007 - A Strange Bernard Hill to Die On

In this episode, I sit down to talk about riddles and sudoku, and end up talking about movie trivia.

If you have questions, comments, critique or feedback, find me.

Transcript

0:00

My name is Russell sewer brown. I'm probably not the Russell you're looking for, but I'm the one you've got right now. And these are some things I've learned. Something that I've learned is that sometimes the answers in the question. And if it's not in the question. It's in the rules. And really, I mean, in that sense, I suppose, Yeah, I think the answer is in the question works. Pretty solidly there. But what I mean by that is that. Sometimes you can work out the answer from a question. How do oh, okay. So if there's a question, which is assuming something. That's probably a bad way to put it. All right, let's go with the rules first. So. Let's take. A simple game. Solo game a puzzle specifically. We don't want to take just the game. We want to take a puzzle. Like say Sudoku. And I'm not going to go too deep into it. I enjoy them quite a bit. But I won't go too deep into it, but. The basics of the rules is that every row, column and box within the. Frame of the Sudoku has to be filled with one through nine to nine digits, one through nine. And. From those rules. You can solve an easy Sudoku. Now in order to solve a medium Sudoku. You might have to take notes as well. But all your notes are still going to work off of. The one through nine. The one through nine. And the one through nine. Something that you learn that is that. Say there are two boxes. In a row. That can only contain two and four. If they can't contain anything else. But two and four. Then those two boxes must contain to one of the most contained to. And because that one contains two, the only remaining option is for the other one to be for. Doesn't sound like it might be immediately useful except there might be other boxes on that line. We're a two and a four. Could it also go. So, if you ever walked someone solve a Sudoku, they write down all the little notes and they write down sort of all the, the numbers that might go in here. Different notation systems exist. But if you were to write down just every number that could be in a possible box, you could cross out the two and the four. So that's a rule known as doubles. It works for a row, works for a column. It works for a box. Triples work the same way. And. That would be what I would say. That's getting to be like immediate. And then when you learn hard, is that you learned that if you have certain sets of doubles, That are across from each other in the In the actual puzzle, there'll be like the top two boxes and the bottom two boxes. And from those you'll be able to work out well there. I can't be a two in box three in box nine here, here and here. It gets more complicated, but. Everything comes back to the original conceits, which is that. There can only be. The numbers one through nine. But there must be the numbers. One through nine. And they. Have to be unique. Although. For certain puzzle makers, uniqueness. Isn't. Isn't as big of an issue. As others. They say for. Very good Sudoku. It should only have one solution. W when you filled in all of the 81 numbers. It should be in the only order. That you could end up with the order I get should be the same one. That's the one that you get. It's fairly easy to make a Sudoku. If you don't care about that, cause you just don't have to put enough numbers. So long as they follow enough rules in your allowing guesswork, eventually somebody will be able to just guess it. If you don't. Train the computer properly to do it. If you don't write the program properly to do it, it might not come out unique. A bit of a tangent. But. In that case. We are in the case of those puzzles. Well, I'll put it this way. Let's say then that you go on to do the variants of Sudoku. And so I have a lot of fun with those ones as well. And so say I'm. What's a good variance. This is a docu. You know what let's forget Sudoku for now. And I'll go back to, let's say the answers in the riddle. Or the answer? Isn't the question. And that is actually how I'm going to go about it. Because the next thing is riddles. Okay. There is. There's a couple of key things in rebels. That you like, especially once you've heard. It before. Like if, if If they don't mention the gender of a, if they mentioned someone just by profession. You can almost expect to answer. Yeah. That's that's how I'll do it. I really like to be able to answer. Before they've. Finished speeding. Stated. So. If you say to me, Doctor has one working a doctor is working one night. When their son. And boom right there. I'm going to say, well, the doctors, his mother. That's the reason for that is that that riddle is usually. Done in such a way where you're you're you're you're meant to imply. Oh, the doctor's son. It comes in, in a car crash. And he's injured. However, 10 minutes later, the doctors or the son's father comes in and he has died. Who's operating on the sun. Chemic there's you're supposed to just assume doctor equals man. And Which is a, you know, I mean, I. That's a heavy statement. Cause like society. Is given us that. Ironically. I