December 19, 2023 • 32 mins
This week, Ben, Noel and Max welcome special guest, the legendary author AJ Jacobs, to explore the world's strangest historical puzzle crazes. In part one of this two-part series, AJ regales the gang with the moral panic surrounding early crosswords, armchair treasure hunts and much more. Spoiler: you can hear Ben and Noel on AJ's own show, The Puzzler.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much
for tuning in. Let's give it up for our super producer,
mister Max Williams. Mister Max White Suit Williams.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Oh my god, we gotta just tell the to find
folks at home.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
I'm remote. You guys are in the same building.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
I feel sense of fun and that's well exactly, that's right,
that's true. But you guys are in the same physical,
larger space. And you said you got to see this
thing that Max has got going on. I'm like, is
it going to be underwhelming? Because it was underwhelming, I'm
going to be mad. And boy howdy, he blasted into
the room, just blazing in the suit, this white, shining suit.
I had to squint, you know, on my computer screen,
(01:06):
almost overtook.
Speaker 3 (01:07):
My whole field of vision. It's a real thing to behold.
Speaker 4 (01:10):
Man.
Speaker 3 (01:10):
You've been talking about it on the podcast for months now.
Speaker 4 (01:13):
Well, see, I've been waiting to wear it, and there
was some reason, like like last time I recorded, I
was like I had to go do some asswords. I'm like, okay,
wearing a full white suit is not a good idea
right now. But I'm also wearing a green tie and
a red shirt. It is a holiday company going on
right now, that bed.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
And being red, green, color blind as I am. I
didn't know that until you told me. Oh wow, it's
a day of surprises for us. I'll wear my white
suit next time. Max and Solidaria, I'm been bowling. You're
Nold Brown, and we have a very we have a
very special week ahead. I can't remember if I mentioned
it on air before, but I was very, very lucky
(01:54):
to meet a literary hero of mine quite recently on
the on the podcas cast the Puzzler.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
And to be confused with the quistor not to be
confused with the Quist equally diabolical, but more gently diabolical.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
Yes, we are expanding the Ridiculous universe today, because, folks,
we are over the moon to welcome a special guest
this week, the journalist, author lecturer, a prolific writer of
amazing books like The Know It All and The Year
of Living Biblically, a personal favorite of my Ridiculous historians,
(02:34):
Please join us at welcoming mister A. J.
Speaker 5 (02:36):
Jacobs, Well, thank are you kidding? This as an honor
you are my podcast heroes, so right back at and
we loved having Ben on the show, and Noel, we
are going to recruit you. You are going to be
in the hot seat soon.
Speaker 3 (02:52):
I'm so here for it.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
A Jay.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
I was aware of you obviously from various appearances on
NPR and you know, talking about your incredible work and research.
But you were one of the first guests of another
podcast that I worked on for a while, movie Crush.
Speaker 5 (03:06):
I love that movie.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
I wasn't on those episodes. I was on the mini
Crush episodes where Chuck and I would just kind of
post mortem some of the interviews. But you were one
of the very first guests of that show, and I
engineered that. I don't think we actually spoke, but that was.
What was your movie?
Speaker 3 (03:20):
Again, by the.
Speaker 5 (03:21):
Way, it was a Clockwork Orange?
Speaker 3 (03:22):
Oh it was.
Speaker 5 (03:23):
I wanted to do A Groundhog's Day because that, but
someone else had taken it and a Clockwork Orange. I
had mixed feelings about it because I loved it when
I was a high schooler and now I look at
it as a father, an old man, and I was like,
you know what.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
Though, it would have been pretty pretty meta and epic
if you went on and did groundhog Day, and people
just came on, like on every six months someone did
groundhog Day. Idea, it's just fun.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
I think I maybe was just having like a brain fart,
but I heard you as saying a groundhog's Day as
though it were there's a clockwork orange and a groundhog
dog's day. What if we did a mashup of those two,
what would that be like, Charlie Kaufman, ease your heart outs.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
I like that, ye clockwork groundhog. You know that's that's
very good. We'll keep dropping it.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
But equally excited to be here, can't wait to be
in said hot seat. And I think today, you know,
we talked about what we might discuss, and you just
had so many possibilities that you sent our way, and
we ended up going with sort of a general topic
area that actually ends up being quite apropos some of
the recent episodes that we've done.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
Yeah, let's do it this way, let's do it this aging.
Uh So, tell us about the puzzler because we've been
throwing this around, right, we've been throwing the phrase around.
We talked about the podcast, but what is the puzzler
and how does it inform what you're going to teach
Nola and Max and I today.
Speaker 5 (04:48):
Well, the Puzzler right now is an iHeart podcast and
it's a daily it's short. We have a celebrity guest
on and we do a fun little word game with
them and the audience can listen along. And Ben was
a recent guest, and we always try to tailor it,
so we had a ridiculous history theme. Puzzle was one
(05:09):
for Ben, so it was sort of ridiculously misunderstood history.
So if it was a guy who had heard of
historical events but didn't hadn't read them, hadn't listened to
this podcast, so he would say, like this event, I
think it's about a croissant array and a glass of
red wine going around in a circle, and oh, thank you.
(05:31):
And then the answer, which which Ben got, was oh,
that's the French Revolution, So it's always a yes. He
did very well. Ben was a star.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
Say that because we're here, well.
Speaker 5 (05:43):
We give no money, so I have to be nice
with the praise.
Speaker 3 (05:48):
Better than money. You know.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
It's funny that, like in this age of wordle and
all the wordle adjacent things that honestly there's so many
of them now that make my head spin. Ben and
I recently discussed this really anachronistic one that guessing like
gross domestic product of various countries.
Speaker 3 (06:04):
What's that one called exportal or.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
It's cradle and it's from the OECD, and it's uh.
I think there's something tricky about tradele. This is what
makes it an interesting puzzle. There's something tricky about it
because all of the like you said, Noli, you have
to guess the exports, guess a country based on exports
and imports. However, what the OECD classifies as a country
(06:30):
is kind of like the aspirational list of what investors
wish was a country, like the British version islands not
a country. Sorry guys, all this to say.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
Ben, that's one that I immediately when it was you know,
revealed to me or shown to me, I was like,
this is so not my wheelhouse and I wouldn't even
know where to start.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
But Ben will be at this, and sure enough you were.
So I just have to ask a j when I'm
on the show. Please, no export based the puzzles.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
Now, whole plan. We all know so much about music.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
I do know a lot on music, but that's good,
not so much about countries and their various imports and exports.
So again, you know, in this era where puzzles have
really become this you know craze in and of themselves.
Speaker 3 (07:11):
I mean it's.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
Like a very old craze, but it's sort of back
in vogue with all these New York Times apps in
such you know, ways of passing the time on the train.
We thought it might be fun, or really, you thought
it might be fun to talk about some of the
history of puzzle crazes, you know, throughout throughout time exactly.
