De-lightful Listener Puzzles

0:00Hello puzzlers, I thought today we could start with a quick puzzle. Today's puzzle comes from a listener, my friend Todd Christman. I love Todd, great writer, and he asked me what is the name of a palindromic group that had a palindromic hit song in a palindromic music genre. This has been around its famous palindrom based music riddle, and I thank Todd for sending it my way. Let me just repeat it. Can you name a palindromic group that had a palindromic hit song in a palindromic music genre? The answer and more puzzling goodness after the break. Hello folks, welcome back to the Hello Buzzlers podcast, the friends and family hotel block

1:02at your puzzle destination wedding. I am your host AJ Jacobs, I'm here of course to achieve puzzle off your Greg Plyska and Greg. Before the break we had a little palindrom based riddle. Can you name a palindromic group that had a palindromic hit song in a palindromic music genre? All I can say is wow. It took me a while to think of the song, but you think I got two out of three. How old is your group immediately going to think about right? That I got yes, and then I got the genre. How to be pop, right? That's right. This I didn't get though. I was like mama Mia. I saw that I didn't have any points. It doesn't point. No. If you said I mama Mia, it still wouldn't be a palindromic. If you said aim, aim mama Mia. No, it didn't work aim mama. Anyway, never mind. No, you think of the song SOS. That's it. Todd is thinking of it more specifically, but yes, that is it. SOS. So, yeah, a very fun little fact.

2:03I was hoping that also you could add that Abba had some songs with the rhyme scheme, ABBA, but apparently not. No, probably not. It's very uncommon in pop music. It's an uncommon one. Yeah, it's so uncommon that there's a few famous ABBAs. James Taylor, sweet baby James is a famously ABBA rhyme scheme because it's usually ABAB or AAAB. ABAB, it's common. Yeah. No Abba for Abba. That was from our listener Todd, but I thought it was appropriate because it is puzzle lab Friday where we try different things that we experiment in the lab. And today we're going to have an all listener themed day. We got an intro puzzle from a listener. We got another puzzle from a listener. We got letters. So let's go immediately to the first puzzle from a listener and Andrea is going to give

3:06it. I didn't really look at it closely, so I'm going to play and Greg didn't look at it at all. I love that we get listener mail. Hello puzzlers, poddardgmail.com. And it comes in and I see you, listener mail. And I mean, they say I can't look at it because it might have a puzzle that I'm going to get to do on the air. So I love it. And in this case, I did. I love it. Thank you listeners. So who is this from Andrea? This is from Ginger Oppenheimer. Hi, Ray Ginger. We love her. She sent one in earlier, I believe. The Claire Hughes, is that right? Yeah. Yeah. Thank you Ginger. Tell us more Andrea. She is from Bellyham, Washington. And she's a retired editor, but still perforates outdoors and recreation books. Love it. For a five a year. And she's a photographer concentrating on minimal and abstract photography. Love it. And a huge puzzler. So a puzzle solver and a puzzle maker. I love our listeners and their multi-farias lives.

4:09There it is. Even boring about the folks in our community. No. All right. So let a ginger send us. All right. She says, hi, AJ Gregor and Andrea. I've got a puzzle. But the trick of it seems so obvious that I thought one of you or another listener must have already done this or perhaps something like it. I hope instead this is new and fresh. I checked it over and it is definitely new and fresh. Okay. All right. This idea occurred to me when I saw two similar words in a crossword puzzle. They had all the same letters in them except that one ended with ED and the other started with DE. But my flabber was gassed when I realized that the word that started with DE had nothing to do with the word that was a past tense verb. Oh, cool. Private. It's not like, you know, taxed and detax or something like that. Exactly. So for this puzzle, the first word ends in ED. Move ED to the front and transpose the letters to DE to get another word that is

5:10not related to the first word. Okay. Fun. All right. I love it. I am ready to have my flabbergasted as well. All right. Do you want an example or should we just jump right in? No. Jump in. Yeah. Okay. I believe in you. So glad that the art department finally blank off on this brochure blank because it's past its production deadline. Very fun. Very fun. All right. I'm going to do it because I'm not confident. I'll get any of the others. For me, it was signed off, signed off. Yes. And then I'm like, oh, take the ED and design. So signed off on the design. Yes. Exactly. Very fun. Nice ginger. Okay. He blanked to his colleague to come over to his desk because he wanted to tell him he was sad to receive a blank. Interesting. I don't know what yet. All right. Blanked to his colleague. To come over to his desk. Oh, I just got it.

