January 30, 2024 • 44 mins
For most people, puzzles are a fun, fascinating diversion. Yet throughout history, they've also played a crucial role in the great game of espionage. Join Ben, Noel and Max as they welcome their returning guest A.J. Jacobs, author and creator of The Puzzler podcast, to learn more about the history of puzzles, codes and spies in part one of this special two-part episode.
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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 a shout out to our
super producer, mister Max one Hand Williams. Who Ah, who Rah,
who is Hurrah Otowski? I'm Ben Bullen, You're Old Brown.
And this is a very very special special episode maybe
(00:50):
series for us, because Noel, you'll recall back in December
of twenty twenty three, we had a good friend of
ours on the show and there was an episode that
we really wanted to do.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
I was already in the bag man, you just didn't
have the time.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
We are making the time, of course, because we have
a luminary, a returning guest, a member, as you said
off air, of the Ridiculous History Pantheon, the legendary author,
the thought Leader, I would say, of all things, ladies, constitution. Yeah,
this is this is the return of our good friend,
(01:32):
none other than the puzzler himself, Aj Bahamas Jacobs, Aj.
Welcome back to the show.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
It's great to be That's the best intro I've ever got.
I'm going to leave beside yourself, illuminary thought Leader, my
ego is huge. I'm going to my trailer, you know,
I gotta say aj before we get into today's episode.
Speaker 4 (01:52):
I thought of you recently. I was in Boston walking
the Freedom Trail, which is like a very constitutionally minded
is he walking tour that takes you through some of
the cool little back old English he kind of you know,
parts of Boston. And the craziest part that happened was
as my friend and I were walking along, having just
seen Ben Franklin's family plot, we see off in the
(02:13):
distance that's very familiar sight and it's a star of
internet meme fame.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
The cop slide. Do you know about the cops Slide?
Speaker 3 (02:20):
I don't know about it?
Speaker 4 (02:21):
Is so, there was this video that made the rounds
last year sometime where there was this unfortunate cop who
went down this slide for children that's really really tall
and he shoots out of.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
It like a rocket.
Speaker 4 (02:37):
The internet went nuts, and there's some guys that I
follow on YouTube the Internet Today Show who conjecture they
have this whole theory thing about how it was because
of his police belt, his utility belts and all the
metal on it that would like totally eliminate friction down
this metal slide that caused him just to rocket out
of that thing like a bullet. And so me and
my friend were just beside ourselves. It was like seeing
(02:59):
a celebrit And I've made a video of him sliding
down it very gently.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
There was no issue with me, did you slide?
Speaker 4 (03:07):
No?
Speaker 2 (03:07):
I was not getting stuck in there like Pooh Bear
in the tree.
Speaker 4 (03:10):
No. But I made the video and I asked him
how what was the experience like for you? It's apparently
also a sign at the top that says don't go
down head first.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
The cop also went down head first. Well, so you.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
Get in situations. We also, uh, just for a recap
everyone previously, AJ, we had you on because very excited
about your show, The Puzzler Monday through Friday show wherein
you present all sorts of people with a number of
(03:43):
spoiler alert, increasingly arcane puzzles over the course of a week.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
Are is there a number? How many are we talking here?
Is it just your discretion? AJ?
Speaker 3 (03:54):
You mean the number of puzzles?
Speaker 2 (03:55):
The number of puzzles? Is it codified it?
Speaker 5 (03:58):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (03:58):
Well, it's guesses on for the week, so we have
we usually give him four or five puzzles one a
day and uh, and Ben Noel is going to be
on in a couple of weeks. Ben was just recently
on and he was fantastic. And I told him off
air that my wife said to me after he was on,
she said, I like that Ben Bolan a lot, and
(04:22):
it was the emphasis was like a little alarming, and yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
Show your wife Ben Bolan's in the house. Thanks guys.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
Well, we also we also want to say that we
just had such a fantastic time learning about the history
of crosswords, uh, learning about where Waldo actually is and was.
Speaker 4 (04:46):
From Nudity right right children's book uh huh, and my
takeaway at.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
A famous cue by guys. Some of our fellow ridiculous
historians might be familiar with rubric and all the iterations thereof.
But one thing we did not get to in our
previous explorations together was the idea of the ultimate puzzling games,
the ultimate concept of discerning truth in hidden messages.
Speaker 4 (05:15):
And things in plain sight, you know, like important things
dare we say, classified government secrets, you know. And by
the way, I was still excited about doing this one.
I think I accidentally teased it first before the episode.
We actually did and had to take it back. Yeah,
so I've been I've been rare to go for this
one since since December.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
Yeah, aj, the first one is good. Also, we got
to keep the Bahamas nickname going and never explain it.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
So the uh I don't know what it means?
Speaker 1 (05:47):
Sure me neither neither, uh so the uh so, the
h This is our long awaited episode about something called
read craft spycraft to the uninitiated ag what How would
you set this up for us? What really drew you
(06:09):
to this concept as a guy who's an expert on puzzles.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
Well, I yeah, I wrote a book about puzzles and
puzzles and trade craft. Thank you for teaching me that
that phrase I was, I was saying spycraft like a loser.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
No, No, they're inchangeable. You're fine.
Speaker 3 (06:26):
Okay, Well they are kissing cousins. As you said, they
have been a ramp because they both involve deciphering codes.
These you send a secret message and the enemy is
trying to solve the puzzle basically, so this has been
true since the start of spying, So I thought we
(06:46):
could talk a little about that. And then there's some
that are even more direct crossovers between spying and puzzles,
like actual crossword puzzles that are involved with spy scandals.
Speaker 4 (06:57):
Oh, I can't wait to get to that one. That
one I was not aware of at all, And I'm
very much aware of the surrounding material, but just not
that particular detail.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
Vague, I know. But we'll get to it, we promise.
Speaker 4 (07:08):
But maybe yeah, to start off, I mean, you know,
the term decipher obviously comes from the term cipher, which
I think is also awesome that it's set to stand
in for like hip hop lyrics, like really good flow
because you know, if you're a good MC, you can
hide coded messages in the cadences and in the you know,
not like morse code. But I mean, you know, listening
(07:28):
to good rap is like listening to a story where
not everything is what it seems because there's so many
little things buried. You have to know references, you have
to know certain details about the person's life. There's all
these hidden little things. I just think that's so fascinating
about puzzles in general, but specifically these kind of word
based puzzles.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
Right And by the.
Speaker 3 (07:47):
Way, I did recently for some reason search morse code
in pop songs, and there's a list of about some
of them, including Rush. Rush is very famous for their.
Speaker 4 (07:58):
Into that numerology stuff. For Rush, those guys are another ancients. Yeah,
and Tool as.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
Well their drummer. Oh and the Journey and Tool both
have such phenomenally talented drummers that work in such innovative
ways for their time that I wouldn't be surprised if
they accidentally wrote entire paragraphs in morse code just doing
triplets and breakdowns and stuff.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
I think you mean Rush and Tool, but I like
Journey too.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
Oh yeah, yeah, I meant Rush, but I also like Journey, all.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
Right, all three Journey in the same echelon.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
No, no, wait, Nola, you did you stop believing?
Speaker 2 (08:36):
I never stopped believing, and I won't stop believing.
Speaker 4 (08:38):
And that song is forever intrinsically linked to the Sopranos
season finale in my mind and the minds of anyone.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
That saw that. Love it all right.
Speaker 3 (08:47):
Well, moving from Rush and Toul and Journey to back
to the ancient Roman, they had some of the first ciphers,
the famous Caesar cipher, which you might have heard of.
This is where you shift one letter three or four
or two spaces on the alphabet. It's probably the most basic.
(09:09):
It's the one you see like if you go to
a chain restaurant and they have the kids' menus, they'll
have a Caesar cipher for the kids.
Speaker 4 (09:16):
So that's also really interesting kind of primer for these
get so much more complex the keys to these things.
So that's actually really helpful for me because I usually
come in hot on like mega complex ones and this
is so above my pay grade. But to understand, this
is sort of the building block for what could then
be tweaked and mangled all kinds of crazy ways.
Speaker 3 (09:35):
Right, this is the one of the most basic, and
you probably know, but if it's a Caesar one, you
move at one space, so A would be b ben
would be CFO, which is interesting, and NOEL would be OPFM.
But you can shift at eight or fourteen, And like
you said, Noel, it's kind of a building block because
(09:56):
then the next level is called a visionnaire cipher, and
that is and you have a bunch of different Caesar
ciphers in the same message and you keep switching between them,
and uh, but there are hundreds of these ciphers. There's uh,
there's the zig zag cipher. I love that one.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
There's the.
Speaker 3 (10:15):
The Arnold cipher, which gets us back to spying because
that was named after not me. My first name actually
is Arnold, but it's named after Learning.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
I don't mean it's shocked. It's a fine first name.
Speaker 3 (10:28):
I don't know, it is not as I mean it
is in the and when we looked at baby books,
it was the list of names that will never come
back in stay.
Speaker 4 (10:35):
It's an old person's name. At this point, it's kind
of up there with Ruby, you know. I put it
over a Harold, you know, thank you. Yeah, it was
like Harold and Maudge so much.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
I'll always oh, that's a good one.
Speaker 2 (10:45):
That's a good one.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
But Moud's the breakout of that one.
Speaker 4 (10:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
But so okay, so this these building blocks. The thing
that we have to remember as we're hearing this in
twenty twenty four is that, with the benefit of retrosp fact,
this may sound very easily discernible. This may sound very
like easy to figure out. You know, you'd say, CFO,
let me just shift the letters or what.
Speaker 2 (11:10):
Have you, because that's because yeah, but that's the hindsight
talking right.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
So for centuries, for centuries, these kinds of ciphers were deployed.
