April 23, 2025 • 20 mins
Hello, Puzzlers! Puzzling with us today: writer Alix Strauss!
Join host A.J. Jacobs and his guests as they puzzle–and laugh–their way through new spins on old favorites, like anagrams and palindromes, as well as quirky originals such as “Ask AI” and audio rebuses.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hello puzzlers. Let's start with a quick puzzle. What do
these three phrases have in common? The Sahara desert, the
Avon River and the LaBrea tar pits. The Sahara desert,
Avon River and Lobrea tarpits? What do they have in common?
The answer and more puzzling goodness after the break, Hello puzzlers,
(00:31):
Welcome back to the puzzler the prominent bump on your
puzzle phrenology skull, I'm your host, aj Jacobs. Before the break,
we asked, what do these three phrases have in common,
the Sahara desert, the Avon River and the Librea tar pits. Well,
one answer is that they're all geographical locations. But there
(00:52):
is something a little more specific, and that is that
they are all redundant. They all have words that mean
the same thing in different languages. So Sahara means desert
in Arabic, so Sahara desert translates too desert desert. Avon
is derived from a Celtic word for river, so that
(01:14):
translates to river river. Avon river is river river. Same
with Librea. Librea means tar and Spanish, so the LaBrea
tar pits are tar Tar pits interesting.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
No, I think so.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
Anyway, I have something else that's interesting, and that is
our guest. We are very excited about our guest, the
great novelist, New York Times writer and my friend Alex Strauss. Welcome,
Alex A.
Speaker 3 (01:45):
James.
Speaker 4 (01:46):
So excited to be here. I've got on my smart hat.
I'm really I'm trying to be prepped for this.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
You look very smart, and you're wearing spectacles, so even
higher iq. Alex is an amazing writer. She writes about
all sorts of things. She writes about trends and profiles
for The New York Times. She also wrote a wonderful
book called The Joy of Funerals, which was about well,
(02:14):
I guess you would be in a better position to
describe it.
Speaker 4 (02:17):
Sure they like to call it a novel in stories,
but it's about eight short stories in the beginning, and
in each short story a death has happened, and you
move through these stories with these amazing and interesting and
slightly crazy women. And then the novella part of the
Joy of Funerals is about a funeral attending junkie, if
(02:40):
you will, and she goes to all the other funerals
You've just read about because she's desperate to connect with people.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
And really I.
Speaker 4 (02:48):
Wrote this twenty years ago. It was reissued recently in
honor of its twenty the anniversary. But fascinatingly, we are
still in this moment of need for connection, and now
we've just been given permission to talk about grief and
our loneliness and all of these things that were really
taboo twenty years ago. So the reissue has been a
(03:10):
really fascinating ride.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
I love it.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
The resurrection and we will talk more about that. We're
gonna do the puzzle, and then we're gonna come back
and talk about puzzles and death, but not in a
morbid way. Maybe a little morbid, all right, So first
the puzzle, and of course we felt it only appropriate
to do a puzzle theemed to funerals. So this one
(03:38):
is a call. You know that the words on tombstones,
the epitaphs as they're called, There have been some great
epitaphs of real people, real things that appeared on their tombstone.
Mel Blank had that's all, folks, So that he was
the voice of a porky pig and that's on his tombstone.
(04:00):
Merv Griffin, the TV host and producer wrote, I will
not be right back after this message.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
Yeah, these are good people.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
Billy Wilder, the director, had I'm a writer, but then
nobody's perfect, which was a reference to the famous last
line of his movie that he directed, Some Like It Hot,
when Tony Curtis takes off his wig and reveals he's
a man, and the suitor says, well, nobody's perfect.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
So there you go.
Speaker 1 (04:34):
It's a place for people to make jokes if they
see fit, make references. So we have a puzzle here
that is not about real epitaphs. It is about fictional
epitaphs from fictional people. So if these fictional characters die,
(04:55):
this might be what appears. So I'm gonna give you
the epitaph, and then you have to guess the fictional character.
Speaker 3 (05:01):
Okay, I'm ready. I'm up for this. I'm totally up
for this.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
All right, here we go, Here we go, and I'm
here for hints. Whose headstone might read you elogizing me?
Speaker 2 (05:14):
You elogizing me.
Speaker 4 (05:17):
I guess that is the Robert de Niro character in
uh right?
Speaker 1 (05:20):
Is that your guess is correct?
Speaker 3 (05:23):
I don't it was.
