Quick Question with Soren and Daniel - The NYT Crossword Broke People | Ep. 329

Episode Date: April 28, 2026

A New York Times crossword puzzle was accidentally unsolvable, which raises an important question: when something doesn’t make sense, is it broken, or are you just dumb?Soren and Daniel talk puzzles (both kinds), people who follow rules vs. people who look for loopholes, and why car horns should probably be illegal or at least--lest we be branded authoritarian--exhaustible. Then later, would you be surprised to learn that Soren got into another fight? Or that Daniel is unprepared to talk about Wheel of Fortune?All that PLUS Air Bud is Republican Coded and Soren is doing some facial hair things. To explore coverage, visit ASPCApetinsurance.com/QUESTION.  The ASPCA is not an insurer and is not engaged in the business of insurance.Follow the guys on Bluesky!https://bsky.app/profile/danielobrien.bsky.socialhttps://bsky.app/profile/sorenbowie.bsky.socialBonus episodes 2x/month at patreon.com/quickquestion OR Apple Podcasts

question for you. If there's an answer for you all right. We are back. I'm just glad that we can talk tonight. So what's your favorite? Who did you get? If there's an answer, they're gonna find it.

I think you'll have a great time. Yeah. We are back. It's a quick question. I want to jump right in with a scandal that is rocking a very niche community. Soren, I'm sure you've heard about it.

this or maybe you've experienced it okay uh soren in a patreon exclusive several months ago because this is the kind of dirt that we never get into in the real episodes this is the kind of the the deep dark shit you revealed to our audience and to me and to god that you have been getting into the new york times crosswork puzzle yeah and that you do it uh on paper do you still do that? Yeah. Are you up to date? No, I did the, so I've been doing the LA Times crossword puzzle. Oh, the LA Times, okay, then this, this, this hasn't reached your shores yet. For the first time in its 84-year history,

the New York Times published an unsolvable crossword puzzle. They were migrating some stuff over from like their old templates to their new templates and in the print edition, not the digital edition. I do it on the app, so I was fine. But this weekend's Saturday puzzle, the hard one, was unsolvable. They were clues that didn't match, that didn't match up. And they just had to print something on Sunday that was like, we made a mistake. And that's the kind of thing that it's such a specific form of torture for a crowd that I don't know if they know how to ask for, for how to ask for help on it. I, because it's specifically the paper solvers, you know, and they're not going to, they're probably not going to go online and look up answers or anything like that because they're

such purists. And there was reading that, Vulture has a great piece about it. Just all these people who were so, who all thought they were going crazy. There was a guy who was talking about, I was like, yeah, I was really worked out about it. And then I was hanging out later with my, my brother-in-law, and I was so ashamed that I couldn't solve the puzzle that I couldn't even bring it up to him. And I was like, man, I mean, the puzzle being unsolvable is, is like the headline. But the lead is, you're crazy. The lead is that all these, these people who take the crosser puzzle very seriously. I'm deeply in love with all of these weird little nerds who, whose day can be ruined if they can't solve this puzzle.

It feels like I'm laughing at that because I'm smiling. Because I'm laughing at them. because I just called them little freaks. But it is, it's so, I think, really always heartening to find passionate communities around anything, even if it's under circumstances like this, just finding out like, I don't know, they suddenly discontinued a flavor of popsicle and 30 people in America called out of work because they couldn't handle it. That kind of thing is like deeply humanizing to me to discover.

That there's people who are, this niche group that never found each other, but had like this thing that was the most important thing in the world to them. I've always feared that. I mean, anytime I'm doing any puzzle, because you have to assume that there's somebody on the other hand, you're in good hands. Yeah. Like that somebody has this all thought out.

And occasionally you're doing it and you're like, what if it, what if there's no one? What if this is a mess up? That was something that was crazy to me. Like the, specifically the guy who was like, I can't even talk to anyone about this because I'm so embarrassed that I didn't solve the puzzle. Every single Saturday, I think the puzzle's wrong. There's always a period of time where I'm like, this is fucking broken. They did it again.

I have to remember, every time I look at even a single clue, I have to, before I immediately, move on. I have to remind myself, this is probably something you know. And I go, oh, oh, okay. And then, like, I'll really look at it. But otherwise, I'll be like, no, not for me. I'm a child. No, this one's not for me either. I'm a kid. I don't know these things yet. And I really have to, like, sit there for a minute and be like, no, this is something that a lot of people know. You likely, when you get it, you're going to go, oh, yeah. So just start from there. Start from that moment. Especially if the, if the clue, Sounds like gibberish. Think about the clue a little bit longer and think what else the clue might mean. Because the New York Times wouldn't suddenly start doing this. They wouldn't just introduce a new language. Is it possible? I guess I don't know enough about crossword creation to ask this question. But I'm going to anyway. Is it possible that they've started using generative AI to make the puzzles and they fucked up? it didn't seem like that was the case here. I know I was reading a great piece, years, within the last 12 months, also in Vulture about AI coming for the proper puzzle community,

the non-crossword puzzle community, and how they were just having like machine-generated, like cuts of things for shapes. And this was another very similar heartening moment for me, where people who were way into puzzles were very upset about this. They're like, it's not just about a bunch of weird shapes that fit together.

