December 21, 2023 • 43 mins
How did the Rubik's Cube become a global phenomenon? Where exactly is Waldo? In part one of this series, legendary author and podcaster AJ Jacobs regales the gang with the wide world of Puzzlers, from early human history to the modern day.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show Ridiculous Historians. Shout out to our super producer,
mister Max Williams. You're Noel Brown. I've Ben Bollen.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
No.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
No.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
This is part two of an amazing conversation we have
had with the puzzler himself, the legendary author AJ Jacobs.
Speaker 4 (00:44):
Too cool, and I just have to say, uh, I
just I couldn't even bring it upon myself to believe
that he really is a fan of the show, but
he's dropping so many deep cuts from like episodes that
we forgot we even did. It turns out it's actually
the case. And I think we're both beyond flatter because
we're huge fans of AJ's work as well. And this
conversation went all kinds of fun places, and I think
we can probably just join it already in progress.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
What are some of the I don't know. We talked
about the sociological sort of milieu or environment within which
these crazes, good and bad grow. Right, puzzles can become
incredibly popular, which hunts happen historically, right when people are
looking for some sort of escape, some sort of cause
(01:27):
that they can blame and maybe we go back to
something you mentioned with jigsaws and the Great Depression, because
at first plance, honestly, it sounds like jigsaws might be
a difficult thing for people in the depression. Money is tight.
You have to buy the puzzle, right you can't. I
(01:48):
guess you could rent a jigsaw. That's good.
Speaker 5 (01:50):
There were jigsaw libraries during the Depression. Yeah, really, yeah, yeah, Well,
just to back up, jigsaws were invented in seventeen sixty
by this British map maker named John Spillsbury. They called
them dissected maps, and they were meant to be a
learning tool. So the idea was, you know, you get
your young British aristocrats and they like, here's the country
(02:14):
that you should colonize and plunder, and you know that
teach them how to carve up the world early on.
And but it really caught on in the Great Depression
for a couple of reasons. Partly, like you said, people
needed a distraction, and you know, movies were huge and
jigsaws were huge. Also technology. They originally jigsaws were made
(02:38):
with a jigsaw. They were made out of wood carving.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
With a jigsaw.
Speaker 5 (02:44):
But then they invented this cookie cutter like machine that
could chop down on cardboard and make them really quickly
mass produced. So during the depression you had these weekly
dime jigsaw puzzles and people would line up like a
I don't know whatever, people line up for now Billie
Eilish concert and so and and as with all the
(03:07):
other puzzle crazes, you had moral panic. You had a
preacher who said Nero fiddled while Rome was burning, and
we will go down in history as the nation who
worked jigsaw puzzles while our country was falling to ruins.
Speaker 3 (03:19):
And amazing armists.
Speaker 5 (03:22):
Yes, no, it did not fall to.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
No, I'm inverted. I'm into it now.
Speaker 4 (03:29):
Isn't Nero The idea of neuro fiddling while Rome burns?
Almost akin to let them eat cake?
Speaker 3 (03:34):
Like? It's just sort of like a myth, that.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
Right, I don't know that.
Speaker 5 (03:39):
I can't remember whether, I don't think well.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
The problem with the leaders of the ancient past, whether
they be whether they be Roman emperors or whether they
be Catholic popes, is that the history gets written after
their death, usually by a guy who is terrified of
upsetting the current ruler. They'll say, okay, that guy was terrible,
(04:02):
and you know, usually there's a lot of truth to that,
but then they'll lean in hard so that they don't
get executed.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
Excellent point.
Speaker 5 (04:10):
Excellent point. And there was even a split in the
in the jigsaw community during the depression between sort of
the rich and the poor, the powerful and because the
rich and there still are these these fancy artisanal wooden
jigsaw puzzles that you can pay thousands of dollars for
(04:30):
in their hand carved and one of the famous ones
during the depression was called par Puzzles. And here's a
this is a fun I would maybe not so fun fact,
but they had all of these high end ones have
a they have a signature piece, like a shape that
is in every puzzle. And the shape that Par went
(04:51):
with in the thirties was a swastika. Oh boy, and
that turned out to be not a great choice, so
they had to switch to a seahorse.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
Uh horses here, yeah, sea horse.
Speaker 3 (05:06):
Yeah, we did.
Speaker 4 (05:07):
We did an episode. We did an episode on I
believe it was just weird dental stuff and there was
a material that dentures were once made. It was referred
to as seahorse teeth, which when you read it on paper,
it just seems beyond ridiculous because seahors are so small
do they even have teeth? But what it was referring
to actually was hippopotamus teeth. They're referring to them as
sea horses is a delightful misnomer.
Speaker 5 (05:30):
I heard that on this very show, thank you. And
also I made me think because hippoponamous. I do believe
hippo is horse and us river horse is what it
translates to, and it's not that far off. Also, if
you're around a hippopotamus, leave they are the most dangerous
(05:51):
Uh that is not a yeah, the most dangerous land mammal. Right,
shout out to the Mosquitos for most dangerous animal or humans?
Moving on, So so okay, so there are these, there
are these bespoke. There's a spectrum of jigsaws there, right,
the mass produced ones, and then there's this upper echelon
(06:11):
of bespoke hand carved you know, hardwood what have used.
And those are probably the ones that the aristocrats are
still buying, right yeah, and they had. I mean, there's
a wonderful company if you can afford it, which I can't.
I is called Stave and They're in Vermont and they
make these wooden puzzles. Everyone is different, and they have
(06:33):
people just carving them in what looks like a huge
sewing machine. And Bill Gates is a is a client,
and and they're called they're thousands of dollars like they are,
you know, they can go up to ten thousand dollars,
and they're super tricky. The guy who founded them calls
himself the tormentor in chief because he'll have puzzles that
(06:54):
they don't. They they look like edge pieces, but they're not.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
They don't.
Speaker 5 (06:58):
They have holes in the middle of the puzzle. They
have pieces from other puzzles intentionally stuck in that don't
fit at all, just to mess with your mind.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
I'm looking at just for reference, ridiculous historians. I am
looking at Steve puzzles dot Com too. I am looking
at their Honuka puzzle right now. It is two hundred pieces.
It is two thousand, three hundred and ninety five dollars,
and just from the picture it looks kind of simple.
I'm looking at and I'm thinking, well, I could knock
(07:29):
this one out.
Speaker 3 (07:29):
Got some neat depth to them.
Speaker 4 (07:31):
But I will say based on the hell the whole
idea of puzzle ending libraries. They have a rental program
and a timeshare program for their puzzles, so that's how
you know. Then they have a whole page that descript
that explains the difference, so hilarious.
Speaker 5 (07:49):
Yeah, that's the I mean they I hope they're not
listening because they for the book, they lent me like
five beautiful puzzles, oh wow. And I just have not
had a chance to return them, but I will, but
I will stay.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
Yeah, as long as you eventually return it, it's fine, right,
And yeah, I have been borrowing a.
Speaker 3 (08:10):
I think the statutes passed.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
I've been borrowing a uh uh encyclopedia from my high
school for quite some time now, but I will return
it at one point when I am done reading it.
Speaker 4 (08:26):
I don't know if they I think the internet has
sort of replaced the encyclopedia sold door to door and
they were very I.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
Had. I've got an unabridged dictionary, not encyclopedia because that
would be in a set, right. But and that's that's
kind of a puzzle too when you think about it,
I like what I guess it goes to what we
define as a puzzle, and you know, you talked briefly
about the Rubik's cube, which I don't know about you, nol,
(08:59):
but those are still pretty baffling to me. I could
work through it, but I'm constantly befuddled and baffled by
those speed cubers.
Speaker 4 (09:10):
Yeah, and then there's there's even more elaborate versions and
shapes and sort of like hex like three dimensional sort
of hex hexagonal versions or whatever. But whenever I think
of these three dimensional puzzles, I don't know about you guys,
in my mind always goes back to the lament configuration
from Clive Parker Hell Raiser movies. And I'm a little
suspicious of these because I'm always afraid they're going to
(09:31):
summon these demonic, you know, snm.
Speaker 3 (09:34):
Creatures from Hell. But I don't know about you.
Speaker 4 (09:36):
Tell us about three D puzzles and some of these
like what's what's the fifteen puzzle? And believe there was
a bit of a scandal involved in that one too.
Speaker 5 (09:45):
Yeah, this was actually this was a spatial puzzle that
of This was sort of the Rubis cube of his time,
the eighteen eighties, and it was called you've actually I'm
sure seen it. It's the little square with fifteen tiles
and an empty space, and you have to rearra it's
the tile.
Speaker 3 (10:00):
So it's like a cracker bear.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
I've got several yes, like a cracker BEARA.
Speaker 5 (10:08):
This was huge in the eighteen eighties. And again it
was like a New York Times called a pestilence on
our society and uh, and it was invented by a
postal worker. But the main character in this craze was
a huckster. He was like this, this hooxter, a huckster
named Sam Lloyd.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
Next do we get some like huckster con man. This
will sound great in post.
Speaker 5 (10:35):
So he claimed to have invented them, even though he didn't,
and he sold millions of them, and he partly he
did it by scamming America. He said that he would
pay one thousand dollars, which in eighteen eighty now you
know something, he said, anyone who can solve the fifteen
puzzle from this particular starting arrangement will get a thousand dollars.
(10:56):
But the catch was it was rigged. There are seven
billion initial arrangements of the fifteen puzzle, and half of
them can be solved and half mathematically just cannot be solved.