I think it's fair to say, uh with with great success,
the the Arnold cipher, which I I don't think correct
me here a j. I don't think Benedict Arnold referred
to it as the Arnold cipher because that would blow
(11:43):
up his spot.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
I wasn't boasting at the tavern, right, I got this
new cipher called but but.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
So it's already illustrative here the power of the puzzles
in this way, like the the idea of, as you said,
the zigs cipher, the basic move a letter, a couple
spaces kind of thing that baffled people, and it worked
quite well for many, many centuries. It's just nuts and bananas.
(12:13):
I don't know why I'm siting breakfast references too.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
Well, that's the thing you.
Speaker 4 (12:16):
Say, Ben, that's one of your back pocket phrases. I'm
just gonna be a nerd for like five seconds. I've
been getting more into math lately because I've Aju and
I had a lovely breakfast at Barney Greengrass in New York,
and I told you about my modular synth craze, and
within modular synthesis and just synthesis in general, there's a
(12:37):
lot of math, and there's a lot of In order
to make what's called generative music, you use things that
resemble these kind of ciphers, and these shifting things are
something called euclidian sequencing, where you basically set a number
of squares it could be thirty two. Think of the
squares as a step of musical information music that you
have Euclidean triggers, and they're offset from the number of steps,
and as the thing triggers when it triggers, if it's
(12:59):
less and the number of steps, it'll start to make
these weird permutations as it cycles back on it. So
and just there's so much math and all kinds of
stuff in sense, But that really came to mind when
you're talking about shifting those characters. Think of those letters
being placed on a grid and then like shifting everything
around as you have more and more complex permutations. That's
when things really get like incredibly difficult and complex, right.
Speaker 3 (13:22):
Yeah, and absolutely, like you say, it can be visual,
it can be. The zigzag cipher is one where you
have to arrange them in a certain way. And by
the way, they are not even the basic ones. Okay,
the caesar cipher's not bad, but the Visionaire cipher is
pretty hard to crack, and the way you attack them
is they still use the same method now, which is
(13:44):
frequency analysis, because some letters in the English language are
common and some are not, right, like E, like e exactly.
Speaker 1 (13:54):
My mother for a very long time was an educator
and one of her favorite little riddles to give children
was what is the most common word in the English language?
Speaker 2 (14:08):
I love it?
Speaker 3 (14:08):
Right, So I'm guessing it's the Oh you nailed it?
Speaker 1 (14:12):
Wait, who show is this?
Speaker 3 (14:14):
So I'm a puzzle expert, y, you are a puzzle expert.
Speaker 4 (14:18):
And frequency analysis that's something I mean you wouldn't have
to have computers necessarily to do that, right, This is
something that could be done by hand.
Speaker 3 (14:26):
Right, I mean it is much better with computers because
then you get to the second level of frequency analysis,
Like certain letters are often next to each other, so
you know, you might see a lot of g h's,
but you don't see a lot of gzs or qus, right, all.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
Of these things that would help you out very much.
And wordle when.
Speaker 4 (14:48):
You're trying to like figure out what the word is,
You've got a number of squares, what are the ch
you know which ones are you going to cross off
your list first, you know, those are first go to attempts,
kind of those sorts of things.
Speaker 1 (14:59):
Yeah, to get the vowels at least in the English language.
And and of course the problems or the not the problem.
The question changes depending upon the language, especially if it's
a non Latin language. Can you imagine a cipher a
Caesar cipher in Mandarin that boggles different.
Speaker 2 (15:18):
Rules though, right, And I think you can have that
as well.
Speaker 1 (15:21):
Yeah, that you could have something.
Speaker 2 (15:23):
Like that, but it would be very hinetic version that
It's fascinating.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
I remember I once I once visited Iceland, and I
remember playing scrabble in Iceland and it was hilarious because
the j's and the z's were like worth two points
or one point. And so yeah, it definitely depends on
what alphabet you're using.
Speaker 1 (15:42):
So sore buddy Benedict Arnold has has this cipher that
he is using to communicate with British forces or their
proxies U during what turns out to be like one
of the biggest judas Ariot like moves in American history.
(16:02):
Could you could you tell us a little bit about
how one of the few bad bends of history Uh
was able to was able to do this, Like why
did he do it, how did it work, and what
was the end result. Obviously the other bad bend is
Benito Mussolini.
Speaker 2 (16:24):
Other than his friends.
Speaker 3 (16:27):
I don't know if we had, but yeah, yes, so
Benedict Arnold of course, uh became a spy for the British.
And I actually listened to one. I don't think it
was your podcast, but some podcasts was trying to sort
of do a little revisionist history and rehabilitate him a little.
I don't know if I buy that, but anyway, he
he was talked about him recently and I think we
(16:48):
were trump I was, at least to a point trying
to see both sides.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
It gets to a point in his his Uh, he.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
Got he got passed over from promote.
Speaker 3 (16:58):
He didn't get a promotion, which he does ad he
probably deserved it.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
So then he turned fully to the dark side, you know, right,
so pretty uh irredeemable.
Speaker 3 (17:08):
And there's well, there's also the Yoko Ono conspiracy like
that it was sort of his wife, who was very loyalist,
who was the one who turned him.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
So it was.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
Agree she was the same Yoko Ono from the Beatles,
by the way, Benedict Arnold was her first project, and
then the Beatles and then hook performance.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
No one's the things you learn the things you learn.
Well anyway, the Arnold ceipher is is done when both
the spy and the person he's communicating with have the
same exact book. So it could be the Bible could
be pride and prejudiced. And each word in the secret
code is clued with a three number code. So say
(17:53):
the code you get the first part of the code
is twelve nine seven. That means the first word is
on the twelfth page of the ninth line, of the
seventh word on that line.
Speaker 4 (18:04):
So the words in the books are just kind of
your like literal magazine cut out, like kidnapping letters right right.
Speaker 3 (18:11):
Like refrigerator magnets. You're creating a little a little poem.
Speaker 1 (18:15):
A predecessor of the one time Pad, which I'm sure
we'll get to, right.
Speaker 3 (18:19):
Oh yeah, I actually don't know the one time pad.
Speaker 1 (18:22):
I'm gonna I'm very fun at parties, so we'll get there.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
We'll get there.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
But so, okay, so he's got so we've got a
shared like to Nole's point about hiding a puzzle on
plane sight. We've got a shared common publication that people
can read like the same the same version of Bible
or something. And then you've got we've got essentially a
code directing you where to pull certain letters or certain
(18:51):
certain words, or just letter by letters.
Speaker 3 (18:53):
It could be either. I actually used this what I
wrote a book about puzzles, and I figured book.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
About what are dude, are you into puzzles?
Speaker 3 (19:05):
I'm just trying to in case you're just tuning in.
But I wanted to include a secret code in the
in the book, and I decided I should do the
Arnold cipher. So my book does have an Arnold cipher.
Speaker 4 (19:18):
Goofed about doing that in our book, but you know
how books go. You got to write them and then
they tell you you got to turn it in yesterday,
and then you don't have time anymore to do clever
little tricks like that, or maybe you do because you
had a better relationship with your publisher. But we did
talk about that, Ben doing some little easter eggs hidden
with page numbers or whatever in the footnotes and just
(19:39):
didn't quite happen.
Speaker 2 (19:40):
But glad that you got it across the sad I
did well.
Speaker 3 (19:42):
I was so nervous, like what if I messed the
code up? And I will say this, if you're listening
out there by, please buy the paperback version of The Puzzler,
not or because the hard Fact does contain an error.
And I just feel horrible about out it because it's
I print a bunch of puzzles and one is called
(20:03):
the World's Hardest KenKen Puzzle, and somehow there was a
printing error and the world's Hardest KenKen Puddle is actually
impossible to solve the way it's printed. So I just
feel horrible, and I've sent out about four long apology notes.
(20:23):
You know, I'll give you your money back.
Speaker 2 (20:25):
I really appreciate that.
Speaker 4 (20:27):
I think it's a little overkill personally. But you have
a reference for puzzles, man, you know, like, nope, we're
recalling all of them.
Speaker 3 (20:36):
No, I should have.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
Publisher that book. By the way, folks, for anyone playing
along at home, it is a must read. It is
called The Puzzler, One Man's Quest to Solve the most
baffling Puzzles Ever. There is a hilarious jigsaw competition anecdote
you can check out in our previous episodes.
Speaker 4 (20:57):
Yeah, and I got a jigsaw like coaster kind of situation,
like a mini Yeah, and we use it all the time.
Speaker 2 (21:04):
It was a big hidden in the Brown households.
Speaker 3 (21:06):
Oh I love it. Yes, this is a one piece
jigsaw puzzle which you can buy online.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
But AJ did did nascent Us authorities ever bust the
Arnold cipher?
Speaker 2 (21:19):
Did they solve it?
Speaker 1 (21:20):
Like?
Speaker 3 (21:21):
While he was question I should listen to previous Ridiculous
History episodes to figure out how he was busted because
I cannot remember. Do you remember anyone how he was busted?
Speaker 4 (21:31):
He was?
Speaker 1 (21:31):
Uh, let's see. So I don't think it was necessarily
the cipher itself.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
It was some intercepted something.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
Something was intercept Maybe it's also it was in general
his sketchy, resentful activity that gave him away.
Speaker 3 (21:50):
Well, it is an interesting point when you are at
war and you decode, you crack the code of the
other person, how much you have to be careful about
letting on that you've cracked the code. And that was
huge in World War Two, which we'll get to in
a moment, but with the when we cracked the Nazi code,
we had to sacrifice certain uh ships or battles because
(22:16):
we didn't want to let on too much so.
Speaker 4 (22:19):
There're a thing where we even like had a cadaver
with certain information in this pocket that was like the
wrong information that they There was a film about that
and with Benedict Cumber Badge meat.
Speaker 2 (22:31):
I can't remember, but okay, operation Min's meat.
