July 9, 2025 • 20 mins
Hello, Puzzlers! Puzzling with us today: author of The Fault in Our Stars, Paper Towns, the recent Everything is Tuberculosis, and more, John Green!
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.
Subscribe to The Puzzler podcast wherever you get your podcasts!
"The Puzzler with A.J. Jacobs" is distributed by iHeartPodcasts and is a co-production with Neuhaus Ideas.
Our executive producers are Neely Lohmann and Adam Neuhaus of Neuhaus Ideas, and Lindsay Hoffman of iHeart Podcasts.
The show is produced by Jody Avirgan and Brittani Brown of Roulette Productions.
Our Chief Puzzle Officer is Greg Pliska. Our associate producer is Andrea Schoenberg.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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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. You know
that classic by Kermit the Frog, It's not Easy Being Green.
It's a lovely song, and Kermit is talking about being
literally green, the color green, the color of his skin. However,
the adjective green also has many other meanings, So for
today's mini puzzle, can you name at least two other
(00:24):
waves that this song could be interpreted two other meanings
of the phrase it's not easy being green. For instance,
it could mean it's not easy having the last name green.
Like our guests, the wonderful John Green, the answers, and
more puzzling goodness. After the break, Hello puzzlers, Welcome back
(00:50):
to the Puzzler Podcast the Hemp covering on your puzzle
Conestoga Wagon. I'm your host, AJ Jacobs, and I am here,
of course with chefs the loss of Greg plusk.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
Hello Greg, Hello Adrian Greg.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
Before the break, we talked about Kermit the Frog's plastic
song It's not easy Being Green, and I asked, aside
from the literal meaning it's not easy having green skin,
what are some other meanings of the adjective green? So
who are some other people who might sing this song?
Speaker 2 (01:19):
So I thought, it's not that easy being green, meaning
it's not that easy to being new. Yes, right, so
if you're a rookie, you're the first person, you know,
you're just arrived in college as a as a first
year student, it's not.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
That easy being green. Perfect, you could sing it.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
And then I thought of being envious of someone. Totally
not that easy being green with MV.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
Which is true. I think it's a very destructive emotion. Yeah,
and one more, I got a third one that's not
that's all I have. That's being nauseous, sick to your stomach,
so you're green in the face. Not that easy being
green in okay, so I do have We came up
with three different Mine was it's not easy being an
eco conscious person. Oh good, So it's not easy being green.
(02:02):
But as I mentioned, another meaning of green is the
last name, as in our wonderful guest, John Green, a YouTuber,
a best selling author of The Fault in Our Stars
and a new nonfiction book, Everything Is Tuberculosis. Welcome John Green.
Speaker 4 (02:16):
It's great to be with you.
Speaker 3 (02:17):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
We are delighted. And you've heard from Chief Puzzle Officer
Greg Kuliska. But now he is going to take the
reins and do his chief puzzle officing. So Greg, I'm
turn it over to you.
Speaker 3 (02:32):
Thank you aj.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
So John, this is a puzzle we're calling John Green
is not real or is he inspired? As you might
guess by your novel Paper Towns, sure, which was also
made into a really nice film with the same name,
because it references paper towns, the false map locations that
have been inserted to catch people right right, I'm curious
(02:57):
how you first came across the idea of papertown.
Speaker 3 (03:00):
So.
Speaker 4 (03:01):
Paper towns, or copyright traps are ways that map makers
and dictionary makers and other folks have of making sure
that their copyright is being protected, that nobody's stealing from them.
So they'll insert fictitious entries or fictitious places into maps
as a way of protecting the copyright. And I discovered
this astonishingly because I went to a paper town we
(03:25):
drove through. I was with a girlfriend in college, and
we drove through a place called Hole in Nebraska as
a whole in Nebraska, very funny, and we couldn't find it,
and we asked someone who lived in the area if
there was a if this was Hole in Nebraska, because
we thought this was a very funny pun, and they
(03:47):
confirmed that there was no such thing as whole in Nebraska.
And we came home and apparently it was an example
of a known example of a paper town.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
I love it.
Speaker 4 (03:55):
I love it.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
And in the novel in Paper Towns, there's a town Aglo,
New York, which has an interesting history too.
Speaker 4 (04:03):
Yeah, it's it's a real place or not a real place,
depending on your perspective. But Aglo, New York was added
to a General Drafting Company map of New York State
as as a copyright trap. But because people kept going
to that intersection expecting there to be a town but
place called Aglo, eventually someone built a place called Aglo
(04:24):
and it had a general store and a couple of houses,
and it was a real place for a while. And
now it is sort of descended back into not being
a real place, but it still sometimes shows up on
maps interestingly. So it's kind of it's kind of for me.