So he put them in an impossible arrangement and just
messed with people's minds and sold millions of them, and
that one sort of died out. It's not like crosswords
(11:19):
are still big, but the fifteen puzzle it had a
little resurgence when Bobby Fisher, the chess legend, slightly disturbed
personality for him. There you go. Well, he was searching
for himself, yes, for sanity. He was obsessed with him
and solved speed solved one on the Johnny Carson Show
(11:42):
in nineteen seventy two and he like in seventeen seconds.
So that chess and fifteen puzzles were Bobby Fisher's obsessions.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
And this is nuts because we can see, you know,
Chess requires such a dare I say, myopic commitment into
it that other puzzles, because Chess is a game that
is also a puzzle, right, So I think when you
get so deep into the world of chess, and I'm
cartoonishly bad at that game, when you get so deep
(12:10):
into it, then other puzzles seem kind of like elementary.
It's like playing a really hard video game and then
you go back to Solitaire and you're like, oh, I
got this.
Speaker 3 (12:20):
It's a black eight, it's a red seven. Nailed it again.
Speaker 4 (12:23):
I guess it all comes down to something called game theory, right,
and like, you know, a good puzzle, And to maybe
a question I asked earlier, like what makes one of
these really catch on? It needs to be difficult enough
to be not so banging your head against a wall,
but also difficult enough to like really feel like you
have a challenge and that you've succeeded in some small
(12:43):
way if you solve it. Can you just talk a
little bit what you've run into in terms of game
theory and like how that sort of intersects with these
and to Ben's point, like how puzzles now kind of
are in the realm of video games in a lot
of ways.
Speaker 5 (12:58):
Oh yeah, it's some of the greatest puzzles now or
video games, which my kids always argue it is, like
I'm not wasting time, I'm doing but the But like
you said, there's a goldilock zone, Like it's very easy
to make an impossible puzzle, uh, and it's also easy
to make it too easy puzzle, so you want it
just in the middle. And speaking of chess, there are
(13:25):
what are called chess puzzles or chess problems where you
set up the pieces in a certain way and you
have to get to checkmate in you know, five moves.
And I actually for the book, I interviewed Gary kasper
Off and he he says, I'm not the best chess
I am. I was the best chess player. But chess
(13:47):
puzzles are different. It's a different skill. And he he said, like,
there are crazy chess puzzles that not even the best
chess puzzlers can do that require five hundred moves. You
have to see five hundred moves in advance. The only
only artificial intelligence can solve them. Only computers can solve these.
(14:10):
So he but, but that speaks to that's not a
fun puzzle unless you're ascension robot. Maybe you find enjoying
a fun puzzle is right in there where it's like
five moves and it's surprising. That's what it's like. You
have to sacrifice your queen, something surprising and delightful. That
to me makes a good puzzle.
Speaker 3 (14:30):
Got it?
Speaker 1 (14:31):
I think another good puzzle thing to this point, and
this brings us to our next graze, which may be
near and dear to some of our listeners. One of
the other incredibly like tantalizing things about a good puzzle
is you realize that if you shift your perspective right,
if your mind is the piece that moves, then you
(14:53):
will see the answer that has already been there the
entirety of the time, Which brings us to the great
obsession of nineteen eighties America amid a certain demographic and
of course someone who will always be welcome at conventions
and coseplay gatherings. We ask you, aj where is Waldo?
Speaker 5 (15:16):
Where is Waldo? Exactly? He is all over, at least
in the eighties. And I loved researching the history of
Where's Waldo? Because there's, first of all, there's a long
history of artists hiding stuff in paintings. There's one Renaissance
painter who's famous for hiding a pickled cucumber in all
of his paintings. So I'm sure Freudians, Yes, Leonardo da
(15:40):
Vinci also hid things in his paintings, not as much
as Dan Brown claimed in the Da Vinci Code. You know,
I don't think that the Last Supper is a secret
clue that Jesus is a proud papa. But I do
think that there are legitimate art historians who say there
are easter eggs. But like in the Last Supper, if
(16:02):
you look at the arrangement of the roles, the bread
rolls on the table, it looks eerily like notes in
a musical notes and people have played these notes and
it's actually it's not bad. It sounds like So there
was that.
Speaker 4 (16:21):
In fact, Da Vinci also hid actual penises in many
of his paintings.
Speaker 5 (16:25):
So is that true in you can see Oh, I say, yeah,
it wasn't so hard to find those. Yeah, well this, uh,
speaking of that, I don't know what that segue means,
doesn't Martin Martin Hanford is the British artist who probably
(16:45):
has a penis, and he is the one who created
the uh Where's Waldo? In nineteen eighty seven. God damn
it so smooth. And he actually he had done a
couple of Where's Waldo like paintings. He did a album
cover for a group called the Vapors. I don't know,
I had never heard of them.
Speaker 3 (17:04):
It was like a surf rock situation, perhaps, I don't know.
Speaker 5 (17:07):
Yeah, and he uh, that was a little more adult.
That was a scene, a crowd scene, and there was
a secret sniper like with a rifle which would not
go over with Where's Waldow? But he came out with
Where's Waldow in nineteen eighty seven, and this, of course
are these huge scenes and you have to find the
little guy with the red and white striped sweater and
(17:29):
the glasses. And it was a massive, you know, forty
million copies sold all over the world. And there's actually
the original was called Where's Wahlie? That's what it was
called in Britain, and Waldo is the American one, and
I have a couple of the foreign ones there is well,
maybe you can guess where is the va isht water
(17:53):
va Germany.
Speaker 3 (17:56):
I had to jump in real quick.
Speaker 2 (17:58):
The vapors are in English wave and power popping that
exists initially existed between nineteen seventy eighty and nineteen eighty one.
They had a hit song which was titled Turning Japanese, which.
Speaker 4 (18:10):
Oh, I really think so yes, the album covers neat.
I mean, he really can see that Where's Waldo aesthetic?
But it is like a crowd scene, but the center
it's sort of on a grassy knoll situation, and they
the figures are crowded around this like sort of like
cadre of ambulances because it would appear that someone has
been shot because you can't see in the top corner
(18:32):
the waldou of this painting is in fact a sniper
putting away his gun. But the center crowd it makes
the shape of an eye, and like everything else above it,
it's really cool. But yeah, and also on this article
that I found on Unremembered History that shows this, it
points out that he was really inspired by a lot
of classical paintings that have these tableaus where there's like
(18:55):
a city or a scene a village and there's all
kinds of stuff going on, people doing all kinds of
little things, and they're full of Easter eggs, you know.
Speaker 5 (19:04):
Yeah, yeah, there's some great Easter eggs like Hieronymous Bosh
to it like it looks like and there I think
there is theories that he was uh like tripping on
some hallucinogen.
Speaker 3 (19:15):
That very very disturbing.
Speaker 1 (19:18):
Yeah. I was able to see some of those in
person earlier this year, the Bosh pains, and they still
don't let you photograph them, which I feels like kind
of a rip to me, But I'm sure there are
legitimate reasons. Museum restorationist and curators please understand that we've
got your back. Uh, and we're we're not going to
(19:41):
take pictures any longer where we are not supposed to,
because let me tell you I had to Uh, I
had learn I had to learn a language pretty quickly
with that museum curator when I got when I got
caught snapping and snitching with my iPhone, which which takes
us to an other things. So, so where's Waldo? The
(20:03):
answer is around the world, but he's using different identities.
Speaker 5 (20:06):
Is that there's Finn horrid Ga. Fien horrid Ga is uh, what's.
Speaker 3 (20:17):
That Finland perhaps or somewhere in.
Speaker 5 (20:21):
Yeah, But can I give you my favorite where's Waldo?
Fact is that it has been consistently on the American
Library Association's list of most banned books. And I researched this,
and this is not apocryphal. This is because in one
beach scene in one of his books, there's a small
(20:44):
illustration of a woman and she's not wearing a bikini top,
and some mothers got really upset and and you can't
even see like there's there's no actual nipple. You can
sort of see a side boom, but because she's lying
face down. But it was enough to get banned in
several states and make this list, and the publisher had
(21:07):
to do like an emergency version with a like a
new bikini top.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
A collector's and wait till the New York Times finds
out about this. I think we're due for another moral panic.
Speaker 4 (21:18):
You know, it's interesting that the aesthetic of Where's Walla though,
to me, is very European, Like just the whole vibe
of it feels like a book that would be popular
in Europe, and you know, they are much more open
about nudity and little things and this, you know, a
nude sunbather is something that you that would be a
normal thing to see in a beach scene. You can
(21:39):
only do so many different things and have it be
like super crowded. So it makes perfect sense that they
were that he would have done that.
Speaker 5 (21:45):
But yeah, yeah, no one in England or in Germany
was complaining exactly right.
Speaker 1 (21:53):
I was going to say, famously more chill, but I
guess it depends on the era of time that we're
referring to. So speaking of only having only so many things,
we have made this a two parter and we have
(22:15):
to we can't talk about every puzzle. Unfortunately, to learn more,
you're going to have to read AJ's book, The Puzzler
and tune into The Puzzler Podcast. But before we go,
fellow ridiculous historians, there's one that I'm sure we've all
been waiting for.
Speaker 3 (22:32):
I hope we have.
Speaker 4 (22:33):
I jumped the gun and set up the wrong thing
when I was talking about the Lament configuration, which is
sort of this hellish Rubik's cube. But this now we're
here with the idea of three dimensional puzzles and specifically
Rubi's cube being the craze. But that wasn't the only
example of this type of thing, right.