Speaker 4 (22:34):
Max tells us yes in the operation meh no to
your point of the levels that you have to go
to the depths to cover your tracks to make sure
the enemy doesn't know that you know what they know? Right?
Speaker 1 (22:46):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (22:46):
Uh what?
Speaker 1 (22:47):
It's also what what do we call it? Sometimes collection
methods like you don't want people to know to Knowle's point,
how you know a thing right and you want to
feed some false information. Uh, funny side stories with that
in addition to in addition to framing cadavers, basically they
also they also had a thing where like the reason
(23:12):
a lot of people in the West believe that carrots
are great for your eyesight is because it was a
myth spread to access forces to sort of downplay advances
in aviation and surveillance.
Speaker 3 (23:29):
I love that story, and I actually that was one
that I did know, and it is great because it
is Yeah, they invented radar or sonar. I can't remember
which one the British did, and yeah, they said, well, no,
it's all because we eat carrots and that's why we
have night vision and it's the best thing for the
carrot industry. Ever, so I'm for your other show on conspiracies.
(23:50):
I'm wondering if the carrot industry is sort of lobbied
to make this happen.
Speaker 1 (23:55):
Big carrot is by far the number one sponsor of
stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 4 (23:59):
It is known. It is literally just a big carrot
with like an anthropomorphic carrot with eyes and a mouth
like from an old Fleisher cartoon, you know, menacingly rubbing
his green hands together.
Speaker 1 (24:12):
There is there is, there's our garret. And so so
we know that we know that Benedict Arnold is is
a common touch point, right, It's something that most Americans
will go about. Indeed, I would say most people in
the Western world are on some level aware of the
(24:33):
skull duggery that Arnold engaged in. But you set up
something quite beautifully at the beginning of our conversation today,
AJ where you said crosswords might also be part of
trade craft. And I know this is a shout out
for any of our fellow ridiculous historians who have been
playing a crossword and maybe like your bait or mainhoff
(24:57):
comes out and you're thinking, is this crossword tried to
tell me something like this? Why is this getting increasingly specific? Right?
Speaker 3 (25:13):
Well, like you said, I mean, we've been talking more
generally about how puzzles and tradecraft are kissing cousins, but
there are several times when they are more than kissing cousins,
when the overlap is completely direct. So one of my
favorite puzzles of all time is the crossword puzzle that
saved the Free World. Maybe a little overstated, it helped
(25:35):
save the free world. Let's just throw it say it
that way. And this happened in nineteen forty two. The
British newspaper The Daily Telegraph printed a particularly tricky crossword
and it said that the people who solved the crossword
in twelve minutes or less would should contact the number.
And that number turned out to be Bletchley Park, which
(25:59):
is the hood breaking operation in World War two that
famously broke the Nazi enigma code and helped us win
the war. A huge key and and of course you've
covered him before. I loved your episode on Alan Turing thanks.
So yeah, this this was a recruiting a secret recruiting
tool for Bletchley Park. Were these crossword puzzles? And I
(26:23):
will say they were not your average This was not
your average cross This was a super tricky crossword puzzle.
Speaker 1 (26:30):
Did you did you play it yourself?
Speaker 3 (26:32):
I did, and I did not solve it in twelve
minutes or I could not solve it in.
Speaker 2 (26:38):
Call yourself a puzzle expert? Were calling park right now?
Oh my god.
Speaker 4 (26:43):
By the way, when we did talk about this episode,
I just I think I commented that Bletchley Park is
the most British sounding name for a place ever of
all time. And I swear that I've already said that
I wouldn't do it again. But modular sent people love
Alan Turing. There's a module that's very popular called the
Turing Machine, and it is a random voltage generator. It
basically is like a way of generating random pulses of
(27:06):
information that can be interpreted by different Since you know,
it's all in honor of Alan Turing, who is a
huge person in mathematics and AI and attack of all kinds.
Speaker 3 (27:15):
Hero hero and now instance I didn't even know.
Speaker 1 (27:19):
And also, by the way, just the way British culture
tends to struggle with good names for food and dishes.
Bletchley Park might as well be like some kind of
bread that they made.
Speaker 3 (27:32):
Really does sound something you'd have at high t a
little ually and Marmalade.
Speaker 1 (27:39):
Park.
Speaker 4 (27:39):
Wait, so this, this crossword puzzle was like a secret
Jeopardy audition kind.
Speaker 3 (27:44):
Of exactly it was, and I, as we said, I
did not solve it. We are very happy that World
War two did not rest on my shoulders. But but
let me just I want to give you and the listeners,
let me just give you one example if I could,
just to show you how tricky these things are, because
(28:05):
British crosswords were and still are famous for their wordplay,
their anagrams, palindromes, puns.
Speaker 2 (28:13):
Clever Brits, they are so clever the language or something.
Speaker 1 (28:17):
And everything, but again naming food right exactly.
Speaker 3 (28:21):
So here, let me give you seventeen across and and
well I'll walk you through it because there's no way
I would have gotten this without hints. All right, So
the clue is it's a six letter word, and the
clue is is this town ready for a flood? Is
this town ready for a flood? Six letter. Oh you
got it.
Speaker 1 (28:41):
No, I'm just appreciating the the artistry.
Speaker 2 (28:47):
Oh yeah, I mean I'm assuming that it's not going
to be the name of a town.
Speaker 3 (28:50):
Well, let me walk you through it. What do you
think of when you think of a flood? I think
of like, yeah, most famous flood are sure?
Speaker 2 (28:58):
Yeah? All right?
Speaker 3 (29:00):
So yeah, noah, And as you said, what did he
do to get ready for the flood? He had an arc?
But if you're ready, you don't want an old arc,
you want well exactly, I think it was Newark, England, but.
Speaker 1 (29:20):
Whatever, whatever I prefer.
Speaker 3 (29:22):
But yes, so that that's the kind of level of British.
Speaker 1 (29:27):
Let me give you this.
Speaker 3 (29:28):
Let me give you two more of these.
Speaker 4 (29:30):
We had the the ammunition, Ben and I. And to
get there though I know you again, hindsight is a thing,
but almost you know, if we it's one of those things.
It's also to be appreciated that it kind of requires
you to follow your intuition and to trust yourself and
not to like second guess things.
Speaker 3 (29:47):
And yeah, you did say it was a town, you
did say at the beginning. Well, next time I'll just
let there be dead air and give no clues and
we'll just wait.
Speaker 4 (29:57):
For I actually said, I bet it's no out of town.
But now there are certain things in the parlance of
crossword where you know a certain thing when it's said
in a certain way, and a clue is a true thing,
sure what the solution is going to be like otherwise
the rules would be it'd be impossible right to kind of.
Speaker 3 (30:13):
Like we talked, there are definitely rules.
Speaker 1 (30:15):
We talked about the evolution of crossword nomenclature, little things
that are now universal, Like if there is an abbreviation
as a clue, then there is an abbreviation in the
answer right.
Speaker 3 (30:33):
Action, so you have two more Well these are not
from that puzzle, but they're the same kind of British puzzle.
So for instance, this is a very famous clue. It's
just the whole clue is gigs g E G S.
That's the whole clue, and the answer is going to
be a two word phrase nine letters, four letters, so gigs.
(30:57):
You know, when I first saw this, I was like,
what is a gig? I don't know what a gain?
It sounds like something in the.
Speaker 2 (31:02):
Sine cockney rhyming slang kind of situation or something.
Speaker 3 (31:06):
Well, now that's interesting, you say, rhyming, but think of
they like rhyming, but they also like anagrams a lot.
So if you rearrange something eggs, but what kind of
eggs are they? Grambled eggs, crambled eggs. Nice, Yeah, exactly,
really good at this.
Speaker 2 (31:24):
You're definitely helping us out.
Speaker 3 (31:25):
A little bit, a little bit, a little bit of
saved the world.
Speaker 2 (31:28):
But you know, but but I only mentioned Cockney rhyming slang.
Speaker 4 (31:31):
Is that, in and of itself, is a puzzle where
you'll say, like, we're in I think I got this
one from one of the Ocean's movies Oly Love and
where the character says we're in Barney and he goes
rubble trouble, Barney's trouble. But that's a example a puzzle,
kind of rock, kind of Cockney ryming.
Speaker 1 (31:49):
As a as a as an actual MC person, the
thing that bugs me about Cockney rhyming slang is they
have no respect for meter or syllable count. They'll just
go with the thing that rhymes.
Speaker 2 (32:02):
Ben is the breaking rap. Pretty good, thanks.
Speaker 1 (32:06):
Man, but definitely Nola and I need your help on
these pretty fascinating and pretty storied crossword clues. For anybody
who listened to our previous episodes with AJ. I think
it was before we moved to your third British Crossword AJ.
(32:27):
Can you remind the good people here of the crossword
clue that was called like the most famous or best
of all time and you said it was kind of mids.
Speaker 3 (32:38):
Well, I think maybe it was Will Schwartz's favorite of
all time. That's the which is pretty good. I'm certainly
better than anything I've written, but it was I believe
this turns into another story. This turns into another story.
Was the clue and the answer was a two word
phrase and I guess I'll say it. You can paunt spires, yes,
(33:03):
viral staircase, spial staircase.
Speaker 1 (33:05):
Which I still that wouldn't stuck in my head.
Speaker 4 (33:07):
Sometimes well, your mind immediately goes to like a page
in a book or something right, and that's where the
twist is, you know, because if you're focusing on that
wrong thing, which is where they get you, then you're
going to just spin yourself out right, and like you
can really get my opic and lose objectivity with these things.
So it really is a great exercise to kind of
elasticize your mind, you know, and think in different directions.
Speaker 2 (33:30):
For stuff you know.
Speaker 3 (33:30):
Exactly, well exactly, you have to look at it in
a different way, whether it's a different meaning or a
different arrangement. So, for instance, the other very famous British
crypto crossword clue is this. It's the whole clue is
h I, J K l M And oh, just all
those words in a line, all those letters in the line,
(33:51):
H I, J K l M N.
