#588: A.J. Jacobs — How to Be Less Furious and More Curious

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Tim today. At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. And then also you post some questions. No sea. I'm a cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal endoscalar.

No Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferris. Welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferris Show. My guest today, one of my favorites, one of your favorites, AJ Jacobs. AJ Jacobs is a best selling author, journalist, and human guinea pig. Now All of you long term listeners will know I do not apply that term, that label lightly, but in this case it applies. He has written four New York Times bestsellers, including One of my favorites, The Year of Living Biblically, for which he followed all of the rules of the Bible as literally as possible, including, I should mention, stoning adulterers. You'll have to read it to get that.

And thanks a thousand for which he went around the world and thanked every person who had even the smallest role in making his Morning cup of coffee possible. I thought about this morning as I had my coffee. He has given four TED Talks with a combined 10 million plus views. He contributes to NPR in the New York Times and wrote the article My Outsourced Life, which was featured in the four hour workweek. What a title. Four work week. Who wrote that? Sounds like an infomercial. He was once the answer to one down in the New York Times crossword puzzle. You can find my 2016, good Lord, that's a long time ago, interview with AJ, where we cover a lot of backstory, a lot of our

shared converging paths in life at Tim.blog slash AJ. You can find him online, AJJacobs.com. The website for the new book. is the puzzler book. Dot com And we'll link to all the social as well, but it tends to be

AJ Jacobs on Twitter, Facebook, et cetera. And uh AJ, it is so lovely to see you again. I am so delighted to be back. And first I have to Say thank you. Because for many things, but one is that beloved entertainer, Hugh Jackman

Read my book on gratitude because of you. You know, he's a huge listener. And he put it on Instagram, and that was the first time in my life that my kids showed a monicum of respect to me because Wolverine Sad that. My book was okay. That's amazing. So I I'm indebted. Thank you. You're most welcome. Hugh is a sweet guy. And that was Thanks a Thousand, or which which book was it? You have many books.

Yeah, it was thanks to the and he's also into coffee. He has a coffee company, so uh it all worked together. That all The colliding worlds collide. Yet again. As the world gets smaller and smaller, it seems, every day. You are prolific. And I wanted to start.

with a bit of a flashback and then we'll come to present. So I have read this is on 8000hours.org, and we may have covered quite a bit of this in our first conversation because we did discuss creative process and writing process, which I'm sure we'll touch on here again. That At least with some of your books you've had a spreadsheet. And uh you send the manuscript out to say twenty friends who are nice enough to read it.

And you'll ask each of them to tell you their five favorite parts, five least favorite parts, and then you sort of look for patterns to make decisions on what to cut or keep. And I'm curious to know. What? You can answer this in either order, but what got cut From the puzzler that you really hoped would make it. And then what

ended up being a fan favorite. A proofreader favorite. I might well have gotten that strategy from you. Uh I do something very similar. Yes, I do something very similar. Okay. Thank you. I'm giving you full credit now. Well the weird thing is That strategy usually does work.

With this book? It was a complete failure. Because Everyone has their own favorite type of puzzle, and I cover twenty different types of puzzles. So there are people who love crosswords, sudoku's, jigsaws, Logic, secret codes, and everyone was like, This is the best chapter, and this one sucks. And they were all over the map. There was no way to see the signal and the noise, and

And it was a it was a huge flop. Spreadsheet fail. Spread sheet fail. So now just for people who don't have any context. The puzzler subtitle. You are and I also don't The Stow sounds a little grandiose. Use this I I wouldn't say this lightly in that is you are a master of subtitles. And subtitles are important. They're long. Well yes, they are long. Maybe I think that's uh that's part of the affinity. I like long subtitles too. One man's quest to solve the most baffling puzzles ever.

From qu crosswords quaswords. I got a little elmer foot. From crosswords to jigsaws to the meaning of life. So there's a lot to unpack there. What made the short list of possible next books for you and how did you settle on The puzzler. Well it's interesting. I actually worked on another book

For three months. and abandon it right in the middle. Because I was miserable. And one of the big themes of the puzzler is you gotta be flexible, you gotta pivot, you gotta always be open to new ideas. And this was an example of it. I still think it's an interesting idea. The idea was It was called

Tentatively fact checking my life. And it was about the post truth crisis. So what do we know and how do we know it? How do I know that the world is round? How do I know that my wife loves me. She says she loves me. I don't know, you know, what what how do I know anything. And I was working on it and I was just miserable because it was

I felt I didn't I didn't know anything and it was freaking me out. So uh I may come back to it, but Uh my agent. You know, you love puzzles. He knows that

That's my obsession. And he said. Why don't you just do a book about your true passion? And I thought it was fascinating because in a sense I have love puzzles since I was a kid. And all of my books

are about metaphorical puzzles. Like the year of living biblically was about The puzzle of religion. gratitude book was How do you be more grateful in this world where it's sometimes very Difficult to be grateful. And This one I was like, All right, I'm gonna stop beating around the bush.

I'm gonna focus on literal puzzles. And why do I love'em? Why do millions love'em? What can they teach us? And How can they make us better thinkers? And so I went all in for two years, just a deep dive. And I got to

Meet crazy people and do puzzles. As my job. So I was super grateful. You've been described as the George Plimpt of thought experiments, which I think is is pretty apt. And for people who don't know George Plimpton, worth checking him out, but he would I think he did a few rounds with Sonny Liston, which if you don't know that name, you can look it up. But suffice to say, punch is a lot harder than George Plimpton professional boxer and then would write about the experience or become a professional football player for a period of time and then write about the experience. I wouldn't say that what you do is purely mental, but it sounds almost Like

What you attempted with the fact checking book. Was similar to someone else. You have quite a bit of respect for I'm blanking on her name, but a female writer who did quite a lot of let's call it immersive journalism. One of Experiment of which was

Admitting herself to a mental hospital. to show the abuses there in Oh right. This was the From the eighteen hundreds. No, this is not current. And I was just thinking right. I was thinking as as I did a little bit of research and she popped up. You having mentioned her once before that

Getting admitted is the easy part. How do you, especially as a woman in the eighteen hundreds, get yourself out of a situation like that? But if you're the one imposing insanity or in the form of not knowing what is true or what is not, what is real or what is not when you're fact checking your life. I can see how that would be very anxiety producing. As a first attempt.

I have two comments. First of all. Thank you for saying I uh I'm the George Plinton. Uh uh it was written somewhere. I prefer to my think of myself as the less successful Tim Far. Uh'cause you are the master of uh of life experiments and uh and I'm just trying to keep up with you. I just go for I just go for the cheap applause with fat loss and writing about sex and NFTs and so on. So you're taking the more honorable paths. I don't know. Less successful, but

And yes, that woman you mentioned was Nelly Bly, and she was a great character. I don't know, there should be a movie about her When the book Around the World in Eighty Days she actually did it. She's like, All right, I'm gonna do it. So she was sort of the original guinea pig. And she also did a very Tim Ferris experiment, I think. Where She decided to write an article about this might be a little apocryphal, but I think it's true, about why there are not more women in journalism. And she got an interview with all of the

Editors in chief of all the major newspapers in New York. And that's how she made the connection. And they're like, Oh yeah, maybe we should hire. So that's how she got her job. That to me is sort of how you Came out of the year. Being a first time writer and four hour work week, mega blockbuster, you like met people you approached me. I didn't do much for you, but other people did. Well