Speaker 5 (22:52):
Right, right, Wait, can I just do one last visual puzzle,
because yeah, it could be my favorite puzzle ever. It
was a few years about three years ago, the Baltimore
Sun printed one of those spot the Difference puzzles and
it was two pictures. You know, you have to find
the difference, and it was a kid brushing his teeth
(23:15):
in his pajamas. And the next day, the best correction
in newspaper history had said, we regret to inform you
that those two pictures were actually identical.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
Amazy, I've always if you've always thought that, right, like
if you're looking at a very difficult version of those
you've always thought, Okay, this is a prank, so that
actually feel.
Speaker 3 (23:39):
Like you're going insane. I feel like, yeah, it.
Speaker 5 (23:42):
Wasn't even April Fools. It was just they messed up
and it was just can you imagine the human the
hours of human wasted, you know, wasted.
Speaker 4 (23:51):
Like it's because you refused your mind refuses to accept
that in the moment, you know, I'm just missing something.
Speaker 3 (23:59):
The power.
Speaker 1 (24:02):
I do have immense respect though, for that that hypothetical
person who is in that rarefied cognitive air, the person
who not only looked at this extensively but wrote to
the Baltimore Sun and told them the picture was identical.
That's a lot of self confidence.
Speaker 3 (24:20):
That's true.
Speaker 1 (24:21):
That is true.
Speaker 4 (24:22):
Kind of like the people that leave mean podcast reviews.
You know, who are these people? And where do you
get your chutzpah? But yeah, no, no, If we could, though,
I would love to hear a little bit more about
some of these kind of art object type puzzles. You know,
I think they're like, I don't know, if you saw
the glass onion, the the you know, there was so many.
Speaker 3 (24:41):
Cool puzzles that were like these.
Speaker 4 (24:44):
You know, things, these like things that you interact with
that were all crazy bespoke. But to me, in my mind,
I always go back to the humble Rubik's cube. But
that represents sort of a modernized, you know, plasticified eighties
version of something that's very historic, you know, and that
you would have seen in like the Dan Browns of
the World's kind of writings.
Speaker 1 (25:04):
Totally like that.
Speaker 5 (25:05):
Well, well, let me give you a quick Rubik's cube
and then we'll move to like sort of the advanced
through excube.
Speaker 3 (25:12):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, But.
Speaker 5 (25:13):
The Rubik's cube was invented by Erno Rubik. He was
an architecture teacher in Hungary and he wanted to use
it as a teaching tool. Now this makes me feel better.
It took Erno Rubik himself one month to solve his
own cube.
Speaker 3 (25:26):
Oh wow.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
So yeah, I only know that because years ago I
wrote a show called The Stuff of Genius and we
went and looked at inventors that the world. And that's
one of the facts that that stuck with me. First off,
I love it when an invention is named after the
guy who actually invented it, you know what I mean. Rice,
And I also love just to get this part in.
(25:49):
I also love that that fact that he created something
he didn't understand. It reminds me a little bit of
artificial intelligence.
Speaker 4 (25:57):
I was going to ask, I mean, it seems to
me that, you know, I would assume that anyone that's
creating a puzzle or and designing a game that they're selling,
what's the process for that? Like, I would imagine that
a lot of cases you're working backwards from the solution.
But this is a great example of how maybe that's
not always the case.
Speaker 3 (26:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (26:14):
He writes about it in his autobiography, and I actually
found it very inspiring. He talks about how he packed
his room with all sorts of just random crap so
like safety pins and buttons and crayons, and it was
like a little playground for his mind. And from that
he eventually came up with the rubric cube that he
(26:36):
couldn't solve. And actually it was very hard to sell
it to a toy company because they were a lot
of this is too hard, no one's gonna want to
do this. And finally he sold it to the Ideal
Toy Company and they you know, as you know, it
just became a phenomenon. There have been about a half
(26:57):
a billion of them sold by some estimate. It just
a lot of Rubik's Cubes at the height. In the eighties,
there was a Saturday Morning cartoon of a flying crime
solving Rubik's Cube. We have a theme song by Menudo.
Speaker 3 (27:14):
Cocaine was a hell of a drug, my friend.
Speaker 1 (27:16):
Finally, finally the theme song from Minudo, which is the stamp
of authenticity exactly.
Speaker 4 (27:23):
There was there was a video game in the early
nineties that starred the red Dot that was the logo
for Sprite, and it wore sunglasses and just bounced around
and did stuff. So there was a golden age of
anthropomorphizing anything.
Speaker 1 (27:37):
And Achester that she'tah had a game at some point,
but that was more nineties. And this this, uh, this
is fascinating too because you would pointed out to us
that all the weeks called the Rubik's cube. Today it
had a different name, right, well, it.
Speaker 5 (27:53):
Had all sorts of I mean, before they went with
the Rubik's Cube, they were thinking the Gordian Knott, the
Inca gold, the Hungarian cube. But Rubik is such a
great word and it kind of rhymes with cube, and
it worked. It took off and it became a phenomenon.
And what's funny is I interviewed all of these like
(28:13):
old school nineteen eighties champions and first of all you vets, yeah,
the old style. And I mean it's kind of sad
because their records. They were all proud, like they got
twenty three seconds and they were like, yeah, that was
the first world record was about twenty three seconds, and
now the world record is three point four to seven seconds.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
Oh that's insane. Because you can see these videos on
YouTube right from these they're much more frequent than annual. Now.
I'm sure there's an annual Worlds competition, but there are
a lot of regional things. These guys do it like
one handed blind fold. Yeah, they look away or they
put it behind their back. It's just this with their feet.
Speaker 3 (28:57):
That was I.
Speaker 5 (28:59):
Met the the North American world record holder for the footsto.
Speaker 3 (29:02):
For the footstof.
Speaker 4 (29:04):
Is there is there a standard like the way you
have like in gambling, someone takes calipers to your dice
and make sure it's regulation, like obviously it's it's evolved,
you know, there's I think they're the gears are a
lot smoother now, you know, that's probably partially why the
times have been so you know, decreased.
Speaker 3 (29:22):
But can you talk talk a little bit about like
what what what are.
Speaker 4 (29:25):
These standards for competitive play in the modern day Rubik's
Cube world.
Speaker 5 (29:30):
Well, it is hilarious because you talk to the old
timers and they have a grudge because, like you say,
it's much smoother. There are little magnets are allowed so
that it clicks into place. There's cube lube. You can
get lots of different like brands of cube lube and
uh and lub up your your erubics. But yeah, of
course they're definitely it has to be mixed up in
(29:54):
a certain way. But there is a little bit of
luck involved because it could be mixed up in a
way that it only needs like you know, fourteen turns
or whatever.
Speaker 1 (30:02):
It lends itself to the algorithm, right.
Speaker 5 (30:04):
Right, and these these kids and mostly kids memorize hundreds
thousands of algorithms because I did it, but I did
the easy way, Like there's one algorithm for for people
like me.
Speaker 1 (30:18):
But that'll eventually get Yeah, yeah, you say.
Speaker 4 (30:22):
Algorithm, Like I guess maybe i'm sort of maybe miss
not not thinking about that term correctly. But is that
just numbers of configurations and possibilities or what can you
talk a little bit more about what algorithm means when
it comes to solving a Rubic's cube.
Speaker 5 (30:36):
Sure, in the in the cubing community, as it's called,
it's it's basically a series of moves. So it's twist right,
twist up, twist down, twist left, and that is an algorithm.
So if you have a certain arrangement, then you're going
to have to do an algorithm. And by memorizing these
(30:58):
hundreds of different ones, you can figure out the fastest algorithm.
Speaker 3 (31:02):
Through them by process of elimination almost kind of.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
Yeah, and it's kind of like when you read the
notation for it, uh, it gets to the point where
it's similar to seeing chess notations. This is how you
do this, and it's it's more confusing than actually getting
there and just playing with the cube spatially. But I'm
like you, aj, I had to I had to say, Okay,
(31:25):
here's the one I understand, right, and this this will
be my afternoon and this this craze takes over because
it follows some of the same things we've learned that
make puzzles historically fascinating. Right, you do have a feeling
of progress. I think that's one thing we have to
(31:45):
have to make. We do have the feeling of an
answer being right in front of us, but we're part
of the puzzle and we simply need to shift the
blocks of our perspective. Going a little far on that one.
But but but as as you were saying, uh, this
is it has maybe not reached the older heights of
(32:06):
its original craze, but it's still very much a global thing, right.
Speaker 5 (32:09):
Oh yeah, Well it had a second life with YouTube
because and again the old people are like, we had
to figure out ourselves. We didn't have YouTube tutorials. But
but yeah, these YouTube and like you said, people who
juggle them and do them underwater.
Speaker 1 (32:24):
You know it is.
Speaker 5 (32:25):
It is pretty a wonderfully visual medium. And also, like
Noel said, it's become artisanal. Like now people are making
their own cubes that are not just cubes that got
twelve sides that like, you know, one in the shape
of Michael Jordan I saw rights and uh, and so
people have with three D printing. They've just become it's
(32:45):
like a golden age for what they're called twisty puzzles,
puzzles and and Noel brought up that it's not just
these twisty puzzles. This is a long tradition of three
D puzzles.
Speaker 1 (32:58):
Uh.
Speaker 5 (32:59):
And for the most famous are puzzle boxes, which is
isn't that the hell Raiser.
Speaker 4 (33:04):
That configuration baby from your hell bounds heart?
Speaker 3 (33:10):
Yeah, right, that's right, let's read it.
Speaker 4 (33:12):
Can I just ad a really quick gripe and then
I'll let you continue. I I sometimes fall a victim
to Instagram ads for products, it seems to Alex speaking
of algorithms, and I saw this would looked to be
a completely workable, manipulatable uh puzzle box hell Raiser, And
I ordered it and it came in and the thing
as solid as a rock, didn't have a single articulating part.
(33:34):
It still looks really cool. But man, I'm that video.