Speaker 5 (07:30):
And I love, I love these puzzle crazes because there
have been wordles from the eighteenth century, nineteenth century and uh,
and it's really it is like a tulip mania. People
just get obsessed. And I also love the element where
there's always a moral panic. There's always preachers saying, oh
the people are parents are ignoring their kids and doing
(07:53):
jigsaw puzzles and.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
It's ruined homes.
Speaker 5 (07:59):
Seriously, The New York Times covered crossword puzzles like the
crack epidemic in the eighties.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
Are you serious?
Speaker 5 (08:08):
Yeah, they were like, this is a you know, it's
causing prison riots, parents, our father husbands are murdering their
wives over crossword arguments. There was Olympic stars were not
training because they were distracted by crossword puzzles. This was
in the twenties and thirties, and yeah, it was just
(08:29):
hilarious to read.
Speaker 3 (08:30):
New York Times did eventually come around to crossword puzzles.
Speaker 5 (08:33):
Exactly that they did. Yes, they did decide to buckle
to and actually, maybe that's a good segue, let's start.
That was one of the crazes I wanted to talk
about was the crossword craze of the teens and twenties.
(08:54):
The first crossword appeared in nineteen thirteen in the New
York World newspaper. Wait, the first one in the world,
the first one ever? Wow, I know I thought it
would be older, but I thought it would be older too.
That's crazy, Uh, And it was. It was actually called
word cross at the time, and then they changed it
later because of a typographical error. So sometimes mistakes are good.
(09:17):
I always tell my kids and I will say it
was the first, but it was. It also kind of sucked.
It was not a good crossword puzzle. It was the
the clues were all really obscure, Like the fiber of
the Gomuti palm was ten down and he got it.
Speaker 3 (09:40):
Oh no, no, I couldn't possibly. Yeah, I wouldn't even
hazard to guess. Ben.
Speaker 6 (09:45):
How about you, Well, I'll give you that the way
they do it, the way they would do it now,
is much better, which is Homer Simpson outburst three dollars.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
Oh there it is.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
I was just gonna ask, and not to interrupt, you know,
the did the original word crosses or crosswords or whatever
come from the kind of rudimentary, sort of across stick
poem form at all?
Speaker 3 (10:10):
Was there any connection to that?
Speaker 5 (10:12):
Yes, there were sort of these proto crosswords, so it
didn't come out of nowhere. The inventor is this guy,
a British bloke named Arthur Wynn, and he says that
he was inspired by things like the magic squares, which
I don't know if you've ever seen, but they have
numbers or letters that you've read crosswords and down it
(10:33):
has the same words crossed down. So he had some inspiration.
But this was considered the first actual one, and despite
it kind of being lame, it really became this mania,
and every newspaper started printing him except for the New
York Times, as we said, and there was a Broadway
(10:53):
musical about crosswords. There was a hit song, Well, I
know you're a musician, so I'm sure you know this
great work crossword Mama. You puzzle me, but Papa's gonna
figure you out.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
I love it.
Speaker 3 (11:05):
Wow, got there, beautiful song.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
I'm wondering though, because New York Times obviously got a
reputation as being like one of the more difficult cross wars.
Is kind of a more illustrious crossward, like if you
do it in pen then you're a real, you know,
a smart person. Do you think they held out because
they thought it was beneath them, and then they finally decide,
you know what, if we're gonna get into this crossword game,
we're gonna be the best on the block.
Speaker 1 (11:26):
They looked askance at it right like in the beginning,
because they were kind of the high falluting sort of
paper of note for the fair metropolis, and so maybe
crosswords for a time were considered sort of like tabloid
esque or sort of lower class.
Speaker 5 (11:45):
Absolutely, that's exactly what they were. It was frivolous, It
was nothing. They they didn't print comics and they still don't. Uh.
New York World was sort of this tabloid the newspaper. Uh,
the phrase yellow journalism comes from it because they had
a common strip called the Yellow Kid. And uh, but yes,
they they finally buckled. It took a world war for
(12:08):
the New York Times to buckle. It was World War
two a week and a half after Pearl Harbor. There's
an internal memo that says, you know what, people need
a little distraction. Uh there might be blackouts, was was
what he said. So this, so that is when they
and like you, you said no, They said, you know what,
(12:29):
We're just gonna be the best at what we do.
And so they did and they and they hired this
woman who was who was really good at she's sort
of reformed. She's a legend in the crossword community, Margaret
Petheridge ferrr and she h a great name. And she
made them symmetrical. She got rid of the mistakes the
(12:50):
two letter words. So it did become the market leader
and it still is.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
And then yeah, there's a there's a craft to it.
There's a flow and like a sort of an esthetic
to a good crossword that is in and of itself,
something to kind of enjoy.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
Right.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
That leads to Yeah, that leads to one of my
questions was is this person, the one who sort of
codified the coded language of crossword clues, like everybody knows
these certain tricks. If something is abbreviated in the clue,
then the answer is going to be abbreviated.
Speaker 5 (13:22):
You know what I'm talking about. Yeah, no, I she
did a little of that. What's interesting, though, is they
those first crossword puzzles were very trivia oriented and so
they weren't clever. Like to me, a good crossword puzzle
now is it's all about wordplay and anagrams. That's kind
(13:43):
I like. And Will Schwartz introduced he's the current New
York Times gedder, and he introduced a lot of that.
You have his favorite clue if you ask him, of
all time. It seems good to me. I wouldn't say
it's my favorite, but it was. It turns into another story,
was the clue. And it's a two word phrase, a
long phrase, spiral staircase. So it turns pretty good. Yeah,
(14:08):
there's some levels there, there are levels. Yeah, two levels.
Nicely done, thank you sir. But yes, so that that
only came out later. And actually it's the British who
who really were into the wordplay, and Americans they they
look down on Americans. They were like those those crosswords
(14:28):
are too easy.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
And so now the crossword has become a normalized thing
here in Atlanta. For a long time there was a
paper called Creative Loafing and it was the Goldilocks Zone
of crosswords. If People Magazine is too easy and the
infamous Sunday New York Times is too difficult, then you
could get together at It used to come out on
(14:50):
Thursdays here, so we would go to our local chicken
wing place and hang out for an hour after work
while we tried to while we would do the cross
Usually between like two or three of us, we could
figure it.
Speaker 2 (15:02):
Out pretty much a bit of a brain trust. Yeah, no, Ben,
you were usually taking the lead on this. This is
really more your thing. We were just kind of there
for support. But you mentioned Will Schwartz as well, and
there's I just wanted to mention it for anyone that
wants to find out more about the craze. I haven't
seen this myself, but I know it's supposed to be
good wordplay. It's a documentary that sort of talks specifically
(15:23):
about the bit of the history and just specifically about
his tenure as the crossword puzzle editor for Love Marit.
Speaker 5 (15:29):
Times, and can I just throw in one quick one
about the easy and hard because a few years ago
the start of the reason I started this book and
podcast was a few years ago I was the answer
to a clue in the New York Times cross re puzzle,
and as a word nerd, I was like, this is
the best day of my life, Like, this is better.
Speaker 3 (15:52):
Do you have it?