Speaker 2 (33:53):
It's the alphabet.
Speaker 3 (33:53):
But I don't know, right, but where does it start?
Where does it start? It starts at G No, no, h,
I said, sorry, eh.
Speaker 2 (34:03):
Oh, so we're doing numbers here, we're doing nothing.
Speaker 3 (34:05):
No, no, Just what letters at the beginning and what
letters at the end? Right, So it goes from H
to water water exactly water.
Speaker 2 (34:18):
I'm being an adult. It's eight was the last one,
and that is yes.
Speaker 3 (34:24):
The clue translated to H two O and then the
answer is a five letter word.
Speaker 2 (34:28):
It's water. Very clear.
Speaker 1 (34:30):
So there you go.
Speaker 2 (34:31):
So this requires several permutations, right to get that.
Speaker 1 (34:34):
Yes, So this really was a This actual nineteen forty
two crossword in the Daily Telegraph was an actual ad
for intelligence or cryptography operators.
Speaker 3 (34:50):
Yes, a secret recruiting tool and and who knows how
many of them were recruited that way, but it was
a four for good. On the other hand, there's another
crossword puzzle in World War Two that I want to
talk about that was the exact opposite. It was an
agent of chaos. So are you ready for the second
(35:13):
big crossword scandal. Well, this was also in the same newspaper,
the Telegraph. Three years later, in nineteen forty five. They
printed a series of puzzles in the days leading up
to D Day, and these puzzles caused a national security crisis.
(35:34):
They caused a frenzy because the problem was the answers
to Several of the answers in those crossword puzzles were
top secret code words related to D Day, like a
crazy number like beyond.
Speaker 2 (35:49):
So no possible coincidence. There's somebody knew something or well, it's.
Speaker 3 (35:54):
Still debated whether it was.
Speaker 1 (35:56):
Let me.
Speaker 3 (35:56):
But listen to some of these words that appeared. You ta,
which was a beach in the invasion Omaha. Another beach
Neptune was Mulberry where the floating harbors. And this one
weirdest of all was overlord.
Speaker 2 (36:12):
That's a weird one.
Speaker 3 (36:14):
Yeah, that's not an regular word, you see, And.
Speaker 1 (36:18):
Unless you're really into che yeah, or less or unless
you make jokes about corporate overlords. But that's the one
that really scratches behind the ears of my stuff. They
don't want you to know overlord. With the rest of
the very.
Speaker 4 (36:31):
Specific choice, it feels like the use of that one
is become more of like a shorthand, like for nefarious evil. Now,
but I wonder how it would have been used in
conversation back in those days.
Speaker 3 (36:42):
Yeah, it was clued as big wig and but it was.
But overlord is is the actual code name for the
whole D day. It's like the number one. So the
British Secret Service notice this or someone alerted them to it.
Speaker 2 (36:57):
And round up these nerds.
Speaker 3 (36:59):
Yes, that's exactly what they did.
Speaker 1 (37:01):
Yeah, they and everybody everybody at this point is I
don't know, crosswords a very mainstream in British society at
this point, right, So it would have it would have
immediately been public knowledge, right, a worrisome thing. It's not
like it's not like this showed up on a niche
(37:23):
reddit forum and got two up votes. It's now, uh
something the entirety of the Kingdom is putting together. So
now everybody knows on some level, these like five words
in relation to each other. But another thing about puzzles
and codes is like knowing the words doesn't really matter
if you don't know the context.
Speaker 2 (37:45):
They're like what they're referring to. So I can understand
them freaking out a little bit, but it's not like
the jig was up all of a sudden.
Speaker 1 (37:51):
Yeah, but they had to find whomever made this and
figure out if they were German.
Speaker 2 (37:55):
Well they did, okay, so they.
Speaker 3 (37:58):
Did actually round up the nerds, or one nerd in particular,
the headmaster of.
Speaker 2 (38:03):
A school that is nerdy right here in the outlet.
Speaker 3 (38:09):
Listen, I am a nerd, so I feel I can
throw it around recognized nerd.
Speaker 2 (38:13):
That's right.
Speaker 4 (38:14):
So he was.
Speaker 3 (38:16):
He was arrested and he was brought to London and
they interrogated him extensively.
Speaker 5 (38:23):
And sorry, I'm laughing because I pictured like a picturing
the old school, like old school heart boiled true crime
procedurals where there's a chair in a harsh white way
mirror and some guy in a powdered wig walks out
and goes, what's the oting.
Speaker 4 (38:44):
I guess I'm also a picture. I mean, I don't
know not to be morbid about it. But do you
think they would have roughed him up a little bit?
Speaker 2 (38:49):
Perhaps?
Speaker 3 (38:49):
I'm guessing this guy he's a headmaster of like, uh,
he's gonna still, he's gonna, he's gonna tury over and
as well. Right, the Leonard Daw that's his name, and
poor Leonard was interrogated, but he eventually they let him
go because they decided it really was a weird coincidence.
Speaker 1 (39:10):
It is.
Speaker 4 (39:11):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (39:12):
Yet the twist is, and this may be this better
for your other show that there is still speculation that
it was not a coincidence, so it's still debated. One
theory is that DAWs students he uh used them to
help him construct the crosswords that is that is known. Yeah,
(39:32):
he did a little outsourcing, okay, But the school happened
to be nearby a base and so the theory is
maybe they were uves dropping and overheard the soldiers chatting.
Speaker 2 (39:42):
And it is an elaborate fu or what what are
we like? Why do that? Though?
Speaker 3 (39:47):
Even in that circumstance, that's a point, Yeah, let's try
to screw our country and also a goods.
Speaker 1 (39:54):
Also, we do know, Agadden, with the benefit of retrospect,
that the war Old of British academia was would end
up being pretty heavily compromised.
Speaker 3 (40:09):
I really know that.
Speaker 1 (40:10):
Yeah, there is that part you know, when you go
when you go look at like the Cambridge Ring and
stuff like that. Again, nothing occurs in a vacuum. I
do like this theory, AJ, because it does sound like
a cool teacher who's saying, hey guys today. Is it
like his version of the substitute teacher who plays a
(40:31):
movie and says, hey guys today, instead of worrying about
you know, math or whatever, we're going to work on
a crossword together. And then these these students are going
My favorite words are omaha, utah, neptune, mulberry and wait for.
Speaker 2 (40:47):
It, overlord, overlord. How about that one? Right every one?
What was it a big wig?
Speaker 4 (40:52):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (40:52):
Yeah, it's Barry bart Simpson. But luckily it did not
cause the D Day to fail because that wouldn't have
been as funny.
Speaker 2 (41:00):
I know that was that one was kind of important.
They made some movies about that.
Speaker 1 (41:02):
They should take a couple Yeah, no, AJ, I think
it's fair for us to ask at this point your
your personal take. Now, with great respect, you've all obviously
been very careful not to make any kind of like
hyperbolic claim. You're proposing one common theory with this, But
(41:23):
if we could, if we could get inside your mind
a little bit, my friend, do you think it is?
Speaker 3 (41:30):
Uh?
Speaker 1 (41:32):
What's the line between like coincidence and conspiracy?
Speaker 3 (41:36):
Right, it is a great question. I would guess my
I would say seventy percent chance it's a coincidence, thirty
percent chance they there was something. Maybe it's funny, maybe,
but it is. I mean, one thing you notice when
you work with puzzles or and or history is just
(41:57):
how much noise there is and how good we are
as humans at finding the signal in.
Speaker 2 (42:02):
The patterns, pattern recognizing beings.
Speaker 3 (42:06):
Exactly after Fenia. That's one of my favorite words I learned.
Speaker 2 (42:09):
You know about that.
Speaker 3 (42:11):
They yeah, the it's the ability to find patterns that
do not exist, and we are very good.
Speaker 2 (42:18):
So it's being cuckoo bananas basically exactly.
Speaker 1 (42:22):
And with that we are going to pause. We're going
to call this part one of the Puzzler teaches the
gang trade craft because we got some unpleasant messages from then. Essay, Uh,
that just asked us to pump our brakes a little bit.
So so We're gonna We're going to take a brief pause.
We are going to continue this story later this week.
(42:45):
In the meantime, aj Bahamas Jacobs, thank you so much
for coming back onto the show. Where can people learn
more about your work?
Speaker 3 (42:55):
Ah well, I love being on the show. It is
a joy. I love listening, so now get to listen
to myself. Please tune into The Puzzler, the Daily podcast
featuring Ben Bollen and soon Noel Brown. I'm scared, No,
don't be scared.
Speaker 4 (43:12):
You you are.
Speaker 3 (43:13):
I'm very easy with the hints, sokod time, I'm very gentle,
lead me by the nose. Yes, there you go, so please, yes,
tune into that.
Speaker 4 (43:22):
And in the meantime, huge thanks and wishing well are
our nemesis Jonathan Strickland, the quister, who is on the
mend after not feeling super well lately, so we hope
to see him back very very soon.
Speaker 1 (43:35):
Yes he is, as I'm sure everybody's first question will be,
is he still doing those obnoxious puns? The answer is yes,
and you'll hear them on air. Thanks thanks also to
our super producer mister Max Williams, his biological brother and
the composer of this Bop and soundtrack. Mister Alex Williams nol.
(43:55):
We got a cavalcade of people to thank real quick.
Speaker 4 (43:58):
Oh, of course always thanks to Chris frosciotis here in spirit,
along with Eve's Jeff Codes and boy, I don't know.
I don't know about a laundry list, but you count
for at least five humans in the weight that your
thank you kats at the end of this program.
Speaker 1 (44:12):
Oh my gosh, we're doing credits like the Electoral College.
Well well, five, thanks you, five, thank yous to you
as well, mister Brown. We're extremely excited to explore trade
craft with you Aja in an upcoming episode. Oh my gosh,
can we do spoilers? There's a puzzle the CIA cancel.