It was like, ooh, I want to summon those demons.
But yeah, the puzzle box, right, let's let's.
Speaker 3 (33:42):
Let's go on. Yeah.
Speaker 5 (33:44):
The most famous ones are are Japanese puzzle boxes.
Speaker 1 (33:47):
Yeah, I've got a few of those, you do, I've
got Well, I've got like the low end version.
Speaker 5 (33:53):
Well, yeah, it's super expensive. They can be thousands, like
fifty thousand dollars for like the really high end ones.
Speaker 4 (34:00):
No, like like the box that everyone gets at the
beginning of Glass Onion, for example, to be invited to
this you know, get away meeting of the mines at
the the you know, the Billionaire's Island. Everyone gets this
crazy box that has to be solved in various ways,
and then certain sides of it flip open and then
you twist things and within it is a clue or whatever.
Speaker 5 (34:20):
Right, And the traditional one is the Japanese one made
of wood, and you slide some panels and you have
to slide them in a certain direction and you open
it up. Usually there's nothing in it, and sometimes an
invitation to an island party, but usually it's just like
I want to open this up. And and they've gotten
so elaborate. There's this guy who does them on YouTube
(34:42):
and gets millions of hits because he does them live
and you get to see him curse and sweat and
throw things around. And I can't remember his name right now,
maybe Max knows it, but he but but these things
are works of art. They're quite beautiful, and the best
of them, like it's not just sliding, they get really creative.
So you have to spin them. One one you have
(35:05):
to freeze because I don't know it releases something. One
guy complained. He told me he ordered a puzzle box
in December to Massachusetts and it came solved because it
was all about freezing. Uh and it was already frosy
like rip off. But yeah, these things are there are
extraordinary and I talked to the the people who do them,
(35:28):
and one of my favorites was this guy named Kagan
Sound who's in Colorado and he made one for the
movie director. What's the name of the guy who did
He did the whale he did uh Oh, he made
a desk for Darren Aronofsky that it was like an
(35:49):
Aroonofsky film. It took this guy four years to do
it and he said he lost all of his friends.
He just stayed in his workshop going insane. But it's amazing.
It's got all of these puzzles. I mean, it's not
great if you want to get a stapler out because like.
Speaker 4 (36:04):
You well, yes, but it really reminds me of Aeronowsky's
first film, Pie, which is all about, like you know,
just digging into the secrets of the universe until you
go completely mad.
Speaker 1 (36:17):
Fantastic slapstick comedy, especially for the holidays.
Speaker 3 (36:22):
Watch with your children, So maybe do a double feature
with Requiem for a Dream.
Speaker 1 (36:27):
The best best blind date I ever went on was
going to see a blind double date see Requiem for
a Dream. And we were running late, so we got
dinner after. It was a very surreal moment at Applebee's
that evening. But with all this, you know, this is
just the beginning of the story. The world of puzzles
(36:51):
is wide and vast, and I think it's not hyperbolic
to say that as long as human hardware works the
way it does, puzzles will continue to rate and proliferate
in the future. And you know, we're a ridiculous history show.
But Aja, I think we have to ask you here
at the end of the week, what do you do?
(37:12):
What do you think the future of puzzles is? Is
there a world where it's just AI making puzzles for
each other they just solve those?
Speaker 5 (37:19):
Well, I think I mean AI can be used to
make puzzles that are interesting and creative. I'm hoping that
we can collaborate with AI and that they won't take
over all the puzzle making themselves. And in fact, on
the Puzzler Show, we have like an AI. It's called
like what guess the g chat GPT prompt, So we
(37:44):
give you what chat GPT said and you have to guess.
But I do think we are still in the golden
age of puzzles, Like there are so many people now
doing so much creative work in puzzles that I'm optimistic.
And again, like you know, I'm an evangelist, so I
don't think it's I don't agree with the New York
(38:04):
Times that it's the end of civilization and that is
a waste of time and we're going to ignore our kids.
I think it's actually at its best, it's like community building.
Like the I saw the guy work Josh Wirdle w A. R.
D Ellie, who he invented wordle, and I saw him
speak at the Crossword Puzzle convention and he his argument is, yeah,
(38:27):
it's it brings people together. Like it's a very almost
you know, like Kumbaya message. He talked about he gets
letters from a gay man who reconciled with his conservative
Christian mother by doing wordle.
Speaker 2 (38:43):
Uh.
Speaker 5 (38:44):
Yes, these nice little stories about puzzles bring us together.
Speaker 4 (38:49):
That's funny too because they are somewhat ideologically agnostic kind
of you know, there is a certain common ground to
them where you're sort of just trying to solve a goal.
And I'm surely there are themed puzzles that you know,
could have some sort of whatever leaning, But in general,
wouldn't you say they are kind of like an even
playing field in terms of that kind of stuff.
Speaker 5 (39:11):
Absolutely, And it depends on the type of puzzle, as
you say, like you know, I think sudoku is is
pretty even. There's It's been actually fascinating to watch the
politics of crossword puzzles because there was a few years
ago there was a movement a lot of crossword makers
of color and women cross science. They sent a petition
(39:32):
to the New York Times saying it was it was
too white and male, the clues and the makers were
too white and male. And they've actually changed, Like the
New York Times, it had an impact. They hired some
editors who were people of color. So so it depends
on the type there are. It can get political, like everything,
but it can also I do think that something like
(39:54):
a puzzle box is uh is accessible to anyone.
Speaker 4 (39:58):
Well, and I just wanted to give you a quick
recommendation since you have kids in your interest in video games,
and it sounded like you, you know, think there is
some potential and creativity and you know, puzzles in the
video game realm. We are kind of a golden age
of like indie game designs and like you know, with
Steam and various you know, nine ten dollars games, you
can get that they're out there, you know, to be had.
(40:20):
There's a game called Cocoon that is a purely just
puzzle game, but it's beautifully designed. It's incredibly interactive and
kind of trippy, and I think you and your kids
would really dig it.
Speaker 2 (40:33):
I love it.
Speaker 3 (40:34):
Do you guys?
Speaker 1 (40:34):
Remember Missed with a y it's got this actually has
missed design, missed.
Speaker 3 (40:39):
Qualities to it, but it's Yes, what a cool game
that was.
Speaker 1 (40:43):
Yeah, if you haven't played Missed, it's a it's a
nice chill point and click And I'm with you, guys.
I love games that are not you know, super high
adrenaline busters. You know, they're just like, hey, let's lay
back and investigate, point and click.
Speaker 3 (40:57):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (40:57):
And with this, folks, we have to tell you we
are calling it today, but please do go to your browser,
your mobile thinga madjig of choice and point and click
on the puzzler which is as you said, aja daily
show coming out with such luminary guests such as michae
Iam Black, Roywood Junior. I think our Palo Fia Eisenberg
(41:20):
has been on there as well as.
Speaker 3 (41:23):
Gosh, it's a cavalcade of folks.
Speaker 1 (41:24):
We can't name them all, but we can tell you
each episode brings unique, new and fascinating puzzles with the
world class expert on them. Aj Where can people learn
more about your work because you've done much much more
than just puzzled over our Yes.
Speaker 5 (41:43):
Well, first of all, the other luminaries include Ben and
soon to come know al So I'm very excited about that,
And I mean, this is a dream. I love your podcast,
so it is like it's very weird to be on
a podcast you love.
Speaker 1 (41:59):
Thank you for not stopping at it's very weird.
Speaker 3 (42:02):
Very weird to do.
Speaker 4 (42:02):
I do just want to say though, we had intended
to do two different topics, and I may have even
set it up weirdly where I said that one of
them was an intersection with a very recent episode that
we did, and I hope that we can maybe even
just go ahead and do it before the holidays, you know,
get you back and do this other one that is
sort of about puzzles and ciphers and all of this
kind of stuff.
Speaker 3 (42:22):
Because this one.
Speaker 4 (42:23):
Ended up being more than we would normally fit into
a single episode, so we just split it.
Speaker 3 (42:26):
But we'd love to get that one on the books.
Speaker 1 (42:29):
Too, all right, or at least January. Yeah, and at
twenty three three, or we'll kick off twenty twenty four
with more puzzles. No spoilers, folks, but the next time
Aji returns, we're going to be talking about a particularly
great game. Oh my gosh, that's too much. So thank
you so much for tuning in, folks. Thanks as always
(42:49):
to our super producer, mister Max Williams. Thanks to the
one and only legendary author and now podcaster A. J.
Speaker 3 (42:56):
Jacobs, Noel who else.
Speaker 1 (42:58):
Oh you know what, We got to get Jonathan Strickland
ak the Quizzer to get his act together.
Speaker 4 (43:02):
That's right, Twist and the Puzzler too much, too much now,
but he's gonna wait.
Speaker 3 (43:07):
That's why we got to get him in before the
end of the year. I know that he's in building
right now.
Speaker 1 (43:11):
Oh yes, I can say his name too many times now.
Speaker 3 (43:16):
I'm glad that I'm not in the building.
Speaker 4 (43:18):
But We do want to thank though, Alex Williams, who
in fact is Max's brother, who composed our theme which
is definitely playing right now. Chris Frostiotis leaves Jeff Coates
here in spirit.
Speaker 3 (43:27):
Ben, thank you a j well once again, thank you.
Speaker 4 (43:30):
It was an absolute pleasure and look forward to having
you back soon and also getting in.
Speaker 3 (43:34):
That hot seat.
Speaker 5 (43:35):
Hell yeah, I can't wait.
Speaker 3 (43:37):
I can't wait.
Speaker 5 (43:37):
We'll be gentle, We'll be gentle.