Speaker 5 (15:53):
Of course, But here's the twist. The twist is my
brother in law. Then I was on out nine, but
my brother in law sent me a very brother in
law email the next day He's like, congrats, but you
should know you're in the Saturday puzzle, and the Saturday
is the puzzle. All the answers are totally obscure, like
(16:15):
like you know the palm of the Gomo Ti tree
and h and so his point was.
Speaker 3 (16:21):
The implication that you're a deep cut, the deepest cut.
Speaker 5 (16:24):
I am so obscure, no one knows who I am.
This is not accomplished. Hard. I think you should.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
I think you should leave a like partially completed versions
of the crossword around for your kids and let them
discover it for themselves.
Speaker 5 (16:42):
Also, the only one that they would get wouldn't be me.
Speaker 3 (16:45):
Yeah, what a brother in law thing to Jujo.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
Just send an email about this first of all, and
the most backhanded of compliments, that is, I hope he's okay.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
I want to shout out. I want to shout out
one of the many books that you have written, a
and one that informs your expertise in our conversation before
we move to the next puzzle. You are the author
of not just the podcast, but the book The Puzzler,
One Man's Quest to solve the most baffling puzzles ever,
from crosswords to jigsaws to the meaning of life.
Speaker 5 (17:17):
That's it a very humble title.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
And I have one tiny thing to add more pose
it here before we move on. How come there hasn't
been a movie about a crossword puzzle related serial killer.
Speaker 3 (17:30):
I leave it with you, I leave it with the
group as there not if there isn't there, there should
be anything. I haven't seen it. I want to find
out what it is.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
I must be thinking it like a mini series. Okay, yes,
that's a good call. No, we'll have to look into that.
But let's say a j makes the film. Before we
get to it, we have another puzzle that I don't
know about you, guys, Maxwell, but this was brand new
to me. I have never heard of the Masquerade.
Speaker 5 (18:00):
Range, yet this one I endured up because I actually
got caught up in it a little because I'm older
than you guys, So I was this was published. It
was a book. It was a book published in nineteen
seventy nine in the UK, and it was called Masquerade
(18:23):
and the Artists. It was an illustrated book and there's
gorgeous illustrations and they contained clues to a buried treasure
in the UK. An actual it was a rabbit, a
gold and gem encrusted rabbit, buried somewhere in England. And
people went bananas like there were thousands of treasure hunters
(18:43):
and they dug up yards and gardens. They just created chaos.
They the artist Kit Williams, he received death threats and
in the middle of the night three am visits from
people covered in mud. People were arrested, they had to
be rescued from cliffs, and so it was just a
(19:03):
mania and I loved I never went to England, but
I spent you know, hours looking at these, uh these
illustrations for clues, which of course I never cracked.
Speaker 3 (19:15):
The golden hair.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
The gold hair absolutely new to me, and I mean, honestly,
even the concept seems very novel, because at first I
was going to ask, like, were people just taking it
too seriously? But no, there was a thing, there was
an object of of whatever this this narrative.
Speaker 5 (19:31):
It was, and it was you know, it was insured
for a couple hundred thousand dollars, so it was a
real thing, and actually it spawned all of these other there.
It's a genre called armchair treasure hunts.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
Oh, like that guy in the US right, Well.
Speaker 5 (19:46):
There's the secret was a famous one where they're twelve
treasures buried throughout North America and only three of them
have been found. So people are still obsessed on Like
you go on these these websites, you know, and people
are man like they are. They've got all these theories,
they've got all these and they get very angry at
(20:08):
the other one for having a different theory that the masquerade.
Just to close that loop, that one was solved three
years later. It was buried in beneath the statue a
statue of Catherine of Aragon, of the Queen, and in
a town called Bedford, and it was buried underneath the
(20:29):
tip of a shadow cast at noon on the equinox.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
Oh my gosh, that's just so.
Speaker 2 (20:34):
It is like spe was there a bit of a
scandal though that maybe there were some accusations of cheating.
Speaker 5 (20:42):
Yes, and not just accusation. It was the guy who
solved it did cheat. He got inside information from the
ex girlfriend of the artist. And the artists are super
bummed out. Uh. They the official winners were. These were
these two physics teachers who actually solved it for real,
but they didn't get the They didn't get the rabbit.
(21:02):
The cheater got the rabbit. So but yes, it was, Uh,
it was despite the scandal at the end, enormously influential.
You might have also, I don't know if you. I
don't think you've done an episode on Forest Fen. That's
a famous treasure hunt.
Speaker 1 (21:18):
That's who I was thinking. That's what I was thinking about. Yeah,
and that also with the Armchair treasure Hunt a j
What I find fascinating about these is that this led
to conspiracy theorists. Of course, like in the Forest Fen
case and the Secret case and in the Golden Hair case,
weren't there some people who were like, there's something up
(21:41):
with this official story there's.
Speaker 5 (21:43):
More exactly that was. I mean, this is a hint
into the human mind because people, even years after it
had been found, they were like, no, my my theory
is correct. It really is here. It's really under the
you know, the Tower of London, or you know that
(22:04):
people just get so attached to their theory that they
just cannot switch gears.
Speaker 1 (22:10):
Open your eyes, sheeple. The hair is still out there.
It's still out there.
Speaker 5 (22:15):
Go dig up some yards in England. But luckily no
one died during the Masquerade hunt. But Forrest Fenn, this
was a treasure buried in the Rockies and I think
it was twenty ten about and he had a book
with clues to it, and five people died while searching
for that treasure.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
So would you argue that maybe there's you know, you
got to be really careful with this kind of stuff.
Speaker 5 (22:39):
No, just go ahead and just go nuts, you know
what I mean, just jump off cliffs.
Speaker 2 (22:44):
And at what point does it become intriguing enough to
spawn that kind of devotion and obsession? Like, you know,
not anybody has the chops to pull something like this off,
because it requires enough notoriety, a b. It has to
be cleverly constructed to have enough people that don't just
aren't just able to solve it instantly, like are there
(23:05):
any elements that you see and stuff like this, because
I'd really never heard of this, and now I want
to find out more about what makes a good one
of these sort of real world mystery kind of treasure
hunt things.
Speaker 1 (23:17):
Well, Finn had a poem. I loved the poem, right,
And I guess the idea is that you can play
along at home, right, you get you get pieces, and
there's this maddening thing about the human need for pattern recognition. Right,
That's that's my armchair guess because I was obsessed with
a Finn situation for a while and that was kind
(23:38):
of sad when it was found.
Speaker 5 (23:40):
Did you go out and look for it?
Speaker 1 (23:43):
I did. I did not go out and look for it,
but my friends, I spent probably a little too much
time on those forums. I was thinking, I'm never gonna
find it, but I want to learn about it, and
I would literally make popcorn and then go online and
read various Yeah, I would read various like subreddits. So
I came in very late in the game. This was
(24:05):
like twenty fifteen, twenty sixteen.
