vertigo that
Speaker 1: made me physically nauseated and my throat was swelling with cortisol.
Speaker 1: So the tagline of this giant daily freeword puzzle is
Speaker 1: quote play as much as you dare. Every sex agenta
Speaker 1: quatu ordle is a nightmare. But maybe in an increasingly
Speaker 1: boiling planet with an ongoing pandemic and just the star
Speaker 1: of the next presidential campaigns, A playtime nightmare is preferable.
Speaker 1: Do you stay off social media in a healthy way
Speaker 1: because you're doing puzzles? Uh?
Speaker 2: No, everything's a juggling act. Okay, yeah, yeah, I'm on
Speaker 2: there just like everybody else.
Speaker 1: It's probably so much better for you to be doing
Speaker 1: a quordal that it is just to be like, oh.
Speaker 2: There's a great puzzle community online. So oh that's lovely.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah yeah. Spelling Bee, sorry, the spelling Bee. I
Speaker 2: can't believe this slipped my mind. The spelling be I
Speaker 2: do every day with my mother on the phone. We
Speaker 2: started it in the Pandemic. It's the loveliest tradition. It's
Speaker 2: another New York Times word game, and it's great. You
Speaker 2: have seven letters and you have to use the middle
Speaker 2: one and make as many words as you possibly can,
Speaker 2: and it's awesome.
Speaker 1: Now that is not an anagram then though, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, a pangram pan meaning all uses all the letters. Right,
Speaker 2: So there are sometimes several pangrams, which means those are
Speaker 2: all anagrams of each other. But anagram is just mixing
Speaker 2: up letters.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because some people Paul Srilio, Miranda Panda, Fuzz Goddess,
Speaker 1: Davis Bourne, Sarah matthew Anna Thompson all had questions about
Speaker 1: why is it like in Sarah's words, why is it
Speaker 1: that some people like filling empty space like wordle or crosswords,
Speaker 1: while others like moving letters around like word scrambles. They
Speaker 1: are an empty space filler themselves. But yeah, is it
Speaker 1: a different part of the brain that fills things in
Speaker 1: versus unscrambles?
Speaker 2: Wow? Good question. Right, it's a similar muscle. But when
Speaker 2: you're filling in the blank spaces, you are using logic
Speaker 2: in a different way to know what your possibilities are, right,
Speaker 2: And with every letter it narrows the possibilities down and
Speaker 2: you're drawing on your database of words and know what
Speaker 2: can still fit in there. Whereas when you have all
Speaker 2: the letters in front of you, it's a little more
Speaker 2: of a physical exercise of moving things around and recognizing
Speaker 2: the patterns that are right in front of you. I
Speaker 2: like doing both.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I feel like I have to really let my
Speaker 1: mind be more flexible and elastic, because sometimes if I
Speaker 1: see a word scramble and it starts with a thh,
Speaker 1: all I can think of is thh words and I
Speaker 1: have to force myself to split the t in the
Speaker 1: age or you know what I mean, And you're like,
Speaker 1: I can only see it as this one thing, Like
Speaker 1: my brain gets stuck in that loop. You know.
Speaker 2: Well, there's a new word game that came out of
Speaker 2: fun little thing you can do every morning that Adam
Speaker 2: Wagner made. It's called anagrams okay, and it's animal oh
Speaker 2: stop sort of. I mean, these are the levels you
Speaker 2: can get to al giraffe, dolphin, I already love it, parrot, octopus,
Speaker 2: all the way to the goat, and you try to
Speaker 2: get to the goat. So basically you have these letters
Speaker 2: and you have to make words out of them.
Speaker 1: Ooh, okay, this one is just a difficult delight and
Speaker 1: it has nothing really to do with anim We'll Sti't
Speaker 1: let that throw you. It's just spelled anagram A n
Speaker 1: I g r M with an I and the levels
Speaker 1: go up to goat or greatest of all time, and
Speaker 1: it starts with a four letter word scramble, and then
Speaker 1: it adds a letter each level until you've got nine
Speaker 1: letters to work with. And the emojis of cute animals
Speaker 1: are just kind of a visual bonus. So that is
Speaker 1: anagrams dot us. I like this game already. This is
Speaker 1: a new one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think you put it out a month ago,
Speaker 2: a couple months ago.
Speaker 1: Do you feel like since wordles, Yes, yeah, people are
Speaker 1: like it's exploded.
