📙 Part 2: Describe a puzzle (jigsaw, crossword, etc.) you have played

This episode's vocabulary

Muddle through (phrasal verb) - to manage to do something although you are not organized and do not know how to do it.

Puzzle sth out (phrasal verb) - to discover or understand something by thinking hard about it.

Crossword (noun) - a game in which you write words that are the answers to questions in a pattern of black and white squares.

Puzzle (noun) - a problem or question that you have to answer by using your skill or knowledge.

To solve (verb) - to find an answer to a problem.

To underpin (verb) - to give support, strength, or a basic structure to something.

Totalitarian (adj.) - of or being a political system in which those in power have complete control and do not allow people freedom to oppose them.

Stick out to the end (idiom) - to endure, tolerate, or continue through to the end or completion of something.

To relive (verb) - to remember clearly an experience that happened in the past.

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Questions and Answers

M: Hello, hello, hello. And welcome to speaking part two. In this one Rory is gonna describe a puzzle, jigsaw, crossword that he has played. Yeah. Oh my God, it could be better than a law on environmental protection. But it's a pretty tricky one. So a puzzle. He's gonna say what it's like how easy or difficult it is how long it took him to solve it, and how he feels about it. Rory, are you happy to get this question?

R: Oh, it's a puzzle how am I going to get through this?

M: Oh, you'll have to muddle through. My boy.

R: But I'll puzzle out an answer.

M: Fire away.

R: My family and I used to do the crossword in the evening telegraph when we were all together back home. And I suspect that my mum and dad still do. Although to be honest with you, we rarely talk about it these days. I should say, the evening telegraph is like our local newspaper. And it gets published every day. And it always has a puzzle page. And one of the main puzzles that people are attracted to there is the crossword. It's not exactly the hardest thing to solve in the world. And there are words that repeat themselves. My parents call them "tele-words". But it's a fun test of vocabulary. And I think it sort of underpins us all being together at dinner time, which is kind of important if you sort of value your relationship with your family. I usually gave up about halfway through and my mom was always a bit totalitarian with writing the answers. Like sometimes she would ignore us when we gave answers, and she would just put her own down. But dad would always stick out to the end, my brother and I would just sort of chip in every now and then while we were eating dinner, or if we were cleaning the dishes and stuff like that. So despite the fact that we weren't all in 100%, you know, it's still like a nice thing to do together as a family, while other things are going on. To be honest, I don't mind much about the crossword itself. It's more sort of, like I said, the idea of having something to bring us together. And I really look forward to reliving it when I go back home. Actually, I hope we get the chance to do that. Because one of the things that I missed about being in Russia for one and a half years and not going home was actually doing things together with my family. And I think this will be quite a nice place to start.

M: Thank you very much, Rory! Do you think that you're gonna do this again sometime soon?

R: Oh, yeah. Like I said, I want to do it with my family when I go back, although I suspect the problems that I mentioned will be the same.

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Discussion

M: Well done.

R: That was difficult. That's more difficult than environmental protection.

M: Really? Is it?

R: A puzzle? How am I supposed to talk about for...

M: For one to two minutes.

R: Yeah, I know. But like, how much can you say about a crossword?

M: I don't know. Well, you have to...

R: Apart from the fact that you have to...

M: Educated native speakers can speak about jigsaws and crosswords for one to two minutes.

R: I haven't done a crossword in years. Jigsaw neither.

M: Anyway, dear listener, so they've added new topics to the IELTS speaking and this is one of them. Right. So yeah, be ready to talk about the puzzle. What is a puzzle?

R: Oh, a puzzle is just, it's kind of like a game that you do for fun. It requires you to apply some kind of logic or background knowledge in order to complete it.

M: Yep. So a puzzle. When I think about the puzzle I think about these thingies. What do you call these parts?

R: Oh, thingies. Are you thinking about a Rubik's Cube?

M: No, not the Rubik's Cube.

R: Oh, jigsaw puzzle.

M: Jigsaw. Yeah, so a puzzle is like a generic term. And then within this like puzzle thing we have jigsaw puzzle with the thingies that you put together. Dear listener, do you understand what I'm talking about? These little thingies.

R: Jigsaw pieces.

M: Jigsaw pieces, and you put them together, and then Bob's your uncle, you have this nice picture. Or for example, if I take a photo of Rory and then I can turn it into a puzzle.

R: You can.

M: And then I can, what do I do? I put it together.

R: Yeah, you fit pieces together.

M: I fit the pieces of Rory's face puzzle together. And I hang it on my wall or on my ceiling.