Speaker 2 (24:08):
And I guess my question can really apply to any
of these crazes or like, you know, what makes something
you know, of enough interest that enough people are going
to be involved, but difficult enough that people aren't gonna
be able to solve that. That injects a certain amount
of competition, a certain amount of kind of you know,
sportsmanised ship, and like it creates sort of a community,
(24:29):
whether it be crossword puzzles, these real life treasure hunts,
or you know, other types of puzzles that we're going
to get into. Do you have any thoughts about, like
what what makes these things kind of catch the public imagination?
Speaker 1 (24:41):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (24:41):
I think there a couple of factors. One is just lock.
It's like tulip mania, something just blows up and reaches
a tipping point. Another is a lot of these manias
seem to happen during Like the Jigsaw puzzle mania was
during the depression, a wordle was during the pandemic, So
there's a little of that going on. They asked, that
(25:06):
is a puzzle with no real answer exactly that is,
but it's the same. That's another cause is, like you said,
we are wired to look for patterns, whether or not
they exist, So this is a very deep I mean
the first puzzle, of course, was you know, who do
I mat with? Who do how do I eat?
Speaker 1 (25:25):
You know?
Speaker 5 (25:25):
So, so it's all of the same and uh and
so we have a very deep need for this and uh.
And puzzles just satisfy that that aha instinct that we
that we are wired to look for. And I love them.
I mean, I think they have a dark side. Like
you say, QAnon is kind of a big puzzle, But
on the other hand, I think that there are wonderful
(25:48):
They're like a way to train your minds. And here's
a little though this is I tried a little wisdom
for my kids. Quincy Jones as a saying, he says,
I don't have problems. I have puzzles in my life.
Speaker 1 (26:02):
Oh that's beautiful.
Speaker 5 (26:03):
Yeah, he reframes life as a series of puzzle This
is much more pleasant.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
But also as a record producer, you know, as a
music producer, when you're in the studio with an artist,
it's a series of problems that you're trying to solve creatively,
you know. So, I mean, I think that's what he's
referring to in a lot of ways too, is how
do I figure out how to get these pieces to
fit together, get these elements to work together harmoniously, because,
like you know, as a sort of fair weather armchair
(26:28):
music producer myself, that is part of the fun is
figuring out how to get these disparate elements to kind
of play nice together.
Speaker 1 (26:34):
And I want to go back to the point you
raise about jigsaw puzzles, AJ, because there is there is
one guy that you spoke to pretty recently who might
be one of the few people who likes jigsaw puzzles
more than you. I'm thinking about Roy Wood Junior.
Speaker 5 (26:52):
Oh. Yes, he's a huge fan, and he's he's a
great comedian, but he does jigsaws and he he glues
him to get other and uh and puts them on
his wall, which I think some people do. When I
went into this book, I was actually not a huge
big jigsaw fan. I have converted. I actually really I
converted so much that for the book, I competed as
(27:14):
with my family as Team USA in the World Jigsaw
Puzzle Championships, and we sucked so hard.
Speaker 3 (27:23):
It's a very specific skill set.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
I heard you talk about this on public radio not
too too long ago.
Speaker 5 (27:29):
We came in second to last. We were just an
embarrassment to our country, and they were every you know,
Hungary was ahead of us, Turkey, you name it, the Russians.
The Russians one so fast. There were rumors of, you know,
of performance enhancing. So juicy juicy.
Speaker 1 (27:49):
The puzzle, Hi Max jumping in here.
Speaker 3 (27:51):
What does juicing in jigsaw?
Speaker 1 (27:53):
Puzzle jigsaw juicy, let's call it jigsaw juicy, jigsaw jy.
Speaker 5 (27:56):
Sorry about the sirens. Wait, I'm guessing it. You know
it was adderall.
Speaker 1 (28:02):
They did.
Speaker 5 (28:03):
They did recommend advil because you are the way set
up is eight hours straight. You've got four people on
a team, and you have four big puzzles of like
two thousand pieces each, so you are standing over with
your back hunch for eight hours. So advil is recommended
and allowed. I don't know. I'm sure there's adderall and other.
Speaker 2 (28:23):
Adderall and advil is like a jigsaw speedball in the community.
Speaker 1 (28:28):
I would want something. I would want something that relaxes
you a little bit, because I feel like there would
be there would be a lot of pressure. And I
remember this story about your experience when I heard it,
because you had been training right and we're feeling you
guys are feeling pretty good about it. And there's certain
strategies that I think, as you said, because when I
(28:49):
was hearing this, it was a look into the mind
of the everyman learning to master jigsaws, and I was thinking, yeah,
you get the quarter pieces right, you get the edges,
you go like that, and apparently that is a rookie
move or something like that.
Speaker 5 (29:03):
It is, it is sometimes acceptable, but it depends on
the puzzle. If it's a very colorful puzzle, then then
some of the pros go by sorting by color first
and then to the edges. I mean, it is hilarious
the amount of strategy that goes into this. And they
division of labor so they have an expert on the team,
(29:23):
the Russian team who's like really good at at monocrement,
Like if there's a blue sky, she will sort them
all into different shapes so that it all fits together.
But you know, I find that with everything, whatever it is,
even if it's a seemingly trivial thing, like if you
are at the top of Michael Jordan's and Lebron James
is of anything is just fascinating to watch.
Speaker 2 (29:45):
But it's also it's not using the same I'm imagining
it's not using the same parts of your brain that
sorting out word puzzles are. Can you talk a little
bit about the it's obviously pattern recognition and data mining
slash sorting, But does it operate on the sand does
Does your brain require the same types of smart says
(30:06):
it does to do word puzzles or is it completely different?
Speaker 5 (30:09):
I would say that there are some similarities between all puzzles,
but you're right there are. This is much more spatial.
I am terrible at space. Like it takes me five
I did not solve a rubiks cube for fifty two years,
like because I solved it when I was fifty two.
But all of them require things like being able to
(30:31):
think outside the box, which I can say because that
cliche comes from puzzles. Sure, it was the nine dots
uh puzzle and you have to connect them with four
pencil straight lines and you have to go outside the box.
So all spoiler guys, spoilers, Oh yeah, sorry, sorry for
spoiling that ancient puzzle. No, speaking of puzzles, we have
(30:56):
run into a puzzle situation.
Speaker 1 (30:58):
My friend, I think, uh, I think this is a
two parter.
Speaker 2 (31:01):
Oh man, it's time to pick up the pieces and
try our hand to putting together a second. I don't know,
I'm not doing very well with my puzzle metaphorce here apologize,
but yes, indeed, Aj is such a delight and we
kind of had a feeling this might happen. We did
have two complete topics on the docket with him, and
we realized that just one of them was going to
(31:21):
be a two parter.
Speaker 3 (31:22):
So look for the next one sometime in the new year.
And it's a doozy as well.
Speaker 1 (31:27):
Agreed and big, big thanks to the legendary A. J.
Jacobs for classing up our show. Big thanks to our
super producer mister Max Williams, and additional thanks to our
guest super producer Paul Mission Control Decade Woop Woop.
Speaker 2 (31:42):
Alex Williams who composed this banging theme you hear before
your very ears. Christoph Rasciotis needs Jeff Coates here in
spirit and Ben last, but not least first in my heart, sir,
the missing Jigsaw puzzle piece to my very soul.