There is an elegant art to deciding like where a cut needs to happen and what a piece needs to look like and the machines are fucking it all up. You need a clue. You need a clue on each piece. I don't believe they're using AI to generate the New York Times crossword puzzle.

I take a long time New York Times crossword puzzle editor Will Short at his word when he says that this was just like a formatting issue when they were trans when they were migrating their new i don't know if it's a CMS thing or like what what what kind of back end stuff they use for for a newspaper printing apparatus but they were migrating something from the old system into the new system and it couldn't handle this particular format of puzzle and that's what broke it uh i take him at his word even though it seems like Shouldn't someone check the puzzle before you send it to the, like, shouldn't, shouldn't that be caught at some point?

I still take him out his work. And I still think, even if it's not AI, I can read between the lines that the reason this new system is being put in place and the reason that things are slipping through the cracks is because a lot of people have been laid off in print media over the last, my entire life. And someone is trying to optimize something somewhere and turn 10 cents into 20. 12 cents and because of that there's a new system that that drives a whole bunch of very specific nerds into an

existential fucking crisis over the weekend. That's great. It's wonderful to hear. I don't think that I I don't think I could do it online. Online when you put in a word, you can then change the word. It's obviously not telling you that the word is right or not. But

I don't, I still like the I'm not even going to put a word in. If I'm uncertain of it, I'm not just going to be like, well, this could be crossroads and like try and put that in because it fits. I'm not going to do that. But I am going to in my mind mentally remember that section so that I'm going to be testing the C, the R, the O, the S, the S in the other direction. Yeah. And I like that.

I like keeping that. My brain makes me feel smart. Answers don't go in until they're right. My own. We all have our own mental hang-up. with crossword puzzles. Sometimes I'll look at a clue for a grid that feels long and I have an immediate outside the box answer for it. Like today when I was doing the puzzle, feeling seen was the answer that I thought should go in there. But it was early in the puzzle and I didn't have my confidence yet.

So I didn't write it. I was like, feeling seen. Hey, don't go with your first thought. Just keep moving. And then as the puzzle reveals itself and the answer was feeling seen, I'm like, Daniel, just trust yourself. Just love yourself a little bit. You know, you know it. You know what you're doing. Just go. Someone else is going to get that answer before you because they are confident.

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slash Amazon Terms for more info. This is a paid advertisement. Insurance is underwritten by either Independence American Insurance Company or United States Fire Insurance Company and produced by PTZ Insurance Company Limited. The ASPCA is not an insurer and is not engaged in the business of insurance. The thing about puzzles that makes me feel very ashamed is that generally with crosswords, they give you that theme of the crossword. There's a title to the whole crossword puzzle. Means nothing to me. And then all of the, the long answers are supposed to be part of that theme. And you're supposed to finally get the joke by the end of it, because there's puns wrapped up into the long answers. Yeah. And I can finish an entire crossword and not get a lot of them. There are a lot of them that I'm like, I don't know. I don't know how this one is connected.

It's just beyond me. There are, especially deep. into the week, crossword puzzles where some letters in the grid are circled. And that doesn't give you a hint to anything. It's just like it's part of the theme. It's part of the additional layer to this. And that is frankly, none of my business. It's just like, yep, some of them are circled. Okay. Some animals have stripes. What are you going to do? I'm not, I'm not going to try to get any meaning from this. It will help me, those circled ones will help me in the end when I get really stuck

because I can figure out what that puzzle is first before I have to go back and figure out what some of those circled answers were. And then I can be like, okay, well, I know at least there's an R right here. I can't do crossword. I'm not good at it. But I will say regular puzzles.

Do you, you've got, I think, probably, there's six traditional shapes in a real puzzle of puzzle pieces, right? Yeah. When you're hunting for one of those, what are you calling it in your brain? Like, what are you thinking?

Do you have little names for each one of those different shapes? No, I don't. Do you? Where on the spectrum is this? I don't know. I've got guy, I've got guy with big feet. I've got guy with one shoulder.

Yeah, I got guy with one shoulder. I've got guy with two shoulders. I got guy that's all shoulders. Okay. They're all like, vaguely humanoid. What's the headless guy? Is that just X? There's no headless one?

Yes, there is. No way, no way. There's one that's just arms and legs. Every single one has heads. Oh, you're saying, no, that's guy with all shoulders. Those are all heads. Those are all heads and those are all shoulders. I see, I understand now.

But there's guy with one foot. But guy with one foot always is one shoulder guy as well, so I don't really differentiate between those two. But there's a guy with big feet. Guy with big feet is an important one because you can sometimes solve a puzzle just by finding all the guy with big feet because those are really easy areas to spot.

They're the ones to have like at the ends of their where their feet would be, they come down into diamonds, you know? Yeah. Those like big fat, yeah. Anyway, there's when I'm looking with my son, it really occurred to me because I was going, all right, Ronnie, give me all the guys.

And he was like, what? And I was like, the guys, the guys, the guys. Like yelling nothing at him. I like, my wife is better at puzzles than I am, but she thinks she's much better at puzzles than I am. And I do like to play with that expectation and troll her when we're doing puzzles together in ways that I'm not sure she realizes that I'm trolling. Because when someone thinks you're dumb, there's really no depth to how dumb you can play. Yeah. Yeah.