Speaker 4 (05:25):
I actually, yeah, I'm trying to think of what movie
that was.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
It was Taxi Driver.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
Oh, yes, Taxi Driver and that with Jodie Foster. That
was a great.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
Film, exactly. All right, we're gonna stick with that era
of movies, and I'm gonna give you this one.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
I'm lying in here. I'm lying here.
Speaker 4 (05:44):
That was also It's a movie I don't even think
I saw. But I'll tell you who the actor is.
It's Vestin Hoffman, it is. But what what's the movie?
Speaker 2 (05:53):
Midnight Cowboy?
Speaker 1 (05:55):
Oh, Midnight Cowboy rights o Rizzo. It is a very
bizarre movie.
Speaker 2 (05:59):
So you haven't seen I have.
Speaker 4 (06:01):
Not seen Midnight Cowboy. And I mean I got to
tell you I haven't seen Taxi Driver in easily two
or three decades.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
Well, there you remembered it. That's all that matters.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
I think.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
How about this one? Who might have said this when
they are on their headstone?
Speaker 2 (06:19):
Saint Peter.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
Speaker 4 (06:25):
Oh my god, aj what is the like?
Speaker 3 (06:27):
Where are the movies from recently?
Speaker 4 (06:32):
I'll take a clue.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
Oh all right, well, let me think there would be
this was It was the last line of one of
the most famous movies ever.
Speaker 4 (06:42):
So I don't know if that's Casablanca.
Speaker 3 (06:44):
I don't know it is it is?
Speaker 4 (06:46):
Okay, I would like them, Okay, I would like a
movie from the last decade.
Speaker 3 (06:50):
Is that possible?
Speaker 4 (06:51):
You know, that's a movie that was made before I
was born. So I really think we're pushing the envelope here.
I realized we're jet exos, but really.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
Well, I think the problem is it has to be
an incredibly famous line or else.
Speaker 3 (07:05):
And that was Humphrey Bogart, right.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
Yeah, exactly, Humphrey Bogart as Rick Blaine in Casablanca. He's
walking off with the head police officer played by Peter
Lourie and said, this is the beginning of.
Speaker 3 (07:18):
A beautiful, beautiful friendship.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
All right, Well what about this here lies Johnny.
Speaker 4 (07:25):
So that was the shining and that was Yes, I'm
trying to think of the characters names though. That's what's
so difficult. It's Jack Nicholson, but I'm trying to think
of what the character's name was.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
Well, it's the same first name as Jack Jackson Jack.
Thank thank goodness, I've gotten Jack Jack Torrance. Yeah, I
didn't remember the full name either. All right, well what
about this one? This one is this one is brand
spanking new Are you ready?
Speaker 4 (07:54):
I am.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
There's no place like an urn. There's no place like
an urn.
Speaker 4 (07:59):
The okay, at least that's Judy Garland and the Wizard
of Oz. And I think her name was Drothy goal Nice.
Speaker 1 (08:05):
I wouldn't have gotten the I wonder if there was
some wordplay on Gael and wind and Tornado.
Speaker 4 (08:11):
I'm sure there was, considering she was hallucinating everything. Supposedly
it's one large acid trip.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
Well you did fantastic, even though it was not current movies.
I'm sorry, that's okay, but you nailed it all right.
So we'll have an extra.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
Coffin so nice.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
There you go, You and the Wizard of Oz screenwriters
and the wordplay. We'll do an extra credit in a moment.
But I want to talk about you and your book
and funerals and puzzles. So what First of all, what
(08:56):
got you interested in funerals in the first place?
Speaker 4 (09:00):
So I am the only only child ever in my family,
so as far back as you could trace, everybody has
had more than one child, except my parents, who decided
to just have me. They could have had many. I'm
not even sure they had me. I really do believe
my mother went shopping at the hospital. I think she
saw people leaning into a window and said, I'll take
(09:20):
that one. So there's not one picture of my mother
pregnant either, So it's just one large mystery. And I
don't really think I'm like either of my parents, So
who knows.
Speaker 3 (09:31):
I mean, that's just the big who knows.
Speaker 4 (09:33):
But I didn't have a lot of family, and we
weren't invited to the happier occasions like weddings and bar
mitzvahs and anniversary parties and reunions, but we were invited
to the funerals because everybody deserves a chance to say goodbye.
And so I learned that to me, a funeral was
(09:55):
like a reunion. And I, you know, when you're young,
you really don't know. I just knew that I was
meeting people that I was connected to that I hadn't
met before, and there's this incredible sense of belonging that happens.