Speaker 1 (31:57):
You, sir, you're the Waldo to my wares Way.
Speaker 3 (32:02):
We'll see you next time, folks.
Speaker 2 (32:10):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much
for tuning in. Let's give it up for our super producer,
mister Max Williams. Mister Max White Suit Williams.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Oh my god, we gotta just tell the to find
folks at home.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
I'm remote. You guys are in the same building.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
I feel sense of fun and that's well exactly, that's right,
that's true. But you guys are in the same physical,
larger space. And you said you got to see this
thing that Max has got going on. I'm like, is
it going to be underwhelming? Because it was underwhelming, I'm
going to be mad. And boy howdy, he blasted into
the room, just blazing in the suit, this white, shining suit.
I had to squint, you know, on my computer screen,
(01:06):
almost overtook.
Speaker 3 (01:07):
My whole field of vision. It's a real thing to behold.
Speaker 4 (01:10):
Man.
Speaker 3 (01:10):
You've been talking about it on the podcast for months now.
Speaker 4 (01:13):
Well, see, I've been waiting to wear it, and there
was some reason, like like last time I recorded, I
was like I had to go do some asswords. I'm like, okay,
wearing a full white suit is not a good idea
right now. But I'm also wearing a green tie and
a red shirt. It is a holiday company going on
right now, that bed.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
And being red, green, color blind as I am. I
didn't know that until you told me. Oh wow, it's
a day of surprises for us. I'll wear my white
suit next time. Max and Solidaria, I'm been bowling. You're
Nold Brown, and we have a very we have a
very special week ahead. I can't remember if I mentioned
it on air before, but I was very, very lucky
(01:54):
to meet a literary hero of mine quite recently on
the on the podcas cast the Puzzler.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
And to be confused with the quistor not to be
confused with the Quist equally diabolical, but more gently diabolical.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
Yes, we are expanding the Ridiculous universe today, because, folks,
we are over the moon to welcome a special guest
this week, the journalist, author lecturer, a prolific writer of
amazing books like The Know It All and The Year
of Living Biblically, a personal favorite of my Ridiculous historians,
(02:34):
Please join us at welcoming mister A. J.
Speaker 5 (02:36):
Jacobs, Well, thank are you kidding? This as an honor
you are my podcast heroes, so right back at and
we loved having Ben on the show, and Noel, we
are going to recruit you. You are going to be
in the hot seat soon.
Speaker 3 (02:52):
I'm so here for it.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
A Jay.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
I was aware of you obviously from various appearances on
NPR and you know, talking about your incredible work and research.
But you were one of the first guests of another
podcast that I worked on for a while, movie Crush.
Speaker 5 (03:06):
I love that movie.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
I wasn't on those episodes. I was on the mini
Crush episodes where Chuck and I would just kind of
post mortem some of the interviews. But you were one
of the very first guests of that show, and I
engineered that. I don't think we actually spoke, but that was.
What was your movie?
Speaker 3 (03:20):
Again, by the.
Speaker 5 (03:21):
Way, it was a Clockwork Orange?
Speaker 3 (03:22):
Oh it was.
Speaker 5 (03:23):
I wanted to do A Groundhog's Day because that, but
someone else had taken it and a Clockwork Orange. I
had mixed feelings about it because I loved it when
I was a high schooler and now I look at
it as a father, an old man, and I was like,
you know what.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
Though, it would have been pretty pretty meta and epic
if you went on and did groundhog Day, and people
just came on, like on every six months someone did
groundhog Day. Idea, it's just fun.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
I think I maybe was just having like a brain fart,
but I heard you as saying a groundhog's Day as
though it were there's a clockwork orange and a groundhog
dog's day. What if we did a mashup of those two,
what would that be like, Charlie Kaufman, ease your heart outs.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
I like that, ye clockwork groundhog. You know that's that's
very good. We'll keep dropping it.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
But equally excited to be here, can't wait to be
in said hot seat. And I think today, you know,
we talked about what we might discuss, and you just
had so many possibilities that you sent our way, and
we ended up going with sort of a general topic
area that actually ends up being quite apropos some of
the recent episodes that we've done.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
Yeah, let's do it this way, let's do it this aging.
Uh So, tell us about the puzzler because we've been
throwing this around, right, we've been throwing the phrase around.
We talked about the podcast, but what is the puzzler
and how does it inform what you're going to teach
Nola and Max and I today.
Speaker 5 (04:48):
Well, the Puzzler right now is an iHeart podcast and
it's a daily it's short. We have a celebrity guest
on and we do a fun little word game with
them and the audience can listen along. And Ben was
a recent guest, and we always try to tailor it,
so we had a ridiculous history theme. Puzzle was one
(05:09):
for Ben, so it was sort of ridiculously misunderstood history.
So if it was a guy who had heard of
historical events but didn't hadn't read them, hadn't listened to
this podcast, so he would say, like this event, I
think it's about a croissant array and a glass of
red wine going around in a circle, and oh, thank you.
(05:31):
And then the answer, which which Ben got, was oh,
that's the French Revolution, So it's always a yes. He
did very well. Ben was a star.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
Say that because we're here, well.
Speaker 5 (05:43):
We give no money, so I have to be nice
with the praise.
Speaker 3 (05:48):
Better than money. You know.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
It's funny that, like in this age of wordle and
all the wordle adjacent things that honestly there's so many
of them now that make my head spin. Ben and
I recently discussed this really anachronistic one that guessing like
gross domestic product of various countries.
Speaker 3 (06:04):
What's that one called exportal or.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
It's cradle and it's from the OECD, and it's uh.
I think there's something tricky about tradele. This is what
makes it an interesting puzzle. There's something tricky about it
because all of the like you said, Noli, you have
to guess the exports, guess a country based on exports
and imports. However, what the OECD classifies as a country
(06:30):
is kind of like the aspirational list of what investors
wish was a country, like the British version islands not
a country. Sorry guys, all this to say.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
Ben, that's one that I immediately when it was you know,
revealed to me or shown to me, I was like,
this is so not my wheelhouse and I wouldn't even
know where to start.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
But Ben will be at this, and sure enough you were.
So I just have to ask a j when I'm
on the show. Please, no export based the puzzles.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
Now, whole plan. We all know so much about music.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
I do know a lot on music, but that's good,
not so much about countries and their various imports and exports.
So again, you know, in this era where puzzles have
really become this you know craze in and of themselves.
Speaker 3 (07:11):
I mean it's.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
Like a very old craze, but it's sort of back
in vogue with all these New York Times apps in
such you know, ways of passing the time on the train.
We thought it might be fun, or really, you thought
it might be fun to talk about some of the
history of puzzle crazes, you know, throughout throughout time exactly.
Speaker 5 (07:30):
And I love, I love these puzzle crazes because there
have been wordles from the eighteenth century, nineteenth century and uh,
and it's really it is like a tulip mania. People
just get obsessed. And I also love the element where
there's always a moral panic. There's always preachers saying, oh
the people are parents are ignoring their kids and doing
(07:53):
jigsaw puzzles and.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
It's ruined homes.
