Mmm that's some good puzzling! [Best-Of Episode]

0:00Hello puzzlers! Let's start with a quick introductory puzzle. Today's intro challenge is, name that language. Alright, here it is. What language is the official language of Serenam, the South American country, Serenam? This language is also the mother tongue of Martin van Buren, the eighth president of the United States, and the only president for whom English was not his first language. This language is also the mother tongue of actress Audrey Hepburn and guitarist Eddie Van Halen, which would be very interesting to have all three of them talk together. What language am I talking about? Serenam's official language also spoken by Martin van Buren, Audrey Hepburn and Eddie Van Halen, the answer and more puzzling goodness after the break. Hello puzzlers! Welcome back to the Hello Puzzlers Podcast, the ventilation shaft escape

1:12route in your puzzle action movie. I'm your host A.J. Jacobs. I'm here of course with Chief Puzzle Offsert, Greg Pliska, and Greg before the break we played, name that language my clues were. What is the official language of Serenam, South American country, and the mother tongue of Martin van Buren, actress Audrey Hepburn and guitarist Eddie Van Halen? A.J. I'm over here in the ventilation duct. I mean the ventilation duct. Hold on, let me climb out. You are in action here. Okay, now I'm back. Wow, now some good foley, is that what it's called? Yeah, yeah, it's right. I'm getting a whole new career. I'm guessing Audrey Hepburn was not her actual name. Oh, yeah, that's probably true. I bet she was Van Dijk or something or Van Lewin or Van Holland. Because I believe the correct answer is Dutch.

2:14Is YAH, YAH, that is right. YAH, it is Dutch. I'm fascinated that we had a president whose native language wasn't English. I know. And there are some easy jokes that I really want to make, but I'm deciding not to. But anyway, okay. Yeah, I see about presidents in their abilities with language. Exactly. Yeah, I can't make it. And big words, big words, that kind of thing. But yeah, I know it was fascinating. He was born in the United States, but to Dutch parents and they spoke Dutch. I love it. Alright, well, I thought I would pay homage to the Dutch language for two reasons. First, this week in the Netherlands, they celebrated Liberation Day, a holiday marking the end of Nazi occupation. So happy, belated Liberation Day. It was two days ago, May 5th. The second reason I wanted to mention Dutch is that it is a language that contains many repeated letters where you have two letters in a row. Right, yeah.

3:19YAH, Loovin, for example, L-E-E-U-W-E-N. There you go. I, well, speaking of E's, there's not just the doubly or the triple E occasionally. You got a quadruple E. Come on now. I wish I could. The word meat, or I guess it's pronounced May 8th. I'm sure my Dutch accent is flawless as all it's as good as your French accent. May 8th means that's M-E-E-E-E-T. And it's a word meaning to eat with, join someone to eat. Sometimes it's hyphenated, but sometimes just straighties. Now, I thought this was appropriate because today we have some great, this is a real genuine segue. We have some great listener feedback. We also have Greg Pliska with breaking puzzle news, puzzles later in the show, but we're going to start with a listener letter about words and phrases with repeating letters. These are words and phrases in English, not Dutch. Sorry, Mr.

4:27President Van Buren. The letter was in response to a Greg Pliska puzzle about phrases with three letters in a row, such as Hawaii Island, Hawaii like I, I at the end, an island at the beginning of Island. So this letter was from none other than Peter Gordon, friend of the show. He is one of the great crossword puzzle constructors in America or puzzle. He wrote in a letter about repeating words with two parts. First, he gave us a list of every word that is legal to play in Scrabble that contains three of the same letters in a row. Okay. There are eight words that fall into this category. Nine, if you count plurals. So for instance, one of these is a word you might say if you are really, really, really cold, that is correct. Three are. So you can actually do burr with two hours or three hours. That's true. That is true. And by the way, you might have

5:31noticed that clue contained a repeating word really, really, really the letter R at the beginning. Eight news. So I'm going to give you these clues in that form. And I think you might be okay. I think you're going to get through this. But let's give it a shot. This is a word you might say if something is extra, extra, extra disgusting. Are you always going to repeat the word that starts with the letter? I mean, could you clear the extra extremely, now I'm going, it's straight up. A repetition. That's the answer is ew. That is correct. E E E W. And there is also E E W E W and E W W. All mean, but not E W W W. There is no E W W. Thank you for for the clarification. E E S X T W U really. Exactly. All right. We've got a rock and rock and rock and singer who