Speaker 2: These daily games have exploded. There's really all sorts of
Speaker 2: spin offs. A lot of them are play plays on
Speaker 2: the word wordles. So you have hurdle, you're listening to things,
Speaker 2: and you have world all where you're looking at the
Speaker 2: world trying to recognize countries. I think there's a movie
Speaker 2: recognition one that people are into now from movie scenes.
Speaker 2: I just give you like a still and you have
Speaker 2: a number of guesses to figure out what movie it is.
Speaker 1: This is called framed dot WT And I played one
Speaker 1: round and based on pictures of a jungle and a
Speaker 1: guy in a cape and some ogres and a sword,
Speaker 1: I guessed Lord of the Rings, and then Eternals Avatar,
Speaker 1: and then I don't know, I just typed in the
Speaker 1: word winter with a question mark, and finally I gave
Speaker 1: up and I was just trying to burn through my
Speaker 1: guesses and I just put in like magic mic. It
Speaker 1: was the fantasy movie Warcraft. So my bad framed WTF. Indeed,
Speaker 1: do you think that people are doing it out of
Speaker 1: a sense of play? Or out of a sense of
Speaker 1: oh maybe I can have the next big hit.
Speaker 2: Making them both both. Okay, I mean sixty four to
Speaker 2: sixty four wordles is not trying to be the next
Speaker 2: big hit.
Speaker 1: And it's just that's a very good point. Yeah, Kate
Speaker 1: Munker wants to know. Okay, David, so you might create
Speaker 1: the Sunday crossword, but can you do them yourself? Oh?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I get I can sell them. I'm not the fastest.
Speaker 2: I would say the Sunday Near Times puzzle takes me
Speaker 2: about twelve to fifteen minutes.
Speaker 1: That's it.
Speaker 2: The world's best are doing it in seven maybe less. Gosh,
Speaker 2: people were posting this this Monday past Monday puzzle was
Speaker 2: all like Hollywood references. It was like Shonda rhymes. Was
Speaker 2: the things that rhymed with Shonda, like Honda ugh huh.
Speaker 2: And I saw people on Twitter posting times that were
Speaker 2: under two minutes on the computer presumably, but like, you know,
Speaker 2: a minute thirty Monday puzzle can blaze right through it.
Speaker 1: People who suck at crosswords, people who are scared of crosswords.
Speaker 1: I am your people, and I did this week's Monday
Speaker 1: puzzle and I finished a whole crossword. It took me
Speaker 1: twenty five minutes. Twenty five minutes, Okay, some people get
Speaker 1: it in like two minutes. But let me tell you
Speaker 1: that when I finally got that Caesar dressing with a
Speaker 1: question mark was a clue for the word toga, I
Speaker 1: was like, y'all got me? That was a good one.
Speaker 1: Monday crosswords are designed for children, marine mammals, or maybe
Speaker 1: Martians who landed just a few months ago, or me
Speaker 1: and I loved it. Felix Wolf wants to know who
Speaker 1: decides what are easy, medium and hard clues.
Speaker 2: It starts with a constructor in that when you think
Speaker 2: of a theme, you kind of envision what day it
Speaker 2: might be on. So if there's multiple letters in a square,
Speaker 2: it's certainly going on a Thursday or a Sunday. If
Speaker 2: you're doing a very easy bit of wordplay, it's probably
Speaker 2: a Monday puzzle, and you write the clues accordingly. But
Speaker 2: the clues are changeable, and the editing staff at the
Speaker 2: Times will change the clues to calibrate the puzzle and
Speaker 2: maybe make it a Tuesday instead of a Monday or
Speaker 2: oh and then also they're changing clues because they want
Speaker 2: to avoid what might have just been used. Because the
Speaker 2: words are repeat all the time, so you know, Oreo's
Speaker 2: in the puzzle all the time. It was in the
Speaker 2: day before and it was clued as you know, black
Speaker 2: and white cookie. The next day it's going to be like,
Speaker 2: you know, double stuff Company.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know, pedloc says I heard the
Speaker 1: puzzles that appear in newspapers are easier to do later
Speaker 1: in the day because people use solutions from the puzzle
Speaker 1: more in their chit chat during the day. Is there
Speaker 1: something to that. Do words get implanted in us subconsciously?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Oh, I mean I hear that point that people
Speaker 2: are talking about things around the water cooler and you
Speaker 2: hear some answer, you know that it's going to be
Speaker 2: in your subconscious and you can put in the puzzle.