I I would refute that you that you didn't do much for me. A, you're very generous with your time. And I think were you working on the year of living biblically at the time? You might have been. So I caught you in a period where I think you were trying very hard to be compassionate. You're already a nice guy, but I may have caught you in a really good window. But you were very helpful and you gave me a lot of great advice when I was writing I remember the coffee shop in Buenos Aires where I was and whenever it was, two thousand five, two thousand six. when we were chatting, it must have been via Skype or something at the time. So I owe you thanks for that. So puzzles. I have

I don't wanna say abandoned, but I was when young a fan of all sorts of puzzles, and I think as I got older, somehow convinced myself that I shouldn't spend time on Certain frivolous activities after college anyway. And have have let certain muscles atrophy. Perhaps you could just give us a little context and you can tackle it any way you want as to why

Puzzles are important or meaningful. or valuable. And you could do that via telling a story, giving us some historical context. Any way you'd like to tackle that. I think that puzzles are the opposite of frivolous and I hope that I can entice you to come back. First of all, you do

Even though you say you don't Do buzzles. You do buzzles, because you're one of the most curious guys I've ever met, and innovative thinkers. And that is the essence of puzzles. It's a problem where you use curiosity and innovative thinking to solve it. You do puzzles even if you don't think so. And these little puzzles like crosswords and logic of secret codes They're just ways. Two

help you come up with strategies to solve the big problems in life. So little puzzles help you with the big puzzles. I've always loved puzzles and I never lost my obsession. About five years ago, as you mentioned in your intro I was the answer to a clue. And the New York Times Crossworth Puzzle One Down, author AJ Blank

And as a word nerd. I was like, this is the greatest moment in my life. This is better than my kids being born, my marriage. And then my brother in law. Pointed out correctly. If a little ungenerously that

I appeared in the Saturday New York Times crosswords. And if you know anything about crosswords in the New York Times, Saturday is the hardest, harder than Sunday. All the answers are totally obscure. No one knows them. So his point was this is not a compliment. Like you are just this is proof you're totally obscure. No one knows who you are. So I told that story on a podcast and

It happened that a a New York Times crossword constructor was listening. and saved me and put me in a Tuesday puzzle, which I don't belong in. That's where like you might belong, where Lady Gaga, but not me. So I didn't belong, but I loved it. And that reignited I I had done a little less obsession. I was like, oh man. So I started doing the crossword every day, hoping to reappear after that Saturday. But I'm not monogamous. I'm promiscuous. I love all kinds of puzzles, except I did not love jigsaws, which we can get into until this project and now I have tremendous respect for Jake Soss, which is All about flexible thinking, as we mentioned, being okay with being wrong.

How does one compete? In The World Jigsaw Puzzle Championships. So this, I believe, was in Spain. What does such a competition look like? Because I I I can imagine that many people cannot imagine, including myself, what that looks like. And this is true for a lot of competitions, right? There are memory competitions and there are different events. It's kinda like a decathlon of of attentional Focus and so on, but what does a jigsaw puzzle championship look like?

I was totally surprised,'cause I always think of it as a a relaxing meditative. So it's like m you know, a meditation competition or a or a napping. competition, but I found out about it because I was Googling. First of all, one of the m first facts about Jake Saws is that Hugh Jackman is a huge fan. He spent about ten minutes of maybe fifteen on uh our podcast, he and I together talking about jigsaw puzzles. So yes, huge jigsaw puzzle fan. But one of the other results, uh, this was right before the pandemic, uh was that there was a

World championship in Spain And it listed all of the countries that were competing and they were Tons of them. There are forty countries, Mexico, Japan, Uganda, but no USA. So On a whim, I fill out the form and figure that'll be the first of this long process. to qualify.

I get back an email the next day. UR Team USA. And I'm like, Oh why. That's not good. The next day the next day, no due diligence at all. No It was a disaster. Uh yeah. And I as I said, I didn't love Jake's I thought they were I was a snob. I thought they were too easy, they were not sophisticated. So I was like, Oh God. So I recruited my family.

to be it's a four person team and we flew to Spain and You have eight hours To finish four giant jigsaw puzzles. And I'm sorry. I apologize to my fellow Americans because we came in second to last. We beat one of the Spanish hometown teams, so that's something

Despite us. The humiliation? I loved it. Because it was just so fascinating for so many reasons. First Just being able to see people At the top.

Of The Lebron James is of Jigsaw. So no even if Jigsaw as you think is a silly A silly pastime seeing anyone. And you know this, you've interviewed that's sort of the premise. You interview the top people of every category and you're gonna learn something from them. And these people, their hands move so fast. We

Finished one puzzle. Of the four in six and a half hours. The Russian team, these women, four women from Siberia finished in just over four hours, the whole thing. The hands were moving so fast. And there were rumors of doping, but uh not not confirmed.

Another part I loved was just meeting people from all over the world united by this weird obsession. I talk about jigsaw diplomacy. I actually I felt I was a little ahead of the curve because I have a paragraph in the book that about how much I hate Putin. This was long long before Ukraine. Yeah. before it was cool. And I say, but I can't hate these people because I'm here in face to face and they're humans. And you know, I am hoping that they're one of the some of the millions who oppose what Putin is doing now, but it was sort of uh what I call jigsaw diplomacy. So it was a wonderful experience and also learning

Like in everything, there are strategies. You think oh it's just putting together. And the strategies are sometimes surprising. You don't always everyone's like, Oh, do the edges first. No, not necessarily. Some puzzles, if they are very colorful, you do the colors first. Sometimes you focus on shapes. If you're hit with the sky, like a huge expanse of blue, you You've got to sort them by shapes. So this one has two outies and one innie. This one so

It was just wonderful to see the nuances. of this delightful and ridiculous competition. It was one of my favorite experiences. I have a number of questions about this. The first is how do you Delegate. Or divide and conquer as a team because I can imagine

If four people were just let loose having no strategy trying to put together jigsaw puzzle might take longer than just one person trying to do it if you don't have some type of plan going into it. And second I'm just curious, did you notice any sponsors? I'm just wondering what kind of Financial support is offered to the world jigsaw.

Puzzle championships. I just I'm just curious. I know. Maybe not, yeah, but This was right before the Covid when jigsaws experienced a boom. during COVID, not seen since the Great Depression. So they became harder to get than Clorox wipes. So maybe now.

They could be sponsored by VNV. But then yes, it was the only sponsor was the puzzle company itself, Ravensburger, sadly. So I didn't make a huge amount of money on it. But the second to last finisher. Yeah, well I feel it's a little bit. You finished. No, it's a thing. So for strategies like yeah, what do you do as a team? Well, you're absolutely right. That was the secret that the Russians had. They told me it's all about division of labor, like in many endeavors. So there was one woman who specialized in

Sorting colours? Another one with sort of shapes, another sorted what was good at the um the edges. And And another was really good at The

Trial and error. Because you I often am you know, I'm f afraid to put something down if I don't think she was like No, just do it. Just be okay with failing.

You know, she put things she try it. No, next one? No. Next one, yes. So uh yeah, it was fascinating to see the division and and I found that as a theme throughout puzzle solving. I went to this one event That was sort of the Iron Man triathlon for nerds. It was called a puzzle hunt.

And it was at MIT two thousand people, like real rocket scientists, and they Come together for seventy two hours and solve the hardest Craziest, most baffling, nonsensical puzzles. That involved like Advanced calculus and Justin Bieber's tour schedule and just the most random things you can think of. And you need 50 people on a team.

The teams are fifty people because you needed specialists. And all these areas. So yes, sort of a diversification and uh having Different people do different things is a big theme, I think, in Puzzles and Life.