6:12That was my aha moment. I had an aha moment. You received a numerate? No. He received worse than a numerate. He received a demotion. Oh, no. Yeah. So he moved to his colleague to come over and tell him about the demotion of wonderful. Love it. Really paints a picture. That's true. I'm got a little Terry. I never really thought about it until she said it. But a friend has blank that it's super easy to use an ATM to make a cash blank. Oh, I like that one a lot. That's good. It's funny. Yeah. A friend posited that it was super easy to make a deposit at the ATM. Exactly. Positive deposit. My friend Lisa Blank, some apples because we're at least, she wanted to use them that way on her mantle as part of her autumn blank. That one I don't know.

7:15Hold on. I was thinking display, but it's not a display. It's an all second design to an autumn to my grandma. Well, I was also thinking peeled and ed pleat. That doesn't work. It's a lot depar paired. Cored and decor. Yes, decor and decor. Here's another one. It is so stinky that once you get a whiff of that blank stationery, it's a straight blank into hell. Sorry. Straight blank into what? Into hell. Into hell. Wow. I mean, first of all, that must be a terrible stationery. One stationery that is scented. I think that's if you're writing love letters. I can say. Right. But it's just a descent into hell when you smell some of it. Yeah. Well, it must be fire and brimstone. No, you're smelling. Sulfur. Yes. A sulfur. That's some. There's probably a market for hate mail or mail or something.

8:16Oh, I'm sure. Yeah. Start that up. Put a little anthrax in it and then you put it in the console. There's about some legal problems. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. How about this one? It used to be way too dark and even a little scary to walk there. But now the blank hallway is a blank to traverse. I like it. It was at the light when I got it because that is the answer. It is a lighted hallway. Turns into a delight. Exactly. Long ago, in a dormitory far away, a blank named Nancy loved to study art history, especially art blank. Okay. I was thinking like, what is this? Because I got the first part. I was like, I think I know what she's going for. But what is the reverse work? Because coed. I immediately thought of coed. And then I'm like, what the heck is she going to do with this? And it was art deco.

9:17Yeah. Very well done, Ginger. Yeah. That's good one. Just a few more. And I said I didn't like to eat lunch. I blank about that because my favorite place to grab sandwiches and have a nosh is the blank. Oh, good. You got it. I don't know about it. I lied about that because my favorite place is to go to the deli. Well done. Exactly. Very different pronunciation. The short ones are kind of unexpected in really fun ways, actually. Yeah. All right. Just one more. I've said all my life that I didn't like lima beans. So I blank that theory and eat some to discover that I don't just not like them. I blank them. Of course you do. Yep. Yep. You got it. You got it. You tested the theory. Oh, good one. You did test to the lima beans. Very fun. Very fun. And who doesn't really?

10:17Yeah. Well, I don't want to yuck the um of thousands of lima beans. Right. No, I apologize to the lima bean lobby. Happily we'll do an unair ad for that. I'm going to buy one. Thank you, Ginger. That was super fun. Very clever. Very good ginger. Yeah. Good for flu. Good word choices. But we got some more listener contributions coming right up. So stay with us. Hello, Pezler's. Devoted listeners might be familiar with one of our favorite games that we've created for the show. But nah. Nah. Let's do it on three. One, two, three. Banana split. Banana split. I love it. We call it Earbus, a Rebus for your ears. And we are absolutely thrilled to announce that this game is now available to you. Bubble, bubble, bubble, bubble. This is bubble wrap. Exactly. Whisper it. Sing it. Stretch it out.