Speaker 2: I think more on that line of thinking is this
Speaker 2: idea of tip of the tongue memory, and that is
Speaker 2: when you're trying to think of something and you can't
Speaker 2: recall it, and you can't recall it, and then it
Speaker 2: just pops in your head an hour later. That's tip
Speaker 2: of the tongue memory. And that's a very real thing,
Speaker 2: and your brain is working to solve problems like that
Speaker 2: and crosswords even and you're not thinking about it.
Speaker 1: So is that why if you put something away and
Speaker 1: you come back to it, you might have Does that
Speaker 1: help with your work life balance knowing that, like, let's
Speaker 1: say you're stuck on a problem or something that you
Speaker 1: could go and go to the beach or go to
Speaker 1: a petting sew or something and come back and be
Speaker 1: better at it.
Speaker 2: Well, certainly for puzzle construction, something will just pop into
Speaker 2: my head, and it will I was I'm searching for
Speaker 2: some word or some pattern that I could use to
Speaker 2: get out of some corner of a puzzle that I
Speaker 2: was stuck in. It'll just pop in. So it helps
Speaker 2: constructors as well.
Speaker 1: Patrons Justus Bears, Christa Jones, Marin Prophet and Shelby Mills
Speaker 1: wanted to know about sources for inspiration and if he
Speaker 1: starts with the solutions or the clues, how does he
Speaker 1: do it? Do you have something on your notes app
Speaker 1: or some sort of tiny notepad that you write ideas
Speaker 1: as they come to.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I have, let's see my computer's open, so like
Speaker 2: I love it on Crossword ideas, Yeah, like.
Speaker 1: They're in a spreadsheet. How did I expect anything less?
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, this is yeah.
Speaker 2: Esp and el don't use any of these, by the way, listeners,
Speaker 2: but no, you can't whatever, Like, look at Kumail nan Gianni.
Speaker 2: That's got to be in a puzzle. Yes, come on,
Speaker 2: those letters are insane.
Speaker 1: Absolutely. You may know Kamail Nanjiohnny from The Big Sick
Speaker 1: or Eternals or Chippendale's great actor wonderful dude. And I'm
Speaker 1: absolutely bragging when I say that he has been to
Speaker 1: my birthday party. So I've known Kamail for probably a
Speaker 1: decade socially, and back when he hosted The Meltdown, this
Speaker 1: comedy show in the back of a comic book store
Speaker 1: on Sunset Boulevard, I remember Camail telling this story about
Speaker 1: how his last name was slang for a couch, and
Speaker 1: I was like, what is that story? Well, folks use
Speaker 1: something called rhyming slang. For example, why call the steps
Speaker 1: stairs when you can call them apples and pears with
Speaker 1: more syllables and no relation to stairs. A joke might
Speaker 1: make you bubble bath rather than laugh. And if you're
Speaker 1: in between paychecks, you're not broke. According to UK slang,
Speaker 1: your coals and coke, satin and silk means milk and
Speaker 1: rats and mice are a paradise. I'm like, what is
Speaker 1: this slang? I had no idea anything about rhyming slang.
Speaker 1: So back to Glasgow, Kumil Nanjianni happens to have a
Speaker 1: second cousin who was an esteemed Scottish broadcast journalist, and
Speaker 1: in the local rogue Scharen nan Giohnny rhymes ever so
Speaker 1: slightly with her word of fanny, which is your front
Speaker 1: put so a charene nan gianni means a baby maker. There,
Speaker 1: So different parts of the world have all kinds of
Speaker 1: linguistic angles. On that note, Joe Portofito wanted to know
Speaker 1: how much consideration is given to the diversity of the
Speaker 1: puzzle solvers. Some people would be more familiar with certain
Speaker 1: words than others.
Speaker 2: For example, we're in a revolution right now. Yeah, the Crossword,
Speaker 2: just like everywhere else, has really tried to become more diverse,
Speaker 2: and they've done a great job. Over the New York Times,
Speaker 2: you're seeing fewer, fewer puzzles that are just themed on
Speaker 2: like you know, old these songs from the nineteen to sixties, right,
Speaker 2: and then cluing can be adjusted, so again instead of
Speaker 2: referencing just you know, white people from the nineteen fifties.
Speaker 2: They've just done a great job over there, right, And
Speaker 2: then they're trying to really democratize the submissions process, so
Speaker 2: it's not just constructors of old but anyone can go
Speaker 2: through the poral now and submit a crossword, and you're
Speaker 2: seeing people from all walks of life submit crosswords, and
Speaker 2: that leads to more diverse content as well. So, you know,
Speaker 2: hats off to the New York Times, they've done a
Speaker 2: great job with that.