think it would be more, even more. Probably just as exposing if you, if you framed it with a nurse and tried to. To frame it a certain way or, or another one is that They say, if anybody ever says, all right, there's a fishing trip. On the fishing trip are two sets of boom. There's three people. Because what they're going to say. There's two sets of fathers and there's two sets of sons. And then the joke or not the joke, but the riddle there is that, well, it's a father. His son. And the grandfather of the youngest son or the youngest one that. I had a child, his father and his grandfather. And then that gives you two sets of father and son. In three people. And so in that way, like, When I don't know, or radar. I I've already learned from, from those examples that, that very early on inner riddle. You kind of state the answer. Especially when it seems super tricky. Caveat, this doesn't apply to all, all riddles. There's there's there's. It's just like paradoxes. It's probably different types of hurdles. In fact, I've really loved that. I bet like the guy who wrote Alice in Wonderland, he probably would have had like great opinions on like, The riddle kingdom. Most species of riddles and stuff like that. Cause he had some crazy ones like the Alison one too. Well, I have, I have his collected work. Lewis Carroll is collected work and. To riddle. He writes about, they're not always clearly or middle. Like, oh, actually this is the best example because this is the sort of thing it is. This is a riddle. Everyone knows, but they don't know it's a riddle. Okay. And the reason for this. Is it, it's never posed as a question. But I'm going to ask you right now. What is Humpty-Dumpty. And if you're thinking he's in the egg, then, well, don't you like. A lot of other people learned that early on. Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall. Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. All the King's horses and all the King's men. Couldn't put Humpty, couldn't put him back together again. Which in fairness, like, yes, I don't believe that horses are going to have any form of engineering or medical training. But that's a riddle. That poem is a riddle. It doesn't ask a question, but you're supposed to. Say. You're supposed to hear that poem and say, well, how is it the case that someone could be sitting on a wall, have a fall off of it and not be put back together again? Which if you're on a high enough wall, like, I mean, again, I mean, that's not even a good riddle, but that is the format. Of those riddles. Which is here's a short poem. Which appears to be slightly nonsense. But. If you work out that they're secretly talking about something else, like there's. This is another one. I can't quite remember it. And that's about. A bunch of horses, white horses on a red hill, 32 white horses on the red hill. Something. It's about. Your teeth and your mouth and. The horses where all the teeth that people had and that sort of thing. And it's it's. I mean, You know, I was going to say, it's not, it's not. I was going to say it might be my least favorite type of riddle, but there's a better answer for this, right. Aye. You know, The last episode, I talked about my mental health. Cause you know, I was feeling down on myself. Now I'm feeling down on the world. I want to fight with other people. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna call JRR Tolkien out because if anybody, if, and he buddy, and I thought I was in some bad fandoms, but if anybody has a fandom. That the, the G the Lord of the rings fandom, sorry, I shouldn't say the Lord of the rings fandom, because that implies the movies. And they're not happy about that. But the people who read the books and really liked the books. Are very gatekeeping. Like gates of Mordor level a hum. They don't like people. I was going to add a qualifier to them, to that sentence. It's true. In and of itself. But they also don't like people who have come into their fandom from. Casual. Areas. So if you saw the latest. Lord of the rings television show, or if you really liked the movies. You gotta be a bit. You know, it could be a bit weird. Whereas opposed to like star wars fans were like, I think what star wars fans, when there was an expanded universe that was. Like I was one of these people who read all the star wars books. Cause they continue the story on for about 60 years after returning. I know it went further than 60. Before the star wars. Yeah. I want to piss off the Tolkin nerds in the star wars nerds. But, but. I don't think outside of wanting people to enjoy the good parts of that expanded universe. I don't think I ever. Like scoffed at someone for having not. Read the books and star wars. Whereas you definitely do get that. Like I said, in Lord of the rings, I think as well in comics, I think there. Are a lot of comics. Fans were like, oh, you've seen the Marvel movies. Okay. W named me, blah, blah, blah. I know it's a stereotype, but. I mean, it's quite literal. I have a cousin who. I brought her once she was. I think she was early teens, something like that at the age. I brought her to a comic book shop. And like immediately she started getting questioned. About why she was there