Weekend Favorite: "Taking the Simpsons to the Bank" w/ Mike Reiss

From time to time on the weekends, we’ll be bringing you some of our recent favorite episodes. Enjoy your weekend, and we’ll be back with a brand new puzzle on Monday!

Hello, Puzzlers! Puzzling with us today: longtime Simpsons writer and producer and author of What Am I Doing Here?, Mike Reiss!

Join host A.J. Jacobs and his guests as they puzzle–and laugh–their way through new spins on old favorites, like anagrams and palindromes, as well as quirky originals such as “Ask Chat GPT” and audio rebuses.

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"The Puzzler with A.J. Jacobs" is distributed by iHeartPodcasts and is a co-production with Neuhaus Ideas. 

Our executive producers are Neely Lohmann and Adam Neuhaus of Neuhaus Ideas, and Lindsay Hoffman of iHeart Podcasts.

The show is produced by Jody Avirgan and Brittani Brown of Roulette Productions. 

Our Chief Puzzle Officer is Greg Pliska. Our associate producer is Andrea Schoenberg.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Hello puzzlers, and welcome to the Puzzler Weekend, where we
bring you some of our favorite episodes from the vaults
for your weekend listening. This weekend, in honor of Tax Day,
we have a classic from Mike Reese, longtime writer for
The Simpsons. Now, what does Mike's episode have to do

(00:25):
with tax Day? Well, we give Mike a type of
word puzzle called a letter bank, and to pay taxes
you have to take money out of a bank. A
bit of a stretch, let's admit that together, but it
made sense when we came up with it, So enjoy

(00:45):
the puzzle. Hello puzzlers, Welcome to the Puzzler Podcast the
Woe in the Middle of your Keanu Reeves Puzzle Movie.
I'm your host, AJ Jacobs, and I'm here with our guests,
the great Mike Grease, longtime writer for The Simpsons and

(01:08):
author of the new book What Am I Doing here?
A Simpsons writer visits the World's hell Hole So you
don't have to welcome Mike.

Speaker 2 (01:16):
Thank you, great to be here, Delighted to have you. Mike.

Speaker 1 (01:20):
When I interviewed you for my book, you told me
you have a compulsion to find anagrams in any word.
You see, you have anagram itis.

Speaker 2 (01:29):
Yes I do. Yeah, I cannot help it.

Speaker 1 (01:32):
So like if you see a stop sign, you rearrange
the letters to pots or whatever.

Speaker 2 (01:37):
Pots and posts and ops and all those.

Speaker 1 (01:40):
Yeah. See, you already did it faster than me. And
you've told me some great ones you've come up with. Well,
one that I always remember is you told me that
you went to go see a what was it, an
Oscar Wilde play?

Speaker 3 (01:55):
It was an Old Coward play and we walked out
of the play and I said to my wife, Noel
Coward is no Oscar wild And for some reason, that
sentence just stuck in my head and I didn't know why.
And then the next day I wrote it down and
I realized the first half of the sentence is an
anagram of the second half, Noel Coward is no Oscar

(02:19):
wild And you know, it just tumbled out of me.
But the idea that my anagram brain was going, hey
there's something there is really shocked me.

Speaker 1 (02:31):
I never forgot it. And you've snuck quite a few
anagrams into the Simpsons, if I'm not mistaken.

Speaker 3 (02:38):
You know they the Simpsons, I think, has had more
anagrams than any other show because there's no real competition,
but that was you know, we and we did one
where I think early on we had a danger sign
and then peace comes to the world and they rearranged
danger to garden. And then like thirty years later, we

(03:02):
needed a similar joke and we wound up changing garden
to danger.

Speaker 1 (03:06):
Oh you know, that's a good that's a good little
east And of.

Speaker 3 (03:10):
Course the fans busted out. So you did that already.
It's like thirty years ago. You can't get away with
anything with these guys.

Speaker 1 (03:18):
But you did the opposite. It was closing the loop. Yeah, okay, yeah,
that's what you did it on purpose. Well what about
you told me in the very first episode you tried
to get Bart and Brett as a as an anagram.

Speaker 3 (03:33):
Yes, you know, it was funny. It actually is in
the show where in the first episode I ever wrote,
where mister Burns is meeting the Simpsons family and these
little note cards, which by the way, just for Simpsons fans.
It was something we took from Ronald Reagan, and that
was our initial conception of mister Burns. He was going

(03:54):
to be very genial and doddering, like really Ronald Reagan.
So he's going, oh, here's a little Lea. He's looking
at cards and Marge and here's little Bratt in set
of Bart. And Bart says, that's not my name, man,
and Homer goes, shut up, Bratt. But we made that joke,
and then Matt Groening said, you know that was the intent.

(04:16):
It was part of his naming Bart Bart is that
it was an anagram of Bratt.

Speaker 1 (04:21):
Oh, I didn't know. That's interesting, yes, And when did
mister Burns turn evil? How did that happen?

Speaker 2 (04:28):
It was funny.

Speaker 3 (04:29):
What was happening was in that first season several of
us were writing episodes independently, so we wrote him genial
and then someone else wrote him evil. And I guess,
as always in life, evil one hour, it.