We'll be tackling different parts of the puzzle because it's important for us to keep a little bit of distance when we're doing puzzles if we want to keep this relationship going. And she'll be on one side and I'll be on the other doing our different things. And sometimes I will just say, okay, babe, I need a piece with red and a little bit of yellow in it. Keep your eye. That's red with a little bit of yellow. Just keep your eye out. And it's like a thousand piece puzzle. And of course she's not going to look for There's not one piece that's red with a little bit of yellow in it But she is still just like

Okay, I'll keep my eye out for it I'll look for it She thinks that's how I'm doing this puzzle Not even going to tell her wear in it It's wearing it just like it's a piece that's got a little bit of red And a little bit of yellow It's it's we're doing the American flag Dan It's it's

It's um Puzzle shaped It's the best I can do It's shaped like a piece of a puzzle. Yeah. It's going to go in this section over here. I'm going to find, I can't show you where exactly because I haven't found any of the pieces around it, but I know it goes right around here. Wait a few minutes, wait maybe 10 minutes and check in.

Do you find that, the Red with Yellow? No? Okay. All right. Because I'd moved on because I thought you were going to find that one. So let me just, okay. We'll both look for that one. That can incite the same panic in me as I think this crossword situation did for people.

where I'm looking for a piece and it's not there. And you know there's the possibility that it doesn't exist anymore in the box. Yeah. That you've lost it. And I mean, 90% of the time, it's there. It's there. And it's also like, you're just, the context wasn't exactly what right. Like you weren't looking for the exact right piece.

And all of a sudden you'll find something like, that's not right. And you put it in. And all of a sudden it makes sense. And you're like, oh, shit. Yeah. It really is the, so many of our puzzles. come from Goodwill because we're not gonna, it's just

financially untenable for the amount of puzzles that we do to just buy new all the time. And we're basically trading in puzzles at Goodwill at this point. Given the unregulated nature of Goodwill puzzle marketing, it's astounding

how rare it is that you're actually missing a piece. I would say in my life, it's never happened. And I still think every single time we're missing a piece. We got the wrong puzzle from this box.

The same way I look at a crossword every Saturday or Thursday and I'm like, well, this is just a mirror wheel short, you fucked up again, this is unsolvable. I do that with every proper puzzle I do too.

I know we're 30 seconds into this but I haven't found the one corner piece that I'm looking for so I think we got to call it. I think this puzzle is broken. I think we don't have all the pieces. There's, I was trying to find it but there is a

there's a company that makes jigsaw puzzles and somebody discovered along the way that they just had the same cutting machine for every single one of the puzzles. So regardless of what was on it, you could get the exact same puzzle pieces and what they started doing was combining puzzles.

So they'd have like a flower setting and then there would be a lion coming out of the middle of it stuff like that. And I was like, oh, that's very Westworld. That's like there's a game within the game that I don't totally. understand but I like the idea of. That's a kind of lateral thinking approach to our shared reality that I think I resent and I reject.

Sorry I brought it up. I know that nothing ever neatly fits into categories when someone starts a sentence with. There are two kinds of people in this world. And yet there are two kinds of people in this world. And there are the people who look at the rules and they follow. the spirit of the rules. Because they see the rules as a reasonable guideline of how we're all supposed to act towards one shared goal of living harmoniously together.

And there are people who look at the rules and immediately find loopholes to those rules or ways to work around those rules or laws to achieve their own ends without breaking any rules or laws. And I don't like that second group of people. It's fun to watch on Taskmaster when someone gets their assignment and they engage in some lateral thinking that outsmarts the assignment itself. That's fun because it's television and it's not real life. In real life, I want everyone to respect the spirit of the law, not necessarily the letter of the law. I'm trying to decide if that's true for you because it is true for you in games. It's true for you in small settings where it's like these rules have been.

developed over time because everybody has done this lateral thinking previously. And it's like, here's what makes the game work best for everybody. And they've sort of, they've solved it. It's like, this is the best version. Just trust us. This is the best version. Stop trying to play with the rules. It's that we got it.

We nailed it. But your absolute disrespect for authority in the real world suggests to me that maybe you, you do have certain things that you're like, I just do it different because fuck them. they don't understand how it's supposed to go. That's true. I do feel like I'm on record as loving rules, but not loving authority. But this mindset has, has, you're right that it's, it's, I'm an evolving creature. And this is becoming more and more of a sticking point for me as I get older.

And I have shifting views of this great country of ours, Soren. That's where I'm what, what, where. where it's codifying into like a life stance for me. You say this great country like it's like you're against big policies, but you're against not being able to carry a knife in the street. No, that's not my problem. The problem is that we have, this was a country that was built by lawyers and it's run by lawyers.