and stuff. And I think. Her assumption was that it was like, I think it was spring break. So they w she thought, oh, maybe they're just wondering why. I'm not in school. It felt really obvious. It felt really obvious that. It was. It felt very gatekeeping. But yeah, the Lord of the rings fans, right? I'm, I'm sorry if I piss you off, but like, I mean the worst rental of all time has to be that one in the Hobbit. All right. Cause I could ask you that rental right now. I will, I'll ask you that riddle right now. And you got to tell me the answer. Okay. Wow. Okay. That's really stereotypical, but here's the riddle. What's in my pockets. I mean, come on. The answer was just, it was just literally what look like, like what was in his pocket. That's not a riddle that's that's. I mean, I was going to say it's a general knowledge question, but no, it should not be general knowledge. If I know what's in your pockets, then your pants are either too tight or see-through and either way we have a problem or you have a problem long term. But Did you guys two lighters and an e-cigarette thing. Congratulations. You solved the riddle. I'm willing to bet, at least at least. You know who you are, but there's, there's. Okay. At least one person there it goes. It's going to be something to do with smoking. Which, which I feel bad if. Because. That that does that does. W w when, when that's the first thing I think to describe myself with. That worries me about how others might see it. Yeah, it's a terrible riddle. What's in my pocket, riddle. It was a ring in the book. And if anything like that was maybe guessable in the book. Because the other dude had just lost a ring. But like, I don't know. I'm disappointed with that. Riddle. But on the topic of general knowledge. And sort of on the theme of. The answer being in the question is that sometimes you can also make very educated guesses. Depending on the question. A good example for that would. Would be something. Something along the lines of. I mean. I don't know this for. Well, yeah. Actually I. I do know this for sure. I feel like it's common knowledge, but. Michael Phelps. Holds the most gold metals for an individual. In the men's Olympics, I believe. Yeah. I know that because they made a big deal about it when he wanted them. And I was there for that. But I think if you know how the Olympics works and how swimmers compete. I bet that's true of probably. A large amount of the top. Say 25, the probably. A lot of athletes who were able to compete in many disciplines in one year. Or many disciplines in two years. Because with the gap in the Olympics and the way athletes bodies works, it makes sense that. Depending on the sport. You, you might, I mean, that's something actually, I got to feel really bad for, right. What if you're in one of these sports for like, during your physical peak for. I don't know, like maybe only. Three and a half years of your life. But like those three and a half years start. Two months after a set of. My picks. I know that that, that doesn't make sense. Well, you know, actually, no. I'll tell you who you got to feel worse for. It is that it's, whoever was competing in the year, Michael Phelps was competing and because there's so many. There's so many different events. There was enough metals forever for everyone. They could have just all gone around, but no, Nope. Mikey P he comes in and he leads them all. And for individuals that, that I think is probably more pronounced. Like say what you want about. I don't know, Tom Brady Superbowl rings, but you got a lot of teammates that also got a bunch. Whereas, you know, I mean. The podium must have had Phelps's like webbed foot imprint in it by the end. He was just on top of it so long and his feet were what. Soaked right in somewhat right through. I don't know. I sometimes wonder if Michael Phelps isn't like part. Okay. I want to be like, I don't want to say, I don't think he's part alien. Like. In the sense that like, I don't think an alien came down and. It's one of his grandparents. Let's just say, you know, an alien. Was. Ana. A little detour. Hopped on planet earth and a. Accidentally spilled some of their magic juice into a local swimming area. A little pond. Where a young Mike UPU was. Swimming and. That's it. You know, animals style. Yeah, no, sorry. That was it. That it's not instead. Right. Michael Phelps was swimming home from school one day. Right? Yeah, I know. Just go with it. Okay. And on his way, swimming home. He saw a spaceship. Crash. And a construction site. Dock area and he swam over. And he, he rescued, he rescued. An alien. Give it mouth to mouth, the alien accidentally threw up in his mouth. Boom. Now he's a Superstorm. That's somehow more gross than, than the alien being his grandfather. And so yeah, you can make educated guesses about things. Like one of the things I learned a long time ago. Was that if, if someone like say you're in a table quiz, and this is a general knowledge quiz, And they ask you who, who is the originator of a quote? A certain quote. A lot of the time it's going to be. Oscar Wilde. Or mark Twain. Oscar Wilde. I have nothing to declare except for my intelligence. Mark Twain reports of my demise have