I think at funerals, where it's a connective moment, we're
all grieving and honoring the same person at the same time,
(10:18):
even if we don't really know each other. And so
I found them fascinating, wonderfully fascinating, And usually it was
a great aunt Edna who's one hundred and four. She
lived a very long life. It's very different now. I
think COVID debate everything different and the way the world
is right now. Funerals are certainly different, but at the
(10:41):
end of the day, you are still honoring someone and
celebrating someone's life, and you are there for this bonding moment.
I think we're desperate for a bonding moment, and I
think that began my fascination and in some sense, my
fixation with funerals. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
Look, and did you like the main character in your book,
did you go to stranger's funerals?
Speaker 5 (11:03):
No?
Speaker 4 (11:03):
I really have to say, I have never been to
a funeral. I was not either invited to or that
I knew the person. I have never been to a
stranger's funeral. I mean, you can only do Meisner so
far into you know, the pathology of your characters. I
have gone to certain cemeteries. I have laid down in
the you know, next to a gravesite, and felt the
(11:27):
the the interest.
Speaker 3 (11:28):
Dirt and the earth.
Speaker 4 (11:29):
And there's one character who goes to the cemetery over
and over again for reasons I'll let the reader find out.
Speaker 3 (11:36):
But there was a lot.
Speaker 4 (11:39):
Of tactile experiences, but going to I really I didn't
think that was right.
Speaker 3 (11:43):
I really never went to a funeral.
Speaker 4 (11:45):
And I had a really undergod understanding for Nina.
Speaker 5 (11:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
Well, speaking of cemeteries, let's talk epitaphs. Since that was
about that was the puzzles topic. So in your research
on few rules and death, what what have you found
about epitaphs?
Speaker 3 (12:03):
So they're two this is so yeah, best appithat.
Speaker 4 (12:06):
I love a good palodrome, and I think that their
their own puzzle, so to speak. Sure, and and Sexton
she had on hers Rats Live on No Evil Star
and that's the same read forward as it is backwards.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
Wow.
Speaker 4 (12:24):
That that's actually one of my favorite epithets.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
That's a perfect one. And it's and it's a crossover
with a puzzle any other puzzly epitaphs you run across.
Speaker 4 (12:35):
So recently, I think you and I just discovered this
fellow Samuel Bean, who created what they say is an
infuriating code and it took over one hundred years to
solve about his two wives, which is really and he
put him on the same appithet. I mean, it's the
same headstone, which I think I would be offended. If
I was wife number one and number two, I'd be like,
(12:56):
move over, I want my own headstone.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
It's true, that is I had never heard of this
until you told me about it. It is a doctor
Bean and he died in nineteen oh four, and his
headstone is basically a word search puzzle, a very tricky
word search puzzle. And as you say the yes, Henrietta
(13:19):
and I think Susannah, they're both side by side, and
I think between the two women you have.
Speaker 4 (13:25):
To figure out what the code is and there is
one in there.
Speaker 3 (13:30):
I mean, it took them a.
Speaker 4 (13:31):
While to do it, but people have done it.
Speaker 3 (13:33):
It's kind of fascinating, amazing.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
All right, So then we've got I mean we were
talking earlier. You mentioned that writing and elegy is a puzzle.
There's so many puzzles metaphorical puzzles when it comes to death.
So what do you got, What do we have? What
are the big puzzles around this topic.
Speaker 4 (13:54):
I think life itself is a big puzzle, and how
you figure out maneuvering through the world.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
And that's the thing that's our motto here at the
Puzzler Life.
Speaker 3 (14:03):
Life is a puzzle.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
Unofficial motto, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (14:06):
Okay, are we going to get that on T shirts?
If you make them, they will come.
Speaker 4 (14:13):
I would love like a good scavenger hunt funeral where
you get a clue for at each at each spot
and uh, and you have to put together like I
think everybody should leave surprised notes. Would also, you know,
I would also love to leave things around my house
for somebody to find when you know they go.
Speaker 3 (14:31):
Through your stuff after you've passed away.
Speaker 4 (14:33):
And then you start putting these pieces of your life together.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
That's such a good idea.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
By the way, speaking of you, what do you want
on your appitaph?
Speaker 4 (14:44):
This is such a good question. I was trying to
think about this because.
Speaker 3 (14:47):
I knew you you'd be asking it. You know that
song you get knocked down but you get up again.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
Sure I would.
Speaker 4 (14:55):
I really think that I'm that person where I got
so many times but I got up. And I think
when you're when you're ahead of the game too or
early to market, no one listens. So I think they
would have to put something on my headstone that says,
boy was she write about so many things that none
(15:16):
of us listened.
Speaker 2 (15:18):
I like it such as I told you so.