And all of our founding fathers were lawyers and all, and the majority of the presidents are lawyers. And so many of the people who are in Congress in the House are lawyers. and you have a system that is built by lawyers that has now been corrupted by lawyers, or not even corrupted. But like when you build a system, when you have a system that is built by lawyers,

instead of a system that is built by engineers or built by artists, God, God forbid, you have a system that is built by lawyers, you have people who are like, these are the laws and I'm going to follow them because it paints a picture of what kind of, society we want to build and live in and you have people who are like what can I legally get away with within this structure that some dummy set up a hundred years ago and I feel like the last

probably more than more than decade but it certainly felt like the last 10 15 years under this under the Trump and and and his acolytes everything has been like what can I do what can I get away with what can I legally get away with I can get away with not paying taxes And that doesn't make me a crook, that makes me a fucking genius and you're all a bunch of marks. Yes, I agree with that. People who are abusing the law instead of respecting the vision that the law has for us, where it's like, yeah, you can probably get away Jeff Bezos with paying no taxes because you claim a salary and you haven't violated any laws. But you must know, that's not what the law means.

The law is not designed to reward the law. smartest scammer. It's designed as guidelines to get us all working towards this same goal. There, it is, I would say, an inherently Republican movie is Airbud. Oh, no. Because my, my, my, my, my barred. They're ticking. Because the rules don't say you can't have a dog. But it's just not really with than the spirit of the fucking game that we're all playing together. You're trying to find cheats.

You know, every single kid's movie where the kids, the rag tag team wins, it's that. It's the kids being like, yeah, but we came up with this trick to confuse all of you where one of the ice skaters brings a rope out on the ice and lassoes you. Wouldn't it be great if the way to win football

was not practicing and putting the one working. Wouldn't it be better for everyone if it was just being a little bit more clever and a lot more morally flexible? Which is, and I think that's like, that's all of them. That's all, every single one of those kids sports movies. Except maybe Sam Lott. But I, I'm like, I kind of agree with you, but also, I don't know. On a real practical level, when I'm writing my bike is a really good example. I break so many laws while I'm riding my bike while I'm riding my bike. but they are not laws that are hurting anyone else. I'm not making other drivers angry and stuff with the laws that I'm breaking. When I get to a red light or let's even just use a stop sign,

if I get to an intersection with stop signs, I'm looking both directions to see if there's another car coming. If there's a car coming and it's also stopping, but it's going to get there before me, I'm going to stop because that's the law. But if I'm going and I don't want to like hop all the way off my bike, down switch my gears and everything, I'm going to look for cars. If I don't see any, I'm going to cook through that stop sign.

Same with lights. I'm not going to trigger traffic lights. So I'm not going to sit there and wait at a traffic light if I don't have to. I'm going to go. Sometimes I'm going to come up on the sidewalk. Go around on that. I'm going to do things on the bike that are harmless to everybody that are technically illegal. But I'm like, this is just what riding a bike is.

I'm allowed these leniencies. I think that is you embracing the spirit of the law. Maybe you're right. I think there is wiggle room. within the spirit of the law in my philosophy this is getting slippery for you and I

when things are convenient to us I think if everyone else just followed the rules exactly everything would be great and it would be fine for good people like me and Sorin to occasionally break them

if it gets us home to our families faster or to wherever faster it's none of your business this is reminding me Dan I got in another fight. I got in a fight. I wasn't on my bike. I was walking in an area where it's basically a T stop, but it had a light.

At the bottom of the T, there was a guy crossing the road with his maybe 10 year old son. And one of the cars, not even the car that was like directly there waiting for him. Because the light had gone green before they got across the road. So these cars should be able to legally run these kids over, run these people over. And there's a guy sitting in his car, two cars back, not even like the front car,

honking, honking at the family. He's not just honking if there's cars in front of him and he can't see what's going on. He knows exactly what's going on. And he's honking. And he's even like rolling down his window as he's honking. And the guy who's crossing with his kid throws his arms up.

Like, what are you doing? And the guy was like, it's a green light. It's a green light. And he's yelling at this guy. And the guy was like, mind your own business, mind your own business. And I took my earbuds out to figure out what the problem was because I see these two people shouting at each other. Figure out immediately what's going on.

And then just fucking interject myself. I could have just kept walking. Could have done nothing about it. But I think I get up. I'm like, oh, I'm sorry. Did the child keep you from getting where you were going for an extra three seconds? And he's like, they shouldn't even be crossing. and I was like, yeah, but they did, let him go.

And he was like, it's mind your own business, which frankly, crib from the other guy. And I was like, I was trying to. And then you start honking for everybody and was fighting with this guy through his window as this family has since moved on. Like that guy stopped caring, but I couldn't. I just was like hanging on to it and then hung on to it for the rest of the day. I'm of split mind on this because I think I'm on record as being broadly anti-car horn almost all the time in any context other than gentle tap it's time for you to go

that's the only time I think it's okay to use a horn it drives my wife a little bit crazy sometimes when someone is in front of me and they're not moving in the light is green and my first step is I will put my hand above the horn a move that they cannot see. Yeah, but so they know you're serious. Just a few more seconds and I'm going to honk this thing. If they don't start moving soon and they go, I'm like, ah, good, I didn't have to bring out the A-bubon.

Another 72 seconds and I'm going to push. So when you carry my crusade of telling someone that honking a horn is not just an interaction between them and who they're honking at, that this involves the whole world. and it makes everyone's time a little bit worse. I appreciate that. I appreciate you carrying my torch on that. That said, a few days ago, my wife and I and baby were heading to Lowe's...