Speaker 3 (43:39):
I appreciate it. Puzzle away, We'll see you next time, folks.
Speaker 4 (43:48):
For more podcasts from My Heart Radio, 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. Shout out to our super producer,
mister Max Williams. You're Noel Brown. I've Ben Bollen.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
No.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
No.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
This is part two of an amazing conversation we have
had with the puzzler himself, the legendary author AJ Jacobs.
Speaker 4 (00:44):
Too cool, and I just have to say, uh, I
just I couldn't even bring it upon myself to believe
that he really is a fan of the show, but
he's dropping so many deep cuts from like episodes that
we forgot we even did. It turns out it's actually
the case. And I think we're both beyond flatter because
we're huge fans of AJ's work as well. And this
conversation went all kinds of fun places, and I think
we can probably just join it already in progress.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
What are some of the I don't know. We talked
about the sociological sort of milieu or environment within which
these crazes, good and bad grow. Right, puzzles can become
incredibly popular, which hunts happen historically, right when people are
looking for some sort of escape, some sort of cause
(01:27):
that they can blame and maybe we go back to
something you mentioned with jigsaws and the Great Depression, because
at first plance, honestly, it sounds like jigsaws might be
a difficult thing for people in the depression. Money is tight.
You have to buy the puzzle, right you can't. I
(01:48):
guess you could rent a jigsaw. That's good.
Speaker 5 (01:50):
There were jigsaw libraries during the Depression. Yeah, really, yeah, yeah, Well,
just to back up, jigsaws were invented in seventeen sixty
by this British map maker named John Spillsbury. They called
them dissected maps, and they were meant to be a
learning tool. So the idea was, you know, you get
your young British aristocrats and they like, here's the country
(02:14):
that you should colonize and plunder, and you know that
teach them how to carve up the world early on.
And but it really caught on in the Great Depression
for a couple of reasons. Partly, like you said, people
needed a distraction, and you know, movies were huge and
jigsaws were huge. Also technology. They originally jigsaws were made
(02:38):
with a jigsaw. They were made out of wood carving.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
With a jigsaw.
Speaker 5 (02:44):
But then they invented this cookie cutter like machine that
could chop down on cardboard and make them really quickly
mass produced. So during the depression you had these weekly
dime jigsaw puzzles and people would line up like a
I don't know whatever, people line up for now Billie
Eilish concert and so and and as with all the
(03:07):
other puzzle crazes, you had moral panic. You had a
preacher who said Nero fiddled while Rome was burning, and
we will go down in history as the nation who
worked jigsaw puzzles while our country was falling to ruins.
Speaker 3 (03:19):
And amazing armists.
Speaker 5 (03:22):
Yes, no, it did not fall to.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
No, I'm inverted. I'm into it now.
Speaker 4 (03:29):
Isn't Nero The idea of neuro fiddling while Rome burns?
Almost akin to let them eat cake?
Speaker 3 (03:34):
Like? It's just sort of like a myth, that.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
Right, I don't know that.
Speaker 5 (03:39):
I can't remember whether, I don't think well.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
The problem with the leaders of the ancient past, whether
they be whether they be Roman emperors or whether they
be Catholic popes, is that the history gets written after
their death, usually by a guy who is terrified of
upsetting the current ruler. They'll say, okay, that guy was terrible,
(04:02):
and you know, usually there's a lot of truth to that,
but then they'll lean in hard so that they don't
get executed.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
Excellent point.
Speaker 5 (04:10):
Excellent point. And there was even a split in the
in the jigsaw community during the depression between sort of
the rich and the poor, the powerful and because the
rich and there still are these these fancy artisanal wooden
jigsaw puzzles that you can pay thousands of dollars for
(04:30):
in their hand carved and one of the famous ones
during the depression was called par Puzzles. And here's a
this is a fun I would maybe not so fun fact,
but they had all of these high end ones have
a they have a signature piece, like a shape that
is in every puzzle. And the shape that Par went
(04:51):
with in the thirties was a swastika. Oh boy, and
that turned out to be not a great choice, so
they had to switch to a seahorse.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
Uh horses here, yeah, sea horse.
Speaker 3 (05:06):
Yeah, we did.
Speaker 4 (05:07):
We did an episode. We did an episode on I
believe it was just weird dental stuff and there was
a material that dentures were once made. It was referred
to as seahorse teeth, which when you read it on paper,
it just seems beyond ridiculous because seahors are so small
do they even have teeth? But what it was referring
to actually was hippopotamus teeth. They're referring to them as
sea horses is a delightful misnomer.
Speaker 5 (05:30):
I heard that on this very show, thank you. And
also I made me think because hippoponamous. I do believe
hippo is horse and us river horse is what it
translates to, and it's not that far off. Also, if
you're around a hippopotamus, leave they are the most dangerous
(05:51):
Uh that is not a yeah, the most dangerous land mammal. Right,
shout out to the Mosquitos for most dangerous animal or humans?
Moving on, So so okay, so there are these, there
are these bespoke. There's a spectrum of jigsaws there, right,
the mass produced ones, and then there's this upper echelon
(06:11):
of bespoke hand carved you know, hardwood what have used.
And those are probably the ones that the aristocrats are
still buying, right yeah, and they had. I mean, there's
a wonderful company if you can afford it, which I can't.
I is called Stave and They're in Vermont and they
make these wooden puzzles. Everyone is different, and they have
(06:33):
people just carving them in what looks like a huge
sewing machine. And Bill Gates is a is a client,
and and they're called they're thousands of dollars like they are,
you know, they can go up to ten thousand dollars,
and they're super tricky. The guy who founded them calls
himself the tormentor in chief because he'll have puzzles that
(06:54):
they don't. They they look like edge pieces, but they're not.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
They don't.
Speaker 5 (06:58):
They have holes in the middle of the puzzle. They
have pieces from other puzzles intentionally stuck in that don't
fit at all, just to mess with your mind.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
I'm looking at just for reference, ridiculous historians. I am
looking at Steve puzzles dot Com too. I am looking
at their Honuka puzzle right now. It is two hundred pieces.
It is two thousand, three hundred and ninety five dollars,
and just from the picture it looks kind of simple.
I'm looking at and I'm thinking, well, I could knock
(07:29):
this one out.
Speaker 3 (07:29):
Got some neat depth to them.
Speaker 4 (07:31):
But I will say based on the hell the whole
idea of puzzle ending libraries. They have a rental program
and a timeshare program for their puzzles, so that's how
you know. Then they have a whole page that descript
that explains the difference, so hilarious.
Speaker 5 (07:49):
Yeah, that's the I mean they I hope they're not
listening because they for the book, they lent me like
five beautiful puzzles, oh wow. And I just have not
had a chance to return them, but I will, but
I will stay.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
Yeah, as long as you eventually return it, it's fine, right,
And yeah, I have been borrowing a.
Speaker 3 (08:10):
I think the statutes passed.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
I've been borrowing a uh uh encyclopedia from my high
school for quite some time now, but I will return
it at one point when I am done reading it.
Speaker 4 (08:26):
I don't know if they I think the internet has
sort of replaced the encyclopedia sold door to door and
they were very I.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
Had. I've got an unabridged dictionary, not encyclopedia because that
would be in a set, right. But and that's that's
kind of a puzzle too when you think about it,
I like what I guess it goes to what we
define as a puzzle, and you know, you talked briefly
about the Rubik's cube, which I don't know about you, nol,
(08:59):
but those are still pretty baffling to me. I could
work through it, but I'm constantly befuddled and baffled by
those speed cubers.
Speaker 4 (09:10):
Yeah, and then there's there's even more elaborate versions and
shapes and sort of like hex like three dimensional sort
of hex hexagonal versions or whatever. But whenever I think
of these three dimensional puzzles, I don't know about you guys,
in my mind always goes back to the lament configuration
from Clive Parker Hell Raiser movies. And I'm a little
suspicious of these because I'm always afraid they're going to
(09:31):
summon these demonic, you know, snm.
Speaker 3 (09:34):
Creatures from Hell. But I don't know about you.
Speaker 4 (09:36):
Tell us about three D puzzles and some of these
like what's what's the fifteen puzzle? And believe there was
a bit of a scandal involved in that one too.
Speaker 5 (09:45):
Yeah, this was actually this was a spatial puzzle that
of This was sort of the Rubis cube of his time,
the eighteen eighties, and it was called you've actually I'm
sure seen it. It's the little square with fifteen tiles
and an empty space, and you have to rearra it's
the tile.
Speaker 3 (10:00):
So it's like a cracker bear.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
I've got several yes, like a cracker BEARA.
Speaker 5 (10:08):
This was huge in the eighteen eighties. And again it
was like a New York Times called a pestilence on
our society and uh, and it was invented by a
postal worker. But the main character in this craze was
a huckster. He was like this, this hooxter, a huckster
named Sam Lloyd.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
Next do we get some like huckster con man. This
will sound great in post.
Speaker 5 (10:35):
So he claimed to have invented them, even though he didn't,
and he sold millions of them, and he partly he
did it by scamming America. He said that he would
pay one thousand dollars, which in eighteen eighty now you
know something, he said, anyone who can solve the fifteen
puzzle from this particular starting arrangement will get a thousand dollars.
(10:56):
But the catch was it was rigged. There are seven
billion initial arrangements of the fifteen puzzle, and half of
them can be solved and half mathematically just cannot be solved.
So he put them in an impossible arrangement and just
messed with people's minds and sold millions of them, and
that one sort of died out. It's not like crosswords
(11:19):
are still big, but the fifteen puzzle it had a
little resurgence when Bobby Fisher, the chess legend, slightly disturbed
personality for him. There you go. Well, he was searching
for himself, yes, for sanity. He was obsessed with him
and solved speed solved one on the Johnny Carson Show
(11:42):
in nineteen seventy two and he like in seventeen seconds.