Speaker 5 (07:59):
Seriously, The New York Times covered crossword puzzles like the
crack epidemic in the eighties.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
Are you serious?
Speaker 5 (08:08):
Yeah, they were like, this is a you know, it's
causing prison riots, parents, our father husbands are murdering their
wives over crossword arguments. There was Olympic stars were not
training because they were distracted by crossword puzzles. This was
in the twenties and thirties, and yeah, it was just
(08:29):
hilarious to read.
Speaker 3 (08:30):
New York Times did eventually come around to crossword puzzles.
Speaker 5 (08:33):
Exactly that they did. Yes, they did decide to buckle
to and actually, maybe that's a good segue, let's start.
That was one of the crazes I wanted to talk
about was the crossword craze of the teens and twenties.
(08:54):
The first crossword appeared in nineteen thirteen in the New
York World newspaper. Wait, the first one in the world,
the first one ever? Wow, I know I thought it
would be older, but I thought it would be older too.
That's crazy, Uh, And it was. It was actually called
word cross at the time, and then they changed it
later because of a typographical error. So sometimes mistakes are good.
(09:17):
I always tell my kids and I will say it
was the first, but it was. It also kind of sucked.
It was not a good crossword puzzle. It was the
the clues were all really obscure, Like the fiber of
the Gomuti palm was ten down and he got it.
Speaker 3 (09:40):
Oh no, no, I couldn't possibly. Yeah, I wouldn't even
hazard to guess. Ben.
Speaker 6 (09:45):
How about you, Well, I'll give you that the way
they do it, the way they would do it now,
is much better, which is Homer Simpson outburst three dollars.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
Oh there it is.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
I was just gonna ask, and not to interrupt, you know,
the did the original word crosses or crosswords or whatever
come from the kind of rudimentary, sort of across stick
poem form at all?
Speaker 3 (10:10):
Was there any connection to that?
Speaker 5 (10:12):
Yes, there were sort of these proto crosswords, so it
didn't come out of nowhere. The inventor is this guy,
a British bloke named Arthur Wynn, and he says that
he was inspired by things like the magic squares, which
I don't know if you've ever seen, but they have
numbers or letters that you've read crosswords and down it
(10:33):
has the same words crossed down. So he had some inspiration.
But this was considered the first actual one, and despite
it kind of being lame, it really became this mania,
and every newspaper started printing him except for the New
York Times, as we said, and there was a Broadway
(10:53):
musical about crosswords. There was a hit song, Well, I
know you're a musician, so I'm sure you know this
great work crossword Mama. You puzzle me, but Papa's gonna
figure you out.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
I love it.
Speaker 3 (11:05):
Wow, got there, beautiful song.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
I'm wondering though, because New York Times obviously got a
reputation as being like one of the more difficult cross wars.
Is kind of a more illustrious crossward, like if you
do it in pen then you're a real, you know,
a smart person. Do you think they held out because
they thought it was beneath them, and then they finally decide,
you know what, if we're gonna get into this crossword game,
we're gonna be the best on the block.
Speaker 1 (11:26):
They looked askance at it right like in the beginning,
because they were kind of the high falluting sort of
paper of note for the fair metropolis, and so maybe
crosswords for a time were considered sort of like tabloid
esque or sort of lower class.
Speaker 5 (11:45):
Absolutely, that's exactly what they were. It was frivolous, It
was nothing. They they didn't print comics and they still don't. Uh.
New York World was sort of this tabloid the newspaper. Uh,
the phrase yellow journalism comes from it because they had
a common strip called the Yellow Kid. And uh, but yes,
they they finally buckled. It took a world war for
(12:08):
the New York Times to buckle. It was World War
two a week and a half after Pearl Harbor. There's
an internal memo that says, you know what, people need
a little distraction. Uh there might be blackouts, was was
what he said. So this, so that is when they
and like you, you said no, They said, you know what,
(12:29):
We're just gonna be the best at what we do.
And so they did and they and they hired this
woman who was who was really good at she's sort
of reformed. She's a legend in the crossword community, Margaret
Petheridge ferrr and she h a great name. And she
made them symmetrical. She got rid of the mistakes the
(12:50):
two letter words. So it did become the market leader
and it still is.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
And then yeah, there's a there's a craft to it.
There's a flow and like a sort of an esthetic
to a good crossword that is in and of itself,
something to kind of enjoy.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
Right.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
That leads to Yeah, that leads to one of my
questions was is this person, the one who sort of
codified the coded language of crossword clues, like everybody knows
these certain tricks. If something is abbreviated in the clue,
then the answer is going to be abbreviated.
Speaker 5 (13:22):
You know what I'm talking about. Yeah, no, I she
did a little of that. What's interesting, though, is they
those first crossword puzzles were very trivia oriented and so
they weren't clever. Like to me, a good crossword puzzle
now is it's all about wordplay and anagrams. That's kind
(13:43):
I like. And Will Schwartz introduced he's the current New
York Times gedder, and he introduced a lot of that.
You have his favorite clue if you ask him, of
all time. It seems good to me. I wouldn't say
it's my favorite, but it was. It turns into another story,
was the clue. And it's a two word phrase, a
long phrase, spiral staircase. So it turns pretty good. Yeah,
(14:08):
there's some levels there, there are levels. Yeah, two levels.
Nicely done, thank you sir. But yes, so that that
only came out later. And actually it's the British who
who really were into the wordplay, and Americans they they
look down on Americans. They were like those those crosswords
(14:28):
are too easy.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
And so now the crossword has become a normalized thing
here in Atlanta. For a long time there was a
paper called Creative Loafing and it was the Goldilocks Zone
of crosswords. If People Magazine is too easy and the
infamous Sunday New York Times is too difficult, then you
could get together at It used to come out on
(14:50):
Thursdays here, so we would go to our local chicken
wing place and hang out for an hour after work
while we tried to while we would do the cross
Usually between like two or three of us, we could
figure it.
Speaker 2 (15:02):
Out pretty much a bit of a brain trust. Yeah, no, Ben,
you were usually taking the lead on this. This is
really more your thing. We were just kind of there
for support. But you mentioned Will Schwartz as well, and
there's I just wanted to mention it for anyone that
wants to find out more about the craze. I haven't
seen this myself, but I know it's supposed to be
good wordplay. It's a documentary that sort of talks specifically
(15:23):
about the bit of the history and just specifically about
his tenure as the crossword puzzle editor for Love Marit.
Speaker 5 (15:29):
Times, and can I just throw in one quick one
about the easy and hard because a few years ago
the start of the reason I started this book and
podcast was a few years ago I was the answer
to a clue in the New York Times cross re puzzle,
and as a word nerd, I was like, this is
the best day of my life, Like, this is better.
Speaker 3 (15:52):
Do you have it?
Speaker 5 (15:53):
Of course, But here's the twist. The twist is my
brother in law. Then I was on out nine, but
my brother in law sent me a very brother in
law email the next day He's like, congrats, but you
should know you're in the Saturday puzzle, and the Saturday
is the puzzle. All the answers are totally obscure, like
(16:15):
like you know the palm of the Gomo Ti tree
and h and so his point was.
