"Rhyme Time" w/ Jessica Shaw

Hello, Puzzlers! This week, we're gifting you a grab bag of puzzles from some of our favorite guests. Today: host of the Pop Culture Spotlight on Sirius XM, Jessica Shaw!

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 Chat GPT” 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.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hello puzzlers, and welcome to the Puzzler Podcast. Please scratch
resistant coding on your puzzling spectacles. I am your host,
A J. Jacobs, and I am here with the wonderful
Jessica Shaw, host of pop Culture Spotlight on Sirius XM. Jessica,

(00:29):
are you a fan of two word rhymes? You and
I are the dream team? WHOA nice look at that?
I can't beat that? All right, dream team, let's go.
Here's how the game works. I'm gonna give you a clue,
and the answer to that clue will be a two
word phrase that rhymes. For instance, if the clue is

(00:51):
hilarious rabbit, then you might say funny bunny, funny bunny exactly.
Wordy gurdy and maybe some of our older puzzlers will
remember it was hugely popular in the eighties. It ran
in all sorts of newspapers next to the crossword puzzle.
It was created by a guy named Tricky Ricky Kane.

(01:15):
Of course, his name was a wordy gurdy itself, and
he wrote thousands of these things. So, Jessica, shall we
try a few?

Speaker 2 (01:24):
Yes?

Speaker 1 (01:24):
All right, here's from Tricky Ricky himself. A couple from
him nasty college administrator, nasty college administrator. Two word phrase college.
Oh dean, mean dean, mean dean. She got it okay.
Number two superior garment when it's chili, A superior garment

(01:47):
when it's chili. Coot what you might wear on your
top if it's chili, if it's autumnal Perhaps it's you
kind of it's you might say, might be an argyle.
Perhaps in my sweater weather sweater better, it's a superior sweater.

(02:14):
You got it better sweater? There it is. Did you
say that already and I missed it?

Speaker 2 (02:19):
Well?

Speaker 1 (02:20):
You got it all right. Here is number three Jane's vehicles.
This one's a little harder Jane's vehicles, and it could
also be Peter's vehicles or Henry's vehicles. It's a noted
Hollywood family with Jane, Peter, and Henry. For recently, what

(02:44):
oh Fonda Fonda Fonda, Honda, Fonda's Hondas you got it?
That see very good and fun fact. That puzzle, that
very puzzle. Fonda's Honda's had a big Hollywood moment. It
was featured in the twenty twenty one Ben Affleck movie
Tender Bar and Jessica, you have interviewed everyone in Hollywood.

(03:11):
Have you ever have you met Ben Affleck? I sure have.

Speaker 2 (03:15):
I like him.

Speaker 1 (03:16):
I'm always you know.

Speaker 2 (03:17):
I feel like at the.

Speaker 1 (03:18):
Time when I was doing a lot of interviewing of
the Ben Affleck Ubra if you will, I was more
of a Matt.

Speaker 2 (03:24):
It was almost like, do you want to interview Matt?

Speaker 1 (03:26):
Do you want to interview Ben? And I was more
on team Matt. Damon got it, But now you've switched.
Now I love them all.

Speaker 2 (03:38):
I love them both.

Speaker 1 (03:39):
And there you go. Good, save good, save well. Anyway,
in this movie, Ben Affleck plays the uncle to a kid,
and to show how smart the kid is, Ben gives
him a wordy gurdy from the newspaper and the kid
solves it in an instant. Okay, we got two more
and then we are out. This is a dialect spoken

(04:00):
by tropical birds. A dialect spoken by tropical birds. Now
these are birds that they're known to sleep on one leg,
standing on one leg, Pelican. They get their color from
eating shrimp. Pink shrimp, Oh, seagull. Flamingo, flamingo lingo. There

(04:27):
it is, flamingo lingo. All right, you are like, finally
we've got one special for you Jessica's rules, Jessica's.

Speaker 2 (04:39):
Rules, Shaw Law.

Speaker 1 (04:45):
I think many countries are under the Shaw Law. Thank
you Jessica, as always a delight. And before we wrap up,
for all you puzzlers at home, here is your extra
credit to puzzle. Your wordy gurdy is a dog drawing.

(05:07):
A dog drawing. So please don't forget to subscribe to
the Puzzler podcast and I'll meet you here tomorrow for
more puzzling puzzles that will puzzle you puzzlingly.

Speaker 2 (05:25):
Hello again, puzzlers. This is Greg Puliska, your chief puzzle officer,
and I've got the answer to the extra credit. From
our previous episode, we had Ben bolan On and we
took a bunch of words and added et to the
end of them to make new words. The clue we
gave you was took a shopping center and turned it

(05:46):
into a large hammer, which would be kind of a
crazy thing to do if you could do it. In
this case, you just do it by adding the et
to the word mall to get to the word mallet.
Mall becomes mallet. We are very happy that you're here
playing with us, whether you're in a mall or holding

(06:06):
a Mallet, and we look forward to playing with you
again soon