I do have a number of friends or have known people through my life who have been I don't think obsessed is an overstatement, obsessed with puzzles of different types. I wanted to get the attribution right. One of them was one of the most curious and uh intelligent people I've ever met, John Horton Conway. And I'm looking at his Wikipedia. Unfortunately he passed away some time ago, but English mathematician active in the theory of finite groups, not theory, number theory, combinatorial game theory, and coding theory. He was uh in Cambridge and then moved to the US and helped the John von Neumann

guessing that's how that's pronounced. Professorship at Princeton University. And he could recite pi to several thousand digits and he would do it musically. I think he and his partner Did that together as they would go for walks. And He was so what struck me about him, I'm not saying The puzzles are

Entirely causal here, right? There's a lot going into this, but He was very childlike in two respects. A is enthusiasm for Any type of puzzle. They could be mathematical, could be societal, it could be a physical game. He had physical games all over his office.

And uh he was also very, very good at Explaining complex concepts. simply, and I remember for a period of time he did public lectures on mathematics and they were standing room only and people would come from all over the place from all different walks of life. So that is to say my connotation with puzzles also is very positive, even though I have let my muscles maybe atrophy when working with What we would consider formal games like jigsaw puzzles and so on.

I know the connotation's really positive. I'm wondering. what you have observed over the process of working on this book, writing this book, engaging with all the puzzles about your own Thought processes or how the working on the small puzzles has helped with other types of puzzles.

Well, first of all, he sounds great. I'm sorry he's not around. I would've interviewed him. And I agree. What you characterize is the the enthusiasm and curiosity. I love that. To me, the two of the big themes of this book in terms of thought processes are curiosity and flexible thinking. And I love

You know, you're one of the most curious people. I think it's one of the greatest drives uh that humans have, along with gratitude. Gratitude and curiosity to me are Two amazing forces. And actually I interviewed Alex Trebek, little late great Alex Trebek from Jeopardy once, and he said a quote that I still think about all the time, even though it doesn't quite make sense, it still totally makes sense to me. And that quote is I'm curious about everything. Even those things that don't interest me.

So he's curious about everything, even the most boring things. And I love that because I think it's true. Whatever the topic is, you are going to if you dig a little, you're gonna find Fascinating. And and in fact I once thought of trying like a challenge where I write a book about the most stereotypically boring thing in the world, maybe it's accounting.

And try to make it interesting because it I'm sure it is. It's not about numbers, it's about people. It's about actions and business and love and hate. So anyway, curiosity. I think puzzles just fuel my curiosity and as I said, I see the world As a puzzle. I have What I like to call the puzzle mindset. Which is

I think so important. When you are looking at world problems to adopt the puzzle mindset. Which is opposed to the motivated reasoning or anger mindset. There's a child psychologist I saw who said, Don't get furious, get curious as parenting advice, but I think that's

Great life advice because That really is if you're gonna solve a problem Curiosity is the way to do it, not anger. Anger gives you tunnel vision. Like if I'm talking to someone from the opposite side of the political spectrum, instead of seeing it as a debate, a war of words, I try to see it as a puzzle that we can try to solve together. What is our real differences and how can

We overcome them. Is there any evidence? I can present to him or her. To make her change her mind? What is How do we solve this puzzle? That to me is is sort of the big

thesis thrust of the book. Don't get furious well, get a little furious. Sometimes you need to, but But balance it with curiosity. What were some of the I Would imagine you still

outline your books quite a bit. Sort of think about the structure in advance. Were there any particular Twists or turns or surprises or things that you found surprising. in the process of

Putting this book together. You're right, that structure to me is everything and I have to structure like my book on health, which was the much less selling four hour body per version. I structured it by body part. So you know a part on stomach health, like what you eat and lung health, how you work out, but even hand health and butt health, like you know, how you go to the bathroom and and I will say I missed a huge opportunity. I didn't have an appendix. I should have had an appendix about a penet. What the was I thinking? But anyway.

So many surprises. And I think that for me writing is a combination of Knowing Where I'm going. Structure it. and outline it very thoroughly, but also allowing for some surprises and twists and turns. Like for instance, I have a chapter

On this. Crazy unsolved. Hazel. which is located at the headquarters of the CIA. And I Got permission after months.

to visit the CIA and see this puzzle in person. And I decided afterwards, like how should I write this? And I decide I'm gonna write it like a thriller, like a spy thriller. So that chapter almost I tried to make it read like a spy thriller, and that was not planned, but it is a fascinating and we can talk about it. It's called crypto. It's one of the craziest puzzles known. Why is there a puzzle at the Yeah yeah. It's just so yes, let's talk about it. What what is this and why is it housed at the CIA?

It's one of my favorite chapters because yeah, it was commission thirty Two years ago by the CIA they wanted to spruce up their grounds and this guy A sculptor teamed with an ex CIA cryptographer, and they made the sculpture, which is basically a a huge metal. a wall with thousands of letters on it. And the letters are a secret code. And they thought it would be solved in like a week.

It's been thirty two years. And No one, including the CIA. Which is right there. Has been able to solve it.

Fully. They have solved parts of it. And part of it seems to indicate that there's something buried on the grounds of the CIA and we don't know what it is. It could be Treasure it could be. The poison cigar we gave Castro. Who knows? What I love about it is many things, but one thing I love about it is that

There's a group of thousands of people. I'm on the The online group. That spend their days. Hours a day.

And thirty two years they've been working at it. So that to me is like The true puzzle. Mindset of grit. When I help my kids with math homework and I give up after like three minutes

I now have to say These folks have been working for thirty-two years on this problem. I'm gonna give it another couple of minutes. So yeah, cryptos is a fantastic puzzle. And I will say just one addendum, the sculptor. It's not just a genius. coder and sculptor. He's also a great businessman and I think you'll appreciate this. He got sick and tired because he would get

dozens of emails every day saying, Is the answer this? Is the answer that? So he decided I will answer you. Yes or no? But you have to pay me fifty dollars. Genius. PayPal. He makes who knows how much, hundreds of dollars a day. Just starting no that's not right. I'm wondering if this sculptor is also just the most epic troll of all time in the sense that he just created a nonsensical

That is such a great point. Piece of work that cannot be broken because there is no message. In which case, he's just created this amazing annuity stream for himself that's lasted thirty two years. Can you imagine? Oh man It is possible there is historical precedent for that. The most famous puzzler of the 1900s was this guy, he was like the Will Schwartz of his day, you know, the New York Times Will Short. He sold millions of this puzzle called the fifteen puzzle, which you've probably seen as a kid. It's the little tiles, you move the tiles around, they numbered one through fifteen, and you have to make them in a square that And he had a contest where he would give, I believe it was

ten thousand dollars at the time, which was huge. That If someone solved this particular arrangement. They would win the money. But

What he didn't tell'em is that half of the initial arrangements are impossible to solve. Just mathematically impossible to solve. And he put it in one of those. So he was like a super troler. From uh from that era. And I will say just I have a contest. There's a secret hidden code in the book and if you put it into the website you can do these puzzles and try to win ten thousand dollars

I am not a troll. They have an actual answer. So there is a real contest. And I think actually, since you are first out of the gate, I think you might be the first time I've I've mentioned it. Fantastic. Well, there you have it, folks. And this brings up sort of a A more Meta. commentary on the book, which is not just about puzzles. It includes

Quite a lot of puzzles. So you you mentioned The sculptor, you mentioned this puzzler and the fifteen. What makes a puzzler if you were doing let's just say like a CIA profile looking for patterns across the puzzlers. Like what makes a good puzzler? Because you were Helped in this book by master puzzle maker Greg

Pliska, am I saying that name correctly? Yes, yes. There are hundreds of historical puzzles, but also a bunch of new puzzles by Greg, who's amazing. And I would say I actually tried to make some puzzles. My wife has a company. Watson Adventures that puts on scavenger hunts and she hired me by not pay me to make a bunch of puzzles. And I I think they're okay, the puzzles, but I don't have it in me because you do need a certain level of sadism. You need To be okay with putting people through the pain because that's what people want. They want to experience and then the release from pain. They want that dopamine hit.