Speaker 3 (16:21):
The implication that you're a deep cut, the deepest cut.
Speaker 5 (16:24):
I am so obscure, no one knows who I am.
This is not accomplished. Hard. I think you should.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
I think you should leave a like partially completed versions
of the crossword around for your kids and let them
discover it for themselves.
Speaker 5 (16:42):
Also, the only one that they would get wouldn't be me.
Speaker 3 (16:45):
Yeah, what a brother in law thing to Jujo.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
Just send an email about this first of all, and
the most backhanded of compliments, that is, I hope he's okay.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
I want to shout out. I want to shout out
one of the many books that you have written, a
and one that informs your expertise in our conversation before
we move to the next puzzle. You are the author
of not just the podcast, but the book The Puzzler,
One Man's Quest to solve the most baffling puzzles ever,
from crosswords to jigsaws to the meaning of life.
Speaker 5 (17:17):
That's it a very humble title.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
And I have one tiny thing to add more pose
it here before we move on. How come there hasn't
been a movie about a crossword puzzle related serial killer.
Speaker 3 (17:30):
I leave it with you, I leave it with the
group as there not if there isn't there, there should
be anything. I haven't seen it. I want to find
out what it is.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
I must be thinking it like a mini series. Okay, yes,
that's a good call. No, we'll have to look into that.
But let's say a j makes the film. Before we
get to it, we have another puzzle that I don't
know about you, guys, Maxwell, but this was brand new
to me. I have never heard of the Masquerade.
Speaker 5 (18:00):
Range, yet this one I endured up because I actually
got caught up in it a little because I'm older
than you guys, So I was this was published. It
was a book. It was a book published in nineteen
seventy nine in the UK, and it was called Masquerade
(18:23):
and the Artists. It was an illustrated book and there's
gorgeous illustrations and they contained clues to a buried treasure
in the UK. An actual it was a rabbit, a
gold and gem encrusted rabbit, buried somewhere in England. And
people went bananas like there were thousands of treasure hunters
(18:43):
and they dug up yards and gardens. They just created chaos.
They the artist Kit Williams, he received death threats and
in the middle of the night three am visits from
people covered in mud. People were arrested, they had to
be rescued from cliffs, and so it was just a
(19:03):
mania and I loved I never went to England, but
I spent you know, hours looking at these, uh these
illustrations for clues, which of course I never cracked.
Speaker 3 (19:15):
The golden hair.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
The gold hair absolutely new to me, and I mean, honestly,
even the concept seems very novel, because at first I
was going to ask, like, were people just taking it
too seriously? But no, there was a thing, there was
an object of of whatever this this narrative.
Speaker 5 (19:31):
It was, and it was you know, it was insured
for a couple hundred thousand dollars, so it was a
real thing, and actually it spawned all of these other there.
It's a genre called armchair treasure hunts.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
Oh, like that guy in the US right, Well.
Speaker 5 (19:46):
There's the secret was a famous one where they're twelve
treasures buried throughout North America and only three of them
have been found. So people are still obsessed on Like
you go on these these websites, you know, and people
are man like they are. They've got all these theories,
they've got all these and they get very angry at
(20:08):
the other one for having a different theory that the masquerade.
Just to close that loop, that one was solved three
years later. It was buried in beneath the statue a
statue of Catherine of Aragon, of the Queen, and in
a town called Bedford, and it was buried underneath the
(20:29):
tip of a shadow cast at noon on the equinox.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
Oh my gosh, that's just so.
Speaker 2 (20:34):
It is like spe was there a bit of a
scandal though that maybe there were some accusations of cheating.
Speaker 5 (20:42):
Yes, and not just accusation. It was the guy who
solved it did cheat. He got inside information from the
ex girlfriend of the artist. And the artists are super
bummed out. Uh. They the official winners were. These were
these two physics teachers who actually solved it for real,
but they didn't get the They didn't get the rabbit.
(21:02):
The cheater got the rabbit. So but yes, it was, Uh,
it was despite the scandal at the end, enormously influential.
You might have also, I don't know if you. I
don't think you've done an episode on Forest Fen. That's
a famous treasure hunt.
Speaker 1 (21:18):
That's who I was thinking. That's what I was thinking about. Yeah,
and that also with the Armchair treasure Hunt a j
What I find fascinating about these is that this led
to conspiracy theorists. Of course, like in the Forest Fen
case and the Secret case and in the Golden Hair case,
weren't there some people who were like, there's something up
(21:41):
with this official story there's.
Speaker 5 (21:43):
More exactly that was. I mean, this is a hint
into the human mind because people, even years after it
had been found, they were like, no, my my theory
is correct. It really is here. It's really under the
you know, the Tower of London, or you know that
(22:04):
people just get so attached to their theory that they
just cannot switch gears.
Speaker 1 (22:10):
Open your eyes, sheeple. The hair is still out there.
It's still out there.
Speaker 5 (22:15):
Go dig up some yards in England. But luckily no
one died during the Masquerade hunt. But Forrest Fenn, this
was a treasure buried in the Rockies and I think
it was twenty ten about and he had a book
with clues to it, and five people died while searching
for that treasure.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
So would you argue that maybe there's you know, you
got to be really careful with this kind of stuff.
Speaker 5 (22:39):
No, just go ahead and just go nuts, you know
what I mean, just jump off cliffs.
Speaker 2 (22:44):
And at what point does it become intriguing enough to
spawn that kind of devotion and obsession? Like, you know,
not anybody has the chops to pull something like this off,
because it requires enough notoriety, a b. It has to
be cleverly constructed to have enough people that don't just
aren't just able to solve it instantly, like are there
(23:05):
any elements that you see and stuff like this, because
I'd really never heard of this, and now I want
to find out more about what makes a good one
of these sort of real world mystery kind of treasure
hunt things.
Speaker 1 (23:17):
Well, Finn had a poem. I loved the poem, right,
And I guess the idea is that you can play
along at home, right, you get you get pieces, and
there's this maddening thing about the human need for pattern recognition. Right,
That's that's my armchair guess because I was obsessed with
a Finn situation for a while and that was kind
(23:38):
of sad when it was found.
Speaker 5 (23:40):
Did you go out and look for it?
Speaker 1 (23:43):
I did. I did not go out and look for it,
but my friends, I spent probably a little too much
time on those forums. I was thinking, I'm never gonna
find it, but I want to learn about it, and
I would literally make popcorn and then go online and
read various Yeah, I would read various like subreddits. So
I came in very late in the game. This was
(24:05):
like twenty fifteen, twenty sixteen.
Speaker 2 (24:08):
And I guess my question can really apply to any
of these crazes or like, you know, what makes something
you know, of enough interest that enough people are going
to be involved, but difficult enough that people aren't gonna
be able to solve that. That injects a certain amount
of competition, a certain amount of kind of you know,
sportsmanised ship, and like it creates sort of a community,
(24:29):
whether it be crossword puzzles, these real life treasure hunts,
or you know, other types of puzzles that we're going
to get into. Do you have any thoughts about, like
what what makes these things kind of catch the public imagination?