Speaker 1: It kind of dovetails to Genevieve Jellybean, who committed an
Speaker 1: assault by asking why are they all geared toward old people?
Speaker 1: Sincerely a twenty five year old who likes old people
Speaker 1: games except for the eighties trivia parts? They said, perhaps
Speaker 1: I'm looking the wrong places, but the crosswords often always
Speaker 1: contain pop culture trivia from the eighties, which is an
Speaker 1: automatic no because I wasn't alive then, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I hear you, trivia from the eighties.
Speaker 2: I'm like, I hear you.
Speaker 1: I get it.
Speaker 2: It's changing. It's the and the crossword audience is getting
Speaker 2: younger and broader, and I think the New York Times
Speaker 2: is hitting a wide demographic. So there's a mix of stuff.
Speaker 2: But if you go to the indie crosswords, they are
Speaker 2: skew much younger.
Speaker 1: There should be crosswords for what year you were born,
Speaker 1: because I know that if I tried to do a
Speaker 1: gen Z crossword, I would not get it. But then
Speaker 1: again there were probably The Cream trio is not something
Speaker 1: I would You should just curre itus like kay cream.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that was the reference of a band from
Speaker 2: a white band from six.
Speaker 1: So where does the youth of today go to? Crossword?
Speaker 1: David likes Rex Parker's blog. He trusts the links there.
Speaker 1: There's also crossword Fiend and avx words, which bills itself
Speaker 1: as crosswords for the not faint of heart. And I'm
Speaker 1: starting to realize that word puzzles have kind of the
Speaker 1: same vibe as hot sauce, like a variety of pain
Speaker 1: levels that people can find infigurating and use as a
Speaker 1: badge of survival, and then for others they're just a
Speaker 1: horror show to be avoided at all costs. Hot sauce
Speaker 1: people are just hot sauce people.
Speaker 2: Why do they make those sauces so hot?
Speaker 1: Do all of the enigmatologists do? They all kind of
Speaker 1: know each other.
Speaker 2: It's a very small community.
Speaker 1: Yeah, are you guys like on a WhatsApp thread, that's like, hey.
Speaker 2: Guys ripping each other's puzzles apart is that's not fair.
Speaker 2: It's actually a very supportive community.
Speaker 1: Well, on that note, Hannah Nolan said in the New
Speaker 1: York Times puzzle this week, one of the answers was
Speaker 1: shade tree. However, the entire word shade was in one square?
Speaker 1: How why now?
Speaker 2: I missed that one? But shade, like you were just
Speaker 2: shade in the square as a black thing, and that
Speaker 2: was probably the as a black square.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean, however, the entire word shade,
Speaker 1: I remember, I.
Speaker 2: Remember it was. Yes, that was in the lower right
Speaker 2: hand corner. What's what's the question? How? Why is that allowed? Yes?
Speaker 1: How how why it's it's allowed.
Speaker 2: When there is a a consistent rule to explain what's
Speaker 2: going on? Okay, you can't just throw a curveball in there.
Speaker 2: But if the whole puzzle has one consistent tricky rule
Speaker 2: in it, then it's up to the solver to figure
Speaker 2: that out and unlock that and have that aha moment
Speaker 2: and hopefully you feel smart when you figure it out.
Speaker 2: That was a very weird little corner I remember, kind
Speaker 2: of raising an eyebrow when I saw that, I don't
Speaker 2: think it was my favorite. But you know, look, constructors
Speaker 2: are always trying to push the envelope a little bit right.
Speaker 1: It just feels like we got one rule here, and
Speaker 1: it's one letter per box. Is what I think?
Speaker 2: You can do multiple words in a box. That to me,
Speaker 2: that's called a rebus r.
Speaker 1: E b U s oh, someone a rebus.
Speaker 2: So I am here. I'll show you some the ribus
Speaker 2: puzzles I've made, shall we.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm learning new vocabulary. Has rebis ever been a
Speaker 1: clue in a puzzle? Do you know what I mean? Like,
Speaker 1: just the word ribus is the answer?
Speaker 2: Answer? Yeah? Yeah, sure, let's see. Ready, I'm on the database.
Speaker 1: You can scour past puzzles at the website x wordinfo
Speaker 1: dot com, which I will link for you, my nerds.
Speaker 1: A ribus of a ribus.