Speaker 2 (44:34):
We'll see you next time, folks.
Speaker 4 (44:42):
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 a shout out to our
super producer, mister Max one Hand Williams. Who Ah, who Rah,
who is Hurrah Otowski? I'm Ben Bullen, You're Old Brown.
And this is a very very special special episode maybe
(00:50):
series for us, because Noel, you'll recall back in December
of twenty twenty three, we had a good friend of
ours on the show and there was an episode that
we really wanted to do.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
I was already in the bag man, you just didn't
have the time.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
We are making the time, of course, because we have
a luminary, a returning guest, a member, as you said
off air, of the Ridiculous History Pantheon, the legendary author,
the thought Leader, I would say, of all things, ladies, constitution. Yeah,
this is this is the return of our good friend,
(01:32):
none other than the puzzler himself, Aj Bahamas Jacobs, Aj.
Welcome back to the show.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
It's great to be That's the best intro I've ever got.
I'm going to leave beside yourself, illuminary thought Leader, my
ego is huge. I'm going to my trailer, you know,
I gotta say aj before we get into today's episode.
Speaker 4 (01:52):
I thought of you recently. I was in Boston walking
the Freedom Trail, which is like a very constitutionally minded
is he walking tour that takes you through some of
the cool little back old English he kind of you know,
parts of Boston. And the craziest part that happened was
as my friend and I were walking along, having just
seen Ben Franklin's family plot, we see off in the
(02:13):
distance that's very familiar sight and it's a star of
internet meme fame.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
The cop slide. Do you know about the cops Slide?
Speaker 3 (02:20):
I don't know about it?
Speaker 4 (02:21):
Is so, there was this video that made the rounds
last year sometime where there was this unfortunate cop who
went down this slide for children that's really really tall
and he shoots out of.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
It like a rocket.
Speaker 4 (02:37):
The internet went nuts, and there's some guys that I
follow on YouTube the Internet Today Show who conjecture they
have this whole theory thing about how it was because
of his police belt, his utility belts and all the
metal on it that would like totally eliminate friction down
this metal slide that caused him just to rocket out
of that thing like a bullet. And so me and
my friend were just beside ourselves. It was like seeing
(02:59):
a celebrit And I've made a video of him sliding
down it very gently.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
There was no issue with me, did you slide?
Speaker 4 (03:07):
No?
Speaker 2 (03:07):
I was not getting stuck in there like Pooh Bear
in the tree.
Speaker 4 (03:10):
No. But I made the video and I asked him
how what was the experience like for you? It's apparently
also a sign at the top that says don't go
down head first.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
The cop also went down head first. Well, so you.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
Get in situations. We also, uh, just for a recap
everyone previously, AJ, we had you on because very excited
about your show, The Puzzler Monday through Friday show wherein
you present all sorts of people with a number of
(03:43):
spoiler alert, increasingly arcane puzzles over the course of a week.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
Are is there a number? How many are we talking here?
Is it just your discretion? AJ?
Speaker 3 (03:54):
You mean the number of puzzles?
Speaker 2 (03:55):
The number of puzzles? Is it codified it?
Speaker 5 (03:58):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (03:58):
Well, it's guesses on for the week, so we have
we usually give him four or five puzzles one a
day and uh, and Ben Noel is going to be
on in a couple of weeks. Ben was just recently
on and he was fantastic. And I told him off
air that my wife said to me after he was on,
she said, I like that Ben Bolan a lot, and
(04:22):
it was the emphasis was like a little alarming, and yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
Show your wife Ben Bolan's in the house. Thanks guys.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
Well, we also we also want to say that we
just had such a fantastic time learning about the history
of crosswords, uh, learning about where Waldo actually is and was.
Speaker 4 (04:46):
From Nudity right right children's book uh huh, and my
takeaway at.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
A famous cue by guys. Some of our fellow ridiculous
historians might be familiar with rubric and all the iterations thereof.
But one thing we did not get to in our
previous explorations together was the idea of the ultimate puzzling games,
the ultimate concept of discerning truth in hidden messages.
Speaker 4 (05:15):
And things in plain sight, you know, like important things
dare we say, classified government secrets, you know. And by
the way, I was still excited about doing this one.
I think I accidentally teased it first before the episode.
We actually did and had to take it back. Yeah,
so I've been I've been rare to go for this
one since since December.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
Yeah, aj, the first one is good. Also, we got
to keep the Bahamas nickname going and never explain it.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
So the uh I don't know what it means?
Speaker 1 (05:47):
Sure me neither neither, uh so the uh so, the
h This is our long awaited episode about something called
read craft spycraft to the uninitiated ag what How would
you set this up for us? What really drew you
(06:09):
to this concept as a guy who's an expert on puzzles.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
Well, I yeah, I wrote a book about puzzles and
puzzles and trade craft. Thank you for teaching me that
that phrase I was, I was saying spycraft like a loser.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
No, No, they're inchangeable. You're fine.
Speaker 3 (06:26):
Okay, Well they are kissing cousins. As you said, they
have been a ramp because they both involve deciphering codes.
These you send a secret message and the enemy is
trying to solve the puzzle basically, so this has been
true since the start of spying, So I thought we
(06:46):
could talk a little about that. And then there's some
that are even more direct crossovers between spying and puzzles,
like actual crossword puzzles that are involved with spy scandals.
Speaker 4 (06:57):
Oh, I can't wait to get to that one. That
one I was not aware of at all, And I'm
very much aware of the surrounding material, but just not
that particular detail.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
Vague, I know. But we'll get to it, we promise.
Speaker 4 (07:08):
But maybe yeah, to start off, I mean, you know,
the term decipher obviously comes from the term cipher, which
I think is also awesome that it's set to stand
in for like hip hop lyrics, like really good flow
because you know, if you're a good MC, you can
hide coded messages in the cadences and in the you know,
not like morse code. But I mean, you know, listening
(07:28):
to good rap is like listening to a story where
not everything is what it seems because there's so many
little things buried. You have to know references, you have
to know certain details about the person's life. There's all
these hidden little things. I just think that's so fascinating
about puzzles in general, but specifically these kind of word
based puzzles.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
Right And by the.
Speaker 3 (07:47):
Way, I did recently for some reason search morse code
in pop songs, and there's a list of about some
of them, including Rush. Rush is very famous for their.
Speaker 4 (07:58):
Into that numerology stuff. For Rush, those guys are another ancients. Yeah,
and Tool as.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
Well their drummer. Oh and the Journey and Tool both
have such phenomenally talented drummers that work in such innovative
ways for their time that I wouldn't be surprised if
they accidentally wrote entire paragraphs in morse code just doing
triplets and breakdowns and stuff.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
I think you mean Rush and Tool, but I like
Journey too.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
Oh yeah, yeah, I meant Rush, but I also like Journey, all.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
Right, all three Journey in the same echelon.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
No, no, wait, Nola, you did you stop believing?
Speaker 2 (08:36):
I never stopped believing, and I won't stop believing.
Speaker 4 (08:38):
And that song is forever intrinsically linked to the Sopranos
season finale in my mind and the minds of anyone.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
That saw that. Love it all right.
Speaker 3 (08:47):
Well, moving from Rush and Toul and Journey to back
to the ancient Roman, they had some of the first ciphers,
the famous Caesar cipher, which you might have heard of.
This is where you shift one letter three or four
or two spaces on the alphabet. It's probably the most basic.
(09:09):
It's the one you see like if you go to
a chain restaurant and they have the kids' menus, they'll
have a Caesar cipher for the kids.
Speaker 4 (09:16):
So that's also really interesting kind of primer for these
get so much more complex the keys to these things.
So that's actually really helpful for me because I usually
come in hot on like mega complex ones and this
is so above my pay grade. But to understand, this
is sort of the building block for what could then
be tweaked and mangled all kinds of crazy ways.
Speaker 3 (09:35):
Right, this is the one of the most basic, and
you probably know, but if it's a Caesar one, you
move at one space, so A would be b ben
would be CFO, which is interesting, and NOEL would be OPFM.
But you can shift at eight or fourteen, And like
you said, Noel, it's kind of a building block because
(09:56):
then the next level is called a visionnaire cipher, and
that is and you have a bunch of different Caesar
ciphers in the same message and you keep switching between them,
and uh, but there are hundreds of these ciphers. There's uh,
there's the zig zag cipher. I love that one.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
There's the.
Speaker 3 (10:15):
The Arnold cipher, which gets us back to spying because
that was named after not me. My first name actually
is Arnold, but it's named after Learning.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
I don't mean it's shocked. It's a fine first name.
Speaker 3 (10:28):
I don't know, it is not as I mean it
is in the and when we looked at baby books,
it was the list of names that will never come
back in stay.
Speaker 4 (10:35):
It's an old person's name. At this point, it's kind
of up there with Ruby, you know. I put it
over a Harold, you know, thank you. Yeah, it was
like Harold and Maudge so much.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
I'll always oh, that's a good one.
Speaker 2 (10:45):
That's a good one.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
But Moud's the breakout of that one.
Speaker 4 (10:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
But so okay, so this these building blocks. The thing
that we have to remember as we're hearing this in
twenty twenty four is that, with the benefit of retrosp fact,
this may sound very easily discernible. This may sound very
like easy to figure out. You know, you'd say, CFO,
let me just shift the letters or what.
Speaker 2 (11:10):
Have you, because that's because yeah, but that's the hindsight
talking right.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
So for centuries, for centuries, these kinds of ciphers were deployed.
I think it's fair to say, uh with with great success,
the the Arnold cipher, which I I don't think correct
me here a j. I don't think Benedict Arnold referred
to it as the Arnold cipher because that would blow
(11:43):
up his spot.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
I wasn't boasting at the tavern, right, I got this
new cipher called but but.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
So it's already illustrative here the power of the puzzles
in this way, like the the idea of, as you said,
the zigs cipher, the basic move a letter, a couple
spaces kind of thing that baffled people, and it worked
quite well for many, many centuries. It's just nuts and bananas.