Speaker 4 (15:20):
Basically, it would be a last it would be, you know,
it's important to have that last word just a little bit.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
Yeah, I think that's I think. So they're also grave.
Speaker 4 (15:30):
Talkers now, and they go to people's graves that they
don't know. They look at the headstones that have recipes
on them, and they make the recipe that is on
some random headstone, and then they eat the meal with
the person who's headstone they were visiting.
Speaker 3 (15:47):
It's a whole thing.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
What, well, there's many things. First of all, I had
no idea that headstones did have recipes. Is that that's
a thing.
Speaker 4 (15:56):
Yes, it's a whole there's a whole subculture. There's a
whole death movement. I mean, there's death curious, and then
you can be death positive. There's a whole new subculture
in the way we are looking at death, exploring death,
our own death. It is not a morbid subject anymore,
and it's something we're all gonna have to face, so
(16:19):
we might as well at least be prepared for it
as prepared as we can get.
Speaker 1 (16:22):
Right, if you you had a recipe on your headstone,
what would that recipe be?
Speaker 3 (16:28):
I don't know.
Speaker 4 (16:28):
If I would do like a life recipe, I don't know.
If it would be for something like rice Krispy treats
because they're easy to make.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
You're always thinking of the others.
Speaker 3 (16:38):
I'm really you know what.
Speaker 4 (16:39):
Thank you for saying, aj I. I think I really
think I would do a recipe maybe with a puzzle
in it, because I do think people would have.
Speaker 3 (16:48):
To work hard for it. I worked my whole life.
Speaker 4 (16:51):
I'm gonna make people work hard, so I would absolutely.
I'd also want to hide something near, you know, like
in a box. You know, we have to dig it
up up and then buried back for other people to find.
But I remember when those geo things were really big. Yes,
I would like to do that. Great, you and the
(17:12):
kids did that right.
Speaker 1 (17:13):
Yeah, well, I love I mean, first of all, you
are an entertainer. Even after your death.
Speaker 3 (17:19):
You are still in the afterlife.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
You are making people giving them an enjoyment. So more
kudos to you. Well, this has been fantastic. Thank you, Alex,
author of Joining of Funerals and many other wonderful works.
Speaker 3 (17:36):
Thank you for having me.
Speaker 4 (17:37):
And we should talk about your book that you're currently
on tour with, which is really wonderful at a time
that we could use a little humor around what's happening
politically and constitutionally.
Speaker 1 (17:48):
So just saying you are very kind.
Speaker 3 (17:51):
I'm really it's really a good read.
Speaker 4 (17:52):
And I'm always so impressed by everything that you're doing
and how your mind works, and that you get up
at five am.
Speaker 3 (17:59):
Got I don't know how you do. I mean, like
it was.
Speaker 4 (18:02):
You know, Ben Franklin is long gone, so you have
no one to compete with. Too early, it's too early.
Speaker 2 (18:08):
Wait.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
I think Ben Franklin had a great avataph, because that's
so Ben Franklin. It's all a pun. He wrote the
body of Ben Franklin, printer, so he's very proud of
being a printer. Said, like the cover of an old book,
its contents torn out. Lies here food for worms. But
the work shall not be lost. It will appear in
(18:31):
a new and more elegant addition, improved by the author,
who I guess is God.
Speaker 2 (18:36):
So there you go.
Speaker 3 (18:37):
Well that was heavy. I thought he was just going
to say, leave the lights on.
Speaker 4 (18:42):
Wasn't he the one who did electricity?
Speaker 3 (18:44):
He did? He did, Okay, so I think that's smart. Yeah,
the lights on.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
Well you punched him up, you have. It's a nicely
done all right. So for the extra credit for the
folks at home. What fictional character has this pitaph? I'm
just a girl lying six feet under a boy asking
if he'd leave some flowers, And with that I will
(19:09):
say goodbye. And Puzzlers, please don't forget to come back
tomorrow and subscribe to the puzzle Or podcast and we'll
meet you for more puzzling puzzles that will puzzle you puzzlingly.
Speaker 5 (19:24):
Hey, puzzlers, it's Greg Pliska here with the extra credit
answer from our previous episode. Gretchen Rubin joined AJ to
play a game called Eat Great. We gave clues to
a pair of words where the second word is the
same as the first, but with two extra letters in
the front. The extra credit was this. The plot is complicated.
You have to blank the book carefully or you will
(19:47):
lose the blank. The answer is read and thread. You
have to read the book carefully or you will lose
the thread. But here at the Puzzler, you never lose
the thread because you're so clever and you love playing
a along with this, and we love having you, and
we will catch you here next time for some more
puzzling puzzles.