6:33resists the exploitation of women. She sings songs protesting. Oh, oh, see that's it. Oh, this is so interesting because I was like, you're just you're describing a proper noun. None of those are legal and scrabble. But then I realized you were when you were going for which is girl, GRRL. Exactly. And that is what the original girl was at refer to. And also, by the way, girls plural, but we won't do a step. Of course. Sure. Sure. Sure. Something you might say when you are engaging in much, much, much, much reflection, you are pondering a question. Wait, you just kind of tidbit. You just said it. I don't know. I think you might have it. Look at that reflection. Listen to him reflect on this question. It's a difference. There's different ways to reflect. I could have just said, right. Or you said H M H M M. He is really thinking H M M M. That's

7:34correct. Love it. Please stop haranging haranging haranging me. Please stop haranging me. Haranging haranging. Oh, oh, oh, oh, because I was thinking it was, oh, oh, but it's not. It's that is correct. H H H. Please be quiet. Also, S H and S H H. How about these ones are not going to be that challenging because they're kind of right there in the clue. Something you might say when when a food gives you much, much, much contentment. Oh, so not, but that is correct. Take the way H off and you've got. And then there's an interjection to represent when someone is zonk, zonk, zonk. That's right. I mean, I didn't even know it's that. It's the it's the what we use to indicate snoring.

8:36We do zzz and extended zz, which doesn't even make sense to me because nobody snores. That's like great point. Nobody snores like that. That is some crappy onomatopoeia. Get it together. Zzzz. I think you just did it. Maybe even a little longer. All right. Well, now there is one last one that is very controversial though. We like to go straight to the controversy here. Nothing. Yeah, I know. That is about this show. We're going right into this. Right. I know. I hope this is not triggering to folks, but it may be. It's about a food that is topped with extra extra extra cheese. Extra extra extra extra. Okay. Oh, oh, right, right, because when you when you put cheese like potatoes, you might have potatoes, gratiné, right? Which is got two ease. And if you did it yesterday, you made it yesterday, they were gratiné. Exactly. Gratiné three ease. Really, really, I see why this

9:37is got the first one. Well, first of all, it can be spelled with two ease. But Peter in his in his letter said that gratiné was one of the eight or nine words, but I looked it up and it wasn't in my scrambled dictionary. So I emailed Stefan Fatsis, the ultimate expert. Yeah. Former guest wrote a book about scravel and he gave me a very long explanation, which maybe I'll put on Patreon, but it was basically one scrabble organization allows it, but a splinter scrabble group rejected it, thinking they also rejected several other words that were added in 2023. That was a bad year, apparently. So it has caused some controversy. So it depends who you're playing with. If you want to use gratiné, just be careful. You might be getting a trouble. You might be make sure check the dictionary you're using basically. That's it. Now Peter had one last

10:38section in his letter because it turns out that Peter wrote a crossword puzzle in 2010 in which some of the answers were phrases. Get ready for this with four of the same letter in a row. I know. Now these are not scrabble legal. These are just Peter Gordon legal. Yeah. These are not words. These are phrases. For instance, one of the answers in Peter's crossword was the song I'm Henry the eighth. I am. So that has four eyes in a row. Henry the V I I I I I am. That's so good. And the song is by Herman's Hermits, not Henry's Hermits. Herman's H H H H Hermits. Exactly. Peter's clue to the song, by the way, contains some interesting trivia. It was that this song knocked satisfaction out of the number one spot. The Rolling Stones were knocked out by Henry the eighth.

11:41I am. Right. Which song have you played more? Check your playlist. Everybody have you played satisfaction? Or I am Henry the eighth. I am. I am. I am. Very good accent. Thanks. Yeah. Yet again, my Dutch and my British and your British. So believe it or not, Peter found a bunch of these phrases. I'm going to give you clues to just two of them and people can look up the others. All right. The first is soup slogan. So, soup slogan, eight letters. Tell me when you have it, but don't say it. Oh, I've got it. I've got it. I think. Well, let me think. I know it's meant that I used spell the thing, but yeah. Well, this is the official spelling. I did look at them. And for those who haven't quite got it yet, the letter that is quadrupled is Emma, Amazon Mary. So, all right. Well, say it or say it. It's Campbell Soup, right? Yeah. Campbell Soup is good. That's it. Mm-hmm. Am apostrophe, M. Am apostrophe, M. Good. That's how