(12:13):
I don't know why I'm siting breakfast references too.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
Well, that's the thing you.
Speaker 4 (12:16):
Say, Ben, that's one of your back pocket phrases. I'm
just gonna be a nerd for like five seconds. I've
been getting more into math lately because I've Aju and
I had a lovely breakfast at Barney Greengrass in New York,
and I told you about my modular synth craze, and
within modular synthesis and just synthesis in general, there's a
(12:37):
lot of math, and there's a lot of In order
to make what's called generative music, you use things that
resemble these kind of ciphers, and these shifting things are
something called euclidian sequencing, where you basically set a number
of squares it could be thirty two. Think of the
squares as a step of musical information music that you
have Euclidean triggers, and they're offset from the number of steps,
and as the thing triggers when it triggers, if it's
(12:59):
less and the number of steps, it'll start to make
these weird permutations as it cycles back on it. So
and just there's so much math and all kinds of
stuff in sense, But that really came to mind when
you're talking about shifting those characters. Think of those letters
being placed on a grid and then like shifting everything
around as you have more and more complex permutations. That's
when things really get like incredibly difficult and complex, right.
Speaker 3 (13:22):
Yeah, and absolutely, like you say, it can be visual,
it can be. The zigzag cipher is one where you
have to arrange them in a certain way. And by
the way, they are not even the basic ones. Okay,
the caesar cipher's not bad, but the Visionaire cipher is
pretty hard to crack, and the way you attack them
is they still use the same method now, which is
(13:44):
frequency analysis, because some letters in the English language are
common and some are not, right, like E, like e exactly.
Speaker 1 (13:54):
My mother for a very long time was an educator
and one of her favorite little riddles to give children
was what is the most common word in the English language?
Speaker 2 (14:08):
I love it?
Speaker 3 (14:08):
Right, So I'm guessing it's the Oh you nailed it?
Speaker 1 (14:12):
Wait, who show is this?
Speaker 3 (14:14):
So I'm a puzzle expert, y, you are a puzzle expert.
Speaker 4 (14:18):
And frequency analysis that's something I mean you wouldn't have
to have computers necessarily to do that, right, This is
something that could be done by hand.
Speaker 3 (14:26):
Right, I mean it is much better with computers because
then you get to the second level of frequency analysis,
Like certain letters are often next to each other, so
you know, you might see a lot of g h's,
but you don't see a lot of gzs or qus, right, all.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
Of these things that would help you out very much.
And wordle when.
Speaker 4 (14:48):
You're trying to like figure out what the word is,
You've got a number of squares, what are the ch
you know which ones are you going to cross off
your list first, you know, those are first go to attempts,
kind of those sorts of things.
Speaker 1 (14:59):
Yeah, to get the vowels at least in the English language.
And and of course the problems or the not the problem.
The question changes depending upon the language, especially if it's
a non Latin language. Can you imagine a cipher a
Caesar cipher in Mandarin that boggles different.
Speaker 2 (15:18):
Rules though, right, And I think you can have that
as well.
Speaker 1 (15:21):
Yeah, that you could have something.
Speaker 2 (15:23):
Like that, but it would be very hinetic version that
It's fascinating.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
I remember I once I once visited Iceland, and I
remember playing scrabble in Iceland and it was hilarious because
the j's and the z's were like worth two points
or one point. And so yeah, it definitely depends on
what alphabet you're using.
Speaker 1 (15:42):
So sore buddy Benedict Arnold has has this cipher that
he is using to communicate with British forces or their
proxies U during what turns out to be like one
of the biggest judas Ariot like moves in American history.
(16:02):
Could you could you tell us a little bit about
how one of the few bad bends of history Uh
was able to was able to do this, Like why
did he do it, how did it work, and what
was the end result. Obviously the other bad bend is
Benito Mussolini.
Speaker 2 (16:24):
Other than his friends.
Speaker 3 (16:27):
I don't know if we had, but yeah, yes, so
Benedict Arnold of course, uh became a spy for the British.
And I actually listened to one. I don't think it
was your podcast, but some podcasts was trying to sort
of do a little revisionist history and rehabilitate him a little.
I don't know if I buy that, but anyway, he
he was talked about him recently and I think we
(16:48):
were trump I was, at least to a point trying
to see both sides.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
It gets to a point in his his Uh, he.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
Got he got passed over from promote.
Speaker 3 (16:58):
He didn't get a promotion, which he does ad he
probably deserved it.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
So then he turned fully to the dark side, you know, right,
so pretty uh irredeemable.
Speaker 3 (17:08):
And there's well, there's also the Yoko Ono conspiracy like
that it was sort of his wife, who was very loyalist,
who was the one who turned him.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
So it was.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
Agree she was the same Yoko Ono from the Beatles,
by the way, Benedict Arnold was her first project, and
then the Beatles and then hook performance.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
No one's the things you learn the things you learn.
Well anyway, the Arnold ceipher is is done when both
the spy and the person he's communicating with have the
same exact book. So it could be the Bible could
be pride and prejudiced. And each word in the secret
code is clued with a three number code. So say
(17:53):
the code you get the first part of the code
is twelve nine seven. That means the first word is
on the twelfth page of the ninth line, of the
seventh word on that line.
Speaker 4 (18:04):
So the words in the books are just kind of
your like literal magazine cut out, like kidnapping letters right right.
Speaker 3 (18:11):
Like refrigerator magnets. You're creating a little a little poem.
Speaker 1 (18:15):
A predecessor of the one time Pad, which I'm sure
we'll get to, right.
Speaker 3 (18:19):
Oh yeah, I actually don't know the one time pad.
Speaker 1 (18:22):
I'm gonna I'm very fun at parties, so we'll get there.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
We'll get there.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
But so, okay, so he's got so we've got a
shared like to Nole's point about hiding a puzzle on
plane sight. We've got a shared common publication that people
can read like the same the same version of Bible
or something. And then you've got we've got essentially a
code directing you where to pull certain letters or certain
(18:51):
certain words, or just letter by letters.
Speaker 3 (18:53):
It could be either. I actually used this what I
wrote a book about puzzles, and I figured book.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
About what are dude, are you into puzzles?
Speaker 3 (19:05):
I'm just trying to in case you're just tuning in.
But I wanted to include a secret code in the
in the book, and I decided I should do the
Arnold cipher. So my book does have an Arnold cipher.
Speaker 4 (19:18):
Goofed about doing that in our book, but you know
how books go. You got to write them and then
they tell you you got to turn it in yesterday,
and then you don't have time anymore to do clever
little tricks like that, or maybe you do because you
had a better relationship with your publisher. But we did
talk about that, Ben doing some little easter eggs hidden
with page numbers or whatever in the footnotes and just
(19:39):
didn't quite happen.
Speaker 2 (19:40):
But glad that you got it across the sad I
did well.
Speaker 3 (19:42):
I was so nervous, like what if I messed the
code up? And I will say this, if you're listening
out there by, please buy the paperback version of The Puzzler,
not or because the hard Fact does contain an error.
And I just feel horrible about out it because it's
I print a bunch of puzzles and one is called
(20:03):
the World's Hardest KenKen Puzzle, and somehow there was a
printing error and the world's Hardest KenKen Puddle is actually
impossible to solve the way it's printed. So I just
feel horrible, and I've sent out about four long apology notes.
(20:23):
You know, I'll give you your money back.
Speaker 2 (20:25):
I really appreciate that.
Speaker 4 (20:27):
I think it's a little overkill personally. But you have
a reference for puzzles, man, you know, like, nope, we're
recalling all of them.
Speaker 3 (20:36):
No, I should have.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
Publisher that book. By the way, folks, for anyone playing
along at home, it is a must read. It is
called The Puzzler, One Man's Quest to Solve the most
baffling Puzzles Ever. There is a hilarious jigsaw competition anecdote
you can check out in our previous episodes.
Speaker 4 (20:57):
Yeah, and I got a jigsaw like coaster kind of situation,
like a mini Yeah, and we use it all the time.
Speaker 2 (21:04):
It was a big hidden in the Brown households.
Speaker 3 (21:06):
Oh I love it. Yes, this is a one piece
jigsaw puzzle which you can buy online.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
But AJ did did nascent Us authorities ever bust the
Arnold cipher?
Speaker 2 (21:19):
Did they solve it?
Speaker 1 (21:20):
Like?
Speaker 3 (21:21):
While he was question I should listen to previous Ridiculous
History episodes to figure out how he was busted because
I cannot remember. Do you remember anyone how he was busted?
Speaker 4 (21:31):
He was?
Speaker 1 (21:31):
Uh, let's see. So I don't think it was necessarily
the cipher itself.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
It was some intercepted something.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
Something was intercept Maybe it's also it was in general
his sketchy, resentful activity that gave him away.
Speaker 3 (21:50):
Well, it is an interesting point when you are at
war and you decode, you crack the code of the
other person, how much you have to be careful about
letting on that you've cracked the code. And that was
huge in World War Two, which we'll get to in
a moment, but with the when we cracked the Nazi code,
we had to sacrifice certain uh ships or battles because
(22:16):
we didn't want to let on too much so.
Speaker 4 (22:19):
There're a thing where we even like had a cadaver
with certain information in this pocket that was like the
wrong information that they There was a film about that
and with Benedict Cumber Badge meat.
Speaker 2 (22:31):
I can't remember, but okay, operation Min's meat.
Speaker 4 (22:34):
Max tells us yes in the operation meh no to
your point of the levels that you have to go
to the depths to cover your tracks to make sure
the enemy doesn't know that you know what they know? Right?
Speaker 1 (22:46):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (22:46):
Uh what?