Hello puzzlers. Let's start with a quick puzzle. What do
these three phrases have in common? The Sahara desert, the
Avon River and the LaBrea tar pits. The Sahara desert,
Avon River and Lobrea tarpits? What do they have in common?
The answer and more puzzling goodness after the break, Hello puzzlers,
(00:31):
Welcome back to the puzzler the prominent bump on your
puzzle phrenology skull, I'm your host, aj Jacobs. Before the break,
we asked, what do these three phrases have in common,
the Sahara desert, the Avon River and the Librea tar pits. Well,
one answer is that they're all geographical locations. But there
(00:52):
is something a little more specific, and that is that
they are all redundant. They all have words that mean
the same thing in different languages. So Sahara means desert
in Arabic, so Sahara desert translates too desert desert. Avon
is derived from a Celtic word for river, so that
(01:14):
translates to river river. Avon river is river river. Same
with Librea. Librea means tar and Spanish, so the LaBrea
tar pits are tar Tar pits interesting.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
No, I think so.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
Anyway, I have something else that's interesting, and that is
our guest. We are very excited about our guest, the
great novelist, New York Times writer and my friend Alex Strauss. Welcome,
Alex A.
Speaker 3 (01:45):
James.
Speaker 4 (01:46):
So excited to be here. I've got on my smart hat.
I'm really I'm trying to be prepped for this.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
You look very smart, and you're wearing spectacles, so even
higher iq. Alex is an amazing writer. She writes about
all sorts of things. She writes about trends and profiles
for The New York Times. She also wrote a wonderful
book called The Joy of Funerals, which was about well,
(02:14):
I guess you would be in a better position to
describe it.
Speaker 4 (02:17):
Sure they like to call it a novel in stories,
but it's about eight short stories in the beginning, and
in each short story a death has happened, and you
move through these stories with these amazing and interesting and
slightly crazy women. And then the novella part of the
Joy of Funerals is about a funeral attending junkie, if
(02:40):
you will, and she goes to all the other funerals
You've just read about because she's desperate to connect with people.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
And really I.
Speaker 4 (02:48):
Wrote this twenty years ago. It was reissued recently in
honor of its twenty the anniversary. But fascinatingly, we are
still in this moment of need for connection, and now
we've just been given permission to talk about grief and
our loneliness and all of these things that were really
taboo twenty years ago. So the reissue has been a
(03:10):
really fascinating ride.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
I love it.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
The resurrection and we will talk more about that. We're
gonna do the puzzle, and then we're gonna come back
and talk about puzzles and death, but not in a
morbid way. Maybe a little morbid, all right, So first
the puzzle, and of course we felt it only appropriate
to do a puzzle theemed to funerals. So this one
(03:38):
is a call. You know that the words on tombstones,
the epitaphs as they're called, There have been some great
epitaphs of real people, real things that appeared on their tombstone.
Mel Blank had that's all, folks, So that he was
the voice of a porky pig and that's on his tombstone.
(04:00):
Merv Griffin, the TV host and producer wrote, I will
not be right back after this message.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
Yeah, these are good people.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
Billy Wilder, the director, had I'm a writer, but then
nobody's perfect, which was a reference to the famous last
line of his movie that he directed, Some Like It Hot,
when Tony Curtis takes off his wig and reveals he's
a man, and the suitor says, well, nobody's perfect.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
So there you go.
Speaker 1 (04:34):
It's a place for people to make jokes if they
see fit, make references. So we have a puzzle here
that is not about real epitaphs. It is about fictional
epitaphs from fictional people. So if these fictional characters die,
(04:55):
this might be what appears. So I'm gonna give you
the epitaph, and then you have to guess the fictional character.
Speaker 3 (05:01):
Okay, I'm ready. I'm up for this. I'm totally up
for this.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
All right, here we go, Here we go, and I'm
here for hints. Whose headstone might read you elogizing me?
Speaker 2 (05:14):
You elogizing me.
Speaker 4 (05:17):
I guess that is the Robert de Niro character in
uh right?
Speaker 1 (05:20):
Is that your guess is correct?
Speaker 3 (05:23):
I don't it was.
Speaker 4 (05:25):
I actually, yeah, I'm trying to think of what movie
that was.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
It was Taxi Driver.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
Oh, yes, Taxi Driver and that with Jodie Foster. That
was a great.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
Film, exactly. All right, we're gonna stick with that era
of movies, and I'm gonna give you this one.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
I'm lying in here. I'm lying here.