My baby, my son wants a chainsome. And we were coming up to a light, and it was a red light, and something had happened with these two cars where a guy in the front car was mad, mad enough to get out of his car and walk around to the guy in the second car and start yelling at him.

and the opposite of take my AirPods out and listen to what's going on, I just backed my car away. I was like, I don't even want to catch strays from this. I don't want to get any, any, I don't want anyone to think that I'm even paying attention to what's going on because I'm not, this is not my pig, not my farm. I have a son. I can't, I can't listen to people's fights. I guess I am a different driver when I have my child in the car.

I will, we've had people like on the first. way. Very angry people like cut us off. We don't know quite what we did in those circumstances where I'm like ordinarily I'd be like unjust, I'm dealing with this. But it was a, when I my kids are in the car, I'm just like, yeah, that person's upset. It's fine. It's fine. It's like water off a duck's back. He can move on with his life and I will move on with mine. I guess the moral of the stories have children. You become a better person. So everything's fine. We're going to have a great time. When we get home, don't talk to me for a few minutes. I'm going to...

The rage is still here. Yeah, I'm just going to keep thinking about it for a while. It's going to take me a while to really push this all the way down where it causes the most damage inside of me. Yeah, I was mad. I was mad immediately, and I don't know why, but as soon as I hear people fighting, I'm like, I need to know who's the good guy and who's the bad guy. I need to know.

And then as soon as I get even close, I'm like, got it. Even though most of the time, it's just bad guys. Yeah, no, that's the problem. So regularly it's like you shouldn't even be involved. I shouldn't have gotten involved in this one. It was dumb of me. But I was like immediately, as soon as people are yelling at each other in the street, I'm already like, you're not allowed to do that.

You're not allowed to do that. And then I start doing it. It's tough because no. one, no adult really, um, ever changes or learns. No adult ever really changes or learns, especially when you were, when, when, when yelling is involved. No one can really hear you when you yell at them. Uh, it's a thing that I've always believed. And yet, I don't know, if we're going to get people to stop hunking their horns so much. Yeah. It's got to be grassroots. It's got to be on the ground level.

I don't know otherwise how we're going to get people, get this whole beautiful country of ours to stop honking their fucking horn so much. If we don't hit them where they live and be like, hey, you can go on hating that guy and their children. But just so you know, I can hear your horn also. And I'm a good person. Can't you tell by my bike? I had a, I mean, my wife and I have a car that could have solved all of this.

if we just kept with the technology, which is on a vault, you have two different horns. You have a real horn, and you have a horn that just goes, like that. It's like a little like, hey, pay attention. And it's like really, it's not annoying. It's not aggravating. It's not scary.

It's just a cute little like, hey, a heads up. Take a look around. We, as a beautiful country, have the opportunity to, solve this if we just all, if all cars going forward have a less aggressive, like we put a cap on how loud horns can be. We make them less aggressive sounding. Whatever it is that I mean by that, we do it. And if they have, uh, like a built in, uh, I don't want to just say an amount of time that they last, like the longevity of them. I, I want to better punch. your word for like that that that puff that burst but like the way you can pump up a nerf gun but

there's only a certain amount of like that it can do and then you need to to pump it up again you we should have that with horns you shouldn't be able to lean on a horn indefinitely you should be able to press the horn and it makes the horn sound that we all know of that gets people to perk their ears up to be like oh perhaps i need to move now i've heard the the horn sound or perhaps there's day I've heard the horn sound. You shouldn't be allowed to just like lean on it in New York City traffic forever. Right. Yeah, I, you know, I think you're absolutely right.

It should be like, it maybe doesn't make the same sound, but it should be like a whoopee cushion. Like, there's a finite amount of air in it. You get the air out and then you can't use it again. And by the way, then it needs to fill up again. So you can't. It needs to fill up again is crucial. You need, you can't just keep using it. Like, you can't then use it three minutes later for another situation.

You used it for the day. I'm sorry, but you're done. You used your horn for the day. I'll go further and say you use it and then you need to log 50 miles of good driving and then you can use it again. If you use it twice. Somehow I have a problem with authority, but I do sort of want an authoritarian state where everything is controlled for all people. The other thing that I think would be really helpful is if you did honk at somebody, it also, transmitted from your car to their car, your email address.

Just so like you can clear up whatever the circumstances were. You know you're guaranteed that if you're going to honk at somebody, you're going to be an asshole and you're going to lay on that horn, that person then has your email address. To that end, and not email address, but what almost became the craziest cap to my close encounter with road rage is the little guy who was yelling at the other guy in the car, eventually got back in his car and I rejoined traffic when it seemed like things had calmed down and the light turned green and I was going to Lowe's and incidentally the guy who got out of the car to yell at the other guy was also going to Lowe's and incidentally oh my God the guy in the

other car who got yelled at was also going to Lowe's so when I saw like first car going to the lane and then second car going to the lane and my car going the lane I'm just like well I'm not snooping now I'm just I'm also going here and we were all going to in the same place for so long. And then the first car turned down an eye on the parking lot. And the second car kept going. And I was like, man, didn't you just want to go and get out of your car, though? I can't believe the, the, I'm not, I'm not a fighting person by nature.