So that chess and fifteen puzzles were Bobby Fisher's obsessions.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
And this is nuts because we can see, you know,
Chess requires such a dare I say, myopic commitment into
it that other puzzles, because Chess is a game that
is also a puzzle, right, So I think when you
get so deep into the world of chess, and I'm
cartoonishly bad at that game, when you get so deep
(12:10):
into it, then other puzzles seem kind of like elementary.
It's like playing a really hard video game and then
you go back to Solitaire and you're like, oh, I
got this.
Speaker 3 (12:20):
It's a black eight, it's a red seven. Nailed it again.
Speaker 4 (12:23):
I guess it all comes down to something called game theory, right,
and like, you know, a good puzzle, And to maybe
a question I asked earlier, like what makes one of
these really catch on? It needs to be difficult enough
to be not so banging your head against a wall,
but also difficult enough to like really feel like you
have a challenge and that you've succeeded in some small
(12:43):
way if you solve it. Can you just talk a
little bit what you've run into in terms of game
theory and like how that sort of intersects with these
and to Ben's point, like how puzzles now kind of
are in the realm of video games in a lot
of ways.
Speaker 5 (12:58):
Oh yeah, it's some of the greatest puzzles now or
video games, which my kids always argue it is, like
I'm not wasting time, I'm doing but the But like
you said, there's a goldilock zone, Like it's very easy
to make an impossible puzzle, uh, and it's also easy
to make it too easy puzzle, so you want it
just in the middle. And speaking of chess, there are
(13:25):
what are called chess puzzles or chess problems where you
set up the pieces in a certain way and you
have to get to checkmate in you know, five moves.
And I actually for the book, I interviewed Gary kasper
Off and he he says, I'm not the best chess
I am. I was the best chess player. But chess
(13:47):
puzzles are different. It's a different skill. And he he said, like,
there are crazy chess puzzles that not even the best
chess puzzlers can do that require five hundred moves. You
have to see five hundred moves in advance. The only
only artificial intelligence can solve them. Only computers can solve these.
(14:10):
So he but, but that speaks to that's not a
fun puzzle unless you're ascension robot. Maybe you find enjoying
a fun puzzle is right in there where it's like
five moves and it's surprising. That's what it's like. You
have to sacrifice your queen, something surprising and delightful. That
to me makes a good puzzle.
Speaker 3 (14:30):
Got it?
Speaker 1 (14:31):
I think another good puzzle thing to this point, and
this brings us to our next graze, which may be
near and dear to some of our listeners. One of
the other incredibly like tantalizing things about a good puzzle
is you realize that if you shift your perspective right,
if your mind is the piece that moves, then you
(14:53):
will see the answer that has already been there the
entirety of the time, Which brings us to the great
obsession of nineteen eighties America amid a certain demographic and
of course someone who will always be welcome at conventions
and coseplay gatherings. We ask you, aj where is Waldo?
Speaker 5 (15:16):
Where is Waldo? Exactly? He is all over, at least
in the eighties. And I loved researching the history of
Where's Waldo? Because there's, first of all, there's a long
history of artists hiding stuff in paintings. There's one Renaissance
painter who's famous for hiding a pickled cucumber in all
of his paintings. So I'm sure Freudians, Yes, Leonardo da
(15:40):
Vinci also hid things in his paintings, not as much
as Dan Brown claimed in the Da Vinci Code. You know,
I don't think that the Last Supper is a secret
clue that Jesus is a proud papa. But I do
think that there are legitimate art historians who say there
are easter eggs. But like in the Last Supper, if
(16:02):
you look at the arrangement of the roles, the bread
rolls on the table, it looks eerily like notes in
a musical notes and people have played these notes and
it's actually it's not bad. It sounds like So there
was that.
Speaker 4 (16:21):
In fact, Da Vinci also hid actual penises in many
of his paintings.
Speaker 5 (16:25):
So is that true in you can see Oh, I say, yeah,
it wasn't so hard to find those. Yeah, well this, uh,
speaking of that, I don't know what that segue means,
doesn't Martin Martin Hanford is the British artist who probably
(16:45):
has a penis, and he is the one who created
the uh Where's Waldo? In nineteen eighty seven. God damn
it so smooth. And he actually he had done a
couple of Where's Waldo like paintings. He did a album
cover for a group called the Vapors. I don't know,
I had never heard of them.
Speaker 3 (17:04):
It was like a surf rock situation, perhaps, I don't know.
Speaker 5 (17:07):
Yeah, and he uh, that was a little more adult.
That was a scene, a crowd scene, and there was
a secret sniper like with a rifle which would not
go over with Where's Waldow? But he came out with
Where's Waldow in nineteen eighty seven, and this, of course
are these huge scenes and you have to find the
little guy with the red and white striped sweater and
(17:29):
the glasses. And it was a massive, you know, forty
million copies sold all over the world. And there's actually
the original was called Where's Wahlie? That's what it was
called in Britain, and Waldo is the American one, and
I have a couple of the foreign ones there is well,
maybe you can guess where is the va isht water
(17:53):
va Germany.
Speaker 3 (17:56):
I had to jump in real quick.
Speaker 2 (17:58):
The vapors are in English wave and power popping that
exists initially existed between nineteen seventy eighty and nineteen eighty one.
They had a hit song which was titled Turning Japanese, which.
Speaker 4 (18:10):
Oh, I really think so yes, the album covers neat.
I mean, he really can see that Where's Waldo aesthetic?
But it is like a crowd scene, but the center
it's sort of on a grassy knoll situation, and they
the figures are crowded around this like sort of like
cadre of ambulances because it would appear that someone has
been shot because you can't see in the top corner
(18:32):
the waldou of this painting is in fact a sniper
putting away his gun. But the center crowd it makes
the shape of an eye, and like everything else above it,
it's really cool. But yeah, and also on this article
that I found on Unremembered History that shows this, it
points out that he was really inspired by a lot
of classical paintings that have these tableaus where there's like
(18:55):
a city or a scene a village and there's all
kinds of stuff going on, people doing all kinds of
little things, and they're full of Easter eggs, you know.
Speaker 5 (19:04):
Yeah, yeah, there's some great Easter eggs like Hieronymous Bosh
to it like it looks like and there I think
there is theories that he was uh like tripping on
some hallucinogen.
Speaker 3 (19:15):
That very very disturbing.
Speaker 1 (19:18):
Yeah. I was able to see some of those in
person earlier this year, the Bosh pains, and they still
don't let you photograph them, which I feels like kind
of a rip to me, But I'm sure there are
legitimate reasons. Museum restorationist and curators please understand that we've
got your back. Uh, and we're we're not going to
(19:41):
take pictures any longer where we are not supposed to,
because let me tell you I had to Uh, I
had learn I had to learn a language pretty quickly
with that museum curator when I got when I got
caught snapping and snitching with my iPhone, which which takes
us to an other things. So, so where's Waldo? The
(20:03):
answer is around the world, but he's using different identities.
Speaker 5 (20:06):
Is that there's Finn horrid Ga. Fien horrid Ga is uh, what's.
Speaker 3 (20:17):
That Finland perhaps or somewhere in.
Speaker 5 (20:21):
Yeah, But can I give you my favorite where's Waldo?
Fact is that it has been consistently on the American
Library Association's list of most banned books. And I researched this,
and this is not apocryphal. This is because in one
beach scene in one of his books, there's a small
(20:44):
illustration of a woman and she's not wearing a bikini top,
and some mothers got really upset and and you can't
even see like there's there's no actual nipple. You can
sort of see a side boom, but because she's lying
face down. But it was enough to get banned in
several states and make this list, and the publisher had
(21:07):
to do like an emergency version with a like a
new bikini top.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
A collector's and wait till the New York Times finds
out about this. I think we're due for another moral panic.
Speaker 4 (21:18):
You know, it's interesting that the aesthetic of Where's Walla though,
to me, is very European, Like just the whole vibe
of it feels like a book that would be popular
in Europe, and you know, they are much more open
about nudity and little things and this, you know, a
nude sunbather is something that you that would be a
normal thing to see in a beach scene. You can
(21:39):
only do so many different things and have it be
like super crowded. So it makes perfect sense that they
were that he would have done that.
Speaker 5 (21:45):
But yeah, yeah, no one in England or in Germany
was complaining exactly right.
Speaker 1 (21:53):
I was going to say, famously more chill, but I
guess it depends on the era of time that we're
referring to. So speaking of only having only so many things,
we have made this a two parter and we have
(22:15):
to we can't talk about every puzzle. Unfortunately, to learn more,
you're going to have to read AJ's book, The Puzzler
and tune into The Puzzler Podcast. But before we go,
fellow ridiculous historians, there's one that I'm sure we've all
been waiting for.
Speaker 3 (22:32):
I hope we have.
Speaker 4 (22:33):
I jumped the gun and set up the wrong thing
when I was talking about the Lament configuration, which is
sort of this hellish Rubik's cube. But this now we're
here with the idea of three dimensional puzzles and specifically
Rubi's cube being the craze. But that wasn't the only
example of this type of thing, right.
Speaker 5 (22:52):
Right, right, Wait, can I just do one last visual puzzle,
because yeah, it could be my favorite puzzle ever. It
was a few years about three years ago, the Baltimore
Sun printed one of those spot the Difference puzzles and
it was two pictures. You know, you have to find
the difference, and it was a kid brushing his teeth
(23:15):
in his pajamas. And the next day, the best correction
in newspaper history had said, we regret to inform you
that those two pictures were actually identical.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
Amazy, I've always if you've always thought that, right, like
if you're looking at a very difficult version of those
you've always thought, Okay, this is a prank, so that
actually feel.