Speaker 1 (22:47):
It's also what what do we call it? Sometimes collection
methods like you don't want people to know to Knowle's point,
how you know a thing right and you want to
feed some false information. Uh, funny side stories with that
in addition to in addition to framing cadavers, basically they
also they also had a thing where like the reason
(23:12):
a lot of people in the West believe that carrots
are great for your eyesight is because it was a
myth spread to access forces to sort of downplay advances
in aviation and surveillance.
Speaker 3 (23:29):
I love that story, and I actually that was one
that I did know, and it is great because it
is Yeah, they invented radar or sonar. I can't remember
which one the British did, and yeah, they said, well, no,
it's all because we eat carrots and that's why we
have night vision and it's the best thing for the
carrot industry. Ever, so I'm for your other show on conspiracies.
(23:50):
I'm wondering if the carrot industry is sort of lobbied
to make this happen.
Speaker 1 (23:55):
Big carrot is by far the number one sponsor of
stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 4 (23:59):
It is known. It is literally just a big carrot
with like an anthropomorphic carrot with eyes and a mouth
like from an old Fleisher cartoon, you know, menacingly rubbing
his green hands together.
Speaker 1 (24:12):
There is there is, there's our garret. And so so
we know that we know that Benedict Arnold is is
a common touch point, right, It's something that most Americans
will go about. Indeed, I would say most people in
the Western world are on some level aware of the
(24:33):
skull duggery that Arnold engaged in. But you set up
something quite beautifully at the beginning of our conversation today,
AJ where you said crosswords might also be part of
trade craft. And I know this is a shout out
for any of our fellow ridiculous historians who have been
playing a crossword and maybe like your bait or mainhoff
(24:57):
comes out and you're thinking, is this crossword tried to
tell me something like this? Why is this getting increasingly specific? Right?
Speaker 3 (25:13):
Well, like you said, I mean, we've been talking more
generally about how puzzles and tradecraft are kissing cousins, but
there are several times when they are more than kissing cousins,
when the overlap is completely direct. So one of my
favorite puzzles of all time is the crossword puzzle that
saved the Free World. Maybe a little overstated, it helped
(25:35):
save the free world. Let's just throw it say it
that way. And this happened in nineteen forty two. The
British newspaper The Daily Telegraph printed a particularly tricky crossword
and it said that the people who solved the crossword
in twelve minutes or less would should contact the number.
And that number turned out to be Bletchley Park, which
(25:59):
is the hood breaking operation in World War two that
famously broke the Nazi enigma code and helped us win
the war. A huge key and and of course you've
covered him before. I loved your episode on Alan Turing thanks.
So yeah, this this was a recruiting a secret recruiting
tool for Bletchley Park. Were these crossword puzzles? And I
(26:23):
will say they were not your average This was not
your average cross This was a super tricky crossword puzzle.
Speaker 1 (26:30):
Did you did you play it yourself?
Speaker 3 (26:32):
I did, and I did not solve it in twelve
minutes or I could not solve it in.
Speaker 2 (26:38):
Call yourself a puzzle expert? Were calling park right now?
Oh my god.
Speaker 4 (26:43):
By the way, when we did talk about this episode,
I just I think I commented that Bletchley Park is
the most British sounding name for a place ever of
all time. And I swear that I've already said that
I wouldn't do it again. But modular sent people love
Alan Turing. There's a module that's very popular called the
Turing Machine, and it is a random voltage generator. It
basically is like a way of generating random pulses of
(27:06):
information that can be interpreted by different Since you know,
it's all in honor of Alan Turing, who is a
huge person in mathematics and AI and attack of all kinds.
Speaker 3 (27:15):
Hero hero and now instance I didn't even know.
Speaker 1 (27:19):
And also, by the way, just the way British culture
tends to struggle with good names for food and dishes.
Bletchley Park might as well be like some kind of
bread that they made.
Speaker 3 (27:32):
Really does sound something you'd have at high t a
little ually and Marmalade.
Speaker 1 (27:39):
Park.
Speaker 4 (27:39):
Wait, so this, this crossword puzzle was like a secret
Jeopardy audition kind.
Speaker 3 (27:44):
Of exactly it was, and I, as we said, I
did not solve it. We are very happy that World
War two did not rest on my shoulders. But but
let me just I want to give you and the listeners,
let me just give you one example if I could,
just to show you how tricky these things are, because
(28:05):
British crosswords were and still are famous for their wordplay,
their anagrams, palindromes, puns.
Speaker 2 (28:13):
Clever Brits, they are so clever the language or something.
Speaker 1 (28:17):
And everything, but again naming food right exactly.
Speaker 3 (28:21):
So here, let me give you seventeen across and and
well I'll walk you through it because there's no way
I would have gotten this without hints. All right, So
the clue is it's a six letter word, and the
clue is is this town ready for a flood? Is
this town ready for a flood? Six letter. Oh you
got it.
Speaker 1 (28:41):
No, I'm just appreciating the the artistry.
Speaker 2 (28:47):
Oh yeah, I mean I'm assuming that it's not going
to be the name of a town.
Speaker 3 (28:50):
Well, let me walk you through it. What do you
think of when you think of a flood? I think
of like, yeah, most famous flood are sure?
Speaker 2 (28:58):
Yeah? All right?
Speaker 3 (29:00):
So yeah, noah, And as you said, what did he
do to get ready for the flood? He had an arc?
But if you're ready, you don't want an old arc,
you want well exactly, I think it was Newark, England, but.
Speaker 1 (29:20):
Whatever, whatever I prefer.
Speaker 3 (29:22):
But yes, so that that's the kind of level of British.
Speaker 1 (29:27):
Let me give you this.
Speaker 3 (29:28):
Let me give you two more of these.
Speaker 4 (29:30):
We had the the ammunition, Ben and I. And to
get there though I know you again, hindsight is a thing,
but almost you know, if we it's one of those things.
It's also to be appreciated that it kind of requires
you to follow your intuition and to trust yourself and
not to like second guess things.
Speaker 3 (29:47):
And yeah, you did say it was a town, you
did say at the beginning. Well, next time I'll just
let there be dead air and give no clues and
we'll just wait.
Speaker 4 (29:57):
For I actually said, I bet it's no out of town.
But now there are certain things in the parlance of
crossword where you know a certain thing when it's said
in a certain way, and a clue is a true thing,
sure what the solution is going to be like otherwise
the rules would be it'd be impossible right to kind of.
Speaker 3 (30:13):
Like we talked, there are definitely rules.
Speaker 1 (30:15):
We talked about the evolution of crossword nomenclature, little things
that are now universal, Like if there is an abbreviation
as a clue, then there is an abbreviation in the
answer right.
Speaker 3 (30:33):
Action, so you have two more Well these are not
from that puzzle, but they're the same kind of British puzzle.
So for instance, this is a very famous clue. It's
just the whole clue is gigs g E G S.
That's the whole clue, and the answer is going to
be a two word phrase nine letters, four letters, so gigs.
(30:57):
You know, when I first saw this, I was like,
what is a gig? I don't know what a gain?
It sounds like something in the.
Speaker 2 (31:02):
Sine cockney rhyming slang kind of situation or something.
Speaker 3 (31:06):
Well, now that's interesting, you say, rhyming, but think of
they like rhyming, but they also like anagrams a lot.
So if you rearrange something eggs, but what kind of
eggs are they? Grambled eggs, crambled eggs. Nice, Yeah, exactly,
really good at this.
Speaker 2 (31:24):
You're definitely helping us out.
Speaker 3 (31:25):
A little bit, a little bit, a little bit of
saved the world.
Speaker 2 (31:28):
But you know, but but I only mentioned Cockney rhyming slang.
Speaker 4 (31:31):
Is that, in and of itself, is a puzzle where
you'll say, like, we're in I think I got this
one from one of the Ocean's movies Oly Love and
where the character says we're in Barney and he goes
rubble trouble, Barney's trouble. But that's a example a puzzle,
kind of rock, kind of Cockney ryming.
Speaker 1 (31:49):
As a as a as an actual MC person, the
thing that bugs me about Cockney rhyming slang is they
have no respect for meter or syllable count. They'll just
go with the thing that rhymes.
Speaker 2 (32:02):
Ben is the breaking rap. Pretty good, thanks.
Speaker 1 (32:06):
Man, but definitely Nola and I need your help on
these pretty fascinating and pretty storied crossword clues. For anybody
who listened to our previous episodes with AJ. I think
it was before we moved to your third British Crossword AJ.
(32:27):
Can you remind the good people here of the crossword
clue that was called like the most famous or best
of all time and you said it was kind of mids.
Speaker 3 (32:38):
Well, I think maybe it was Will Schwartz's favorite of
all time. That's the which is pretty good. I'm certainly
better than anything I've written, but it was I believe
this turns into another story. This turns into another story.
Was the clue and the answer was a two word
phrase and I guess I'll say it. You can paunt spires, yes,
(33:03):
viral staircase, spial staircase.
Speaker 1 (33:05):
Which I still that wouldn't stuck in my head.
Speaker 4 (33:07):
Sometimes well, your mind immediately goes to like a page
in a book or something right, and that's where the
twist is, you know, because if you're focusing on that
wrong thing, which is where they get you, then you're
going to just spin yourself out right, and like you
can really get my opic and lose objectivity with these things.
So it really is a great exercise to kind of
elasticize your mind, you know, and think in different directions.
Speaker 2 (33:30):
For stuff you know.
Speaker 3 (33:30):
Exactly, well exactly, you have to look at it in
a different way, whether it's a different meaning or a
different arrangement. So, for instance, the other very famous British
crypto crossword clue is this. It's the whole clue is
h I, J K l M And oh, just all
those words in a line, all those letters in the line,
(33:51):
H I, J K l M N.
Speaker 2 (33:53):
It's the alphabet.
Speaker 3 (33:53):
But I don't know, right, but where does it start?