Speaker 1 (04:43):
Is more interesting to watch the evil. Yeah, unfortunately, all right, Well,
moving on to our puzzle. This is an anagram based
puzzle written by our Chief puzzle Officer, Greg Puliska. Anagrams,
as you know, are when you rearrange the letters in
a word, so like kat becomes act. But this is

(05:04):
a next level anagram and one that you are familiar
with because it is used in the National Puzzlers League
in their puzzle magazine the enigma, and it is called
a letter bank. So a letter bank is when you
rearrange the letters, but you can use the letters more

(05:25):
than once. So for instance, if the word is nest,
you can rearrange it and add as many t's and
ends as you want and get Tennessee. Or if it's
the word is law and you're trying to get a
city in Washington State, it would lead to Wahalawaala. All right,

(05:46):
So that is the letter bank. And our twist is
that we have made every letter bank out of a
Simpsons character name. So we're going to give you the
name of the character as part of the clue for
the longer word. So for instance, well, this is not
for instance. This is the puzzle I'm not even going
to get for instance. All right, you ready, I think

(06:09):
so this is where Homer when he was a student
went at the start of each school day.

Speaker 2 (06:15):
I don't even know what you want for me.

Speaker 1 (06:18):
That's the puzzle we want to baffle you. So all right,
the letter bank. The bank is Homer is Homer.

Speaker 2 (06:27):
Homer, Okay, sir, Homer is.

Speaker 1 (06:29):
The letter bank. And you've got to use letters in
Homer as many times as you want to find a
place where he might have gone at the start of
his school day.

Speaker 2 (06:41):
And now I know, and the answer is homeroom.

Speaker 1 (06:44):
Home room. Okay, now you got it. Now we're in
the clear. All right. This is where Bart's fourth grade teacher, Edna.
So that's the letter bank. Edna crab Apple might live
if it is a street with no exit.

Speaker 2 (07:04):
Oh, she would live on a dead end.

Speaker 1 (07:06):
All right, now you're in all right here, Yes, of
course it's Krabopple.

Speaker 3 (07:13):
It's Edna Krabopple again, one of those built in jokes
that the idea was her name is Krabopple. But none
of the kids ever figure out to make fun of
her by calling her crab.

Speaker 1 (07:27):
So they are not good at word games.

Speaker 2 (07:29):
That's correct.

Speaker 1 (07:30):
Interesting, So I've mispronounced. Did I say crab Apple? I
meant you said crab That's embarrassing.

Speaker 2 (07:36):
Have you seen the show?

Speaker 1 (07:37):
Oh man, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. We have Lindsey Hoffman on,
who is our producer and Resident Simpson's expert. Apologies, Lindsay,
that was embarrassing.

Speaker 3 (07:48):
All right.

Speaker 1 (07:49):
How about this one. This one's with the Letterbank Marge.
This is a big business deal where Marge might join
together several companies, like if she were perhaps a corporate lawyer.

Speaker 2 (08:02):
I think that would be a mega merger.

Speaker 1 (08:04):
That was fast. That was very fast, by the way.
All right, two more we've got. This is a this
simple one. Not simple, but sure. This is Bart where
Bratt if he went to visit a world capital, he
might go too.

Speaker 2 (08:25):
Oh, I guess you would go to the capitol of Morocco, Robot.

Speaker 1 (08:31):
Exactly, which I assume maybe you've been to.

Speaker 2 (08:34):
I have been there. Yeah, Morocco.

Speaker 3 (08:36):
For anyone who wants to be a world traveler like me,
start with Morocco because it's super exotic and yet very
safe and tourist friendly. Just it's literally like walking into
the Arabian nights. I got off the plane and saw
a snake charmer.

Speaker 1 (08:55):
Really yeah wow? All right. So last one this is Nelson.
This is based on Nelson the Bully, and we're hoping
one day he might get his comeuppance and have his
schnas removed, in which case he would.

Speaker 2 (09:10):
Be he would be noseless.

Speaker 1 (09:14):
Yeah, that was fast.

Speaker 3 (09:15):
That was definitely he would suffer from noselessness exactly.

Speaker 1 (09:19):
He would be noseless. All right, Well, there you go,
you did it.

Speaker 2 (09:24):
Woah, well, that was fun. I enjoyed that.

Speaker 1 (09:26):
Yeah, we redeemed it. It took a rough start. But then,
so where should people enjoy more of your work, Mike Greece.

Speaker 3 (09:37):
Well, they may have had their fill of me by
this point, but they can listen to my podcast What
Am I Doing Here? Or they can buy the book.
It's a perfect Christmas book, and that you can order it,
get it, read it, and then rewrap it and give it.

Speaker 2 (09:53):
To someone else. What the book is called, What Am
I Doing Here? It's big and colorful and full of pictures.

Speaker 1 (10:00):
So do you think that other books are less regiftable?
This is a particularly regiftable book.

Speaker 3 (10:07):
I feel like it's particularly regiftable.

Speaker 2 (10:11):
I wanted to put that on the cover and they say.

Speaker 1 (10:13):
Okay, very good. Well, before we wrap up, as always,
for all of you puzzlers at home, here is your
extra credit puzzle. This is a letter bank. This one's
a little harder if I didn't mention that this was
written by our chief puzzle officer, Greg Pliska. So it's
based on the letterbank Skinner as in Principal Skinner. A

(10:35):
school prank comes with a certain amount of this, seeing
as Principal Skinner might catch you, all right, find out
what it is when you tune in tomorrow, and please
don't forget to subscribe, and also tell your friends and
rate and all that stuff. Oh and also puzzler dot com.

(10:56):
Don't forget about puzzler dot com. That's all your puzzling
needs right there, and we will meet you here tomorrow
for more puzzling puzzles that will puzzle you puzzlingly