It's an irresistible metaphor for an author, right, The idea
that things can be imagined into reality is very compelling
(04:45):
to novelists. So yeah, exactly, Yeah, that was that was
the hope. So and now now there is like a
historical marker where Aglo was Slash is thanks in parts
of paper Towns, which is pretty cool.
Speaker 3 (05:02):
That is, it's very cool. I love that.
Speaker 2 (05:04):
Well, well, this quiz is a true false quiz all
about paper Towns and other copyright traps. So it's sort
of the goal here is for you to figure out
if the story I'm telling about a copyright trap is
a real story or a fake.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
Hey, I love it. I love it. I'll tell the.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
Story and you can guess whether you think it's real
or not. You might know them or not, so we'll
see how it got so the first one. First one
is about the word esquavalience, which was an entry in
the New Oxford American Dictionary defined as the willful avoidance
of one's official responsibilities esquivaliance valiance. It was invented by
(05:47):
a staff lexicographer and caught dictionary dot com off guard
because it appeared in there as well, and even though
it was fake, it actually survived into future editions as
a word that might mean the willful avoidance of one's
official responsibilities.
Speaker 4 (06:03):
So esquavalien sounds so much like a word that someone
would make up to describe that precise definition that I'm
going to say that that story is true.
Speaker 3 (06:16):
Oh, you are clever. That is exactly right. It is true.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
Yes, and in fact, the editor of the New Oxford
Dictionary said exactly that.
Speaker 3 (06:24):
She said, it's it's faketude level.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
Is so high. She said that, you know it's it
should be obvious that it's fake. So it really catches
somebody off. You know, it catches you. If you use it,
you've clearly stolen.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
It from But we did talk a couple episodes ago
about sesquipedalion, which also sounds kind of fake, but means
the what it is, which is pretentious uses of long words.
Speaker 4 (06:50):
Esquipadelion. Sesquipadellianism is absolutely endemic in many of the worlds
in which I work, especially the world of global health.
Really now I will be using that word. Oh yeah,
they never use never used two to, never use one
word when they can use two, and never never use
two words when they can use a an acronym.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
Yes, I've noticed there. Yeah, that's interesting.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
All right, very good, Very good, John, here's your next one.
The Arab geographer Mohammad al Edrisi compiled the Tabula Rogeriana,
or the book of Roger for the Norman king of
the same name, and it's in eleven thirty eight. And
the map is notable because it has North at the
bottom inside in cartographic circles. It's an interesting map for
(07:39):
that reason. It also included a notable paper town in
Central Asia called Rogerdam that was put there to sort of,
you know, please the patron. And although it seems obviously fake,
even Marco Polo was fooled. His writings mentioned a visit
to the friendly people of roger Andam, who served delicious
tea and camel's milk.
Speaker 4 (08:02):
Well, I know that Marco Polo was something of a
spinner of tales and an expert in fic fictions, and
so I wouldn't be surprised if he reported having gone
to a place that didn't actually exist. But I'm going
to say false nonetheless, because I've never heard that story.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
Well, then it's kind of a ridiculous story, and you
are correct, it is completely false.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
I'm not completely false. There is such a map.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
Aladrici actually had that famous tabula Rodriana, but there were
no paper towns that we know of in that map.
Speaker 4 (08:36):
Okay, that's so far. I'm at least with my results.
Speaker 3 (08:41):
Well this is good, all right.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
Here's another dictionary one the last entry in the dictionary
of Terms in the Music Lovers Encyclopedia, which I actually
have in my office here, right here. The last entry
in that dictionary is an eight letter word pronounced shaw
but spelled z z x j O A n W,
(09:04):
and it's listed as a Maori word meaning drum or,
fife or conclusion. Now, of course it's made up. Mayori
doesn't even use these letter strings, but that didn't stop
it from appearing in several other musical reference works that were,
you know, stealing material from the Music Lover's Encyclopedia.
Speaker 4 (09:25):
I'm deeply torn on this one because that seems impossible,
and yet regularly impossible things do happen. I'm none of
the again, though, I've never heard of this, so I'm
gonna say false.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
I'm afraid it's true on screen.
Speaker 3 (09:45):
Sorry, John, But I read about I read.
Speaker 4 (09:49):
I mean, it's an incredible fact, the fact you have
the book with you even more.
Speaker 3 (09:53):
It's right there.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
I was like, I can't believe it's there, and that
people believe it was pronounced shaw.