But if some guy got out of the car and yelled at me and then got back in his car and then I saw that we were both going to Lowe, I would at least park next to them to get out of my car and look at them and be seen by them. But this car who got yelled, I was like, no, I'm gonna, I'm, I'm gonna preserve my sanity and, like, park a few lanes away to not, to specifically not run the risk of bumping into this guy somewhere. That's, but that really went from, from my wife and I, like, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, we're not involved in this to, to, I guess it wouldn't be too bad. If, if, if, if, if these cars go somewhere together, we are also going there. We should, we should see. Got to see what happens.

Yeah, that's so adult To you want to just be like You know what? It's not worth it I know All the things that could happen, I'm going to go Because what about all the fun and delicious things That could happen I might have let slip a few times

That the guy who gets out of the car Is a little guy But he was a little guy He was a little angry guy And I feel like the person in the car That he yelled at was a bigger guy I don't know I didn't see any information, but I was like, I bet this is like a bigger guy physically and also like morally and emotionally that they were just like, hey, this little guy got out of his car to yell at me while we're stopped at a light at the Chick-fil-A movie theater Costco shopping center.

Sounds like a great area. I'm not going to get out of my car and yell back at him. I'm just going to let him yell at me. And, oh, look at that. The little guy is also going to Lowe's. I met he wasn't expecting me to go to Lowe's. Well, just going to go on with my day and my life. I don't want to embarrass this little guy any further. Oh, my God. I want to, man, I want to take life lessons from that guy. I want to feel that. Yeah.

I want to feel, you know, you see people mess up in your life, and you're very angry at them. You're very angry at them because they should know better. But when a dog messes up, I'm like, eh, it's just a dog, man. Like, I'm never mad at a dog. I'm never, even like when a dog does something sneaky, like you leave a room, when a dog hops up on the counter and grabs something off the counter and eats it. I'm like, yeah, but that's the dog, that's just, it's a dog. It's just a dog. If I felt that way about other people where I just wasn't, it was like, that's just human nature. That's just who they are.

It's who that person is. It's fine. It's not me. It's fine. If I could get to that point, I think I'd probably live forever. Right. I think that I wouldn't kill myself with all these things that are eating me alive inside. Right. I wake up in the morning and my dog is pooped in the house and immediately I say he didn't want to do that he's either sick or I didn't get up early enough to let him out but this is not he doesn't want to be a dog who poops in the house so let's let's work on that when I see the little guy get out of the car I'm like that guy fucking woke up this morning ready to yell at some son of a bitch yeah my kids too when when they were really young I was like they could do no wrong everything

thing that they did. I was like, it's, it's all right. Even when they'd lie and stuff like that, they're just, they're imperfect. They're not, they're not fully formed humans yet. And now my son has gotten like 10 years old. And there are things that he does that we've already talked about. And then I'm like, what the fuck? We went over this already. How is this still a thing? And just no grace whatsoever. Oh, man, because it's true that every time my my son is is crying or fighting something. I have the same approach that I have with my dog where I'm just like,

I know you don't want to be sad right now. I know you don't want to scream. You want to be happy or asleep, which is that your two favorite things that you do. So you're screaming right now, and it's my fault and I'm sorry and I'll fix it. I don't want that to ever change. It does.

It's when you say the same thing to them over and over and then you're like, why am I even here? What am I getting? You're not listening to a thing. You're not saying it like that, but you know, you're saying it with your fists. Yeah, of course. I can't believe we've made it so far into the podcast without addressing either your facial hair

or the fact that it looks like you're talking into a melted candle. Yeah, sorry, everyone. Everyone who's just listening to this podcast, it must have felt great. And like it was just a normal podcast. For anyone watching, they're dying right now trying to figure out what's going on. I have a new setup. It's a long, it's an arm that comes off of the desk. And I don't have the screen supposed to arrive today, but I have a new foam screen coming for it.

I can't use the old screen because it would sit on this side. And so this is a, this is my daughter's sock that I have rolled over the microphone like a condom. Yeah. And it is no way around it. Candle colored. It is the color of candles that they make all the candles. Yeah. And obviously it doesn't come all the way down to the end.

So there's like that little poof at the top when you don't put a sock on all the way, that awful little extra bit of cloth that's just hanging out of the top. It does look like a fucked up candle. And then my facial hair, Dan, I looked in the mirror the other day after not shaving for a while.

And I did a few rotations, got like a good view of every part of it. And I realized I have enough coverage that if this grew long, I would technically have a beard. Let's go. And I was like, for anyone listening, it's completely white and gray. That's how old I am when I'm finally able to grow a beard.

It's already too late. It's already gotten gray. But I was like, well, let's roll the dice. Let's ride the lightning and see what happens with this gray beard. You got to see what happens. Yeah. So I'm growing it out. I've got all the accoutrements because I've done this dance before where like we grew

mustaches for November. and I was like, this sucks. Having facial hair sucks because you get through these stages where it starts to hurt at the corners of your mouth because it's stabbing into the lip below it or like the part of your mouth below it.

And I start to get, I could just rub it and just see like this stuff sloughing off of me. And also when you do shave it, you get like this pinkness underneath it. And I was like, I don't want to deal with any of that. So let me just figure it all out now. I'll get it all, all my ducks in a row,

and then I can have a beard for a little while. And so I found out you need a beard conditioner, you need beard oil. Maybe you don't need all these things, but I was like, I do not. I'm going to throw everything at the wall. So I got it all. I got everything. And I'm like taking care of it. Do you have a little brush?