12:44they spell it. That is the official spelling on what? What is the apostrophe lighting for them? There's yet another M in between the two. Classic misuse of the apostrophe, Campbell's. Yeah. Campbell's is not good with their apostrophes, but what are you going to do? M. Am hyphen, M. Am. I could buy that. Mm-hmm. Good. Like that. But Emma, apostrophe, M. Let's say, okay. I don't know what to tell you. All right. The last clue I'll give from Peter's quadruple letter crossword is about a book. It's a children's book. And Peter's clue is, and then I'll give a little more context. But Peter's clue is that this book's opening line is the news just came in from the county of Kek that a very small bug by the name of Van's Lek is yawning so wide you can look down his neck. Weirdly, yeah, the plot of this book is that

13:47a single song. Fascinating. It's really good. Yeah. It's a good one. Well, it's a good one. It's a Dr. Seuss book, isn't it? It is a Dr. Seuss book. It sounds like Dr. Seuss book. And Dr. Seuss might have some letters at the end of Dr. Seuss, right? Oh. Oh. So Dr. Seuss. And then Dr. Seuss's yes, a post for yes, there's an apostrophe that belongs there. That's right. Campbell, listen up. Dr. Seuss's Sneech's and other stories. I give it to you. Dr. Seuss's sleep book. It's so you don't give it to me. I had to completely wrong. You're giving me completely wrong. He said you were a little grumpy today. So I'm just trying to just call it Sneech's and other stories, I think, or maybe it's just Sneech's, but it has no Dr. Seuss's in the title. I was completely wrong. Well, aren't you nice for for being so vulnerable and honest? But yes, Dr. Seuss's sleep book was apparently a very popular book to get kids to sleep. And the plot, as I was

14:51trying to say, is a single yawn from a small bug sets off a countrywide chain reaction of yawns. And I will say it is so yawns at least for me are so contagious. Very contagious. You just mentioned them and everyone's yawned. I am literally yawned. You're welcome yawn. But I'm hosting a podcast. So I don't want to yawn. I'm suppressing my yawn. But thank you. You know what? Does not make me yawn? Peter Gordon's puzzles and Peter Gordon's letters. So thank you, Peter. For that, that was terrific. I have one more shout out I want to make in addition to Peter, which is one of my favorite writers. I had the pleasure of talking to him recently is Paul Bloom. He's a great psychologist and author. He's written books about psychology, including the sweet spot, which I quoted in our book, The Puzzle Art. Oh, because The Sweet Spot is about the mystery of why do we like things that are sometimes hard? So why do we like running five

15:55k's? I don't particularly. Why do we like who does a lot of people? Why do we like doing crossword puzzles? So it's that sort of the challenge and then the the satisfaction. But his wife is also a wonderful psychologist and professor. And she is a daily listener to the puzzler podcast. So I want to thank Christina Starman's for listening and two things on Starman's first of all. It's clear she loves a good wordplay because she is head of the Star Lab for mind and development at University of Toronto's Child Study Center. Starman, Star Lab. And also, of course, it immediately made me think of the David Bowie song, Starman, which has the lyrics, let the children lose it, let the children use it, let all the children boogie. So I am assuming at the Star Lab that

16:56professor starman lets the children boogie. I think I don't know she can I love it. She can tell us how did we get on this? I lost the thread. I was waiting for the Christina Starman Star Lab something and it was going to be like 12 S's in a row. But no, no, it's just that she is a daily listener and I wanted to thank her and thank Paul for letting me know. But there is more for Christina and every other listener. We will be back in just a moment with Greg Siska's puzzle. I love doing this podcast, but keeping track of hundreds of puzzles. It's a huge challenge for someone who's not super organized. The good news is I have started using this all in one workspace called Notion. And it has allowed me to set up these interconnected pages for all of my work projects, books, essays, social media and of course puzzles. But it's not just for my work.

