Summary
Overview
In this episode of Lateral, host Tom Scott challenges three guests—Rialina, Bill Sunderland, and Danny Siller from Escape This Podcast—to solve a series of lateral thinking puzzles. The questions range from emoticon mishaps and tattoo art projects to medieval villagers feigning insanity and Norwegian driving safety tips. The format features collaborative problem-solving with humor, clever wordplay, and surprising historical anecdotes.
Emoticon Face Mishap
The first puzzle involves Matt trying to express happiness through text but accidentally creating an amazed face instead. The guests work through various possibilities including sign language and physical gestures before Bill cracks the case: it's about emoticons versus emojis. When you let go of the shift key while typing a smiley face, the closed parenthesis becomes a zero, transforming a smile into a wide-eyed expression of amazement.
- The puzzle asks what Matt let go of when trying to show happiness but became amazed instead
- Guests explore sign language, Morse code, and various communication methods
- Bill identifies the answer: letting go of shift while typing emoticons turns ) into 0, changing the expression
- Tom shares nostalgia about ASCII art in video game walkthroughs from the early 2000s
" I am today years old finding that out. "
" Elder millennial podcast now. "
The Skin Story Tattoo Project
This section explores Shelley Jackson's ambitious 2002 art project called "Skin," where she wrote a 2,095-word short story meant to be published exclusively as tattoos on volunteers' bodies—one word per person. The project aimed for 2,095 participants but only 553 people completed the process, leaving the story unfinished. The collaborative nature and permanent commitment made participants particularly disappointed when the administrative burden became too overwhelming and the project was abandoned.
- Shelley Jackson's story was not intended for publication on paper or screen, but as tattoos on people's bodies
- The project generated about 22,000 volunteer emails but became too difficult to organize
- Only 553 of the planned 2,095 people got their word tattooed, leaving the story incomplete
- Some participants could reject their assigned word but wouldn't get a replacement
- After many people in a row got the word 'the' tattooed, some suspected it was a joke
" I would love for any of my artworks that I write to have 553 people willing to come in and help me create it. That would be incredible. But I would feel a lot of pressure for them not to feel disappointed at the end of the process. "
" Or just have one person represent the word the and one person represent a. The ones that are like it's my only tattoo. Just have a. Just have the. "
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