Speaker 1: Hello, Puzzlers, Welcome to the Puzzler podcast, The Satisfying Swish
Speaker 1: after your Puzzle jump Shot. I am your host, AJ Jacobs,
Speaker 1: and today we have the wonderful Stephen Jay Dubner, host
Speaker 1: of Freakonomics Radio. Welcome Stephen, Thank you.
Speaker 2: AJM delighted to be in on the Swishing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely well. One of my favorite jobs ever in
Speaker 1: my journalism career was.
Speaker 2: Wait a minute, Wait a minute of one of your
Speaker 2: favorite jobs?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Well, I also wrote the Advertiser of the Week
Speaker 1: column for the North Beach News, and that's hard to
Speaker 1: be because it was just pure sucking up to the advertisers.
Speaker 1: So I always love that there's no wall, but I
Speaker 1: mean advertising and editorial. But yes, after that, this was
Speaker 1: my favorite job. I was the live on air fact
Speaker 1: checker for a Freakonomics trivia show called tell Me Something
Speaker 1: I Don't Know, which is a hilarious show and you
Speaker 1: can go back and listen to it, and contestants would
Speaker 1: tell crazy facts and then judges would judge them, and
Speaker 1: I would very stressful job have to live google and
Speaker 1: see if they were telling the truth. So in honor
Speaker 1: of that, we have a fact checking themed game. Ours
Speaker 1: is slightly different. It's it's fifty percent as factual as
Speaker 1: tell me something I don't know. So I'm going to
Speaker 1: give you two facts, one is real and one is fake,
Speaker 1: and you are going to tell us which one you
Speaker 1: think is true.
Speaker 2: I love it. I love it. So my chances of
Speaker 2: being corrector at least fifty percent a nice way to start.
Speaker 1: There. You go in life exactly since his It's like being.
Speaker 2: Born with one really great parent and one that's TBD.
Speaker 1: I like that analogy.
Speaker 3: I got suddenly dark in a way.
Speaker 2: I think.
Speaker 1: That voice, by the way, is Greg Pliska, who is
Speaker 1: our chief puzzle officer and who is going to be
Speaker 1: joining us because this is a fact checking show about
Speaker 1: puzzle information, so he's gonna come in with additional insights.
Speaker 3: It's like it's like I'm the TBD parent and.
Speaker 2: Greg, we will be the judge of that. Okay, very good.
Speaker 3: I also will say I just I mean, the only
Speaker 3: reason I'm allowed on for this episode is because I'm
Speaker 3: a former fact checker as well. I was used to
Speaker 3: be a fact checker who wants to be a millionaire for.
Speaker 1: Who wants to be a millionaire?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's almost as successful as tell me something
Speaker 2: I don't know. I understand.
Speaker 3: It's because you gave out the same size prize.
Speaker 2: That's interesting though. Thanks for I feel like I learned
Speaker 2: a lot talking to you guys. This is good.
Speaker 1: Well you're about to learn one real and one fake
Speaker 1: fact about puzzles. Okay, Where's Waldo has consistently appeared on
Speaker 1: the American Library Association's Most Banned Books because in one
Speaker 1: beach scene there is a sunbather and you can see
Speaker 1: her side boob, and some readers were offended. Or so
Speaker 1: that's fact one or fact two. Where's Waldo creator later
Speaker 1: admitted that he named Waldo after Waldo Grant and a
Speaker 1: famous American serial killer.
Speaker 2: Hmm, wow, those are both fantastic.
Speaker 1: Thanks.
Speaker 2: I would like I would like them both to be true.
Speaker 2: You know, I have to say I know I know
Speaker 2: what what I know what Where's Waldo is a little bit.
Speaker 2: I know almost nothing else about it. I don't know
Speaker 2: about the creator, et cetera, et cetera. In terms of banning,
Speaker 2: I will say this as some who's written books before
Speaker 2: who have been banned in surprising places. It is always
Speaker 2: interesting how in your question about the banning, was there
Speaker 2: any context for where or when it was banned or
Speaker 2: for how long or how widely, or it just said banned.
Speaker 1: Yes, I didn't give you any more information.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna go I want the serial killer to be true.
Speaker 2: Uh deeply, I'm gonna go with the sideboob ban.
Speaker 1: You are correct, you are one for one. I learned
Speaker 1: it when I was researching the puzzler that some woman
Speaker 1: and I forget whether it was Michigan or New Jersey,
Speaker 1: got very offended. You couldn't even see you can really
Speaker 1: see anything, because I mean you.