R: Or set it on fire and never look at it again. I hate jigsaws. They're really boring for me. I don't understand why people like them. My auntie loves them but I don't, I don't have a liking for it.

M: My brother was given a jigsaw puzzle with all-black pieces. Everything was black, is black. And he has just, he completed it, but it's just black.

R: That sounds like a uniquely Russian gift.

M: All puzzle pieces are the same, they're black. But usually, you have like a nice picture of like a shape or like a map of the world or Rory's face. So...

R: Thought you said a nice picture.

M: Yeah. You can also talk about a crossword.

R: Yes. And I did talk about a crossword. So well, if you don't know, oh, well, actually, it's important to describe what a crossword is because people often get confused between a crossword and a word search. So a crossword has specific lines of blank spaces. And the number of blank spaces indicates the length of the word that you're supposed to write in the spaces. But a word search is a lot of letters mash together, and you have to find out where specific words are. You have to find them. Sometimes you get told what the words are, sometimes you just have to find them by yourself.

M: Yeah, you can say that it's not the hardest thing to solve in the world. And we solve a crossword.

R: Yes, you do.

M: You can also do a crossword.

R: You can or you can buy a crossword solver. Or you could just give up control to my mom and let her do everything.

M: Oh, so you do a crossword and you do a puzzle.

R: Yes. You complete the puzzle as well. You also complete a crossword.

M: Complete a crossword. Okay. Cool. You've used the word underpins.

R: Yeah, underpins just means that it's something that holds everything together, or exists throughout something. So for example, well, for a lot of people watching the news on television underpins their evening, because it's the reason why they get together and they have dinner, for example.

M: And you can say that doing the crossword together brings us together.

R: Oh, it's nice to bring people together. Of course, it's not always plain sailing when you're being brought together. Because sometimes people can be a bit totalitarian with things. And that just means that my mom likes to take control of the crossword or whatever that is going on, and just do her own thing.

M: Yeah, people could get competitive.

R: Oh, yeah. Like my mom is the nicest person in the world until she gets her hands on the crossword. And then it's like, get away from me.

M: Oh, yeah. Anyway, dear listener, you should choose what kind of puzzle you want to talk about. So again, a puzzle is a game, right? It could be a toy, it could be a problem. It could be again, a jigsaw puzzle or a crossword, right? You can call it like crossword puzzles, for example, word search puzzles, number puzzles, logic puzzles, you know. It could be like a story that you can end with a question that you have to figure it all out. Right. So...

R: Or if you're Russian, like Rubik's cube is from Russia, isn't it?

M: No. Rubik's cube is from Belgium.

R: Really? I thought it was Russia.

M: Wait, Belgium? No, it's not Belgium. Hungary. It's Hungary.

R: Really?

M: Rubik's cube was invented in Hungary. I know that. Budapest.

R: Wow, well done Hungarians.

M: No-no, Hungarian people invented many things.

R: That's so strange, because like, I only received Rubik's Cubes like in like famous situations whenever it's Russian people interacting with them.

M: Okay, so a Rubik's Cube. A Rubik's Cube. Dear listener, do you know, like a Rubik's Cube, you know, this cube with colorful thingies that you go like...

R: Colorful squares. You've got to put them in the right alignment.

M: Alignment?

R: My God, use your topic-specific vocabulary. Yeah, you've got to put them in the right order.

M: Okay, whatever. So...

R: What do you mean whatever?

M: Yes, but a Rubik's cube is a puzzle?

R: Yes.

M: Okay. Yep. So you can talk about a Rubik's Cube?

R: But Tetris is from Russia.

M: Tetris is from Russia.

R: Thank God. And that's a puzzle.

M: Oh, and a mafia game is from Russia. Mafia game was invented in Russia. Yay. I love my country. Isn't it lovely? Okay.

R: And you can love your family, and you look forward to reliving what you did with them in the past when you see them in the future. So to relive something is just to do something that you did in the past, and then you do it today.

M: Or you could be puzzled by the fact that you haven't seen your family for a long time.

R: Well, that's not much of a puzzle, to be honest with you. It's like, we're all trapped in here while COVID destroys the world.

M: So positive, Rory. You can say my life is a puzzle. I'm solving my life now. Describe a puzzle you have played. Well, I'm playing it now. My life is a puzzle.

R: I don't think the examiner would take the answer very seriously, you'd probably get marked down for like fluency and coherence.

M: Possibly, yeah. The examiner would go like what? Really? No. Anyway...

R: Thank you for tuning in. We hope you liked this episode. And in the next one, we'll be discussing puzzles still.

M: And games, and different kinds of games.

R: We'll see you there.

M: Bye!

R: Bye!

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