Speaker 3 (23:39):
Like you're going insane. I feel like, yeah, it.
Speaker 5 (23:42):
Wasn't even April Fools. It was just they messed up
and it was just can you imagine the human the
hours of human wasted, you know, wasted.
Speaker 4 (23:51):
Like it's because you refused your mind refuses to accept
that in the moment, you know, I'm just missing something.
Speaker 3 (23:59):
The power.
Speaker 1 (24:02):
I do have immense respect though, for that that hypothetical
person who is in that rarefied cognitive air, the person
who not only looked at this extensively but wrote to
the Baltimore Sun and told them the picture was identical.
That's a lot of self confidence.
Speaker 3 (24:20):
That's true.
Speaker 1 (24:21):
That is true.
Speaker 4 (24:22):
Kind of like the people that leave mean podcast reviews.
You know, who are these people? And where do you
get your chutzpah? But yeah, no, no, If we could, though,
I would love to hear a little bit more about
some of these kind of art object type puzzles. You know,
I think they're like, I don't know, if you saw
the glass onion, the the you know, there was so many.
Speaker 3 (24:41):
Cool puzzles that were like these.
Speaker 4 (24:44):
You know, things, these like things that you interact with
that were all crazy bespoke. But to me, in my mind,
I always go back to the humble Rubik's cube. But
that represents sort of a modernized, you know, plasticified eighties
version of something that's very historic, you know, and that
you would have seen in like the Dan Browns of
the World's kind of writings.
Speaker 1 (25:04):
Totally like that.
Speaker 5 (25:05):
Well, well, let me give you a quick Rubik's cube
and then we'll move to like sort of the advanced
through excube.
Speaker 3 (25:12):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, But.
Speaker 5 (25:13):
The Rubik's cube was invented by Erno Rubik. He was
an architecture teacher in Hungary and he wanted to use
it as a teaching tool. Now this makes me feel better.
It took Erno Rubik himself one month to solve his
own cube.
Speaker 3 (25:26):
Oh wow.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
So yeah, I only know that because years ago I
wrote a show called The Stuff of Genius and we
went and looked at inventors that the world. And that's
one of the facts that that stuck with me. First off,
I love it when an invention is named after the
guy who actually invented it, you know what I mean. Rice,
And I also love just to get this part in.
(25:49):
I also love that that fact that he created something
he didn't understand. It reminds me a little bit of
artificial intelligence.
Speaker 4 (25:57):
I was going to ask, I mean, it seems to
me that, you know, I would assume that anyone that's
creating a puzzle or and designing a game that they're selling,
what's the process for that? Like, I would imagine that
a lot of cases you're working backwards from the solution.
But this is a great example of how maybe that's
not always the case.
Speaker 3 (26:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (26:14):
He writes about it in his autobiography, and I actually
found it very inspiring. He talks about how he packed
his room with all sorts of just random crap so
like safety pins and buttons and crayons, and it was
like a little playground for his mind. And from that
he eventually came up with the rubric cube that he
(26:36):
couldn't solve. And actually it was very hard to sell
it to a toy company because they were a lot
of this is too hard, no one's gonna want to
do this. And finally he sold it to the Ideal
Toy Company and they you know, as you know, it
just became a phenomenon. There have been about a half
(26:57):
a billion of them sold by some estimate. It just
a lot of Rubik's Cubes at the height. In the eighties,
there was a Saturday Morning cartoon of a flying crime
solving Rubik's Cube. We have a theme song by Menudo.
Speaker 3 (27:14):
Cocaine was a hell of a drug, my friend.
Speaker 1 (27:16):
Finally, finally the theme song from Minudo, which is the stamp
of authenticity exactly.
Speaker 4 (27:23):
There was there was a video game in the early
nineties that starred the red Dot that was the logo
for Sprite, and it wore sunglasses and just bounced around
and did stuff. So there was a golden age of
anthropomorphizing anything.
Speaker 1 (27:37):
And Achester that she'tah had a game at some point,
but that was more nineties. And this this, uh, this
is fascinating too because you would pointed out to us
that all the weeks called the Rubik's cube. Today it
had a different name, right, well, it.
Speaker 5 (27:53):
Had all sorts of I mean, before they went with
the Rubik's Cube, they were thinking the Gordian Knott, the
Inca gold, the Hungarian cube. But Rubik is such a
great word and it kind of rhymes with cube, and
it worked. It took off and it became a phenomenon.
And what's funny is I interviewed all of these like
(28:13):
old school nineteen eighties champions and first of all you vets, yeah,
the old style. And I mean it's kind of sad
because their records. They were all proud, like they got
twenty three seconds and they were like, yeah, that was
the first world record was about twenty three seconds, and
now the world record is three point four to seven seconds.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
Oh that's insane. Because you can see these videos on
YouTube right from these they're much more frequent than annual. Now.
I'm sure there's an annual Worlds competition, but there are
a lot of regional things. These guys do it like
one handed blind fold. Yeah, they look away or they
put it behind their back. It's just this with their feet.
Speaker 3 (28:57):
That was I.
Speaker 5 (28:59):
Met the the North American world record holder for the footsto.
Speaker 3 (29:02):
For the footstof.
Speaker 4 (29:04):
Is there is there a standard like the way you
have like in gambling, someone takes calipers to your dice
and make sure it's regulation, like obviously it's it's evolved,
you know, there's I think they're the gears are a
lot smoother now, you know, that's probably partially why the
times have been so you know, decreased.
Speaker 3 (29:22):
But can you talk talk a little bit about like
what what what are.
Speaker 4 (29:25):
These standards for competitive play in the modern day Rubik's
Cube world.
Speaker 5 (29:30):
Well, it is hilarious because you talk to the old
timers and they have a grudge because, like you say,
it's much smoother. There are little magnets are allowed so
that it clicks into place. There's cube lube. You can
get lots of different like brands of cube lube and
uh and lub up your your erubics. But yeah, of
course they're definitely it has to be mixed up in
(29:54):
a certain way. But there is a little bit of
luck involved because it could be mixed up in a
way that it only needs like you know, fourteen turns
or whatever.
Speaker 1 (30:02):
It lends itself to the algorithm, right.
Speaker 5 (30:04):
Right, and these these kids and mostly kids memorize hundreds
thousands of algorithms because I did it, but I did
the easy way, Like there's one algorithm for for people
like me.
Speaker 1 (30:18):
But that'll eventually get Yeah, yeah, you say.
Speaker 4 (30:22):
Algorithm, Like I guess maybe i'm sort of maybe miss
not not thinking about that term correctly. But is that
just numbers of configurations and possibilities or what can you
talk a little bit more about what algorithm means when
it comes to solving a Rubic's cube.
Speaker 5 (30:36):
Sure, in the in the cubing community, as it's called,
it's it's basically a series of moves. So it's twist right,
twist up, twist down, twist left, and that is an algorithm.
So if you have a certain arrangement, then you're going
to have to do an algorithm. And by memorizing these
(30:58):
hundreds of different ones, you can figure out the fastest algorithm.
Speaker 3 (31:02):
Through them by process of elimination almost kind of.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
Yeah, and it's kind of like when you read the
notation for it, uh, it gets to the point where
it's similar to seeing chess notations. This is how you
do this, and it's it's more confusing than actually getting
there and just playing with the cube spatially. But I'm
like you, aj, I had to I had to say, Okay,
(31:25):
here's the one I understand, right, and this this will
be my afternoon and this this craze takes over because
it follows some of the same things we've learned that
make puzzles historically fascinating. Right, you do have a feeling
of progress. I think that's one thing we have to
(31:45):
have to make. We do have the feeling of an
answer being right in front of us, but we're part
of the puzzle and we simply need to shift the
blocks of our perspective. Going a little far on that one.
But but but as as you were saying, uh, this
is it has maybe not reached the older heights of
(32:06):
its original craze, but it's still very much a global thing, right.
Speaker 5 (32:09):
Oh yeah, Well it had a second life with YouTube
because and again the old people are like, we had
to figure out ourselves. We didn't have YouTube tutorials. But
but yeah, these YouTube and like you said, people who
juggle them and do them underwater.
Speaker 1 (32:24):
You know it is.
Speaker 5 (32:25):
It is pretty a wonderfully visual medium. And also, like
Noel said, it's become artisanal. Like now people are making
their own cubes that are not just cubes that got
twelve sides that like, you know, one in the shape
of Michael Jordan I saw rights and uh, and so
people have with three D printing. They've just become it's
(32:45):
like a golden age for what they're called twisty puzzles,
puzzles and and Noel brought up that it's not just
these twisty puzzles. This is a long tradition of three
D puzzles.
Speaker 1 (32:58):
Uh.
Speaker 5 (32:59):
And for the most famous are puzzle boxes, which is
isn't that the hell Raiser.
Speaker 4 (33:04):
That configuration baby from your hell bounds heart?
Speaker 3 (33:10):
Yeah, right, that's right, let's read it.
Speaker 4 (33:12):
Can I just ad a really quick gripe and then
I'll let you continue. I I sometimes fall a victim
to Instagram ads for products, it seems to Alex speaking
of algorithms, and I saw this would looked to be
a completely workable, manipulatable uh puzzle box hell Raiser, And
I ordered it and it came in and the thing
as solid as a rock, didn't have a single articulating part.
(33:34):
It still looks really cool. But man, I'm that video.
It was like, ooh, I want to summon those demons.
But yeah, the puzzle box, right, let's let's.