11:17Add an accent. Anything to get your team to guess the phrase before time runs out. Birds. Birds. Angry bird. There you go. Hospitality. Hospitality. What happened? What happened? What's up there in hospitality? That's right. It takes seconds to learn and it'll bring hours of laughter to your next game night with friends and family. Grab your copy today at EarbusGame.com. Hello, Pezler's. Especially those Pezler's in the New York area. We want to see you in person. We are hosting another live puzzling event. It's going to be filled with word games, brain teasers, interaction prizes, guests, including Gary Gumbeth, the brilliant comedian. So come on over. Where can people find the tickets, Greg? They can just search for caveat, C-A-V-E-A-T and hello, Pezler's. It'll take you to caveat.nyc website where you can buy your tickets now.

12:21And that is November 10th at 7 p.m. in New York City. See you there. Hello, Pezler's. Welcome back to the Hello Pezler's podcast. It is Puzzle Lab Friday listener edition. So we have got two puzzles submitted by listeners. And now we're going to go to the mailbox and solve some more listener puzzles and listener comments. Let's start with a letter from Cantus Braun about a puzzle we did a few days ago about stuff with misleading numbers in the name. Do you remember that one? Yeah. Football's big 10 conference does not have 10 teams. Despite its name it has, do you remember? It's just 78. Hundred and four. It's slightly less. 18. Do you remember how many the pack 12 conference asked? Now it has like 10 or something. Nine. It's down to nine. Cantus had some other examples of this phenomenon.

13:24For instance, here's a question. How many gallons fit inside a 10 gallon hat? What is your guess? The average 10 gallon hat fits as a 10 gallon. How does you know that? Because I've got a big head. No, I was just thinking about it. 10 gallon hat, they're talking about the part that goes over your head. Nobody's head is even the size of a gallon. Think of a gallon of milk. That doesn't, that's not the top of your head. So it was like, well, it's got to be big. Three quarters was a guess. That's a pretty good guess because that's the right answer. That's weird. To me, that's weird. Like you could have said half a gallon, but you said three quarters. What? It was a quarter half three quarters. We're kind of the way to go. I was going to say 78, 100ths of a gallon. Well, regardless, you got it right. And the question is why is it called the 10 gallon hat? And there are a couple of theories. Perhaps the most popular is that it's a mis-translation of the Spanish word galón, G-A-L-O-N, which

14:24means a braid. So it was like you had 10 decorative bands or braids around the hat. And that was a 10 gallon hat. All right. How about another good one from Candace? How many legs does a centipede have? How many does the name imply? 100. 100. Centipede, 100 feet. But maybe it doesn't have exactly 100 feet below it. What would you guess? No, I don't know. They have 24. Uh, no. Three quarters. Three quarters. Three quarters. Three quarters is always right. Yes, really. Well, the thing is that it varies. They can have anywhere from 30 legs to over 350 legs, depending on the species. So yeah, your house centipedes have 15 pairs. Now, what about millipedes? A thousand. A thousand. You would think. But no. Because that's what the name implies. But no. So anywhere from 15 to 412.

15:26Pretty close. They have between 34 and 400. So they can have a few more than centipedes, but they don't really have to. Not really. So what is going on? Apparently, there are other differences. Centipedes are flat. Millipedes are round bodies. Centipedes are worse. Centipedes bite with venom and cause pain. Millipedes, they just curl up into a ball and secrete. Fowl smelling toxic fluids. It's just slightly different. Sometimes I do that. It's very real. Oh, thank you, Candace. That was very educational. Letter number two. It was not really a letter. It was just a comment from my wife, Julie, because she heard our puzzle, Marie, Mariah, Mary and Marie. Julie said, why don't you do a masculine version? A Mario, a Mario, a Mario, a Mario. So here is a very short Mario, Mario, Mario, a Mario.