Speaker 4 (05:44):
That was also It's a movie I don't even think
I saw. But I'll tell you who the actor is.
It's Vestin Hoffman, it is. But what what's the movie?
Speaker 2 (05:53):
Midnight Cowboy?
Speaker 1 (05:55):
Oh, Midnight Cowboy rights o Rizzo. It is a very
bizarre movie.
Speaker 2 (05:59):
So you haven't seen I have.
Speaker 4 (06:01):
Not seen Midnight Cowboy. And I mean I got to
tell you I haven't seen Taxi Driver in easily two
or three decades.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
Well, there you remembered it. That's all that matters.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
I think.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
How about this one? Who might have said this when
they are on their headstone?
Speaker 2 (06:19):
Saint Peter.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
Speaker 4 (06:25):
Oh my god, aj what is the like?
Speaker 3 (06:27):
Where are the movies from recently?
Speaker 4 (06:32):
I'll take a clue.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
Oh all right, well, let me think there would be
this was It was the last line of one of
the most famous movies ever.
Speaker 4 (06:42):
So I don't know if that's Casablanca.
Speaker 3 (06:44):
I don't know it is it is?
Speaker 4 (06:46):
Okay, I would like them, Okay, I would like a
movie from the last decade.
Speaker 3 (06:50):
Is that possible?
Speaker 4 (06:51):
You know, that's a movie that was made before I
was born. So I really think we're pushing the envelope here.
I realized we're jet exos, but really.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
Well, I think the problem is it has to be
an incredibly famous line or else.
Speaker 3 (07:05):
And that was Humphrey Bogart, right.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
Yeah, exactly, Humphrey Bogart as Rick Blaine in Casablanca. He's
walking off with the head police officer played by Peter
Lourie and said, this is the beginning of.
Speaker 3 (07:18):
A beautiful, beautiful friendship.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
All right, Well what about this here lies Johnny.
Speaker 4 (07:25):
So that was the shining and that was Yes, I'm
trying to think of the characters names though. That's what's
so difficult. It's Jack Nicholson, but I'm trying to think
of what the character's name was.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
Well, it's the same first name as Jack Jackson Jack.
Thank thank goodness, I've gotten Jack Jack Torrance. Yeah, I
didn't remember the full name either. All right, well what
about this one? This one is this one is brand
spanking new Are you ready?
Speaker 4 (07:54):
I am.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
There's no place like an urn. There's no place like
an urn.
Speaker 4 (07:59):
The okay, at least that's Judy Garland and the Wizard
of Oz. And I think her name was Drothy goal Nice.
Speaker 1 (08:05):
I wouldn't have gotten the I wonder if there was
some wordplay on Gael and wind and Tornado.
Speaker 4 (08:11):
I'm sure there was, considering she was hallucinating everything. Supposedly
it's one large acid trip.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
Well you did fantastic, even though it was not current movies.
I'm sorry, that's okay, but you nailed it all right.
So we'll have an extra.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
Coffin so nice.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
There you go, You and the Wizard of Oz screenwriters
and the wordplay. We'll do an extra credit in a moment.
But I want to talk about you and your book
and funerals and puzzles. So what First of all, what
(08:56):
got you interested in funerals in the first place?
Speaker 4 (09:00):
So I am the only only child ever in my family,
so as far back as you could trace, everybody has
had more than one child, except my parents, who decided
to just have me. They could have had many. I'm
not even sure they had me. I really do believe
my mother went shopping at the hospital. I think she
saw people leaning into a window and said, I'll take
(09:20):
that one. So there's not one picture of my mother
pregnant either, So it's just one large mystery. And I
don't really think I'm like either of my parents, So
who knows.
Speaker 3 (09:31):
I mean, that's just the big who knows.
Speaker 4 (09:33):
But I didn't have a lot of family, and we
weren't invited to the happier occasions like weddings and bar
mitzvahs and anniversary parties and reunions, but we were invited
to the funerals because everybody deserves a chance to say goodbye.
And so I learned that to me, a funeral was
(09:55):
like a reunion. And I, you know, when you're young,
you really don't know. I just knew that I was
meeting people that I was connected to that I hadn't
met before, and there's this incredible sense of belonging that happens.
I think at funerals, where it's a connective moment, we're
all grieving and honoring the same person at the same time,
(10:18):
even if we don't really know each other. And so
I found them fascinating, wonderfully fascinating, And usually it was
a great aunt Edna who's one hundred and four. She
lived a very long life. It's very different now. I
think COVID debate everything different and the way the world
is right now. Funerals are certainly different, but at the
(10:41):
end of the day, you are still honoring someone and
celebrating someone's life, and you are there for this bonding moment.