I don't know if you've had him on the podcast, Paul Bloom. Great writer. He wrote a book about As humans. Why do we

want to do these painful why do we run marathons? Why do we do puzzles? Why SM? And it is a lot about This idea of We are programmed to struggle, struggle, struggle, and then get that payoff. You have to struggle to get that dopamine hit. But you have to be a little sadistic to be a great puzzler.

I didn't have it in me. So I I stick with the masochism of doing puzzles. Yeah. Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors and we'll be right back to the show. This episode is brought to you by LinkedIn Jobs. Small business owners juggle a hundred balls and don't have time to interview unqualified or even underqualified

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I What other Attributes do you spot whether those are Innate. Nature.

God given attributes or developed skills. in people who are good at creating puzzles? I or is it just sheer volume of exposure? These have to be people who have digested and seen a million varieties of puzzles. How would you describe as a category, or Greg specifically. What are the ingredients that make a good puzzler?

I do believe anyone can be a good puzzler if you can tolerate the sadism. But I would say, yeah, the idea for curiosity and innovative thing, I mean, the best puzzles are the ones that are Just make you go. Oh my God, why didn't I see that? And it's something in your mind you feel you should have known.

And you're like, oh, that is so clever. As opposed to Crappy puzzles where you're like, Oh, that wasn't fair. Or they're just boring, like an escape room. Where you have a hundred keys and you have to try every key in the lock. That's just

Busy work. That's just like doing the dishes. The key is the leap. That leap of ingenuity. The cliche is Outside the box. Think outside the box.

Which actually comes From a puzzle. That's where it originates. The puzzle has nine dots, three on each row. And you have to draw What is it? You have to use Four lines. Four lines. That's right. To connect all the dots. To connect them all. Yeah. And the only way to do it is to go You've drawn the line so far outside the box that the diagonals line up. Oh wow. I didn't realize that's the origin of that expression. That's cool.

I did not know. You know, MRNA vaccine was thinking outside the box. Make just part of the virus so that it kicks in the immune system. Don't make the whole virus. That was a leap. That was a a brilliant way to uh to approach it. So what are some Techniques mental strategies Anything that we can borrow from

Solvles, making puzzles either. And apply. In other areas. I got some for you. I have four or five that I thought we could go through.

That To me, illuminate some of the best strategies. So Let me start with A little puzzle and we'll work through it together.'Cause I am very bad at doing puzzles on the spot and the stress, so I don't wanna put you I know you're brilliant. We all know that.

Uh So this is a puzzle that's based on a famous story of a German mathematician named Gauss in the seventeen hundreds, and he was nine years old in school and the teacher said The assignment is Add up all of the whole numbers from one to a hundred. And tell me the answer. And two seconds later, Gauss raises his hand and the teacher's like, What the hell? You couldn't have done it.

And Cal says, no, I I did it. So the puzzle is how did he do it? How did he add up? One through a hundred. I'm tough just toughy. Go straight. Yeah, let's skip to straight no chaser. Let's I'll leave it to you. Let's get to the spoiler. The default way, which is what I thought and most people think, you add one plus two is three, one plus two plus three, three plus three is six, and you just go straight through.

But Gauss realized There's a better method. Because one plus a hundred is one hundred one, two plus ninety-nine is a hundred one, three plus ninety-eight is a hundred one. So you take these pairs and they're 50 pairs. So 50 times 101, that's not that hard. 5050. That's the answer. So to me

This is a very Tim Ferris way to think. What he did was He didn't immediately dive into solving the problem and doing the busy work. He took a step back and he said What is the meta strategy? What's my goal?

What is a better way to solve this problem? And Many of your books have a lot of this the four hour work week is what is the real goal? Is the goal to have as many clients as possible? Or is it to have a good life and make enough money? So fire those pain in the ass clients. To me that is a very Gaussian way to work. How old would nine years old? Good Lord.

You know, who knows how true it is. For sure. But it makes it makes for a good story. Is this the uh am I making this up? Is this the guss of Gaussian distribution. I wonder. Yeah, the Gaussian distribution, which is a normal distribution. I won't take us too far down.

Tune down that rabbit hole. Uh all right. Gaus. Nine year old one, Tim Ferris zero, but I appreciate the approach. It is very Abraham Lincoln too, and of of course, probably apocryphal. Maybe it's attributed to Groucho Marx or uh Gandhi online because those tend to be three of the top sort of blanket attributions, but the you know, if I have four hours to chop down a tree, I'd spend the first three hours sharpening the axe So thinking about the meta strategy and the the the right tool for the

Yeah, that's the good thing. Uh all right, can I give you another uh oh no, I didn't think to interrupt. God damn it, AJ, you're always interrupting me on this podcast when I'm supposed to be asking you questions. Please continue. Yes. Number two. All right, another strategy that I love is We talked about it before, just the flexibility. Just the flexibility of mind is so crucial. Getting caught in a mental rut is the enemy. of coming up with good solutions. And I'll give you

A puzzle example and then a real life example. So the puzzle example is I have a section on British crosswords, which are Insane, crazy, much harder than Americans. They have all these Weird. obscure word plays and you don't know what's going on. So

For instance, one of the clues in the British Crossword was The letters four letters. G E G S G E G S And I'm like uh What is a gag? So I focus, what is a gag? And I look it up. I even use Google, which I try not to do. And it's the symbol for the Portland Airport is a gag. And there are a couple other like urban dictionary gags that maybe are not appropriate. So anyway, I'm like focus, what is a gag.

And I finally just give up after half an hour and take a break. I don't give up. I take a break, which is Also a huge puzzle and problem solving strategy. Take a break because it resets your mind. Leonardo da Vinci talked about taking breaks. So I took a break and I came back and I was like, maybe it's not a gig. Maybe there's something in the Letters and and eventually I noticed

That gags. If you rearrange them. Is Eggs EGG S. So the answer is scrambled eggs.

Gags is scrambled eggs. So which was annoying, but also brilliant. But that To me is the key. Don't Lock in on your thesis. Have it provisional. Always be open to new ways of looking at it.

Jigsaws is an example. I hated jigsaws and I found that they are incredibly subtle and interesting. Or I was obsessed with ending this puzzle book in a certain way. And I was talking to my son and and he's like, I don't know. That doesn't sound great. So I totally abandoned that. So yeah, flexible thinking Loosely held belief. I am a big fan of Some beliefs you should hold deeply, like you know, don't be an asshole. That

belief to me is like that's sacrosanct. But many other beliefs I have are just Provisional probabilistic. Why are jigsaw puzzles called jigsaw puzzles? Is the jigsaw a tool they use to cut the pieces? What is that? Well originally yes, yes it was. They made him out of wood and they used a jigsaw, which is a saw

I think it's sort of in the shape of a Question mark with a saw and you carve it, and there are still are hand Carved wooden puzzles. There's one of the chapters I go to this crazy Company in Vermont. That makes hand carved

wooden puzzles that are insanely expensive. Like They go up to ten thousand dollars. Oh, they must. Yeah. Bill Gates is a fan.