Speaker 3 (33:42):
Let's go on. Yeah.
Speaker 5 (33:44):
The most famous ones are are Japanese puzzle boxes.
Speaker 1 (33:47):
Yeah, I've got a few of those, you do, I've
got Well, I've got like the low end version.
Speaker 5 (33:53):
Well, yeah, it's super expensive. They can be thousands, like
fifty thousand dollars for like the really high end ones.
Speaker 4 (34:00):
No, like like the box that everyone gets at the
beginning of Glass Onion, for example, to be invited to
this you know, get away meeting of the mines at
the the you know, the Billionaire's Island. Everyone gets this
crazy box that has to be solved in various ways,
and then certain sides of it flip open and then
you twist things and within it is a clue or whatever.
Speaker 5 (34:20):
Right, And the traditional one is the Japanese one made
of wood, and you slide some panels and you have
to slide them in a certain direction and you open
it up. Usually there's nothing in it, and sometimes an
invitation to an island party, but usually it's just like
I want to open this up. And and they've gotten
so elaborate. There's this guy who does them on YouTube
(34:42):
and gets millions of hits because he does them live
and you get to see him curse and sweat and
throw things around. And I can't remember his name right now,
maybe Max knows it, but he but but these things
are works of art. They're quite beautiful, and the best
of them, like it's not just sliding, they get really creative.
So you have to spin them. One one you have
(35:05):
to freeze because I don't know it releases something. One
guy complained. He told me he ordered a puzzle box
in December to Massachusetts and it came solved because it
was all about freezing. Uh and it was already frosy
like rip off. But yeah, these things are there are
extraordinary and I talked to the the people who do them,
(35:28):
and one of my favorites was this guy named Kagan
Sound who's in Colorado and he made one for the
movie director. What's the name of the guy who did
He did the whale he did uh Oh, he made
a desk for Darren Aronofsky that it was like an
(35:49):
Aroonofsky film. It took this guy four years to do
it and he said he lost all of his friends.
He just stayed in his workshop going insane. But it's amazing.
It's got all of these puzzles. I mean, it's not
great if you want to get a stapler out because like.
Speaker 4 (36:04):
You well, yes, but it really reminds me of Aeronowsky's
first film, Pie, which is all about, like you know,
just digging into the secrets of the universe until you
go completely mad.
Speaker 1 (36:17):
Fantastic slapstick comedy, especially for the holidays.
Speaker 3 (36:22):
Watch with your children, So maybe do a double feature
with Requiem for a Dream.
Speaker 1 (36:27):
The best best blind date I ever went on was
going to see a blind double date see Requiem for
a Dream. And we were running late, so we got
dinner after. It was a very surreal moment at Applebee's
that evening. But with all this, you know, this is
just the beginning of the story. The world of puzzles
(36:51):
is wide and vast, and I think it's not hyperbolic
to say that as long as human hardware works the
way it does, puzzles will continue to rate and proliferate
in the future. And you know, we're a ridiculous history show.
But Aja, I think we have to ask you here
at the end of the week, what do you do?
(37:12):
What do you think the future of puzzles is? Is
there a world where it's just AI making puzzles for
each other they just solve those?
Speaker 5 (37:19):
Well, I think I mean AI can be used to
make puzzles that are interesting and creative. I'm hoping that
we can collaborate with AI and that they won't take
over all the puzzle making themselves. And in fact, on
the Puzzler Show, we have like an AI. It's called
like what guess the g chat GPT prompt, So we
(37:44):
give you what chat GPT said and you have to guess.
But I do think we are still in the golden
age of puzzles, Like there are so many people now
doing so much creative work in puzzles that I'm optimistic.
And again, like you know, I'm an evangelist, so I
don't think it's I don't agree with the New York
(38:04):
Times that it's the end of civilization and that is
a waste of time and we're going to ignore our kids.
I think it's actually at its best, it's like community building.
Like the I saw the guy work Josh Wirdle w A. R.
D Ellie, who he invented wordle, and I saw him
speak at the Crossword Puzzle convention and he his argument is, yeah,
(38:27):
it's it brings people together. Like it's a very almost
you know, like Kumbaya message. He talked about he gets
letters from a gay man who reconciled with his conservative
Christian mother by doing wordle.
Speaker 2 (38:43):
Uh.
Speaker 5 (38:44):
Yes, these nice little stories about puzzles bring us together.
Speaker 4 (38:49):
That's funny too because they are somewhat ideologically agnostic kind
of you know, there is a certain common ground to
them where you're sort of just trying to solve a goal.
And I'm surely there are themed puzzles that you know,
could have some sort of whatever leaning, But in general,
wouldn't you say they are kind of like an even
playing field in terms of that kind of stuff.
Speaker 5 (39:11):
Absolutely, And it depends on the type of puzzle, as
you say, like you know, I think sudoku is is
pretty even. There's It's been actually fascinating to watch the
politics of crossword puzzles because there was a few years
ago there was a movement a lot of crossword makers
of color and women cross science. They sent a petition
(39:32):
to the New York Times saying it was it was
too white and male, the clues and the makers were
too white and male. And they've actually changed, Like the
New York Times, it had an impact. They hired some
editors who were people of color. So so it depends
on the type there are. It can get political, like everything,
but it can also I do think that something like
(39:54):
a puzzle box is uh is accessible to anyone.
Speaker 4 (39:58):
Well, and I just wanted to give you a quick
recommendation since you have kids in your interest in video games,
and it sounded like you, you know, think there is
some potential and creativity and you know, puzzles in the
video game realm. We are kind of a golden age
of like indie game designs and like you know, with
Steam and various you know, nine ten dollars games, you
can get that they're out there, you know, to be had.
(40:20):
There's a game called Cocoon that is a purely just
puzzle game, but it's beautifully designed. It's incredibly interactive and
kind of trippy, and I think you and your kids
would really dig it.
Speaker 2 (40:33):
I love it.
Speaker 3 (40:34):
Do you guys?
Speaker 1 (40:34):
Remember Missed with a y it's got this actually has
missed design, missed.
Speaker 3 (40:39):
Qualities to it, but it's Yes, what a cool game
that was.
Speaker 1 (40:43):
Yeah, if you haven't played Missed, it's a it's a
nice chill point and click And I'm with you, guys.
I love games that are not you know, super high
adrenaline busters. You know, they're just like, hey, let's lay
back and investigate, point and click.
Speaker 3 (40:57):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (40:57):
And with this, folks, we have to tell you we
are calling it today, but please do go to your browser,
your mobile thinga madjig of choice and point and click
on the puzzler which is as you said, aja daily
show coming out with such luminary guests such as michae
Iam Black, Roywood Junior. I think our Palo Fia Eisenberg
(41:20):
has been on there as well as.
Speaker 3 (41:23):
Gosh, it's a cavalcade of folks.
Speaker 1 (41:24):
We can't name them all, but we can tell you
each episode brings unique, new and fascinating puzzles with the
world class expert on them. Aj Where can people learn
more about your work because you've done much much more
than just puzzled over our Yes.
Speaker 5 (41:43):
Well, first of all, the other luminaries include Ben and
soon to come know al So I'm very excited about that,
And I mean, this is a dream. I love your podcast,
so it is like it's very weird to be on
a podcast you love.
Speaker 1 (41:59):
Thank you for not stopping at it's very weird.
Speaker 3 (42:02):
Very weird to do.
Speaker 4 (42:02):
I do just want to say though, we had intended
to do two different topics, and I may have even
set it up weirdly where I said that one of
them was an intersection with a very recent episode that
we did, and I hope that we can maybe even
just go ahead and do it before the holidays, you know,
get you back and do this other one that is
sort of about puzzles and ciphers and all of this
kind of stuff.
Speaker 3 (42:22):
Because this one.
Speaker 4 (42:23):
Ended up being more than we would normally fit into
a single episode, so we just split it.
Speaker 3 (42:26):
But we'd love to get that one on the books.
Speaker 1 (42:29):
Too, all right, or at least January. Yeah, and at
twenty three three, or we'll kick off twenty twenty four
with more puzzles. No spoilers, folks, but the next time
Aji returns, we're going to be talking about a particularly
great game. Oh my gosh, that's too much. So thank
you so much for tuning in, folks. Thanks as always
(42:49):
to our super producer, mister Max Williams. Thanks to the
one and only legendary author and now podcaster A. J.
Speaker 3 (42:56):
Jacobs, Noel who else.
Speaker 1 (42:58):
Oh you know what, We got to get Jonathan Strickland
ak the Quizzer to get his act together.
Speaker 4 (43:02):
That's right, Twist and the Puzzler too much, too much now,
but he's gonna wait.
Speaker 3 (43:07):
That's why we got to get him in before the
end of the year. I know that he's in building
right now.
Speaker 1 (43:11):
Oh yes, I can say his name too many times now.
Speaker 3 (43:16):
I'm glad that I'm not in the building.
Speaker 4 (43:18):
But We do want to thank though, Alex Williams, who
in fact is Max's brother, who composed our theme which
is definitely playing right now. Chris Frostiotis leaves Jeff Coates
here in spirit.
Speaker 3 (43:27):
Ben, thank you a j well once again, thank you.
Speaker 4 (43:30):
It was an absolute pleasure and look forward to having
you back soon and also getting in.
Speaker 3 (43:34):
That hot seat.
Speaker 5 (43:35):
Hell yeah, I can't wait.
Speaker 3 (43:37):
I can't wait.
Speaker 5 (43:37):
We'll be gentle, We'll be gentle.
Speaker 3 (43:39):
I appreciate it. Puzzle away, We'll see you next time, folks.
Speaker 4 (43:48):
For more podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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