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