Speaker 4 (10:00):
More indeed, that there's a single word to describe drum
Fife in coming to a conclusion exactly.
Speaker 3 (10:07):
Brilliant.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
I wish I've made up the gravel Dictionary. That would
be because it would.
Speaker 4 (10:13):
Be a great wouldn't it.
Speaker 3 (10:15):
That would be something if we could pull that off.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
All right, here's another one. This comes from the world
of games. The game Trivial Pursuit was caught up in
a copyright infringement suit when they included a question about
Detective Colombo's first name, ostensibly Phillip, which they had lifted
directly from Fredworth's Trivia Encyclopedia. And even more damning than
(10:44):
the mention of this supposed fact was the existence of
several typos and misspellings that matched the Fredworth book exactly,
and Fred actually sued the Trivial Pursuit makers for totally
stealing his material.
Speaker 4 (10:58):
Now this sounds true to me, which makes now now
I'm worried that if something sounds true, it might be
false and I'm overthinking it. It's like when you play
Rock Paper Scissors and you you go into three layers
of well, what if they do this and instead of
just going with with rock, as as Bart Simpson memorily puts,
a good old rock nothing beats rock. I'm gonna say
(11:24):
that's true.
Speaker 3 (11:26):
You are correct, that is in fact true. Awesome, Wow,
well done.
Speaker 4 (11:30):
I mean, you gotta be careful where you take your
where you where you take your trivia from. You know,
we don't true we think of trivia as just being
a huge bucket of facts. But you've gotta sometimes you
gotta you gotta really double source stuff.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
Oh yeah, absolutely, well.
Speaker 1 (11:42):
I learned that writing for mental flaws, like I would read.
I did one on the history of dodgeball and they
had this multiple sources had the story about people throwing
rocks at each other in Africa and that was the
origin of dodgeball, but it was to made up and
they were all just referring to that first fake source,
(12:04):
but it was in like eight sources.
Speaker 4 (12:06):
You're like, oh, well, right right, yeah, yeah, you can
double source it, but you've got to get to the original.
I remember the one that got me, that had me
in stitches was learning that snopes dot com back when
it was primarily not a fact checking website but was
sort of a mythbusting website. It had an entry about
how mister Ed was a zebra because when you because
(12:31):
the way black and white television worked. The lines would
work perfectly to make the horse look a sort of
perfect gray all the way through. And this seemed impossible
to me. But everywhere I would go, I would see
mister Ed was a zebra. It was even on Wikipedia
for a hot minute in like two thousand and three,
and I was like, man, if that's true, that's an
incredible fact. But it seems utterly impossible. And of course
(12:53):
Snopes had put it there as a copyright truck.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
I love it so interesting, and that one is true.
Good right, you're not messed well at us.
Speaker 2 (13:01):
We've now entered a sort of metafictional place in the
show where it is true that.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
Okay, yes, we want to make that clear. In this
world of misinformation, it's very important.
Speaker 2 (13:11):
I mean I actually had to do lots of sourcing
on the stories I'm telling to make sure that they
weren't true or false. And yeah, I might be caught
in another fiction and someone's going to quote our show
and it's going to become true somewhere down the line.
Speaker 3 (13:26):
Which there you go.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
All right, we got a time for a couple more.
How about this one about songwriters. Songwriters have been fighting
AI copyright infringement for a while, and in some very
clever ways. The Weekend's twenty twenty five album, Hurry Up
Tomorrow includes several tracks with sonic material that's outside the
range of human hearing, but when processed through AI music
(13:50):
generated generators, the added sound waves create distortion in his voice,
making it possible to identify when something like chat GPT
has sucked in his material to use without his permission.
Speaker 4 (14:03):
Wow, I mean that's fascinating, but I think it might
be false.
Speaker 3 (14:08):
He spotted it, Ah, how did you know?
Speaker 4 (14:11):
Well? The first the first giveaway was that I'm not
completely convinced that the Weekend is obsessed with AI. He
should be, he should be worried about it, but I'm
not sure that he is. And then the second thing
that I thought was maybe that isn't possible yet, but
(14:32):
it needs to be possible soon, because we can't wait
any longer for better AI protections. I just worry that
in general, we don't have great AI protections, like you know, everybody.
I once sat on an airplane and watched a young
man put his essay through an AI detector over and
over and over again until it passed, and I was like,
(14:54):
you know, in that time you spent doing that, you
could have written an essay.
Speaker 3 (14:57):
But he could have actually learned something.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
I have a friend who's a professor, and he says
that the kids sometimes will include just copy and paste
the whole thing, but they'll include the prompt so it'll
be they'll be like, oh, here's a more informal version
that sounds more like a high school or a college student.