The guy who owns it is calls himself the chief tormentor. Because they're not regular puzzles. He is sadistic. He loves his say them because they're totally different than normal puzzles. They they have holes in them, they have pieces that don't fit. They have pieces that go three dimensional. So yeah, I'm a big fan. That's called Steve puzzles. So if you have enough money, check it out. Chief Torturer. Oh Tormentor. Pretty close. Pretty close. Tormentor. I mean Tormentor is like what an older sibling does to a younger sibling, I guess. A little less intense than torture, but nonetheless.

What what else do you do? Yeah, another, please. All right, well this one I love it's The idea of is to reverse your thinking, to think upside down, to think totally differently. So I'll give you a riddle, a classic riddle. There's a man in a room.

The walls are cement and the floor is dirt. And the only opening is this locked door in the room and a skylight. The man has a shovel. And he starts to dig He knows it's impossible to tunnel out, but he continues to dig anyway.

So what's going on? Why does he keep digging, even though he knows he can't tunnel out? So this one I'm going to admit I know the answer to. So I don't want to do too much thanking of the Academy for my act as I pretend like I don't know the answer. But why don't why don't you explain it? And then I'll have a little bit of commentary because I love these types of riddles. And when I was younger, I actually did, and by younger I mean even up through high school. And maybe even early college, love these types of riddles that force you to

Check a lot of your assumptions about whatever you've just heard. So why don't you unpack that? I'm very impressed with your honesty. It's actually Just a quick side note. I have a chapter on escape rooms.

And The escape room owners tell me that there's always A guy Who comes every week with a date, a new woman And pretends that it's his first time at the escape room.

Ha. And she's supposed to be like, Wow, you can sell the NATO alphabet, I want to go to bed with you. I guess that's the theory. But anyway It's quite a racket that guy's running. No, it's like dozens of guys across the country. They all say they have one. So the idea the way to do this is to reverse your thinking. So instead of focusing on the fact that he's digging a hole, what What else is he doing? He's doing the opposite. He's building a mountain, a little mountain of dirt, and he's gonna climb that mountain and get to the skylight. And I love this because I use it

In everyday life I use it. Collecting the laundry. I I reverse my thinking. And this one came up yesterday. Collecting the laundry. How do you apply? Please explain. The collecting laundry. We ha I live with three teenage boys, so they're as clothes.

Every corner. Uh uh so I used to go around and collect uh an arm load and put'em in the hamper in our bedroom. But I realized. What if I took the hamper with me? And put the clothes in so I don't have to make as many trips. So I like reversed it. I was like bring the hamper. To the clothes. So yes, I am a genius. That is the uh conclusion. But to give you another example that's maybe more important.

My son said to me Yesterday. If the power goes out. What's to stop the elevator from plummeting to the basement and killing us? And I looked it up. And it turns out That elevator brakes work the opposite.

Of the way you think. The default is that the elevator brakes are clamped on the elevator. And they only are released. When there's an electric current. So the uh electromagnetism opens them up. So if the electricity goes out.

If there's a blackout, the breaks automatically clamp on, which is the opposite of what I was have thought. You need to activate the brakes. But some genius Yeah. This is a better system. So uh whoever it is.

Thank you for that. For uh I'm sure you saved my life. I love these word vitals. And you know, one came to mind. I'm not gonna get it totally right, but this is from like twenty years ago or twenty five years ago. They could be so simple. There's a woman Who's afraid. She's afraid because She can't go home because the man with the mask is there.

Who is the man in the mask? And then the Person who's attempting to answer it can ask yes or no questions. This was sort of a common game that we would play. And you can think about it, you can go through all sorts of hoops and ultimately in this example, it's a game of baseball. I love that one. Yeah.

Sometimes I've heard it as two men in masks. The umpire and the cat would be a better way of phrasing it, for sure. What are these types I mean, are they just known as riddles? Those are sometimes called lateral thinking. And again, the idea is Lateral thinking involves totally reframing and looking at what your assumptions are, which again I think is crucial in

Thinking about real life problems and A very fairy so I'm surprised that you even gave them up because they are very fair's ways of thinking. I think I was just encountering them piecemeal and didn't know where to find a collection of them. I think that's probably what it came down to is that I would very once in a blue moon run into something. I remember w another one which was and you probably know the better phrasing, but it was something like There's a man in a room. He's dead on the floor.

And there are fifty three bicycles in the room. What happened. He was cheating at cards. Right. Right. Yeah, the bicycle cars I love that.

I can send you a a website with all of them. I don't have it offhand. Or you can buy my book. Ha ha ha. Get the book, folks. Shameless. Shameless. Shameless. That's you gotta you gotta be shameless sometimes, especially on podcasts. That's right. If you were choosing

For yourself, kinda best bang for the buck. Puzzles and by bang for the buck I mean. Puzzles that are Enjoyable slash interesting enough that you'll keep doing them, but that also seem to have an impact on the rest of your life. And that can be super broad, right? It could help you sleep, it could help you with your thinking, it could help in any way. Are there any particular Types of puzzles.

That Kinda make the final cut. If you think about them through that lens. I guess I would break it down into what is your goal. So if your goal again is to go to sleep, then jigsaws are very meditative. If your goal is to learn how to think, then buy one of these lateral thinking puzzles or or one of these incredibly hard British crosswords. Also

One of my favorite genres that I knew very little about. is Japanese puzzle boxes. So I would recommend that. For Just for pure Wonder and awe.

And these are I actually went to Japan where they make them and they are wooden boxes. But they're works of art, they're gorgeous. And they're locked. And you have to

manipulate them. Sometimes it's spinning them. Sometimes it's turning them upside down. Sometimes it's moving hundred slats in a certain order to open them. And they have become this cult. And there are people who pay. thousands of dollars, tens of thousands of dollars for the most, you know, rarest of these puzzle boxes. Apparently Russian oligarchs buy them out where they used to. I don't know if they can afford it anymore. Hopefully not. These things are really extraordinary.

And I will say I'm friends with You might know him, John Rulin. His expertise is Giftology. Giftology. It's all about Giving gifts.

and how they can make your life better and make other people's lives better. They make these boxes in all sorts of themes, so I gave my editor A Japanese puzzle box in the shape of a book. So if you are looking for a great gift or you're looking for something to inspire wonder and awe, that's a beautiful object, that's a good one. Japanese puzzle boxes. I've actually seen some of these in person in Japan because I as as you may or may not know, lived there as an exchange student for a year. I've gone back many times since and they are stunningly beautiful.

And very intricate. I mean you'll have, as you mentioned, some you have to turn upside down because there are ball bearings or other Weight loaded. components that will shift only if you tilt them in a certain direction. Absolutely stunning.

I was hoping to bring this up because the my latest book I got is this, which makes me think of A lot about Japan. Anyway, not relevant to the conversation, but Visions of Japan by Kawasay Hasuis. masterpieces. A lot of people don't hook with I but I've been becoming more and more interested in other Wood block.

Bast. artists and need to to thank Maria Popova for that reference. Oh yeah, she's great. And by the way, have you ever had Darren Aronofsky on the board? I have a long time ago. Long time ago. Because he is super into um puzzle boxes and he actually designed one of the most Intricate I mean he commissioned one of the most intricate puzzle boxes ever. It's a desk.

by this artist named um Kagan Kagan Sound. And the desk has twenty two secret puzzles in it and it took Kagan four years to make. He lives in Colorado. And it literally it's like one of Darren's movies. It drove him crazy. Like he had a mental breakdown. Oh no. Exactly. Uh so yeah, they they are really remarkable. Well let's talk about the the shadow side of puzzles. It drove them crazy. Yeah, there is a there is a shadow side of the I see a bullet here tackling a logic puzzle that literally drives people insane and has spawned a hundred philosophy papers.

