Speaker 1: Hello puzzlers, and welcome to the Puzzler Podcast, the Soft
Speaker 1: Nugdi center of your daily puzzle treat I am your host,
Speaker 1: AJ Jacobs, and I am here with our guest puzzler,
Speaker 1: the brilliant Andy Borwitz of The Borwitz Report.
Speaker 2: Welcome Andy, Thanks for having me, Aj.
Speaker 1: And Andy, you wrote me a very nice blur, and
Speaker 1: you know I'd take flurves very seriously. I rarely do them.
Speaker 1: But you wrote a nice blur for the Puzzler book
Speaker 1: where you said you don't have to like puzzles to
Speaker 1: love the Puzzler, which was lovely, but it brings to mind.
Speaker 1: Do you like puzzles? What's your what's are your puzzle
Speaker 1: file a puzzle foe? Are you more agnostic?
Speaker 2: I would say I'm somewhere in the medium. I would
Speaker 2: say that I don't like all puzzles. There's some puzzles
Speaker 2: I find infuriating. My son when he was round five
Speaker 2: could just kick my ass and connect four. There's no
Speaker 2: way is that would you consider that a puzzle? Or
Speaker 2: is that more a game? A game?
Speaker 1: But it's a cousin.
Speaker 3: But you know what I.
Speaker 2: Do like and I don't like The New York Times
Speaker 2: Crossword puzzle because it's this whole culture around that, and
Speaker 2: like did you get the Saturday one? And all? You
Speaker 2: know it's just too hard. And and also I'll tell
Speaker 2: you what I do. Like I like scrabble, ok computer,
Speaker 2: it's a game, okay, But here is a puzzle I
Speaker 2: do every day. What I do I do play wordle.
Speaker 1: Okay, that's a very good and your opening word just
Speaker 1: so we know.
Speaker 2: My opening word is ile ai s l e because
Speaker 2: of it's it's it's very vowel rich there. But I
Speaker 2: do think I think wordle is one that you can
Speaker 2: actually improve with.
Speaker 1: All right, well, we've established that that you are a
Speaker 1: medium puzzle fan. Hopefully by this we've converted to you
Speaker 1: to be a little more of a puzzle fan. Andy.
Speaker 1: You are also a writer, and you've written a great
Speaker 1: new Ish book called Profiles and Ignorance How America's Politicians
Speaker 1: Got Dumb and Dumber, a humor book with footnotes.
Speaker 2: I'd like that, yeah, well, because it's unfortunately everything in
Speaker 2: the book is true. I usually make up things when
Speaker 2: I write the board wood support, but in this instance
Speaker 2: I stuck to history and facts, and they're much more
Speaker 2: terrifying than anything I could come up with myself. So
Speaker 2: it's kind of like if you like Stephen King, except
Speaker 2: Stephen King with politicians, then this is the book for you. God,
Speaker 2: absolutely fine.
Speaker 1: I loved it so yeah, and I was terrified.
Speaker 2: So because we're living in this reality, it's like you
Speaker 2: read like Kujo and it's like, well, there's no Kujo
Speaker 2: in my house, I don't think, but we are living
Speaker 2: the reality of my book.
Speaker 1: So it's a terrifying well, speaking of terrifying, actually this
Speaker 1: is not that terrifying, but we did create a political
Speaker 1: themed puzzle for you, and appropriately it's it's kind of dumb.
Speaker 1: So it's called Rhymer in Chief. And here's how it works.
Speaker 1: I'm going to give you a clue that will consist
Speaker 1: of a president's first name and an object. So, for instance,
Speaker 1: Barack's South American pack animal. The solution is going to
Speaker 1: be the last name of that president and a word
Speaker 1: that rhymes with.
Speaker 2: It, so it would be Obama and Lama.
Speaker 1: Obama's Lama, Yes exactly, Sama. Okay, with the yeah, the possessive, I'm.
Speaker 2: Going to stop. I think since I got that one right,
Speaker 2: we can call it for me.
Speaker 1: You want to end on a high note.
Speaker 2: Okay, we got so I got credit for that one,
Speaker 2: even if I screw up the other one.
Speaker 1: Yes, one for one. All right, you're ready, Yeah, William's
Speaker 1: flotation device?
Speaker 2: Can I just shoot it out?
Speaker 1: Just shoot it out?
Speaker 2: Well, William. It's interesting that it's a flotation device because
Speaker 2: this I believe that this president, William Taft, William Howard Taft,
Speaker 2: was a rather large gentleman. But I think this would
Speaker 2: be Taft's raft.