And it's like, you can't even cheat without sheet clearly.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
Uh, it's terrible, It's great, all right, we have time
for one more.
Speaker 3 (15:28):
I got one more tell you.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
The lyrics website Genius has long suspected that Google's lyrics
boxes were lifting material directly from their site without permission.
You know, when you go search a lyric and Google
shoots you at the top the thing. So to catch
the theft, Genius embedded two different types of apostrophes, straight
and curly in the way they printed the lyrics, and
(15:53):
these exact characters appeared in the Google presentations of the
same songs and as icing on the cake. The pattern
of the apostrophes could be read as Morse code dots
and dashes spelling out the message red hand.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
Oh I love it. I hope it's true.
Speaker 4 (16:09):
Wow, I hope that's true because that is incredible and
if it's not true, it's a real testament to your imagination.
Speaker 3 (16:16):
I'm going to say it's true. You are correct. Woah,
absolutely correct.
Speaker 2 (16:21):
Very cool little trick to do to totally catch them
at their own game.
Speaker 4 (16:26):
And what an amazing trick. And to spell out the
word red handed.
Speaker 3 (16:29):
No less right there.
Speaker 2 (16:31):
Good And the extensive documentation using this kind of thing
of where their their material was directly sucked into sucked
into Google.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
Well, John did great.
Speaker 4 (16:42):
What a fun puzzle that was. I had a great time.
Thank you so much, Greg, my pleasure.
Speaker 1 (16:47):
Yeah, if you have been a lovely guest, we'll have
you back anytime. Before you go, I learned one piece
of trivia and I know you enjoyed trivia that made
me think of you and I only learned it like
two days ago, so I just want to share it
with you before you go, because I was wondering, why
is why are Liverpool residents called liver puddling? And I
(17:08):
know I'm a fan of the Liverpool soccer.
Speaker 3 (17:11):
Team I am.
Speaker 1 (17:13):
Does anyone know? I certainly didn't until two days ago.
Speaker 4 (17:16):
Absolutely no idea it's a pun.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
It's a little it's a little dad joke because Liverpool,
if you make a small pool, you need a lot
of small pools to make a city. And a small
pool is a puddle, So a single person is a
liver puddling pudding.
Speaker 4 (17:34):
Who is it really a pun on? It's a puddle joke.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
Well, that's we can actually let's see if I get
busted for me.
Speaker 3 (17:43):
But at this point nothing is real.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
It was the Oxford English Dictionary, so it's.
Speaker 4 (17:48):
A great fact in the English Dictionary. That is a
really I'm going to use that one until I'm able
to act as if I came up with it.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
Well, John Green, we loved having you. John wrote a
great book where he reviewed everything from our world. So
I just want to say that John Green as a
human gets five stars, and thank you for your book.
Speaker 4 (18:19):
And in turn, thank y'all for your great work and
for the absolute joy of getting to be on this podcast.
Speaker 3 (18:24):
What a blast.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
Thank you, well, that was great, Thank you Greg, Thank
you John and Greg. Do you have an extra credit
for the folks at home?
Speaker 3 (18:32):
I do.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
And the idea here is to guess whether this is
a true story about a fake thing or a fake
story about a fake thing. So the towns be A
Tosu and Gobalu, which are spelled b e A t
o s U and g O b l U. They're
(18:54):
actually pronounced beat Osu and go blue. And they were
inserted into the nineteen seventy eight official State of Michigan
map by the chairman of the State Highway Commission who
was a University of Michigan alum who was just trying
to needle his rivals at Ohio State.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
Ah, that's good, all right, Well, either way, we'll be good.
I really want it to be true, but if it's not,
then it is a testament to your creativity, which is also.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
I want to claim they're all false because then I
get more creativity, but I can't always do that.
Speaker 1 (19:25):
Well, come back tomorrow, and if you have some time
in the meantime and want to have more of your
puzzle itches scratched, then go to our Instagram feed at
Hello Puzzlers, where we post original love at puzzles and
other fun stuff, And of course we'll meet you here
tomorrow for more puzzling puzzles that will puzzle you puzzlingly.
Speaker 2 (19:53):
Hey puzzlers, it's Greg pliska up from the Puzzle Lab
once again with the extra credit answer from our previous show.
John Green joined us for a game we called Mental
to Dental, inspired by the Great Mental Floss, where John.
Speaker 3 (20:06):
Used to work.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
In this game, we replaced the M in a common
phrase with a D. So here's your extra credit clue.
Replace the M with a D, and a demented physicist becomes.