Speaker 2: Ribas has been in twenty five times.
Speaker 1: Oh my god.
Speaker 2: Oh that's Will Shorts took over database inclued, most recently
Speaker 2: on July second, twenty twenty two as image problem question mark. Okay,
Speaker 2: like an image puzzle, image question? Yeah.
Speaker 1: See I would see image problem and I would instantly
Speaker 1: be like a publicist.
Speaker 2: The question mark is what tells you that's the that's
Speaker 2: the nomenclature for there's some word play going on here.
Speaker 1: Really, I didn't realize that that was the tip of
Speaker 1: the hat. Speaking of tip patrons, Audrey Lloyd, Beca Christensen,
Speaker 1: Melissa Burger, Jesse Dragon, first time askers Beca Van Tassel,
Speaker 1: and Carolyn Colin wanted to know, in Carolyn's words, what
Speaker 1: are some tips, tricks and strategies for tackling a crossword?
Speaker 1: Are there any other things like that that are Once
Speaker 1: you do puzzles a lot, you'll go, oh, okay when they.
Speaker 2: Yes, if there's an abbreviation in the clue, there's an
Speaker 2: abbreviation in the answer.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: If there's a first name in the clue, they're usually
Speaker 2: going for a first name in the answer. So if
Speaker 2: it was let's see, what's a good movie to reference.
Speaker 1: I keep thinking of volcano movies. How about Jurassic World?
Speaker 2: Okay, Jurassic World. So that was Chris Pratt and Bryce
Speaker 2: Dallas Howard, right, So if the answer were Bryce, it
Speaker 2: would be Chris's co star in Jurassic World.
Speaker 1: Oh, but if it were Pratt's co star, it might
Speaker 1: be Howard.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Oh, and it's a little tricky there because she's
Speaker 2: Dallas Howard.
Speaker 1: Okay, that's a good point. That's a good point. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's super helpful.
Speaker 2: Got my rigidity. I'm just like, no, you can't.
Speaker 1: Do that's helpful. This is helpful. Calysta Donah wants to know,
Speaker 1: are there any clues that you're particularly proud of where
Speaker 1: you're like those A good one.
Speaker 2: I can tell you puzzles I'm proud of. It's probably
Speaker 2: the easiest way to do that.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: So I made a Sunday puzzle with my friend Kevin
Speaker 2: that was a Mad magazine folding, so you would, oh
Speaker 2: my god, fold the page on the dotted line, so
Speaker 2: the right side linked up with the left, and there
Speaker 2: were words that ran across that that took a couple
Speaker 2: of years to make.
Speaker 1: Oh my god. This one was co written with Kevin
Speaker 1: Chose at New York Times Sunday, January twenty fourth, twenty ten.
Speaker 1: Should you dare attempt it?
Speaker 2: This one I just called up here. We were talking
Speaker 2: about Rubis's and this one is grid art. This this
Speaker 2: is made to look like a panda in the black squares,
Speaker 2: Oh my god, and then running across the middle there's panda.
Speaker 2: But as you saw the puzzle, you start to realize
Speaker 2: that that parses as P and A and there are
Speaker 2: P and A squares around the puzzle.
Speaker 1: Oh, my lord, So that there's a lot of ribuses
Speaker 1: in that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's probably a dozen.
Speaker 1: Wow, I know what a ribus is now.
Speaker 2: But you can see that it's it's all cohesive, right.
Speaker 2: It says popular zoo attraction or a hint to eleven
Speaker 2: squares in this puzzle. Oh my gosh, panda.
Speaker 1: How long did you take to work on that?
Speaker 2: Oh? I'd probably spend a week on that. I don't
Speaker 2: know when when you get really into it and you
Speaker 2: feel on the groove and you unplug everything and just
Speaker 2: work on that, I probably took a week.
Speaker 1: It's funny too, because I remember earlier you mentioned, you know,
Speaker 1: if I were to put in a word panda, which
Speaker 1: clearly this was on your mind. Is that's similar to
Speaker 1: how the subconscious works when you get people to guess
Speaker 1: certain things in a magic act, or when you lead someone,
Speaker 1: you kind of implant something in their brain so it's
Speaker 1: at the top of their mind.
Speaker 2: So what do you mean exactly?
Speaker 1: I need you to rephrase, like you had mentioned an
Speaker 1: example of a word earlier, and you use the word panda.
Speaker 2: I'm always looking for a word that they did not
Speaker 2: mean to hide in there. Oh, I guess panda.