Please tell me more about this. Oh yes, this is called the sleeping beauty problem. And it's a cousin of The Monty Hall problem. Do you know the Monty Hall problem? I don't. I don't know that either. Maybe you could explain. The Monty Hall problem is a very famous

High. Very controversial. And it was popularized by Marilyn Vaux Savant. I don't know if you've had her on the show, this woman who says she's got the highest IQ ever. So she wrote of

No comment on why the smartest woman that's writing the raid magazine aren't Alum'cause she's smarter than me. So she would slam me. But anyway The problem she popularized was this. Suppose you're on a game show. And you're given a choice of three doors behind one door.

Is a car. And behind the other two doors are goats. So you pick Assuming you want the car and not the goats. So your goal is to pick the

door with the car. So you pick door number one. And the host He knows what's behind all three doors, and he says Well, I'm gonna open door number three. Before I answer whether you got it right, I'm opening door number three, which

Then he says to you So You wanna switch? You wanna

Pick door number two instead? My gut. And most people's gut is like Why would it matter? It's like fifty fifty, right? But it's not. You should switch. You should switch. Okay. So this is

Yeah, this is a better question for my brother who has a lot of statistics and mathematical training and inclination. I would not have passed I would have failed that test. Most people do because it's so counterintuitive. And that's another big theme of puzzles, I think, is that Don't trust your gut. I am very wary of my gut. I feel my gut is an idiot, especially when it comes to Manners of probability. So yes, you should Switch.

And when she wrote this, she got Hundreds of condescending letters from Her mathematician saying, You're an idiot. But she's right. You should switch and you can look it up why, but basically Instead of your initial odds of one to three.

You have a two out of three probability of getting the car. Because Monty didn't just pick a random door. He knew what was behind all three doors, and he picked a goat. So then it narrows it down. But anyway, this sleeping beauty problem, I'm not gonna say it because it's super complicated and it'll put you to sleep. But it has caused, as you say, a hundred philosophy papers. And I love it because This is one of the puzzles. People are still debating.

What the answer is. Is the answer two out of three or is it one out of two or something else? So I love a puzzle that cannot be solved. And actually as part of the book. I commissioned What I believe. is the hardest puzzle in the history of the world and it cannot be solved because

Because you cannot solve it. By the time we're going to be able to do The universe runs out of energy. It's a mechanical puzzle. Where it's got a metal rod inside a tower, and in the tower there are all these pegs. And you have to turn the pegs to remove the

metal rod. But you have to turn the pegs Many times. Many, many times. One point two decillion times, which is one of the thirty three digits in

Yeah, so it is literally if you do one every second, every nanosecond, the universe will will end. Now what Uh and I love that. I love that. So So what what was the impetus for creating this puzzle? And this is Jacob's ladder, am I right? Yes. Okay. A few reasons I loved it. One It's part of a genre called generation puzzles, where you pass them down from generation to generation, because no one person can solve it. So I love this idea of connecting. Generations and You mentioned eighty thousand hours.

That's the effective altruism movement. They talk a lot about The far future and our fourteenth great grandkids. So this is sort of a way to connect with that. One of the great Japanese puzzle makers. He was called the Godfather of Sudoku, and he summarized Puzzles and much of life with three symbols.

The question mark. The forward arrow. The exclamation point. You arrive, you're baffled. Forward arrow is the struggle, the wrestling with the and then the exclamation point is the revelation.

And he said, This very Zen, he said. You have to embrace the arrow. You have to learn to love The solving. Because you're not always gonna get to the exclamation point. So this is the ultimate arrow. This arrow is

Goes on. Until you, you know, to the end of the universe. So I love that. I love that. And it's also I love it because it's kind of like a ritual that I can do, a little meditative. Ritual.

There's only one in the world, Jacob's Ladder. Where is it located? I'm looking at it right now. It's the left of my desk. It's taunting me. I mean the guy, he's a brilliant puzzle maker, Oscar van Deventer was the one who designed it. So and he's gonna release the plans on the internet. So you can 3D print one yourself. So it will be available. So it sounds like Jacob's ladder, maybe if you commercialize this and sell it the Company logo should be

the question mark and the forward arrow without the exclamation point. I love it. All right. I'm in. Well you are a a collector of

Experiments and experiences and last handful of books, I mean you certainly span a lot of disciplines. And one question I'm curious to hear your answer to related to the puzzler. is what you think a year or two from now You might still have

taken with you from this book, whether it's a habit, a new type of puzzle, could be anything. And I remember you and I chatting years ago after the year of living biblically, and one of the things that you took from that, for a period of time at least, was wearing white And then after that wearing more colours and There's a lot more to that story, but What do you think?

You may take forth From All the work you've done on the puzzler. And just to dip into the wearing white clothes, I I love that that

at least at one point had an influence on you. You and I both are big believers in the outer. affects the inner your behavior, affects your thoughts. And so wearing white It just has this connotation of lightness that like you're gonna go play Wimbledon or I think I used it in the book that you might go to P. Diddy's white party I don't think exists anymore. But anyway Yes, that was one of the many things I took away. I also took away from that gratitude, which turned into its own book.

For this one. The puzzle mindset, it really reinforced this puzzle mindset, which is all about seeing the world as puzzles. Don't get Furious, get curious. Flexible thinking, all that. But more specifically, I do think

Every morning I have some rituals where I We spend fifteen minutes brainstorming ideas. And ninety nine percent of them suck. But I just feel that the the mental aerobic work out of your brain.

Is very helpful. And solving Real puzzles and life puzzles and coming up with new ideas. But in addition to that now, I am addicted to several puzzles. If you're gonna have an addiction, I think it's a good one. So I I do the spelling B in the New York Times. Wordle, which was such a huge phenomenon. I think it's a a friend of mine described it as the Ted Lasso

of puzzles'cause it's very nice. Like you know, you're probably gonna get it. So uh it's not too sadistic. And of course the New York Times crossword puzzle. So I will continue to do that. And I will also I loved

All of the dozens of subcultures of people I met. So I I do hope to keep keep in touch with them because they are such curious and bizarre and interesting thinkers and such great characters. Is there any subculture that If the task or the question was okay.

Twice a month. for the next year you need to have dinner with someone from this subculture. Like a long dinner, not a short one. Could be beers, could be something else, but just I'm wondering which subculture you're like, you know, I could be like an honorary or dishonorable inductee for a short period of time, depending on how things go. Where do you think you would lean?

There are so many that I find fascinating, but one, I do love the Code breakers. the cryptographers and I'm terrible at at codes. And they range from professional cryptographers to janitors to writers to artists, but they are all obsessed with breaking codes. The cryptos one I mentioned, but also There's something called the zodiac killer and his letters. They're like

A few dozen codes. that still have never been solved, but they obsess over them. One of the ones I featured in my book was this amazing woman named Lanka Dunnan Who consulted on codes for the CIA and the FBI.

After nine eleven. And she is so obsessed with cryptos that she moved To D C to be closer. Two cryptos. Talking to them, you realize how much secret codes

I won't say in fact uh just Affect. every part of our lives, you know, cryptocurrency and your bank account, your passwords and you know military. So secret codes may be a puzzle, but They are a

crucial puzzle for Humanity and in fact. One of the historical things I mentioned in the book is that there was A puzzle in nineteen forty two in the Telegraph newspaper.

And it was a crossword puzzle and it said at the bottom If you solve this in twelve minutes or less. Call this number. And that number turned out to be the British secret service, the the spy agency.