18:01It helps me organize and manage my personal to-do lists, my life goals. And I'm not alone. It's a super popular platform, a hundred million users. And it's also powerful because it lets me collaborate with colleagues and friends. Teams using Notion move faster, cut friction and cost by consolidating tools and stay aligned. It's an AI workspace where your teams, knowledge, projects and agents all come together in one place. Learn more about how Notion can support your business at Notion.com slash Hello Puzzlers. That's all lowercase letters. Notion.com slash Hello Puzzlers to try Notion today. And when you use our link, you're supporting our show. So thank you. Our podcast Hello Puzzlers does not have an official uniform, but we sort of do because Greg and I are both huge fans of the clothes from Quince. As is my wife. In fact, every year for the last

19:03several years, Julie has gifted me and our sons a bunch of Quince clothing, sweaters, chinos, t-shirts, long sleeve shirts. I've got my favorite pieces I keep returning to including a fitted blue t-shirt that Julie lets me wear even to nice restaurants. Quince makes it easy to choose your outfit. It's all about fewer and better pieces. Their clothes are made with premium materials, so they're built to last. And what I love is that Quince has priced 50 to 80 percent less than similar brands. They work directly with ethical factories and cut out the middleman. Find your next fall favorites at Quince. Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers or go to quince.com slash Hello Puzzlers. Get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK too. That's q-u-i-n-c-e.com slash Hello Puzzlers.

20:03Hello Puzzlers. Welcome back to the Hello Puzzlers podcast. I'm AJ Jacobs. I'm here of course with Greg Pliska and senior Puzzler Andrea Schoenberg who I feel I'm going to need because Greg Pliska has a puzzle and he's a sneaky guy. He is very mischievous. So I'm going to call in Andrea. What do you have for me and Andrea? Well you promised this would be puzzle news and we've run out of actual news in the world. So now puzzle news will consist of things that happened to me this week. That is news. That is news very widely defined. That's really qualified. In my little news station here in my little room in the puzzle lab it qualifies. Fair enough. That's the future we're heading towards. We're all going to get little you know news silos that are just the things about us that we care about. Right the daily me but to the end of the grade. So the news the news is I learned a

21:05new word this week. Yes what is it? I thought you knew all the words but I thought I did too. The word is anadrome. Anadrome. ANADROME. Do you know what that is? Well a drone. I always thought like a hippodrome isn't that a place where horses go. So maybe this is a race racing arena for people named Anna. Okay no good thinking because some more word related thing. There's another word with drone at the end. Oh well. Palin drone. Palin drone. Oh palin so an anadrome is the word that does not that is not a palin drone. Well that is true. It is not a palin drone. Anadromes are all sometimes known as semi-ordinal app. Well semi-ordinal app is palin drone backwards. Right palin james. So it's a word that is the reverse of a word. Yes that's a word phrase whose letters can

22:06be reversed to spell a different word of phrase. I never knew that we had this term. No and again that anadrome should be the word Ima dana should be some word. Ima dana. Ima dana sounds like the queen of the land of anadromes. Yeah. Queen Aina d'Orma. Now often these are these are invented proper nouns like Oprah's production company. Harpo. Harpo right which is his surname backwards. I also was looking back at the Disney movie Fantasia and there's a sorcerer in the sorcerer's apprentice segment of that film. Do you know what his name is? No I don't. I was going to guess but it is Yen Sid. Yen Sid. Yen Sid. Yen Sid. So this nay. Ah Disney backwards. It's like backwards to get that. But yes Disney. I was doing it in my brain so not on the right. So it just gives a little slower if you do it in your brain. Exactly. Very good. That's a good one. So I've come up with a bunch of anadromes

23:10and I'm going to put them together next to each other and give you a clue to the pair to the two word phrase. I see. Okay. So wait these are sentences with two anadromes in them. It's not going to be a sentence. I'm going to give you a clue to a pair of anadromes. Oh I see. Okay. And to be completely transparent when you put two anadromes together you get a paladrome because the first word is reverse to make the second word. Good point. But in this case it's a little easier than any paladrome which could be words of many different lengths. Right. In this case it's two. It's a word and you reverse it to get the second. All right I'm on it. And Andrea are you ready? Yes I am. So do you want an example? You want to just dive right in? Let's dive in. Okay here's the first one. The featured performers playing Remi, Emil and Django in a famous Pixar restaurant. Oh very good. I'm going to give this to Andreak. They are their rats from Ratatouille and they're