Speaker 3 (20:16):
Someone who studies fathers. That's right.
Speaker 2 (20:19):
We take mad scientists and turn it into dad scientists.
Welcome to all the scientists out there, mad, dad, mom, daughter, son,
non binary, whoever you are. We're glad you're here
Speaker 3 (20:33):
Doing some science with us on the Puzzler
Hello puzzlers. Let's start with a quick puzzle. You know
that classic by Kermit the Frog, It's not Easy Being Green.
It's a lovely song, and Kermit is talking about being
literally green, the color green, the color of his skin. However,
the adjective green also has many other meanings, So for
today's mini puzzle, can you name at least two other
(00:24):
waves that this song could be interpreted two other meanings
of the phrase it's not easy being green. For instance,
it could mean it's not easy having the last name green.
Like our guests, the wonderful John Green, the answers, and
more puzzling goodness. After the break, Hello puzzlers, Welcome back
(00:50):
to the Puzzler Podcast the Hemp covering on your puzzle
Conestoga Wagon. I'm your host, AJ Jacobs, and I am here,
of course with chefs the loss of Greg plusk.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
Hello Greg, Hello Adrian Greg.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
Before the break, we talked about Kermit the Frog's plastic
song It's not easy Being Green, and I asked, aside
from the literal meaning it's not easy having green skin,
what are some other meanings of the adjective green? So
who are some other people who might sing this song?
Speaker 2 (01:19):
So I thought, it's not that easy being green, meaning
it's not that easy to being new. Yes, right, so
if you're a rookie, you're the first person, you know,
you're just arrived in college as a as a first
year student, it's not.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
That easy being green. Perfect, you could sing it.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
And then I thought of being envious of someone. Totally
not that easy being green with MV.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
Which is true. I think it's a very destructive emotion. Yeah,
and one more, I got a third one that's not
that's all I have. That's being nauseous, sick to your stomach,
so you're green in the face. Not that easy being
green in okay, so I do have We came up
with three different Mine was it's not easy being an
eco conscious person. Oh good, So it's not easy being green.
(02:02):
But as I mentioned, another meaning of green is the
last name, as in our wonderful guest, John Green, a YouTuber,
a best selling author of The Fault in Our Stars
and a new nonfiction book, Everything Is Tuberculosis. Welcome John Green.
Speaker 4 (02:16):
It's great to be with you.
Speaker 3 (02:17):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
We are delighted. And you've heard from Chief Puzzle Officer
Greg Kuliska. But now he is going to take the
reins and do his chief puzzle officing. So Greg, I'm
turn it over to you.
Speaker 3 (02:32):
Thank you aj.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
So John, this is a puzzle we're calling John Green
is not real or is he inspired? As you might
guess by your novel Paper Towns, sure, which was also
made into a really nice film with the same name,
because it references paper towns, the false map locations that
have been inserted to catch people right right, I'm curious
(02:57):
how you first came across the idea of papertown.
Speaker 3 (03:00):
So.
Speaker 4 (03:01):
Paper towns, or copyright traps are ways that map makers
and dictionary makers and other folks have of making sure
that their copyright is being protected, that nobody's stealing from them.
So they'll insert fictitious entries or fictitious places into maps
as a way of protecting the copyright. And I discovered
this astonishingly because I went to a paper town we
(03:25):
drove through. I was with a girlfriend in college, and
we drove through a place called Hole in Nebraska as
a whole in Nebraska, very funny, and we couldn't find it,
and we asked someone who lived in the area if
there was a if this was Hole in Nebraska, because
we thought this was a very funny pun, and they
(03:47):
confirmed that there was no such thing as whole in Nebraska.
And we came home and apparently it was an example
of a known example of a paper town.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
I love it.
Speaker 4 (03:55):
I love it.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
And in the novel in Paper Towns, there's a town Aglo,
New York, which has an interesting history too.
Speaker 4 (04:03):
Yeah, it's it's a real place or not a real place,
depending on your perspective. But Aglo, New York was added
to a General Drafting Company map of New York State
as as a copyright trap. But because people kept going
to that intersection expecting there to be a town but
place called Aglo, eventually someone built a place called Aglo
(04:24):
and it had a general store and a couple of houses,
and it was a real place for a while. And
now it is sort of descended back into not being
a real place, but it still sometimes shows up on
maps interestingly. So it's kind of it's kind of for me.
It's an irresistible metaphor for an author, right, The idea
that things can be imagined into reality is very compelling
(04:45):
to novelists. So yeah, exactly, Yeah, that was that was
the hope. So and now now there is like a
historical marker where Aglo was Slash is thanks in parts
of paper Towns, which is pretty cool.