Speaker 1: That's it, you got it, all right, Ronald's heathen, Ronald's heathen.
Speaker 2: Well, that's interesting because of course Ronald Reagan not a
Speaker 2: religious man himself, but he ran as an evangelical Christian
Speaker 2: and he ran against a guy who was a genuine
Speaker 2: evangelical Christian. So I'm going to paint Jimmy Carter as
Speaker 2: Reagan's pagan.
Speaker 1: Oh nice. I was waiting for the payoff, and you
Speaker 1: came right to it. Very nicely done, very nicely.
Speaker 2: Call me Steph Curry.
Speaker 1: And you brought up, I think in your book the
Speaker 1: Nancy Reagan as an astrology fan, which is very pagan.
Speaker 1: It's very pagan.
Speaker 2: A lot of paganism in Reaganism.
Speaker 1: All right, nice, I'm I'm interested to see if there's
Speaker 1: any historical fact you bring up for this one, because
Speaker 1: this one it is Martin's p that's pee, not the vegetable.
Speaker 2: Now we're really in the gutter here.
Speaker 1: We're not above it. Here, we're not we do well well.
Speaker 2: He he was a very I think, very unsuccessful present,
Speaker 2: really unremarkable president. I don't mean to kiss all over him,
Speaker 2: but that would be van Buren's urine.
Speaker 1: That is van Buren's urine, exactly.
Speaker 2: I'm glad that we're now discussing things at my level.
Speaker 2: I'm glad you stooped to that. After a couple more
Speaker 2: high saluted.
Speaker 1: Ones, well, we're going to go to one. This one,
Speaker 1: I think we're going to get out of the gutter.
Speaker 1: This one is James's moderately upscale hotel chain. James is
Speaker 1: moderately upscale.
Speaker 2: Hotel interesting because we hear a lot about his democracy, right,
Speaker 2: we hear a lot about Madisonian democracy, and.
Speaker 1: Even though it's more of a republic than.
Speaker 2: It is more of a republic. I know that's what
Speaker 2: you've been researching that one lately.
Speaker 1: Thank you.
Speaker 2: But we don't hear much about Ratisonian democracy. But had
Speaker 2: he invented or drafted the constitution at a Radison Hotel
Speaker 2: that would have been known as Madison's Radison.
Speaker 1: There you go, Madison's Radison. All right, we got one more.
Speaker 1: You look at that and.
Speaker 2: If you count, if you count the Baraque one, we.
Speaker 1: Promise, all right, sign a one. Dwight cruciferous vegetable. Dwight's
Speaker 1: cruciferous vegetable.
Speaker 2: That is tricky O good of course, because a lot
Speaker 2: of people don't know him as Dwight. They know him
Speaker 2: as as Ike, and they like Ike. And I like Ike.
Speaker 2: I actually think it was one of our better presidents.
Speaker 2: And I'm not known as shows you. I'm bipartisan. He
Speaker 2: was the one who really ended the Macarthy era. Truth
Speaker 2: be told. But even though I like Eisenhower, I do
Speaker 2: not like cauliflower. I think you're talking about Eisenhower's cauliflower.
Speaker 1: Exactly. Well done, look at that. Well there you go,
Speaker 1: five for five or six for six, however you count it.
Speaker 1: Andy Borrowitz, thank you. Where can we get more of
Speaker 1: your content free or unfree?
Speaker 2: Well if you go to profiles and ignorance dot com
Speaker 2: and that will direct you to the.
Speaker 1: Book lovely And of course, for all of you puzzlers
Speaker 1: at home, here is your extra credit puzzle. So andy,
Speaker 1: if you get this, you still get credit in my heart.
Speaker 1: But don't say it out loud.
Speaker 2: I keep it to myself.
Speaker 1: Okay, Harry's spice, Harry's spice. All right, Please don't forget.
Speaker 1: Subscribe to the Puzzler podcast and I'll meet you here
Speaker 1: tomorrow for more puzzling puzzles that will puzzle you puzzlingly.
Speaker 3: Hello once again, puzzlers. This is Greg Pliska here to
Speaker 3: give you the extra credit answer from our previous show.
Speaker 3: I was quizzing aj on words that begin with dee,
Speaker 3: like delightful and lovely, and this was the puzzly clue
Speaker 3: that I gave him to undo a measurement of three
Speaker 3: point two eight feet for the Goddess of the harvest.
Speaker 3: And the answer is demeter or d meter to undo
Speaker 3: a meter which is three point two eight feet. Hope
Speaker 3: you enjoyed it. Happy puzzling