You should brush it. I don't, but you should brush it. Oh, no, I don't. Oh, that's a good idea. I don't know that it's long enough yet. I feel, I need to get a little longer. I just do it anyway. Okay.

Yes. Thank you. Thank you for the permission. I will. Okay. I enjoy that when I say the trimming, I mean like the shaping around it. I'm not touching it because it's barely holding on as it is. Some of them, someone who's always had like patchy facial hair, there's some parts that

they grow in, you shave them, they're never coming back. I've lost them forever. So I keep talking about it, like as though I have a beard. Dan and I had the exact same length facial hair right now. And he probably hasn't shaved in maybe a couple days, I would guess. Yeah. Do you want to know how long this is for me? this is probably

that's probably three weeks growth holy shit I was gonna say a week because I saw you last week I had a little bit of it then if you went back and looked you'd see I've got a little bit there it's a slow process

I mean our viewers were probably distracted because last week's episode I was covered in sweat so we'd given everyone a lot a lot to think about it's a it's not a it's how you win the marathon, right? It's not a sprint. Yeah. It's a jog. Whatever that saying is. No, that person lost the marathon. What are you talking about?

I never understood that there's a lot of expressions that I have problems with in like a 90s stand-up hacky comedy sort of way, but it's a marathon out of sprint. It's like, yeah, it's still, the guys who win the marathons are like sprinting the whole fucking time. They're running their hardest. There's no, there's no like quick mile and then recharge mile. There's no. There's no. No pacing at all. Yeah. It's the people... Sprint out the gate and then their hearts explode when they're 24 years old.

Those people have never run a day in their life because those guys who are... Who say that. Because the guys who are running marathons and the women who are running marathons and they're doing like sub... Or they're doing like sub six or like five minute miles. If you just ran a single mile in five minutes, you're sprinting. It's like it's so hard to do. You can't do it. Oh, that's stupid.

I'm glad we got that bit on record. Yeah, so, yeah, I've got, I've got the beginnings of a beard. Let's just call it that. That's awesome. And we'll see what happens. I really can't wait to see. I'm, I'm a little bit nervous that it's going to be a full dark mustache and full white bottoms. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, I kind of got that going on. I would, yeah. So part of what also gave me the confidence to do this was that I finally am basically completely gray on top. And I was at early grayer. And so early adopter of the gray. And I thought, well, if I had a beard that matched it, that would be kind of cool. If it was, if you're not gray on top, but you have a gray beard, it really kind of ate.

It's like, I think that's fine. You do? I think the bigger issue is, is consistent beard color. And maybe that's just me, but like either all one color or like a decent, umbrae of color. transition but like in the same way that that the length of my beard hair is inconsistent in patch and patchy the color is also like you get four really long really white ones coming out of the chin and then some other brown patches and a couple of white patches it's just like can I just have just consistency yeah it is just it's pure white that makes my my the design of my body

seem intentional please this is maybe a stupid question but do they have an opposite of Just For Men? I think Just for Men is for darkening. Do they have something that I could gray up the mustache a little bit with? Central Silver. Is that what that is? Yeah, I think that's what that is. I should have paid attention during Wheel of Fortune.

I can't remember what any of these drugs are. Speaking of puzzles, do you watch Wheel of Fortune? No, I've not watched broadcast television in 10 years. Boy, I watch Wheel of Fortune every single night. It's part of the Jeopardy Wheel of Fortune. I mean, now this is the part of night that what used to be dinner with wife while watching Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune has become some of those things while also screaming baby at the witching hour of nothing will please him. But we still, I get bits and pieces of all of dinner and television in and around the screaming crying baby. But Wheel of Fortune is kind of comforting.

Wheel of Fortune is such a strange I guess I've been watching it every night for three or four years now and it's it's so odd that the show I think is is great I think it's an incredible public good especially coming off Jeopardy

where you just watch people not only lose every night but like the show is not even designed Jeopardy is not even designed for you to like come in third place having made a decent amount of money. Because first place, you win whatever amount of money you won. Second place, you win a flat amount of money. Third place, you win a flat amount of money.

It's something like $5,000 and $1,000. And the reason the show does that is because when it gets into Final Jeopardy and you're making your wagers, they want you to do something interesting. They want you to try to win. They want you to bet big so you can win. Because if I'm coming into Final Jeopardy with $17,000 and the guy in first has $25,000, I wouldn't try to beat him. I would just be like, $17,000 is pretty good. I'll just go home with $17,000.

But those aren't your options. Your options are try to win or get $5,000 or lose, and that's it. Jeopardy doesn't want anyone to go home with money. We'll have fortune. Everyone is rooting for each other. even though you're technically against each other, you're still like, you're clapping and you want someone else to win. And the winner is going to win whatever they win.

And then at the end of the episode, Ryan Seacrest walks up and shakes hands with a second and third place person. And just like, hey, you made $4,000 today. You know, like, what are you to do? You didn't come in first. You didn't win any of the trips, but like you showed up here. You put in a half an hour of barely any work, and you're walking away with $4,000.