Speaker 3 (05:02):
That is, it's very cool. I love that.
Speaker 2 (05:04):
Well, well, this quiz is a true false quiz all
about paper Towns and other copyright traps. So it's sort
of the goal here is for you to figure out
if the story I'm telling about a copyright trap is
a real story or a fake.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
Hey, I love it. I love it. I'll tell the.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
Story and you can guess whether you think it's real
or not. You might know them or not, so we'll
see how it got so the first one. First one
is about the word esquavalience, which was an entry in
the New Oxford American Dictionary defined as the willful avoidance
of one's official responsibilities esquivaliance valiance. It was invented by
(05:47):
a staff lexicographer and caught dictionary dot com off guard
because it appeared in there as well, and even though
it was fake, it actually survived into future editions as
a word that might mean the willful avoidance of one's
official responsibilities.
Speaker 4 (06:03):
So esquavalien sounds so much like a word that someone
would make up to describe that precise definition that I'm
going to say that that story is true.
Speaker 3 (06:16):
Oh, you are clever. That is exactly right. It is true.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
Yes, and in fact, the editor of the New Oxford
Dictionary said exactly that.
Speaker 3 (06:24):
She said, it's it's faketude level.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
Is so high. She said that, you know it's it
should be obvious that it's fake. So it really catches
somebody off. You know, it catches you. If you use it,
you've clearly stolen.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
It from But we did talk a couple episodes ago
about sesquipedalion, which also sounds kind of fake, but means
the what it is, which is pretentious uses of long words.
Speaker 4 (06:50):
Esquipadelion. Sesquipadellianism is absolutely endemic in many of the worlds
in which I work, especially the world of global health.
Really now I will be using that word. Oh yeah,
they never use never used two to, never use one
word when they can use two, and never never use
two words when they can use a an acronym.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
Yes, I've noticed there. Yeah, that's interesting.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
All right, very good, Very good, John, here's your next one.
The Arab geographer Mohammad al Edrisi compiled the Tabula Rogeriana,
or the book of Roger for the Norman king of
the same name, and it's in eleven thirty eight. And
the map is notable because it has North at the
bottom inside in cartographic circles. It's an interesting map for
(07:39):
that reason. It also included a notable paper town in
Central Asia called Rogerdam that was put there to sort of,
you know, please the patron. And although it seems obviously fake,
even Marco Polo was fooled. His writings mentioned a visit
to the friendly people of roger Andam, who served delicious
tea and camel's milk.
Speaker 4 (08:02):
Well, I know that Marco Polo was something of a
spinner of tales and an expert in fic fictions, and
so I wouldn't be surprised if he reported having gone
to a place that didn't actually exist. But I'm going
to say false nonetheless, because I've never heard that story.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
Well, then it's kind of a ridiculous story, and you
are correct, it is completely false.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
I'm not completely false. There is such a map.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
Aladrici actually had that famous tabula Rodriana, but there were
no paper towns that we know of in that map.
Speaker 4 (08:36):
Okay, that's so far. I'm at least with my results.
Speaker 3 (08:41):
Well this is good, all right.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
Here's another dictionary one the last entry in the dictionary
of Terms in the Music Lovers Encyclopedia, which I actually
have in my office here, right here. The last entry
in that dictionary is an eight letter word pronounced shaw
but spelled z z x j O A n W,
(09:04):
and it's listed as a Maori word meaning drum or,
fife or conclusion. Now, of course it's made up. Mayori
doesn't even use these letter strings, but that didn't stop
it from appearing in several other musical reference works that were,
you know, stealing material from the Music Lover's Encyclopedia.
Speaker 4 (09:25):
I'm deeply torn on this one because that seems impossible,
and yet regularly impossible things do happen. I'm none of
the again, though, I've never heard of this, so I'm
gonna say false.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
I'm afraid it's true on screen.
Speaker 3 (09:45):
Sorry, John, But I read about I read.
Speaker 4 (09:49):
I mean, it's an incredible fact, the fact you have
the book with you even more.
Speaker 3 (09:53):
It's right there.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
I was like, I can't believe it's there, and that
people believe it was pronounced shaw.
Speaker 4 (10:00):
More indeed, that there's a single word to describe drum
Fife in coming to a conclusion exactly.
Speaker 3 (10:07):
Brilliant.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
I wish I've made up the gravel Dictionary. That would
be because it would.
Speaker 4 (10:13):
Be a great wouldn't it.