Speaker 1: And clearly panda has been on. The word panda has
Speaker 1: been on.
Speaker 2: Oh I did say that before. It's a go to word.
Speaker 2: I guess.
Speaker 1: I'm always But is that similar like how you kind
Speaker 1: of subconsciously get someone lead someone to say an answer
Speaker 1: by putting it in their mind enough times where it's
Speaker 1: something on the tip of their tongue.
Speaker 2: For magic or for magic, for magic, for mentalism. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you can. You can get people to say things by
Speaker 2: influencing them. It doesn't always work, and you take risks
Speaker 2: to I hope somebody will fall into that trap, but
Speaker 2: and you always have a back up planning in case
Speaker 2: they don't say what you want them to say. But
Speaker 2: that's just fun for us to to try to pull
Speaker 2: that off.
Speaker 1: I was wondering earlier when you said panda, why the
Speaker 1: word panda was on your mind? And now I know.
Speaker 2: I don't know why.
Speaker 1: That's great. I think that that it proves so many points.
Speaker 1: But back to the puzzle he loves the most.
Speaker 2: Let me show you the puzzle. I'm maybe most proud of.
Speaker 2: This was a Halloween puzzle. Well, the year was it
Speaker 2: twenty thirteen. You have in the upper left hand corner
Speaker 2: the word Wolfman, right, and then in the middle of
Speaker 2: the puzzle vertically you have the word mirrors. Oh my gosh,
Speaker 2: so Wolfman's on the left hand side of the puzzle.
Speaker 2: On the right hand side it says Wolfman seen through mirrors,
Speaker 2: and you have to write it backward in the yeah
Speaker 2: on the right then, and these are all Universal Monster movies.
Speaker 2: So then you have Universal Studios Role of nineteen thirty one.
Speaker 2: It's Monster from Frankenstein's Monster seen through Mirrors is Retznam
Speaker 2: which is Monster backward. Right. There's then here you have
Speaker 2: Phantom right, and over here you have Phantom backward from
Speaker 2: Phantom of the Opera. But then in the lower left
Speaker 2: hand corner you have Dracula seen through the mirrors. And
Speaker 2: there's nothing on the right hand side. There's no so
Speaker 2: no reflection for Dracula. So there is a blank space
Speaker 2: in the puzzle. And what's fun here is right as
Speaker 2: you as you look at this, you think everything is
Speaker 2: one and letter longer than it really is. Because there's
Speaker 2: a blank space.
Speaker 1: You have to account for oh, oh my gosh, so
Speaker 1: all of those downs.
Speaker 2: Yeah, evil. So you so it's a little story, right,
Speaker 2: and it's a little you take them down this path
Speaker 2: and they see what's going on and they figure out
Speaker 2: what the initial trick is is. But then, like a
Speaker 2: good matter trick, there's a twist and you get to
Speaker 2: the bottom of it and you try to reflect Tracula
Speaker 2: and you can't.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, the setups, the punchlines, the long game,
Speaker 1: then that sweet sweet dopamine at the moment of a payoff.
Speaker 2: It is storytelling, and we tell our lives through narrative,
Speaker 2: and it's how we make sense of the world. And
Speaker 2: it's set up and pay off, it's it's foreshadowing and
Speaker 2: reveal and conclusion. And I think we run our lives
Speaker 2: through that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, our brains are wired to love that. Somehow we work.
Speaker 2: We like completion, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know you were saying that we're geared toward
Speaker 1: completion and and how satisfying that is. But there there
Speaker 1: must be something that is not satisfying. There must be
Speaker 1: something that sucks about writing puzzles. Is it is it
Speaker 1: hire from the public, is it anxiety? Is it what sucks?
Speaker 2: What sucks? When Yeah, when people don't get it, when
Speaker 2: they don't when they don't appreciate what you wrote. So
Speaker 2: I had a New York Times Sunday crossword that I
Speaker 2: joke was the Sunday cross word America hated and and
Speaker 2: I'll show it to you. It was.
Speaker 1: It was the date. Do you remember the date on this?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm gonna get it right here, let me look
Speaker 2: it up.
Speaker 1: Did you know that it was going to be a
Speaker 1: tough one.
Speaker 2: It's not that it was tough, it's that people did
Speaker 2: not get the extra level of complexity to it.