And it was a recruitment tool. For the people who cracked The Enigma Code, the Nazi Enigma Code. So you could say that Crossworth puzzles save the world.

And for and for people interested, I just want to lay out the spelling. So cryptos is K-R-Y-P-T-O-S. Sculpture by the American artist Jim Sandburg, located on the grounds of the Central Intelligence Agency in Langley. Virginia. And there's a whole Wikipedia entry. But certainly the the first hand experience of having spent time there as you did.

I think is worth digging into. Do you find not to in any way imply that the woman you just mentioned falls prey to this, but that People interested in cryptography have a high risk of I want to say psychosis, but seeing signal where there is noise. Right. So ending up succumbing to all sorts of conspiracy theories or God knows what. I mean, there are a million pitfalls.

Kind of in the gray zone. I talk about the dark side of puzzle. I think they're mostly a force for good, but If you don't have that flexibility of mind and you get obsessed with puzzles and you fall in love with your particular hypothesis, there's a word for it. It's as not psychosis, it's apophenia. Apophenia is one of my favorite words I learned, and it is when you see signal in the noise. I mean the classic is. You see Jesus' face on a piece of French toast.

And yes, it is a big danger. I mean, you look at these online groups for cryptos and their people like, no, it's gotta be Morse code. It's gotta be The Illuminati. Yes, there's definitely I mean Q and On is basically A puzzle gone wrong. It's people who have figured out a solution that they think is right and no amount of

counter evidence will allow them to change their mind. So yeah, you gotta and I also have a section in the book about This famous book from in nineteen eighty, eighty one in England. Where It was a picture book with clues to a hidden treasure, a golden rabbit hidden somewhere in England. And it caused a mania. Like people were digging up yards and trespassing, looking for this.

Finally someone found it. But what was crazy is That even after someone found it. There were Dozens, hundreds of people who are like

No no. My theory is right. They refused. to abandon their theory even after it was found. And that to me is a very dangerous

Look at the the dark side of human nature. Well Apophenia. Learning all sorts of things. So let's

Take a a revisit of this subtitle. So one man's quest to solve the most baffling puzzles ever from crosswords to jigsaws to the meaning of life. So I'm gonna give you There's a fork in the road that we can take here. We can go to meaning of life and you can expand on why that's in the subtitle. Or or We could go

To The hardest corn maize in the world. If you have time, maybe I'll just do quickly the corn man. I feel like if you do the meaning of life, that's kind of Where do you go from there? Exactly. But yes, I have a section on mazes which uh were fascinating. And I found the hardest corn maize in the world is in Vermont.

And it is so hard. Talk about sadism. The guy who Created it. revels in the amount of pain and misery. You know, he talks joyously about couples getting massive fights, hundreds of people just breaking out in tears of frustration, a father who abandoned his family and drove off. Because he was so It is incredibly hard. There are emergency exits because it's so hard. People get freaked out.

And I I did it. It took about four and a half hours and a bunch of hints. But I loved interviewing him because we'll think of a bunch of hints. Do you just have an earpiece and he's like, Go right. I can see you from the drone. Go left. But he does is he stands on a platform in the middle of the maze like a god. And uh and you can go up to him and plead your case, you know. I'm so frustrated. And you help. Oh my God, that's incredible. Oh But I asked him, you know, standing on that platform, what have you learned from observing human nature? And he said

This theme that we've talked about is The ones who are never gonna make it out are the ones who have no flexibility of mind who just They're like This is the way, I swear, and they'll hit a wall and

They'll go back. They'll do it again. They'll keep in. He does say that. Teenage boys are uh particularly prone to this. So I have teenage boys. I'm trying to say, you know. Flexibility. You gotta be flexible. No test, yeah. Like I'm right. Yeah. So he was great and

I am a big fan of Maze's another genre that I wasn't particularly obsessed with before. But I I do see the beauty of them now. Mazes. Vermont unexpectedly has come up quite a bit. I mean you mentioned the sort of Bill Gates

Bugatti of jigsaw puzzles. From the chief tormentor, which are I think you mentioned were made in Vermont. You've got the most difficult corn maze. in the world in Vermont. It makes me think of these unlikely epicenters or Places that are famous for things you wouldn't expect, right? Like Gilroy, California is the garlic capital of the world.

And uh you would never guess that unless you happen to be driving by it, as I had many times when I lived in California. Are there hotbeds of Puzzle creation. Is Vermont one of them? I think so. I mean these are not as unexpected. These are not Gilbert, but Japan makes amazing puzzles. Russia is known for making amaz and one of the chapters is about Chess puzzles. Which are different from chess games. I played with Gary Kasparov.

who is a big fan of chess puzzle, although he himself is not the greatest Test puzzler,'cause it's a different skill than regular chess. And just very quickly, a chess puzzle is when you have a certain arrangement of pieces on the board, like a a king and and a rook and and a queen, and you have to Checkmate. the other side in a certain number of moves. It's a constrained puzzle as opposed to an unconstrained game. And these people

It's a different skill set. There are these people who are like the Gary Kasparovs of Chest puzzles. And I love talking to him'cause You've had him on the show, right, I imagine. I hadn't. I you know, the only time I've ever met Well I didn't really meet him. Gary Kasprov, quick side note is

when I was presenting it Ted however many years ago and it was my first time, you know, on this big stage at this big event. And I was very nervous and I was told by the organizers Well. Before you go up, when you're like three or four out, you can go into the Zen pot. They had some word for this place that was supposed to be very calming, had all of this beautiful imagery, and it was supposed to be this very Zen sedating. place where you could prepare for what would otherwise be very stressful. And I remember walking out because I was sweating already to

Whatever the Zenpod was. And The people on deck before me were Gary Kasparov and like two other super geniuses and they were pacing like they're on death row about to go to execution and I was like this is not gonna help my nerves and so I turned around and I left. That is my my one and only exposure to to Gary Kasparov. That is funny. Yeah, that would not be good for your nerves. And I will tell you, he was very gracious to come to my apartment and allow me to interview him.

I will say he's not like the softest and cuddliest guy. Which is probably good, you know, he saw this Vladimir Putin thing coming, but when he came, I had set up my chess set. So that we wouldn't waste any time. And he looked at it and he said That is a very cheap chess set, I see. And I was like It's like a plastic thing I had

bought on Amazon and I was like, Oh and he said, No, don't worry. I grew up in the Soviet Union. I'm used to cheap plastic chest sets. So he forgave me. But he was not impressed. Because one of the keys he says to chess puzzles is Is again. The counterintuitive and and looking at the long view.

the long view, which he's good at in in life as well. Yeah. The best puzzles make you do things. That are short term crazy. Like sacrifice your queen. A lot of them are about sacrificing your queen, but in the long run

they will pay off. I like that as a life lesson. Just look at the long view. Yeah, I imagine I mean I I know Very little about chess, but that perhaps the reason these chess puzzles are not comparable to chess games is that they are presenting the pieces and configurations that would almost never occur in a natural game, right? And I do know some very good chess players

But they become Very good at Chunking the board. into sections where they might recognize A particular

sequence of moves that they have already recorded to memory from studying historic games or having played a thousand matches. In a certain way. But when you then get to

A puzzle, perhaps it's almost nonsensical, right? There isn't any historical record to kind of play off of to figure out what the next best move is. Some of the most famous puzzles are just crazy. There's a genre called Grotesques. Which sounds uh very exciting. Grotesque puzzles, uh chess puzzles. And it'll be sixteen

Black pieces and only two white pieces But White can win, and you have to figure out how can White win. So it's a real like David versus Goliath thing. But yeah, they look crazy, you know, they're they're 16 Black pieces huddled in the corner never would happen in a real game. All right, meaning of life. I think we've pushed it as long as we can.