Speaker 3 (10:15):
That would be something if we could pull that off.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
All right, here's another one. This comes from the world
of games. The game Trivial Pursuit was caught up in
a copyright infringement suit when they included a question about
Detective Colombo's first name, ostensibly Phillip, which they had lifted
directly from Fredworth's Trivia Encyclopedia. And even more damning than
(10:44):
the mention of this supposed fact was the existence of
several typos and misspellings that matched the Fredworth book exactly,
and Fred actually sued the Trivial Pursuit makers for totally
stealing his material.
Speaker 4 (10:58):
Now this sounds true to me, which makes now now
I'm worried that if something sounds true, it might be
false and I'm overthinking it. It's like when you play
Rock Paper Scissors and you you go into three layers
of well, what if they do this and instead of
just going with with rock, as as Bart Simpson memorily puts,
a good old rock nothing beats rock. I'm gonna say
(11:24):
that's true.
Speaker 3 (11:26):
You are correct, that is in fact true. Awesome, Wow,
well done.
Speaker 4 (11:30):
I mean, you gotta be careful where you take your
where you where you take your trivia from. You know,
we don't true we think of trivia as just being
a huge bucket of facts. But you've gotta sometimes you
gotta you gotta really double source stuff.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
Oh yeah, absolutely, well.
Speaker 1 (11:42):
I learned that writing for mental flaws, like I would read.
I did one on the history of dodgeball and they
had this multiple sources had the story about people throwing
rocks at each other in Africa and that was the
origin of dodgeball, but it was to made up and
they were all just referring to that first fake source,
(12:04):
but it was in like eight sources.
Speaker 4 (12:06):
You're like, oh, well, right right, yeah, yeah, you can
double source it, but you've got to get to the original.
I remember the one that got me, that had me
in stitches was learning that snopes dot com back when
it was primarily not a fact checking website but was
sort of a mythbusting website. It had an entry about
how mister Ed was a zebra because when you because
(12:31):
the way black and white television worked. The lines would
work perfectly to make the horse look a sort of
perfect gray all the way through. And this seemed impossible
to me. But everywhere I would go, I would see
mister Ed was a zebra. It was even on Wikipedia
for a hot minute in like two thousand and three,
and I was like, man, if that's true, that's an
incredible fact. But it seems utterly impossible. And of course
(12:53):
Snopes had put it there as a copyright truck.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
I love it so interesting, and that one is true.
Good right, you're not messed well at us.
Speaker 2 (13:01):
We've now entered a sort of metafictional place in the
show where it is true that.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
Okay, yes, we want to make that clear. In this
world of misinformation, it's very important.
Speaker 2 (13:11):
I mean I actually had to do lots of sourcing
on the stories I'm telling to make sure that they
weren't true or false. And yeah, I might be caught
in another fiction and someone's going to quote our show
and it's going to become true somewhere down the line.
Speaker 3 (13:26):
Which there you go.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
All right, we got a time for a couple more.
How about this one about songwriters. Songwriters have been fighting
AI copyright infringement for a while, and in some very
clever ways. The Weekend's twenty twenty five album, Hurry Up
Tomorrow includes several tracks with sonic material that's outside the
range of human hearing, but when processed through AI music
(13:50):
generated generators, the added sound waves create distortion in his voice,
making it possible to identify when something like chat GPT
has sucked in his material to use without his permission.
Speaker 4 (14:03):
Wow, I mean that's fascinating, but I think it might
be false.
Speaker 3 (14:08):
He spotted it, Ah, how did you know?
Speaker 4 (14:11):
Well? The first the first giveaway was that I'm not
completely convinced that the Weekend is obsessed with AI. He
should be, he should be worried about it, but I'm
not sure that he is. And then the second thing
that I thought was maybe that isn't possible yet, but
(14:32):
it needs to be possible soon, because we can't wait
any longer for better AI protections. I just worry that
in general, we don't have great AI protections, like you know, everybody.
I once sat on an airplane and watched a young
man put his essay through an AI detector over and
over and over again until it passed, and I was like,
(14:54):
you know, in that time you spent doing that, you
could have written an essay.
Speaker 3 (14:57):
But he could have actually learned something.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
I have a friend who's a professor, and he says
that the kids sometimes will include just copy and paste
the whole thing, but they'll include the prompt so it'll
be they'll be like, oh, here's a more informal version
that sounds more like a high school or a college student.
And it's like, you can't even cheat without sheet clearly.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
Uh, it's terrible, It's great, all right, we have time
for one more.
Speaker 3 (15:28):
I got one more tell you.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
The lyrics website Genius has long suspected that Google's lyrics
boxes were lifting material directly from their site without permission.