Where does it start? It starts at G No, no, h,
I said, sorry, eh.
Speaker 2 (34:03):
Oh, so we're doing numbers here, we're doing nothing.
Speaker 3 (34:05):
No, no, Just what letters at the beginning and what
letters at the end? Right, So it goes from H
to water water exactly water.
Speaker 2 (34:18):
I'm being an adult. It's eight was the last one,
and that is yes.
Speaker 3 (34:24):
The clue translated to H two O and then the
answer is a five letter word.
Speaker 2 (34:28):
It's water. Very clear.
Speaker 1 (34:30):
So there you go.
Speaker 2 (34:31):
So this requires several permutations, right to get that.
Speaker 1 (34:34):
Yes, So this really was a This actual nineteen forty
two crossword in the Daily Telegraph was an actual ad
for intelligence or cryptography operators.
Speaker 3 (34:50):
Yes, a secret recruiting tool and and who knows how
many of them were recruited that way, but it was
a four for good. On the other hand, there's another
crossword puzzle in World War Two that I want to
talk about that was the exact opposite. It was an
agent of chaos. So are you ready for the second
(35:13):
big crossword scandal. Well, this was also in the same newspaper,
the Telegraph. Three years later, in nineteen forty five. They
printed a series of puzzles in the days leading up
to D Day, and these puzzles caused a national security crisis.
(35:34):
They caused a frenzy because the problem was the answers
to Several of the answers in those crossword puzzles were
top secret code words related to D Day, like a
crazy number like beyond.
Speaker 2 (35:49):
So no possible coincidence. There's somebody knew something or well, it's.
Speaker 3 (35:54):
Still debated whether it was.
Speaker 1 (35:56):
Let me.
Speaker 3 (35:56):
But listen to some of these words that appeared. You ta,
which was a beach in the invasion Omaha. Another beach
Neptune was Mulberry where the floating harbors. And this one
weirdest of all was overlord.
Speaker 2 (36:12):
That's a weird one.
Speaker 3 (36:14):
Yeah, that's not an regular word, you see, And.
Speaker 1 (36:18):
Unless you're really into che yeah, or less or unless
you make jokes about corporate overlords. But that's the one
that really scratches behind the ears of my stuff. They
don't want you to know overlord. With the rest of
the very.
Speaker 4 (36:31):
Specific choice, it feels like the use of that one
is become more of like a shorthand, like for nefarious evil. Now,
but I wonder how it would have been used in
conversation back in those days.
Speaker 3 (36:42):
Yeah, it was clued as big wig and but it was.
But overlord is is the actual code name for the
whole D day. It's like the number one. So the
British Secret Service notice this or someone alerted them to it.
Speaker 2 (36:57):
And round up these nerds.
Speaker 3 (36:59):
Yes, that's exactly what they did.
Speaker 1 (37:01):
Yeah, they and everybody everybody at this point is I
don't know, crosswords a very mainstream in British society at
this point, right, So it would have it would have
immediately been public knowledge, right, a worrisome thing. It's not
like it's not like this showed up on a niche
(37:23):
reddit forum and got two up votes. It's now, uh
something the entirety of the Kingdom is putting together. So
now everybody knows on some level, these like five words
in relation to each other. But another thing about puzzles
and codes is like knowing the words doesn't really matter
if you don't know the context.
Speaker 2 (37:45):
They're like what they're referring to. So I can understand
them freaking out a little bit, but it's not like
the jig was up all of a sudden.
Speaker 1 (37:51):
Yeah, but they had to find whomever made this and
figure out if they were German.
Speaker 2 (37:55):
Well they did, okay, so they.
Speaker 3 (37:58):
Did actually round up the nerds, or one nerd in particular,
the headmaster of.
Speaker 2 (38:03):
A school that is nerdy right here in the outlet.
Speaker 3 (38:09):
Listen, I am a nerd, so I feel I can
throw it around recognized nerd.
Speaker 2 (38:13):
That's right.
Speaker 4 (38:14):
So he was.
Speaker 3 (38:16):
He was arrested and he was brought to London and
they interrogated him extensively.
Speaker 5 (38:23):
And sorry, I'm laughing because I pictured like a picturing
the old school, like old school heart boiled true crime
procedurals where there's a chair in a harsh white way
mirror and some guy in a powdered wig walks out
and goes, what's the oting.
Speaker 4 (38:44):
I guess I'm also a picture. I mean, I don't
know not to be morbid about it. But do you
think they would have roughed him up a little bit?
Speaker 2 (38:49):
Perhaps?
Speaker 3 (38:49):
I'm guessing this guy he's a headmaster of like, uh,
he's gonna still, he's gonna, he's gonna tury over and
as well. Right, the Leonard Daw that's his name, and
poor Leonard was interrogated, but he eventually they let him
go because they decided it really was a weird coincidence.
Speaker 1 (39:10):
It is.
Speaker 4 (39:11):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (39:12):
Yet the twist is, and this may be this better
for your other show that there is still speculation that
it was not a coincidence, so it's still debated. One
theory is that DAWs students he uh used them to
help him construct the crosswords that is that is known. Yeah,
(39:32):
he did a little outsourcing, okay, But the school happened
to be nearby a base and so the theory is
maybe they were uves dropping and overheard the soldiers chatting.
Speaker 2 (39:42):
And it is an elaborate fu or what what are
we like? Why do that? Though?
Speaker 3 (39:47):
Even in that circumstance, that's a point, Yeah, let's try
to screw our country and also a goods.
Speaker 1 (39:54):
Also, we do know, Agadden, with the benefit of retrospect,
that the war Old of British academia was would end
up being pretty heavily compromised.
Speaker 3 (40:09):
I really know that.
Speaker 1 (40:10):
Yeah, there is that part you know, when you go
when you go look at like the Cambridge Ring and
stuff like that. Again, nothing occurs in a vacuum. I
do like this theory, AJ, because it does sound like
a cool teacher who's saying, hey guys today. Is it
like his version of the substitute teacher who plays a
(40:31):
movie and says, hey guys today, instead of worrying about
you know, math or whatever, we're going to work on
a crossword together. And then these these students are going
My favorite words are omaha, utah, neptune, mulberry and wait for.
Speaker 2 (40:47):
It, overlord, overlord. How about that one? Right every one?
What was it a big wig?
Speaker 4 (40:52):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (40:52):
Yeah, it's Barry bart Simpson. But luckily it did not
cause the D Day to fail because that wouldn't have
been as funny.
Speaker 2 (41:00):
I know that was that one was kind of important.
They made some movies about that.
Speaker 1 (41:02):
They should take a couple Yeah, no, AJ, I think
it's fair for us to ask at this point your
your personal take. Now, with great respect, you've all obviously
been very careful not to make any kind of like
hyperbolic claim. You're proposing one common theory with this, But
(41:23):
if we could, if we could get inside your mind
a little bit, my friend, do you think it is?
Speaker 3 (41:30):
Uh?
Speaker 1 (41:32):
What's the line between like coincidence and conspiracy?
Speaker 3 (41:36):
Right, it is a great question. I would guess my
I would say seventy percent chance it's a coincidence, thirty
percent chance they there was something. Maybe it's funny, maybe,
but it is. I mean, one thing you notice when
you work with puzzles or and or history is just
(41:57):
how much noise there is and how good we are
as humans at finding the signal in.
Speaker 2 (42:02):
The patterns, pattern recognizing beings.
Speaker 3 (42:06):
Exactly after Fenia. That's one of my favorite words I learned.
Speaker 2 (42:09):
You know about that.
Speaker 3 (42:11):
They yeah, the it's the ability to find patterns that
do not exist, and we are very good.
Speaker 2 (42:18):
So it's being cuckoo bananas basically exactly.
Speaker 1 (42:22):
And with that we are going to pause. We're going
to call this part one of the Puzzler teaches the
gang trade craft because we got some unpleasant messages from then. Essay, Uh,
that just asked us to pump our brakes a little bit.
So so We're gonna We're going to take a brief pause.
We are going to continue this story later this week.
(42:45):
In the meantime, aj Bahamas Jacobs, thank you so much
for coming back onto the show. Where can people learn
more about your work?
Speaker 3 (42:55):
Ah well, I love being on the show. It is
a joy. I love listening, so now get to listen
to myself. Please tune into The Puzzler, the Daily podcast
featuring Ben Bollen and soon Noel Brown. I'm scared, No,
don't be scared.
Speaker 4 (43:12):
You you are.
Speaker 3 (43:13):
I'm very easy with the hints, sokod time, I'm very gentle,
lead me by the nose. Yes, there you go, so please, yes,
tune into that.
Speaker 4 (43:22):
And in the meantime, huge thanks and wishing well are
our nemesis Jonathan Strickland, the quister, who is on the
mend after not feeling super well lately, so we hope
to see him back very very soon.
Speaker 1 (43:35):
Yes he is, as I'm sure everybody's first question will be,
is he still doing those obnoxious puns? The answer is yes,
and you'll hear them on air. Thanks thanks also to
our super producer mister Max Williams, his biological brother and
the composer of this Bop and soundtrack. Mister Alex Williams nol.
(43:55):
We got a cavalcade of people to thank real quick.
Speaker 4 (43:58):
Oh, of course always thanks to Chris frosciotis here in spirit,
along with Eve's Jeff Codes and boy, I don't know.
I don't know about a laundry list, but you count
for at least five humans in the weight that your
thank you kats at the end of this program.
Speaker 1 (44:12):
Oh my gosh, we're doing credits like the Electoral College.
Well well, five, thanks you, five, thank yous to you
as well, mister Brown. We're extremely excited to explore trade
craft with you Aja in an upcoming episode. Oh my gosh,
can we do spoilers? There's a puzzle the CIA cancel.
Speaker 2 (44:34):
We'll see you next time, folks.
Speaker 4 (44:42):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
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Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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