24:12the stars. The star rats. The star rats. Exactly. The star rats. Love it. Very good. How about the banana detritus you take to bed with you? Well I was going to say peel. Oh I see peels and sleep. It's the plural. Okay. Yes. Peel. Sleep peels. Sleep peels. I'm supposed to be good for you. Sleep peels. Try that. See what Julie says if you do that. All right. How about the gloomy emotional state caused by too much social media scrolling? Oh. All right. Andrea you're in the you're in the scrolling generation. Don't know how I feel about that but hey I do relate to this. I could be in a doom mood. That's a real thing. It is a real thing for sure. All of these are real things. How about circles of thread? Oh okay. This one is this one is a little tricky for me.

25:20I was thinking thread. I was going with yarn. No thread. Where do you keep thread? Oh spool loops. Spool loops. Exactly. Gotcha. All right. Good one. All right. Here's to another one. A poet like Shakespeare who is very dull and boring. All right. I think we got that. I think Shakespeare is the bard and he could be drab. A drab of barred. But yeah. Not all that's that is that is a stretch because I don't think he's drab. He can be a lot of things. I think Greg said a poet of like Shakespeare. Oh like Shakespeare. God. I poet as in Shakespeare who is very dull and boring. I didn't say Shakespeare was though you could describe him as a drab bard. I just saw a production of Titus and Dronecas and there's nothing drab about that play. That is like his violent. That's like the quaps. But it gets mutilated and just yeah it's bad. It's bad. Very bad. All right. How about having the expression of someone who had stimulant free coffee?

26:27Oh interesting. Okay. I think I got it. That's a good one. I like that. Laudrea. I saw you nodding so go ahead. Someone who is decaf-faced. Right. Right. Exactly. I feel like that's a thing. You get up in the morning. You order your coffee. You order decaf by accident. You get to work and you drink and you're like, oh I don't have them. I'm not getting the usual stimulation. Yeah. Your eyes are drooping. You're drooping. Very decaf-faced. And by the way when I wrote my book about coffee, you got to bring that up. The baristas that there are. Some baristas that if you are rude to them, they will secretly give you decaf. So always be nice to your barista. Less you be given decaf. How about what rapper Calvin brought us uses to stir his tea? Oh. All right. Well, I'm not sure which rapper that is. There a rapper named Poon S.

27:28Oh, nice. You're on the right idea. These are pluralized. He uses spoons. Yep. It's snoops. Snoops. Snoops. Yeah. Snoops. Snoop guys. Got it. Born Calvin brought us two more for you. A Greek god on an Egyptian canal. Okay. An Egyptian canal. Oh, I say yes. I got it. It is a Suez Zeus. Exactly. The Suez Zeus. He would be very confused because yeah. That's mixing two million dollars. So you don't confuse him with the Roman Zeus. This is the Suez Zeus. I got you. Sorry, the Greek Roman. Well, I got confused. They're all from a previous time. They're all real though. Those gods are real. They could be one. All right. Last one. Statement at the

28:30conclusion of decaf's proof of the existence of Shrek. Oh, interesting. Oh, okay. I got it. That's a good one. I like to imagine decaf proving the existence of Shrek. When he's done, he says there's an arrow. Oh, yeah. Exactly. Because he said Kogito, Kogito, Ergo, some. Yes. I think therefore I am Kogito, Ergo, Shrek. I think I can do Ergo. Shrek. And by the way, what do you think they could do, Greg? I think you're going to patreon.com slash hello puzzlers. And join our community. It's a lovely community. We have a free tier and also a VIP tier. And we've got bonus episodes, news, letters, extra puzzles. And often for the VIPs, we do game nights and they've been on the show as guests. So we would love to. We're going to be spoke puzzle. If you're a VIP, we write a puzzle for you. That's right. Well, thank you to them.

29:36And thank you to all of the listeners. Thank you to the Dutch. Thank you to the Dutch. For inspiring today's episode. And for Martin Van Buren. Yeah. And of course, we will see you here next time for more puzzling puzzles. They will puzzle you puzzlingly. Thanks for playing along with the team here at Hello Puzzlers. I'm Greg Pliska, your chief puzzle officer. Our executive producers are Neely Lohman and Adam Newhouse of Newhouse ideas. The show is produced by Claire Bittegare Curtis and our senior puzzler is Andrea Schoenberg.