You know, when you go search a lyric and Google
shoots you at the top the thing. So to catch
the theft, Genius embedded two different types of apostrophes, straight
and curly in the way they printed the lyrics, and
(15:53):
these exact characters appeared in the Google presentations of the
same songs and as icing on the cake. The pattern
of the apostrophes could be read as Morse code dots
and dashes spelling out the message red hand.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
Oh I love it. I hope it's true.
Speaker 4 (16:09):
Wow, I hope that's true because that is incredible and
if it's not true, it's a real testament to your imagination.
Speaker 3 (16:16):
I'm going to say it's true. You are correct. Woah,
absolutely correct.
Speaker 2 (16:21):
Very cool little trick to do to totally catch them
at their own game.
Speaker 4 (16:26):
And what an amazing trick. And to spell out the
word red handed.
Speaker 3 (16:29):
No less right there.
Speaker 2 (16:31):
Good And the extensive documentation using this kind of thing
of where their their material was directly sucked into sucked
into Google.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
Well, John did great.
Speaker 4 (16:42):
What a fun puzzle that was. I had a great time.
Thank you so much, Greg, my pleasure.
Speaker 1 (16:47):
Yeah, if you have been a lovely guest, we'll have
you back anytime. Before you go, I learned one piece
of trivia and I know you enjoyed trivia that made
me think of you and I only learned it like
two days ago, so I just want to share it
with you before you go, because I was wondering, why
is why are Liverpool residents called liver puddling? And I
(17:08):
know I'm a fan of the Liverpool soccer.
Speaker 3 (17:11):
Team I am.
Speaker 1 (17:13):
Does anyone know? I certainly didn't until two days ago.
Speaker 4 (17:16):
Absolutely no idea it's a pun.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
It's a little it's a little dad joke because Liverpool,
if you make a small pool, you need a lot
of small pools to make a city. And a small
pool is a puddle, So a single person is a
liver puddling pudding.
Speaker 4 (17:34):
Who is it really a pun on? It's a puddle joke.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
Well, that's we can actually let's see if I get
busted for me.
Speaker 3 (17:43):
But at this point nothing is real.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
It was the Oxford English Dictionary, so it's.
Speaker 4 (17:48):
A great fact in the English Dictionary. That is a
really I'm going to use that one until I'm able
to act as if I came up with it.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
Well, John Green, we loved having you. John wrote a
great book where he reviewed everything from our world. So
I just want to say that John Green as a
human gets five stars, and thank you for your book.
Speaker 4 (18:19):
And in turn, thank y'all for your great work and
for the absolute joy of getting to be on this podcast.
Speaker 3 (18:24):
What a blast.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
Thank you, well, that was great, Thank you Greg, Thank
you John and Greg. Do you have an extra credit
for the folks at home?
Speaker 3 (18:32):
I do.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
And the idea here is to guess whether this is
a true story about a fake thing or a fake
story about a fake thing. So the towns be A
Tosu and Gobalu, which are spelled b e A t
o s U and g O b l U. They're
(18:54):
actually pronounced beat Osu and go blue. And they were
inserted into the nineteen seventy eight official State of Michigan
map by the chairman of the State Highway Commission who
was a University of Michigan alum who was just trying
to needle his rivals at Ohio State.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
Ah, that's good, all right, Well, either way, we'll be good.
I really want it to be true, but if it's not,
then it is a testament to your creativity, which is also.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
I want to claim they're all false because then I
get more creativity, but I can't always do that.
Speaker 1 (19:25):
Well, come back tomorrow, and if you have some time
in the meantime and want to have more of your
puzzle itches scratched, then go to our Instagram feed at
Hello Puzzlers, where we post original love at puzzles and
other fun stuff, And of course we'll meet you here
tomorrow for more puzzling puzzles that will puzzle you puzzlingly.
Speaker 2 (19:53):
Hey puzzlers, it's Greg pliska up from the Puzzle Lab
once again with the extra credit answer from our previous show.
John Green joined us for a game we called Mental
to Dental, inspired by the Great Mental Floss, where John.
Speaker 3 (20:06):
Used to work.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
In this game, we replaced the M in a common
phrase with a D. So here's your extra credit clue.
Replace the M with a D, and a demented physicist becomes.
Speaker 3 (20:16):
Someone who studies fathers. That's right.
Speaker 2 (20:19):
We take mad scientists and turn it into dad scientists.
Welcome to all the scientists out there, mad, dad, mom, daughter, son,
non binary, whoever you are. We're glad you're here
Speaker 3 (20:33):
Doing some science with us on the Puzzler
Hosts And Creators
Greg Pliska
A.J. Jacobs
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