Speaker 1: They didn't get you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so okay, so here we go. It was called
Speaker 2: could you repeat that number? New York Times Sunday Puzzle
Speaker 2: September sixth, twenty twenty. Okay, have a ball, guys. It's
Speaker 2: and the way it worked was the clues with double
Speaker 2: numbers eleven, twenty two, thirty three, forty four all the
Speaker 2: way up to ninety nine. You you have to picture
Speaker 2: the clue. There's the number, and then the clue follows it,
Speaker 2: and you would read that number as the word double.
Speaker 2: So for clue thirty three, it read thirty three seven
Speaker 2: film and it reads as double O seven film and
Speaker 2: the answer was you only live twice. This is really
Speaker 2: I thought, very clever and mean. But for forty four across,
Speaker 2: it's you the letter you proceder, and I wanted everybody
Speaker 2: to write the letter T, which comes before you. But
Speaker 2: if you read it correctly, it's double U proceder, which
Speaker 2: is V. I'll just give you a couple more examples.
Speaker 2: Day competitor was double day competitor publishing House, Little round
Speaker 2: In Company was the answer. Oh my god, so a
Speaker 2: tree alternative. Double tree alternative was intercontinental.
Speaker 1: Oh my god.
Speaker 2: But what happened is is you can miss that layer
Speaker 2: to it. There's no apparent trickiness to the answer. Right
Speaker 2: when you have an answer that has a bit of
Speaker 2: a joke to it, or there's letters kind of mixed
Speaker 2: up or replaced, or a funny phrase that comes out
Speaker 2: of it, then you know that some transformation happened and
Speaker 2: something occurred. But people took seven Film and they wrote
Speaker 2: down they solved for you only live twice. And they thought, Okay,
Speaker 2: well that's a movie and that's a real phrase, and
Speaker 2: I guess that answers the clue. Oh seven film. But
Speaker 2: they didn't think, like, why it's not really a no
Speaker 2: seven film. It's a double O seven film.
Speaker 1: It's like when you laugh at a joke but you
Speaker 1: don't fully get it. And who among us hasn't done
Speaker 1: that every day of their lives? Yeah?
Speaker 2: I think I was asking to much. The title was
Speaker 2: could you repeat that number? And what kind of feedback
Speaker 2: do you get?
Speaker 1: Did you get some people who are like respect?
Speaker 2: Man? I got. I got respect from certain constructors that
Speaker 2: I think. Mike Sealinker is an amazing puzzle writer wrote
Speaker 2: on Twitter, do you realize how hard it was for
Speaker 2: David to get these thematic answers to fall at the
Speaker 2: double clue numbers? It was really really hard? And the
Speaker 2: second half of that question was and does anyone care?
Speaker 2: I mean you kind of pointed out that it was
Speaker 2: like a feat of construction that's not really worth it, right,
Speaker 2: Like only a few people noticed. I don't know it
Speaker 2: was the puzzle America hated, but I just had to
Speaker 2: point out that for fun at one to eleven across
Speaker 2: the clue is a suggestion double as suggest answer is root.
Speaker 2: Oh and the reason it is root is because you
Speaker 2: read that as triple a suggestion. It's at one eleven.
Speaker 2: So that was a bonus little answer.
Speaker 1: Oh my Goshugh, I have no idea how that works.
Speaker 1: And that's okay.
Speaker 2: I mean it's a good puzzle people.
Speaker 1: I think that if you've if you've stumped some people,
Speaker 1: that is a job well done. A bit, you know,
Speaker 1: you just push them a little bit past their limit.
Speaker 1: That's good. I think it's good. What about a favorite
Speaker 1: word or your favorite thing about the job?
Speaker 2: Uh, let's see favorite word? I like quicks a tree,
Speaker 2: which is of related to quixotic. That was the highest
Speaker 2: scoring scrabble word of all time. That was something like
Speaker 2: three hundred and eighty points or something. No, maybe it
Speaker 2: was like, let's look it up, sorry quick sitry score
Speaker 2: three hundred and sixty five points.
Speaker 1: Yeah, dang out of one word. Someone's got to have
Speaker 1: that tattooed on their body.
Speaker 2: Cause it it hit two triple letter, two triple word
Speaker 2: scords at the same time, which is like your holy
Speaker 2: Grail trip trip scrabble three hundred sixty five points.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Nice.
Speaker 1: So that might be a favorite word, quicksotic.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And what was the other question? What do I
Speaker 2: dislike about the job?
Speaker 1: And what do you love the most?