16:28I will start with Plummer. Yep, Mario from Super Mario, Nintendo character. Full name, do you know his full name? Plummer, Mario, Plummer. Wait, I think Andrea knows. Well, I, you going with that is, well, name is Mario, Mario, because there are the Mario brothers, but that, that kind of ethnicity of that is dubious. Oh, interesting. All right. It's just been disputed. Mario, Mario. Well, otherwise, it's unfair. Like that would be like calling the you the Natalia brothers. That's rude for some reason. Exactly. There's a lot of reasons for that. Yeah. All right. How about Miserab? Yes. That's your one word. Marias, Marias, a character in the name Miserab. Plates, empty chairs at empty tables, I believe. Yeah. Exactly. We do hear the people saying. Played by the great Lucas Jacobs in a production. We know about governor. Mario Cuomo. Another Mario.

17:29Mayor. Yes, mayor. Oh, yes, that was one of my clues. I don't know why I had to think of a Marion back. Yeah. It was like another clue I've got for you is Wayne. Yes. John Wayne, the other famous Marion Michael Morrison, his name. That's it. Exactly. Very interesting. Well, there you go. That's your Marion, Mario, Marias, Puzzle. And this is a PSA that I would like to give. And it's also for me and my son, Zane, because it's a little service announcement, a warning about internet puzzles. Because I see these pop up on my various feeds. They know I'm a puzzle fan. And there is a variety. This is what I have. And the puzzle to my son. And I'm like, I don't know the solution. The puzzle was it was a picture of a woman. And it had a quotation.

18:30The quotation was, my cousin likes to hold my hand. And then the instructions were, now switch the S with the H. So my cousin likes to hold my hand. So I was like, okay, so my cousin likes to sold my hand. And I wasted three minutes of my hand. And then I'm email, I text Zane. And I'm like, I don't get it. And he's like, you are a sucker. You fell for that. That is engagement bait. There is no answer. It is just there to waste your time and make you stay on the page. Yeah. So annoying. And apparently there are several types. But this is a famous one, sort of the broken letter switch. So be very careful of the broken letter switch. So otherwise you will lose three minutes of your life. Like I did, it actually reminds me of one of my favorite puzzles. It's one of the cruelest puzzles of all time, which was in the Baltimore Sun a few years

19:34ago. I wrote about it in our book. They had a spot, the difference puzzle. And it was two drawings of a boy brushing his teeth. And it said, find the differences. Next day they preach the correction. Sorry. We regret the error. Those were in fact the same image. Hours of people stirring it. I can't find it. I know there are six things in here. So cruel. But you know what we should do is the opposite of this PSA warning. We should do a show about our favorite puzzle games. I play a lot of games on my iPad, someone on my computer, but a lot on the iPad that are puzzle related. And I don't mean like the daily connections games, but games that involve some kind of adventure, some kind of pointed click adventure that involves solving puzzles. And there are some great ones out there. And there are a bunch of crappy ones. It's worth sort of saying, what are the good ones? What should you look for if you like? Let's do it. Let's do that service journal.

20:34I've got some graphic options of this. Yeah. All right. Well, we will work on that. And in the meantime, you can play our game. We have a game. You're a boss. You're a boss. You're bossgame.com. We are very excited to be selling it. And it is based on something we've done on the show many times, the the year bus game, where we give a clue like scientist. And that's a clue for mad scientist. So we've got 900 of those and you play it with your friends, sort of like charades, party game. And we would love for you to check it out if you like games. And I assume you do. Yeah. I have a question, AJ. I was so curious about games and puzzles and talking about puzzles and games and hearing more about the Hello Puzzlers podcast. Where would I go to do that? Wow. Great question. How about you go to patreon.com slash Hello Puzzlers where we have a lovely community of Hello Puzzlers. We got newsletters and we got game nights and ad free versions.

21:37Cross-dialing. You can get a paid subscription. You can get rid of the ads. You can get bonus content. You can become a VIP. That's it. You can get all that personal puzzle on the air. It's good fun. And of course, we still love having you join us for the podcast. So please come back in a couple of days for more puzzling puzzles that will puzzle you puzzlingly. Thanks for playing along with the team here at Hello Puzzlers. I'm Greg Pusca, your chief puzzle officer. Our executive producers are Neely Lomon and Adam Newhouse of Newhouse Ideas. The show is produced by Claire Bittigar Curtis and our senior puzzler is Andrea Schoenberg.