Pretty good. That's all we want. Get out here. It never feels like anyone wants anyone to lose anything in Wheel of Fortune. The part that I... That feels so insane to me is just the people who are doing their fun facts in the beginning. I don't... I was not prepared to talk about Wheel of Fortune today because I don't have any at the ready.

But they go and they play the first game and then Ryan goes and introduces himself to each of the people and let them say a little bit about themselves. And it's always, it's always insane. I don't know where any of these people come from or when any of these people come from. But they're always the craziest people with just the oddest little, and they're so enthusiastic about Wheel of Fortune.

And Ryan will come up to them and be like, now, Anna, you have an interesting thing. And she's like, yes, my uncles are both tubas. Great. Now, Brian, you once married a cake, is that right? Yeah, yeah, it was not a bet or a dare or a prank. I married a cake. That's fascinating stuff.

I hope you wouldn't mind it's all in love. It's just a door swings open and the door swings shut on the whole life. It's, it would be a stealthily solid roast to meet someone and tell them that they would be perfect for Wheel of Fortune. because it's such a specific kind of odd duck that has no filter, always has a weird story, and is happy to be in any room they're in. Do you know who Bob Mortimer is? Yeah. He's a comedian in England.

He makes the rounds on all the beautiful shows that take care of their comedians. Bob Mortimer is exactly that type of person. He is, it's amazing. They have a show there called What I Lie to You, which, is they get all the good ones, all the good comedians, and then one of them tells a story about their childhood or whatever. And like, he tells a story about how he was going to be on this BBC One show and couldn't go because it had to cancel the last minute because all his teeth fell out.

And everyone's like, what? How did all your teeth fell out? And he was like, well, I was eating a candy bar. And they're like, well, what kind of candy bar? Was it something that was like caramel? And it was like, no. It was just like, in our equivalent, and an American equivalent.

It's like the equivalent of like three musketeers where it's like the softest of them and you're like, oh, what the fuck? What happened? And then he's always got something.

He's always got a story about how like, he's just start, people talk to him and also and be like, well, but that's different because my neighbor has a lot of agricultural poisons. I've never heard those two words together before.

There's, like that type of person. I've always thought about if I could go on something like that what my fun fact would be about me. And I think it is really fun to do something that is true of everyone, but make it clear that you don't know that that's true of

everyone. Like being like, well, a fun fact about me is that I've actually I've had two sets of teeth. And all the first ones, I lost them all. Some people, it's like that. There was a woman who was just describing like, essentially, being a writer, but she didn't have the word for writer or, like, a concept that that's a kind of job that exists, like author or anything like that. She was just like, yeah, I'm just always coming up with stories because I'm a creative soul. And so, like, that's why I'm good at Wheel of Fortune because I'm a creative soul and I can just see words. It's like, do you, has, have, is this your first day out? We have, this is a job. And if it's not your job, you shouldn't, shouldn't say it. Shouldn't walk around like you invented it.

God, that's going on a show and pretending to be a writer who doesn't know a word that describes their job. It's such a really fun. Clear bit in my head. I've also thought about going on Wheel of Fortune and my bit, I think, would be, I'm sure they would, like, edit me out of the show completely. But I want the rhythm of, like, he asks someone their fun fact and they give them their fun fact. And they're like, I'm afraid of Alligators. He asked the second person their fun fact. and they're like, I'm an elevator repair person

and everyone has a good time. And then it gets to me and I'm like, now, Daniel, says here something about you at a bicycle. And it's like, Ryan, I'm going to stop you right there. I don't mean to ruin your flow or anything like that, but I'm not here to make friends. I just want to win some money. And just like, be the only player

in the history of the game show who is unenthusiastic and is there like, I've gamed the system. I know how to do this game really well. I don't like being on camera. I don't like being around people. This is just about money. It's just, I'm going to walk out of this studio and I'm going to walk on to Price is right.

I have a system, Ryan. Do not interrupt me. I think I would like that. I would also like for him to come up and be like, now, something interesting that happened in Ireland. And you're like, you look off camera and you go, I told you I did not want to talk about this. I explicitly said this was off limits. and then just leave it with that make it move on.

A lot of great options for Wheel of Fortune folks, but we got to wrap this up. Yeah, it's done. All right, thank you everybody for listening to the show. This has been quick question with Soren and Daniel. As always, thank you to me, Rex, for doing our theme song. If you like this podcast, you want video version, you can do that on YouTube. If you would rather get even more of this podcast, we do a looser version that's a little bit shorter also.

That's on Patreon. If you wanted to become a Patreon subscribing member, you could have access to that. And always thank you to Gabe Harder, who is our sound engineer editor and producer, does all everything. And occasionally, he can't. And right now he can't. And so we have the wonderful McKenzie Mazzel filling in for him. She's actually got a podcast coming out soon that you can all hear. It's called Don't Make It Worse.

We'll talk about it more, I'm sure, at some point. But thank you for listening. Goodbye. Bye. Quick question for you all right. I want to hear your thoughts, don't know what's on your mind. I've got a quick, quick question for you all right.

The answer's not important. I'm just glad that we could talk tonight. So what's your favorite? Who did you get? When do I be? What's it out of? Two best friends and comedy writers. If there's an answer, they're going to find it.

I think you'll have a book. great time here i think you love a great time here