Speaker 2: Oh? I love performing the Enigmatist and I hope to
Speaker 2: hope you get a chance to come see it at
Speaker 2: some point. It's it's me just doing what I love
Speaker 2: on stage, and I've had so much fun talking about
Speaker 2: all this with you and doing a deep dive on
Speaker 2: these puzzles, and the puzzle fans come out for it
Speaker 2: and people that want to learn about puzzles, and the
Speaker 2: whole show starts with kind of like an escape room
Speaker 2: that you have to solve to get into the theater,
Speaker 2: and it's just nerd fest. It's just like it's a
Speaker 2: great time to love puzzles and games and it's such
Speaker 2: a good shout.
Speaker 1: I had to cut out part of the interview here
Speaker 1: because of spoilers, but let's just say follow David Quang
Speaker 1: on social media and hope that The Enigmatist has a
Speaker 1: theatrical run in your town.
Speaker 2: And it's a very fun, interactive show and as I
Speaker 2: said before, hopefully it makes people feel smart and that's
Speaker 2: the ultimate goal.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for doing so fun. Wow, So
Speaker 1: ask brainiacs some basic ask questions, because apparently learning keeps
Speaker 1: our lights on. So follow him at David Quang on
Speaker 1: Instagram and Twitter. He is wonderful. I'll link that in
Speaker 1: the show notes. His website is David Quangmagic dot com
Speaker 1: and he also sells this gorgeous card set called Enigmas,
Speaker 1: which features four of these special puzzle cards. He says,
Speaker 1: or not too hard. They just require you to think
Speaker 1: outside the box. So solving all four puzzle cards in
Speaker 1: that deck unlocks this online puzzle hunt. So those are
Speaker 1: at his website. It's an Enigma's deck and that'll be
Speaker 1: linked on my website in case you need a really
Speaker 1: great gift idea. They were co produced by David Shucan
Speaker 1: and Chris Chelco and David is also available for speaking
Speaker 1: gigs through his agents at CAAA. And he's the author
Speaker 1: of an upcoming kid's book of magic tricks called How
Speaker 1: to Fool Your Parents, which will be out in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty three, so look for that. So look him up.
Speaker 1: He's great. We are at ologies on Twitter and Instagram.
Speaker 1: I'm at Ali Ward with one L on both. Oligi's
Speaker 1: Merch is available at ologiesmerch dot com. We have socks
Speaker 1: and sweatshirts and topeaggs and shirts and stickers ologiesmerch dot com.
Speaker 1: Thank you Susan Hale for managing that and doing so
Speaker 1: much more for us. Aaron Talbert admins the Ologies podcast
Speaker 1: Facebook group with This is from Bonnie Dutch and Shannon Feltis.
Speaker 1: Emily White of the Wordery makes our professional transcripts. Caleb
Speaker 1: Patten bleeps episodes. Those are available at aliwar dot com,
Speaker 1: slash ologies, dash extras. Kelly R. Dwyer does our website
Speaker 1: and she can make yours. We have kid friendly and
Speaker 1: shorter episodes available called smologies. They're right in the speed
Speaker 1: or you can find them all at alleyware dot com
Speaker 1: slash Smologies. Thank you Mercedes Maitland and Seagredriguez Thomas of
Speaker 1: mind Gem Media for editing those and extra editing this
Speaker 1: week was done by the wonderful Dave Christiansen. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much, sir, excellent job and also by Jared Sleeper
Speaker 1: of mind Gem Media, who is both puzzling and magical
Speaker 1: in the best ways. And a huge, huge, Happy birthday
Speaker 1: to Noel Dilworth who is my right hand lady. Do
Speaker 1: not know how I would live without her. Happy birthday, Ballerina,
Speaker 1: You're the best. And if you listen to the end
Speaker 1: of the episode, you know I tell you a secret,
Speaker 1: and this week secret is that we just went to Tucson,
Speaker 1: Arizona for the Thanksgiving holiday, we visited Jared's fam, his
Speaker 1: aunt Emily, his grandma Sue, who's amazing, and we sat around.
Speaker 1: We played some board games. They love banana grams, as
Speaker 1: do I. His grandma is so good at banana grams
Speaker 1: man and we were playing and all in a frenzy,
Speaker 1: and then she shouted banana and she finished her tiles
Speaker 1: and looked over. She played some great words. One of
Speaker 1: them was cunt c U n T And I was like, you, treasure,
Speaker 1: I love you, So get out there, play some games.
Speaker 1: Good for your brain. Okay, bye bye.
Speaker 2: Oh you should see the crossword puzzle