Speaker 1 (24:41):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (24:41):
I think there a couple of factors. One is just lock.
It's like tulip mania, something just blows up and reaches
a tipping point. Another is a lot of these manias
seem to happen during Like the Jigsaw puzzle mania was
during the depression, a wordle was during the pandemic, So
there's a little of that going on. They asked, that
(25:06):
is a puzzle with no real answer exactly that is,
but it's the same. That's another cause is, like you said,
we are wired to look for patterns, whether or not
they exist, So this is a very deep I mean
the first puzzle, of course, was you know, who do
I mat with? Who do how do I eat?
Speaker 1 (25:25):
You know?
Speaker 5 (25:25):
So, so it's all of the same and uh and
so we have a very deep need for this and uh.
And puzzles just satisfy that that aha instinct that we
that we are wired to look for. And I love them.
I mean, I think they have a dark side. Like
you say, QAnon is kind of a big puzzle, But
on the other hand, I think that there are wonderful
(25:48):
They're like a way to train your minds. And here's
a little though this is I tried a little wisdom
for my kids. Quincy Jones as a saying, he says,
I don't have problems. I have puzzles in my life.
Speaker 1 (26:02):
Oh that's beautiful.
Speaker 5 (26:03):
Yeah, he reframes life as a series of puzzle This
is much more pleasant.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
But also as a record producer, you know, as a
music producer, when you're in the studio with an artist,
it's a series of problems that you're trying to solve creatively,
you know. So, I mean, I think that's what he's
referring to in a lot of ways too, is how
do I figure out how to get these pieces to
fit together, get these elements to work together harmoniously, because,
like you know, as a sort of fair weather armchair
(26:28):
music producer myself, that is part of the fun is
figuring out how to get these disparate elements to kind
of play nice together.
Speaker 1 (26:34):
And I want to go back to the point you
raise about jigsaw puzzles, AJ, because there is there is
one guy that you spoke to pretty recently who might
be one of the few people who likes jigsaw puzzles
more than you. I'm thinking about Roy Wood Junior.
Speaker 5 (26:52):
Oh. Yes, he's a huge fan, and he's he's a
great comedian, but he does jigsaws and he he glues
him to get other and uh and puts them on
his wall, which I think some people do. When I
went into this book, I was actually not a huge
big jigsaw fan. I have converted. I actually really I
converted so much that for the book, I competed as
(27:14):
with my family as Team USA in the World Jigsaw
Puzzle Championships, and we sucked so hard.
Speaker 3 (27:23):
It's a very specific skill set.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
I heard you talk about this on public radio not
too too long ago.
Speaker 5 (27:29):
We came in second to last. We were just an
embarrassment to our country, and they were every you know,
Hungary was ahead of us, Turkey, you name it, the Russians.
The Russians one so fast. There were rumors of, you know,
of performance enhancing. So juicy juicy.
Speaker 1 (27:49):
The puzzle, Hi Max jumping in here.
Speaker 3 (27:51):
What does juicing in jigsaw?
Speaker 1 (27:53):
Puzzle jigsaw juicy, let's call it jigsaw juicy, jigsaw jy.
Speaker 5 (27:56):
Sorry about the sirens. Wait, I'm guessing it. You know
it was adderall.
Speaker 1 (28:02):
They did.
Speaker 5 (28:03):
They did recommend advil because you are the way set
up is eight hours straight. You've got four people on
a team, and you have four big puzzles of like
two thousand pieces each, so you are standing over with
your back hunch for eight hours. So advil is recommended
and allowed. I don't know. I'm sure there's adderall and other.
Speaker 2 (28:23):
Adderall and advil is like a jigsaw speedball in the community.
Speaker 1 (28:28):
I would want something. I would want something that relaxes
you a little bit, because I feel like there would
be there would be a lot of pressure. And I
remember this story about your experience when I heard it,
because you had been training right and we're feeling you
guys are feeling pretty good about it. And there's certain
strategies that I think, as you said, because when I
(28:49):
was hearing this, it was a look into the mind
of the everyman learning to master jigsaws, and I was thinking, yeah,
you get the quarter pieces right, you get the edges,
you go like that, and apparently that is a rookie
move or something like that.
Speaker 5 (29:03):
It is, it is sometimes acceptable, but it depends on
the puzzle. If it's a very colorful puzzle, then then
some of the pros go by sorting by color first
and then to the edges. I mean, it is hilarious
the amount of strategy that goes into this. And they
division of labor so they have an expert on the team,
(29:23):
the Russian team who's like really good at at monocrement,
Like if there's a blue sky, she will sort them
all into different shapes so that it all fits together.
But you know, I find that with everything, whatever it is,
even if it's a seemingly trivial thing, like if you
are at the top of Michael Jordan's and Lebron James
is of anything is just fascinating to watch.
Speaker 2 (29:45):
But it's also it's not using the same I'm imagining
it's not using the same parts of your brain that
sorting out word puzzles are. Can you talk a little
bit about the it's obviously pattern recognition and data mining
slash sorting, But does it operate on the sand does
Does your brain require the same types of smart says
(30:06):
it does to do word puzzles or is it completely different?
Speaker 5 (30:09):
I would say that there are some similarities between all puzzles,
but you're right there are. This is much more spatial.
I am terrible at space. Like it takes me five
I did not solve a rubiks cube for fifty two years,
like because I solved it when I was fifty two.
But all of them require things like being able to
(30:31):
think outside the box, which I can say because that
cliche comes from puzzles. Sure, it was the nine dots
uh puzzle and you have to connect them with four
pencil straight lines and you have to go outside the box.
So all spoiler guys, spoilers, Oh yeah, sorry, sorry for
spoiling that ancient puzzle. No, speaking of puzzles, we have
(30:56):
run into a puzzle situation.
Speaker 1 (30:58):
My friend, I think, uh, I think this is a
two parter.
Speaker 2 (31:01):
Oh man, it's time to pick up the pieces and
try our hand to putting together a second. I don't know,
I'm not doing very well with my puzzle metaphorce here apologize,
but yes, indeed, Aj is such a delight and we
kind of had a feeling this might happen. We did
have two complete topics on the docket with him, and
we realized that just one of them was going to
(31:21):
be a two parter.
Speaker 3 (31:22):
So look for the next one sometime in the new year.
And it's a doozy as well.
Speaker 1 (31:27):
Agreed and big, big thanks to the legendary A. J.
Jacobs for classing up our show. Big thanks to our
super producer mister Max Williams, and additional thanks to our
guest super producer Paul Mission Control Decade Woop Woop.
Speaker 2 (31:42):
Alex Williams who composed this banging theme you hear before
your very ears. Christoph Rasciotis needs Jeff Coates here in
spirit and Ben last, but not least first in my heart, sir,
the missing Jigsaw puzzle piece to my very soul.
Speaker 1 (31:57):
You, sir, you're the Waldo to my wares Way.
Speaker 3 (32:02):
We'll see you next time, folks.
Speaker 2 (32:10):
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Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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