Well I First of all, put it in there just because I wanted to show puzzles are not trivial, like you know waste of time, frivolous. So there's a little of that. So I may not have actually solved the meaning of life by the end, but I will say, and I hope it doesn't come off as pat because I truly believe it. Part of the meaning of life. is the search for the meaning of life. Because

Curiosity. As we've said over and over, is to me one of the greatest gifts. It's a key to a joyous life. It's a key to resolving conflicts. It's a key to business, family, everything. So

To me, never giving up on the search for the meaning of life is a big part of the meaning of life. Less furious, more curious. So that came originally or your source was parenting advice? Is this right? Yeah. I was watching uh

They had a a webinar deep in the middle of the pandemic where it was Yeah, as tiled psychologists. And the you know, ways to survive the pandemic with your kids. Because yeah, it was just horrible. So I was like maybe maybe there's something and that was the phrase he used. And he meant it in parenting terms. So like when you're Two year old is throwing a tantrum. Don't get furious.

Get curious why Is the kid throwing a tantrum? What can we do to prevent it in the future? What will work? And I think that's very good for your own mental health. Otherwise, you know, when I read the newspaper or I don't read the newspaper, when I read media online.

I uh When you're reading parade. My favorite column in parade. I mean, I do read the paper, just not like the old folded paper. But when I'm doing that. If I don't look at it like a puzzle, I get so angry and it's just not good for my health.

So yeah, look at it. More like There are different ways to put it. Some people say the engineer. Mindset versus the lawyer mindset. I like Adam Grant. as uh he calls it the um be a uh a scientist, the scientist worldview instead of the prosecutor or the preacher.

Or the he had one other P. He was very good with the alliteration. So yeah, look at the world that way and Pescaterial but they're all the same theme. Could be pesat. You deal with it. Exactly. Those Piscetarians are very narrow minded. Yeah. Well well, AJ, what's I mean, we've covered a fair bit. But I'm

I'd still love to hear you just reiterate for people. What you hope they gain, not just from the book, certainly the book. I mean, I hope people check them out. I've never been disappointed by a book of yours. I think you're a an excellent writer, but also an excellent Entertainer. And the combination of those two I think often results in you being an outstanding teacher because you take what can otherwise be very difficult to absorb or difficult to understand and uh you provide a wrapper that makes it really easy to digest. And I've always admired that. And that goes

back to some of your earliest work, certainly the year of living biblically, I thought was was outstanding. What do you hope will get from This and puzzles if there are any stones we haven't Turn over yet. Tons. I mean, just to reiterate some of what we've covered, I

I mean it's got tons of puzzles in it, so I hope that they will d do those and find the joy of puzzles. It's got the contest, uh, which I hope you'll enjoy even if you don't win. It's got my adventures, but it's also got this way of hopefully looking at the world, which will make your life better, make you happier, more effective, more productive, both in the macro sense of looking at the world as a puzzle. And in the more micro sense of here are ten strategies. For solving puzzles. And we went over three or four of them, but there are plenty more in the book. I think it's funny because I didn't plan this. I feel very lucky, but we are in a puzzle boom.

right now. People are obsessed with Wirtle and jigsaws and So I hope that that as COVID Hopefully ends. that that doesn't die, that people will continue. this love of puzzles because I really do think

That they make the world a better place. And maybe, you know what? Oh, this is good. I'm gonna make you a little Gift box. Of puzzles that are going to blow your mind and get you sucked back into the puzzles. The Gateway Drug Box of Puzzles by A.J. Jacobs. Yes. I would love that. I would love that. Thank you so much. And I also Want to give voice to something that I've been thinking throughout this entire conversation and that is And you pointed this out already when I said that I dropped puzzles. I haven't dropped puzzles. It's just that my narrow definition of puzzles

needs to be expanded. And if we think of puzzles in a sense as games With certain rules, certain constraints, certain desired outcomes. That we're all playing games. If you think about outside of the lowest rungs of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, I mean what we're opting into, we are playing games and I guess the the first order of business is to try to identify which games we're playing. And try to make sure we're playing the right games because you know the social conventions around us can be enabling or disabling. And I would

Expect that the way you present. subject matter and the way you tell stories will help people to realize that the water they swim in is already full of puzzles. And that by, as you said, sort of working on the micro puzzles You can develop capacities that then translate to the the macro puzzles.

You just reminded me you you have been doing puzzles in your first book when you talked about the martial arts competition you won. That was a puzzle. It was that was like you used An innovative technique and then Tango also a puzzle. So yeah, you are a puzzler, whether you know it or not. I suppose that's true for a lot of people. Listening. AJ is there anything else that you would like to Mention uh any requests you'd like to make, public complaints you'd like to lodge.

Anything at all that you would like to add before we bring this this conversation to to a close? I will say I hope you buy my book or at least take it out of the library or enjoy it or talk about it. But I I have not settled on my next book. And I have found that Readers. Or just listeners have sometimes wonderful ideas.

Sometimes not. But uh sometimes interesting ideas. So if you feel like getting in touch with me through my um my website or or Twitter, I would love to hear from you about what you think I should embark on next. Wonderful. People can find you at AJ Jacobs.com, A. Jacobs on Twitter. What can people find at thepuzzlerbook.com? What will people find on this website? That is where you enter the code for the contest that will open up to about twenty wild puzzles that I did not design. These Greg Pliska and these great designers made them. So if you want to enter the contest, it's the puzzlerbook.com. And there are all these disclaimers about you have to be eighteen and live in the United States, et cetera, et cetera. So that's on there. But you can also there are a bunch of puzzles on there as well. So even if you don't enter the contest, uh it might be worth checking out.

Little something for everybody. And we'll link to all of the social link to all the websites in the show notes at Tim.blog slash podcast, as per usual. And I'm very happy that you made it both into the Saturday and Tuesday. editions of the New York Times crossroad puzzle. Getting a two for that that seems, you know, unless you're Justin Bieber, I think I mean I have to imagine that's quite

an unusual honor to actually get a get a document. And I didn't deserve it. I don't deserve it, but I am happy to take it. Who deserves anything. I mean I think you were you were able to you managed to appear twice. So one could one could argue the the results justify in this case the means. And uh so nice to see you again, AJ. Thanks for taking the time. So fun. What a what a blast. Thank you, Tim. And uh For everybody listening. As always, and as I already mentioned, we'll have links to all the resources

In the show notes at Tim.blog slash podcast. And certainly check out AJ's new book, The Puzzler. Subtitle One Man's Quest to solve the most baffling puzzles ever from crosswords to jigsaws to the meaning of life. And until next time, be a little kinder than is necessary. Take care of yourselves, and thanks for tuning in. Hey guys, this is Tim again, just one more thing before you take off, and that is Five Bullet Friday. Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend?

Between one and a half and two million people subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter called Five Bullet Friday. Easy to sign up, easy to cancel. It is basically a half page. that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things I've found or discovered or have started exploring over that week. Kinda like my diary of cool things. It often includes articles I'm reading, books I'm reading, albums perhaps gadgets gizmas all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends including a lot of podcast guests and these strange esoteric things end up in my field and then I test them and then I share them with you. So if that sounds fun again it's very short a little tiny button of goodness before you head off for the weekend, something to think about. If you'd like to try it out, Just go to tin.blog slash friday. Type that into your browser. Tin.blog slash friday. Drop in your email and you'll get the very next one. Thanks for listening.

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