been greatly exaggerated. And when I was in school and I was on a table quiz team. I captained it. And one of the things that our coach told us was that if they say, who wrote this, who said this, and you don't know the answer. Say Oscar Wilde. Okay. Alright, let's go out. And then. How was it worked? That that technique work to like more than once. I thought that was crazy. And so I just started. I mean. As well as that, some of the stuff he said was interesting. Other parts of it are very much what you would write on a tourist mug. We're all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars that's I actually really do like that quote. But I think people People make it into a very happy co Kaddish sort of phrase. Yes. I think he was emphasis on the gutter. And What are some other good Oscar Wilde quote. Oscar is reported last words. And by the way, like, I don't think anyone like very few people's last words are legitimately what their last words are. Of course I decided to nurse didn't speak whichever language. He said his last words in, so we don't have them. But Oscar Wilde's were reportedly either this wallpaper goes or I do. And I have to assume the wallpaper didn't go, but. I started learning these quotes. I started learning them. You know, it's. Think about our squads as well. Like. For mark Twain, you'd be reading things that he wrote or said. Like as a statement for Oscar Wilde as well, he has quite a. Quite quite a lot of good quotes within his, his work. Oh, my favorite Oscar Wilde quote is the only thing worse than being talked about. It's not being talked about. That one and a true friend will stab you in the front. But as you can see, I have, I have a repertoire them now. And the reason for that was that I started learning from them because they were really cool and stuff. But then after a while, Well, now I don't have Oscar Wilde is my answer. Anymore. It's not a fallback because people would say, just say Oscar Wilde. And I would respond. No. If he had said that I would know. If you had written that I would know he only wrote one novel. It couldn't be great expectations. If it's the picture of Dorian gray. I think that was my strength then. Even quizzes. I think it's Wyatt. I did work. I worked as captain of that team. But at no point was I the strongest individual? Quizzer. On the team. Because I think. I mean, honestly, my niches were the kind of niches that. I mean, they'll get their own quizzes, but they won't always come up. But. I had a strong. General knowledge sense. I really liked interesting trivia. I would be proud of learning certain things, but more than anything, if, if two people didn't know the answer, but give me their best guests. I think I was really good. And picking the one that was right more often than not. And sometimes that's what you need. And there's so many. There's so many like great little pieces of trivia that. I don't know. I don't know what they ever come up. Because they're almost like riddles. He didn't up themselves. So, yeah, this is what I'll do. I'll I'll leave you guys with a piece of trivia. Or riddle, however you want to put it. And I'm going to be honest, it's going to be really easy to Google. So feel free. If you cannot wait until next Friday to get the answer to this, then. Just go ahead and Google it. It's not going to be too hard. Oh, yeah, no, I'm not going to do a post credit scene. That is something I debated doing. I will say when I added post credit seeds to my Dungeons and dragons sessions, I had some of the most fun. Of my life. Although I did start. Yeah, that was a problem I have with that. I did start like subplots that I then later had to honor. Which is weird because like the post credit scenes always took my idea was that a post credit scene would let the players know what happened to. An NPC. That would otherwise just be gone forever. But the problem was that too many of them were meeting up and forming a rock group, like a, like a band. Although, when I say that I do that mean. I mean that in several terms of the. Like they were giant Cyclops is who smashed rocks together. And would push their rocks along. The grounds. In order to create. Rolling. Rolling rocks. Which was rock and roll Putin. And. I mean, it wasn't that good at the time, but it feels even worse now. But. Yeah, I'm not going to put the answer to the riddle or the trivia in, but. There are. Three movies. This is the easier part of it. Three movies that have one 11. Academy awards. Oh man. I'm going to double check that. Can you imagine if I got the number wrong? On that. Oh, it would be the most. Barriers thing thing. I could do so it's good that I'm checking. And I'm happy. Yeah. So 11 Ords right. I'm going to give you. I'm going to give you the, the years, right? So the first one came out 1959. The second one came out in 1997. And the third one came out in 2003. So you got to try to identify those three movies without looking it up. Then you got to try to figure out. Which of those movies shares in actor. Two of those three movies, Sharon actor. Can you identify the actor and their role? In the films. I will say that they are named characters. I have authority. Like they are not, it's not that there are