I think we're desperate for a bonding moment, and I
think that began my fascination and in some sense, my
fixation with funerals. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
Look, and did you like the main character in your book,
did you go to stranger's funerals?
Speaker 5 (11:03):
No?
Speaker 4 (11:03):
I really have to say, I have never been to
a funeral. I was not either invited to or that
I knew the person. I have never been to a
stranger's funeral. I mean, you can only do Meisner so
far into you know, the pathology of your characters. I
have gone to certain cemeteries. I have laid down in
the you know, next to a gravesite, and felt the
(11:27):
the the interest.
Speaker 3 (11:28):
Dirt and the earth.
Speaker 4 (11:29):
And there's one character who goes to the cemetery over
and over again for reasons I'll let the reader find out.
Speaker 3 (11:36):
But there was a lot.
Speaker 4 (11:39):
Of tactile experiences, but going to I really I didn't
think that was right.
Speaker 3 (11:43):
I really never went to a funeral.
Speaker 4 (11:45):
And I had a really undergod understanding for Nina.
Speaker 5 (11:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
Well, speaking of cemeteries, let's talk epitaphs. Since that was
about that was the puzzles topic. So in your research
on few rules and death, what what have you found
about epitaphs?
Speaker 3 (12:03):
So they're two this is so yeah, best appithat.
Speaker 4 (12:06):
I love a good palodrome, and I think that their
their own puzzle, so to speak. Sure, and and Sexton
she had on hers Rats Live on No Evil Star
and that's the same read forward as it is backwards.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
Wow.
Speaker 4 (12:24):
That that's actually one of my favorite epithets.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
That's a perfect one. And it's and it's a crossover
with a puzzle any other puzzly epitaphs you run across.
Speaker 4 (12:35):
So recently, I think you and I just discovered this
fellow Samuel Bean, who created what they say is an
infuriating code and it took over one hundred years to
solve about his two wives, which is really and he
put him on the same appithet. I mean, it's the
same headstone, which I think I would be offended. If
I was wife number one and number two, I'd be like,
(12:56):
move over, I want my own headstone.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
It's true, that is I had never heard of this
until you told me about it. It is a doctor
Bean and he died in nineteen oh four, and his
headstone is basically a word search puzzle, a very tricky
word search puzzle. And as you say the yes, Henrietta
(13:19):
and I think Susannah, they're both side by side, and
I think between the two women you have.
Speaker 4 (13:25):
To figure out what the code is and there is
one in there.
Speaker 3 (13:30):
I mean, it took them a.
Speaker 4 (13:31):
While to do it, but people have done it.
Speaker 3 (13:33):
It's kind of fascinating, amazing.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
All right, So then we've got I mean we were
talking earlier. You mentioned that writing and elegy is a puzzle.
There's so many puzzles metaphorical puzzles when it comes to death.
So what do you got, What do we have? What
are the big puzzles around this topic.
Speaker 4 (13:54):
I think life itself is a big puzzle, and how
you figure out maneuvering through the world.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
And that's the thing that's our motto here at the
Puzzler Life.
Speaker 3 (14:03):
Life is a puzzle.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
Unofficial motto, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (14:06):
Okay, are we going to get that on T shirts?
If you make them, they will come.
Speaker 4 (14:13):
I would love like a good scavenger hunt funeral where
you get a clue for at each at each spot
and uh, and you have to put together like I
think everybody should leave surprised notes. Would also, you know,
I would also love to leave things around my house
for somebody to find when you know they go.
Speaker 3 (14:31):
Through your stuff after you've passed away.
Speaker 4 (14:33):
And then you start putting these pieces of your life together.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
That's such a good idea.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
By the way, speaking of you, what do you want
on your appitaph?
Speaker 4 (14:44):
This is such a good question. I was trying to
think about this because.
Speaker 3 (14:47):
I knew you you'd be asking it. You know that
song you get knocked down but you get up again.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
Sure I would.
Speaker 4 (14:55):
I really think that I'm that person where I got
so many times but I got up. And I think
when you're when you're ahead of the game too or
early to market, no one listens. So I think they
would have to put something on my headstone that says,
boy was she write about so many things that none
(15:16):
of us listened.
Speaker 2 (15:18):
I like it such as I told you so.
Speaker 4 (15:20):
Basically, it would be a last it would be, you know,
it's important to have that last word just a little bit.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
Yeah, I think that's I think. So they're also grave.