Speaker 2: Can barely see waldo, how are you going to see
Speaker 2: a sideboob? Let's be honest.
Speaker 1: But she was looking very hard and she found it.
Speaker 1: All right, are you ready for number two? I am
Speaker 1: the creator of the Rubik's Cube was actually color blind.
Speaker 1: The original design had textured sides. That's fact one or
Speaker 1: fact two. It took the creator of the Rubik's Cube
Speaker 1: an entire month to solve his own cube.
Speaker 2: Very nice. I want them both to be true. I
Speaker 2: want everything to be true. I like that about it
Speaker 2: because these are interesting, fact like things. I mean, it
Speaker 2: wouldn't shock me if, first of all, was the creator
Speaker 2: of the Rubik's Cube named Rubik a hungarian or something
Speaker 2: nicely done that just sounds hungarian. It is take a
Speaker 2: month to solve it, you know. I'm trying to think
Speaker 2: about how you would create the puzzle and then build
Speaker 2: the puzzle, and I could see it taking a month
Speaker 2: for sure. That but somehow that fact seems well, is
Speaker 2: that true or that that's the less interesting version. The
Speaker 2: more interesting version is that it wasn't color based. It
Speaker 2: was texture based, and I want that to be true,
Speaker 2: and I'm guessing because I want that to be true,
Speaker 2: it's not true. So I'm going to go with the
Speaker 2: month as the true.
Speaker 1: You got it, you got it. We don't give you
Speaker 1: what you want. That is here at the post.
Speaker 2: You know, I think the moral of the story is
Speaker 2: life is really interesting, but sometimes you want it to
Speaker 2: be even more interesting, but it can't.
Speaker 1: That is true. I will say, though, the fact that
Speaker 1: it took him a month is very inspiring to people
Speaker 1: like me who it took a long time, probably a
Speaker 1: little more than a month, but that now you can
Speaker 1: watch a YouTube video and do it a day.
Speaker 2: But still can I ask you, though, aj, I do
Speaker 2: like your texture idea.
Speaker 1: That was Greg, because Greg's I asked people that wrote
Speaker 1: fake facts and Greg came up with a texture.
Speaker 2: Well, so, Greg, I love that idea. Now I wonder,
Speaker 2: now that you've had the idea, is that worth doing
Speaker 2: for real?
Speaker 3: I'm I would be so right, So it hasn't already been.
Speaker 3: I would think there must be.
Speaker 1: I mean, there has been so many rub excuse there's monochromatic,
Speaker 1: you rub excubes. There's rub excubes the change color while
Speaker 1: you twist them, just to mess with you.
Speaker 3: Color monochromatic.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's that one.
Speaker 3: That's easier to solve. For sure.
Speaker 1: That is easier to solve that one. I could do.
Speaker 1: All right, one more? Are you ready for your last one? Uh?
Speaker 1: Fact number one, a crossword puzzle maker during World War
Speaker 1: Two was arrested because his puzzles coincidentally contained secret code
Speaker 1: words about D Day, and the British Secret Service thought
Speaker 1: he was a spy trying to transmit the words.
Speaker 2: Okay, if that's not true, I really like whoever made
Speaker 2: that up?
Speaker 1: All right? Fair enough? Okay? And then the second but.
Speaker 2: You said coincidentally contained.
Speaker 1: I did say coincidentally?
Speaker 2: Okay, all right, got it?
Speaker 1: So that could be true. It could be not. Second
Speaker 1: fact quote unquote, the CIA used hard very difficult crosswords
Speaker 1: as a recruitment tool, but they were too difficult and
Speaker 1: had to be discontinued. So fact one or fact two.
Speaker 2: Once again, one of the facts is more quote interesting
Speaker 2: to me, which would be the first one. But when
Speaker 2: I pushed back against it, I think, you know, maybe
Speaker 2: it's a little too good to be true. But then
Speaker 2: I also think, I mean, this is I'm sure I'm
Speaker 2: wrong here, But I think of all the things that
Speaker 2: changed during the Second World War because it was so
Speaker 2: intense and bad and vast, et cetera, et cetera. Like
Speaker 2: you know, I happen to be a a what do
Speaker 2: you call it football fan? NFL football, I'm as a
Speaker 2: Pittsburgh Steelers fan, and during the Second World War, briefly
Speaker 2: because they could field so few people to play and
Speaker 2: because everything was so diminished on the home front, they
Speaker 2: actually the Pittsburgh Steelers combined their operations with the Philadelphia
Speaker 2: Eagles and became the Steegels for did they really call it?