two characters who stand behind the heroes with one light. Like these are, these are characters who are. They exist substantially. And. I feel like it is got to be. One of the greatest. Film achievements. You know what I'm going to actually act really quickly go through, go through those. No. I think, I think I'll come back to that. Okay. So. Before I leave you then. In that case. And I'm going to quickly give you my other most interesting factor. At least this is my favorite fact. Right. Because this might be. Just as impressive. As the achievements of the other riddled. But. Do you know, The highest grossing. Actor. Is that the right way to put it? Yeah. We're just giving it away. Do you know the highest. Grossing actor in the world. So that does not be the person who had the most money by being in films. That means the person who has been in the most amount of money made from films. And I did, I did kind of give it away there. But come at that one carefully. Because if you don't know a lot, About. Hi, grossing films. What I will tell you right off the bat is that big blockbuster franchise films. Our a hundred percent, the ones you want to think of. You don't want a. You're actually not looking for say, gone with the wind or something, by the way, gone with the wind. Didn't win 11 Oscars. So that is the first thing everybody guesses for that other question. Gone with the wind is not one of the answers. But think of really successful franchises. So let's go with star wars, right? Looking at the list actually. Oh, that's funny enough. Coming in at number 10 is Andy circus. Andy circus. If you don't know plays Gollum, he plays the apes and planet of the apes, or at least he did. I think of a Tim Burton one. Andy circus is basically. The guy you go to, if you're going to be playing something in CGI. Ease in number 10 and obviously having been in things like Lord of the rings king, Colin. These sort of things they all add up. And as it turns out, he was also in star wars, the force awakens. I think he must've played Snoke. Unless there was another CGI character. And if you go up a little higher, you get, well, yeah, Zoe said that. Zoe Saldana is number seven. She's been an avatar, which is like, I mean, avatar has to be the most like. Grossed movie with the least interest ever. I like, I don't know how it works. And then this is actually another great one. Is that number four is John Ratzenberger. And if you don't know who John Ratzenberger is. You know him from, from somewhere. And so for some people it's from cheers, he was, I don't know if he was the mailman or. He was. It was the grumpy guy. But John Robinson burger is the pig in toy story is the piggy bank. Called ham. In toy story. And they've included him in like every Pixar movie. And so, so he's number four. For someone whose face is most known. For a sick comedy eighties. He is. He's the number four highest grossing actor. And you got like a lot of these different franchises combined with the number two, which is Samuel L. Jackson. And Samuel L. Jackson, over the course of 142 films. Has has grossed 195. Million dollars. That is amazing. 142 films. 190, sorry. An average of 195 million. Topics. Over the course of 142 films. He is actually right. Is slit recount the commas. Hundred thousand million. 27.77. Billion. Samuel L. Jackson has growth 27. Point seven,$7 billion in film film. Box office. And that is. 3 billion less than the number of one on this list. But what is even cooler about the number one in this list is that they did it in 50. At an average of$612 million made. For every film that they were in. So. Who would have been in the most blockbuster films? Samuel L. Jackson is a great. Great. Guests for that. It was in star wars. Oh, and he was in the Avengers. Yeah. Yeah. The MCU is pretty big. Isn't it? It's huge. In fact, And that's why. If you were going off of lead rules, someone like Scarlett Johannson, she. Scarlett Johannson is the highest grossing lead. Actress. Robert Downey Jr. Is the highest grossing lead actor. But who's been at more. Who has been in more Marvel films? And black widow. An Ironman. The Nick fury. And I'm gonna leave you there. If you need an answer, if you can't wait and you really, really need an answer, Google it Wikipedia, or find me if you have any comments, critiques questions or the like, Find me. Thanks for coming to you guys. I know last week was pretty heavy with the whole mental health crap. And I'll apologize for that on occasion, but also Hey, that's important. And you know, you got to hear that crap. You know what I mean? Cause it wouldn't feel right for me to only be happy because I do spend. I would say 55 to 75% of my time. On the other side of happy. You know what? That might even be a bit high up and doing really well raised recently. So yeah, in a car. Let's say in a dozen episodes, we'll come back and re re redo that number. But I hope today was lighter and I hope that I can continue to be light if that's what you guys like. If you guys enjoyed the, the heaviness You know, I can bring it back. Either way. Thank you for joining me. I had fun. I hope you did too. High fives all around. I'm putting Russell Stuart, probably you do that, right?