Speaker 4 (15:30):
Talkers now, and they go to people's graves that they
don't know. They look at the headstones that have recipes
on them, and they make the recipe that is on
some random headstone, and then they eat the meal with
the person who's headstone they were visiting.
Speaker 3 (15:47):
It's a whole thing.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
What, well, there's many things. First of all, I had
no idea that headstones did have recipes. Is that that's
a thing.
Speaker 4 (15:56):
Yes, it's a whole there's a whole subculture. There's a
whole death movement. I mean, there's death curious, and then
you can be death positive. There's a whole new subculture
in the way we are looking at death, exploring death,
our own death. It is not a morbid subject anymore,
and it's something we're all gonna have to face, so
(16:19):
we might as well at least be prepared for it
as prepared as we can get.
Speaker 1 (16:22):
Right, if you you had a recipe on your headstone,
what would that recipe be?
Speaker 3 (16:28):
I don't know.
Speaker 4 (16:28):
If I would do like a life recipe, I don't know.
If it would be for something like rice Krispy treats
because they're easy to make.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
You're always thinking of the others.
Speaker 3 (16:38):
I'm really you know what.
Speaker 4 (16:39):
Thank you for saying, aj I. I think I really
think I would do a recipe maybe with a puzzle
in it, because I do think people would have.
Speaker 3 (16:48):
To work hard for it. I worked my whole life.
Speaker 4 (16:51):
I'm gonna make people work hard, so I would absolutely.
I'd also want to hide something near, you know, like
in a box. You know, we have to dig it
up up and then buried back for other people to find.
But I remember when those geo things were really big. Yes,
I would like to do that. Great, you and the
(17:12):
kids did that right.
Speaker 1 (17:13):
Yeah, well, I love I mean, first of all, you
are an entertainer. Even after your death.
Speaker 3 (17:19):
You are still in the afterlife.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
You are making people giving them an enjoyment. So more
kudos to you. Well, this has been fantastic. Thank you, Alex,
author of Joining of Funerals and many other wonderful works.
Speaker 3 (17:36):
Thank you for having me.
Speaker 4 (17:37):
And we should talk about your book that you're currently
on tour with, which is really wonderful at a time
that we could use a little humor around what's happening
politically and constitutionally.
Speaker 1 (17:48):
So just saying you are very kind.
Speaker 3 (17:51):
I'm really it's really a good read.
Speaker 4 (17:52):
And I'm always so impressed by everything that you're doing
and how your mind works, and that you get up
at five am.
Speaker 3 (17:59):
Got I don't know how you do. I mean, like
it was.
Speaker 4 (18:02):
You know, Ben Franklin is long gone, so you have
no one to compete with. Too early, it's too early.
Speaker 2 (18:08):
Wait.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
I think Ben Franklin had a great avataph, because that's
so Ben Franklin. It's all a pun. He wrote the
body of Ben Franklin, printer, so he's very proud of
being a printer. Said, like the cover of an old book,
its contents torn out. Lies here food for worms. But
the work shall not be lost. It will appear in
(18:31):
a new and more elegant addition, improved by the author,
who I guess is God.
Speaker 2 (18:36):
So there you go.
Speaker 3 (18:37):
Well that was heavy. I thought he was just going
to say, leave the lights on.
Speaker 4 (18:42):
Wasn't he the one who did electricity?
Speaker 3 (18:44):
He did? He did, Okay, so I think that's smart. Yeah,
the lights on.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
Well you punched him up, you have. It's a nicely
done all right. So for the extra credit for the
folks at home. What fictional character has this pitaph? I'm
just a girl lying six feet under a boy asking
if he'd leave some flowers, And with that I will
(19:09):
say goodbye. And Puzzlers, please don't forget to come back
tomorrow and subscribe to the puzzle Or podcast and we'll
meet you for more puzzling puzzles that will puzzle you puzzlingly.
Speaker 5 (19:24):
Hey, puzzlers, it's Greg Pliska here with the extra credit
answer from our previous episode. Gretchen Rubin joined AJ to
play a game called Eat Great. We gave clues to
a pair of words where the second word is the
same as the first, but with two extra letters in
the front. The extra credit was this. The plot is complicated.
You have to blank the book carefully or you will
(19:47):
lose the blank. The answer is read and thread. You
have to read the book carefully or you will lose
the thread. But here at the Puzzler, you never lose
the thread because you're so clever and you love playing
a along with this, and we love having you, and
we will catch you here next time for some more
puzzling puzzles.
Hosts And Creators
Greg Pliska
A.J. Jacobs
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