Speaker 2: They did? They really did. Yeah, it was a or
Speaker 2: didn't want to be the Eler the Eelers. Yeah. So
Speaker 2: when I think about the first potential fact, I think
Speaker 2: were there was there still a puzzle trade during the war,
Speaker 2: because I would think that, you know, if you had
Speaker 2: a good enough brain to make crossroad puzzles, that maybe
Speaker 2: somebody wanted your brain put to work on something slightly
Speaker 2: more more worthy. And so I'm going to go with
Speaker 2: the slightly more boring but still interesting. CIA fact is
Speaker 2: the one that is factually factual.
Speaker 1: Your logic was flawless and completely wrong. We got you,
Speaker 1: We got you that. Yeah, to be fair, that is
Speaker 1: semi trip in fact.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the British Secret Service did use cryptics as a
Speaker 3: as a screening tool for all the folks that worked
Speaker 3: on Park exactly. So that's based on some trueness just
Speaker 3: the different countries.
Speaker 1: But the first one is true, so sometimes the truth
Speaker 1: is more interesting. So your dreams come true. And yeah,
Speaker 1: this it was a British crossword maker and he used
Speaker 1: words such as utah Omaha, Mulberry overlord, which was the
Speaker 1: name of the whole D Day operation. So that freaked
Speaker 1: out the British Secret Service and they actually arrested this
Speaker 1: poor guy, and he claims it was accidental. There are
Speaker 1: conspiracy theories who say no, that he was transmitting information somehow,
Speaker 1: but there you have it. There, you'd had two out
Speaker 1: of three not bad.
Speaker 2: I'm really happy to know that fact and that it's
Speaker 2: real it is, and that he didn't do it on
Speaker 2: purpose allegedly I spent Oh.
Speaker 1: Yeah, where can people hear more of the facts that
Speaker 1: are true on your show?
Speaker 2: Right in their headphones? And they can get their Freakonomics
Speaker 2: Radio we You know, if you listen to podcasts, which
Speaker 2: plainly you do if you're listening to the Puzzler, Freakonomics
Speaker 2: Radio is available on all the podcast places. But also
Speaker 2: if you listen to the radio, which a lot of
Speaker 2: people do. We're on a few hundred NPR stations across
Speaker 2: the country, and we're on Serious XM. We have a
Speaker 2: believe it or not, we have a twenty four to
Speaker 2: seven Freakonomics Radio Network channel on the SERIOUSXM app. I
Speaker 2: don't know what number it is, but if you happen
Speaker 2: to use the Serious XM app, not the one on
Speaker 2: your phone, not the satellite based car one, yeah, you
Speaker 2: can listen to twenty four non stop Freakonomics Radio Network.
Speaker 1: All right, I'm going to listen for the next forty
Speaker 1: eight hours.
Speaker 2: You are not you are.
Speaker 1: I am going to write that that is not a
Speaker 1: cheer a but I will say this because we always
Speaker 1: like to have extra credit for our listeners. Here are
Speaker 1: two facts one is not a fact one. King Louis
Speaker 1: the thirteenth of France employed a professional anagrammatist whose entire
Speaker 1: job was to make anagrams of the royal family. That's
Speaker 1: back one or fact two. Ts Elliott chose the initials
Speaker 1: ts instead of his full name because he liked that
Speaker 1: it made his name an anagram of toilets. So is
Speaker 1: it toilets or is it professional anagrammer? Thank you, Steven.
Speaker 1: Before we wrap up, thank you for listening. Please subscribe
Speaker 1: and we will meet you here tomorrow for more puzzling
Speaker 1: puzzles that will puzzle you puzzlingly.
Speaker 3: Hello puzzlers, this is your chief puzzle Officer, Greg Pliska
Speaker 3: here with the extra credit answer from our previous show.
Speaker 2: We played a game we called ants in France with
Speaker 2: Stephen J. D.
Speaker 3: And each answer includes a word plus.
Speaker 2: Another word that has fr appended to it, the way
Speaker 2: that you get freakonomics from economics.
Speaker 3: So the clue we gave you was if the artist
Speaker 3: whose name starts with MC and is famous for his
Speaker 3: never ending staircase, if he wakes up from a nap,
Speaker 3: you might have a blank who is blank, and that
Speaker 3: would be an Escher who is fresher. Thanks so much
Speaker 3: for playing with us, Keep playing tomorrow.