Brains on the Outside: A Business Ideas Podcast

Water and Wines: The best way to solve a jigsaw

• Alex and Andrew • Season 2 • Episode 3

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Water and Wines make jigsaws designed to teach you about wine. Designed by sommeliers and their passion for oenology, each jigsaw transports you to a wine region around the world. However, just like many of us, they are haunted by an existential question: what is the best way to solve a jigsaw?

Some ideas: an AR app to help you find a piece, a jigsaw you put together based on taste, a wine flight in a hat

Thank you Amy Renyu Jin, Water and Wine’s Head of Marketing, for getting in touch with us. Dear listener, how would you solve Amy's problem? Email us at: brainsontheoutside@gmail.com 

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Thank you to Rich Endersby-Marsh for our theme music: https://soundcloud.com/rich-marsh 

Keep your brains on the outside! xo 

>> Andrew:

Hey, Alex.

>> Alex:

Hey, Andrew.

>> Andrew:

What's this?

>> Alex:

Brains on the outside.

>> Andrew:

And what is brains on the outside?

>> Alex:

It's a podcast where we dream up ridiculous solutions to the world's business issues.

>> Andrew:

That's right. Each week we take an impossible problem from a real business and we just solve it.

>> Alex:

This week, water and wines.

>> Andrew:

Alex, who are, water and wines and.

>> Alex:

Water and wines are a wine based jigsaw company. They don't make jigsaws made out of wines. They make jigsaws about wines so that you can learn about wine while you do a jigsaw. I fucking love jigsaws. I love wine. You drink a lot of wine?

>> Andrew:

That's a difficult question. That's like a question my doctor would ask me.

>> Alex:

Do you drink exactly the right amount of wine?

>> Andrew:

I, feel I don't have my drinking wine to jigsaw. making ratio quite right just yet. Do you, too much wine, not enough jigsaw?

>> Alex:

Oh, yes.

>> Andrew:

The problem is the world I live in, I think.

>> Alex:

Are you a red wine drinker, a white wine drinker, a pink wine drinker, a trendy orange wine drinker?

>> Andrew:

I do like orange skin contact wine. I do like that. But I think white mostly.

>> Alex:

Yeah.

>> Andrew:

Yeah. What about you?

>> Alex:

Yeah, me too. I mean, I do like a red and an orange. And I love a glass of. A cheeky glass of rose in the sunshine. It's nice.

>> Andrew:

We went to, Lisbon. A lot of vino verde. That's really nice as well.

>> Alex:

Crisp.

>> Andrew:

The problem, they got in contact with us, though.

>> Alex:

Oh, yeah.

>> Andrew:

It's quite interesting. It's not about how much wine I drink, thankfully.

>> Alex:

Okay, who contacted us, Andrew?

>> Andrew:

Amy Rednew. Gin from water and wines contacted us. She is their head of marketing there.

>> Alex:

Fancy.

>> Andrew:

Amy says one challenge faced by us and, everyone who puzzles is what is the best strategy to complete our puzzles. Should you sort by grape colours and shapes, or should you lay out the edges first? We don't have an answer, but perhaps you do.

>> Alex:

Perhaps we do. Are you, when you do a jigsaw, Andrew, do you. Are you an edges person? Do you sort the edges out first?

>> Andrew:

I.

>> Alex:

Or are you a kind of madman who dives right into the middle?

>> Andrew:

This might be a bit rambling, but I do have a point to this story. do you know what the theory of mind is? The theory of mind is our ability to understand what somebody else thinks. You learn it as a baby.

>> Alex:

Okay.

>> Andrew:

So if you tell a baby, I don't know, you show it something inside a box, and inside the box is a bit of chocolate. You close the box and then you go, does your friend know what's in the box? They always say yes. They don't understand that not everyone shares the same knowledge.

>> Alex:

Got it.

>> Andrew:

Even an adult gets it wrong something like 75% of the time.

>> Alex:

Whoa.

>> Andrew:

And it's obviously shocking when you get it wrong because you only know yourself. This jigsaws as one of the places where it, broke my theory of mind. I was like, surely everybody does edges. Surely there's no debate. Surely it's not a problem.

>> Alex:

Actually, wait, there are people out there who don't.

>> Andrew:

I don't. It blew my mind how solving a jigsaw could actually be controversial. Because to me it was so obvious and clear. I was like, surely we're all on the same page and we're not.

>> Alex:

Whoa. Wow. Okay.

>> Andrew:

Yeah, edges, obviously. Obviously.

>> Alex:

Edges, edges. Get excited when you find a corner piece as you're going through corner. Put those separately. Excited.

>> Andrew:

Yeah.

>> Alex:

Put your edges together. Your edge pieces together. Work it out. There's always a couple missing. That's okay.

>> Andrew:

Yeah.

>> Alex:

Gotta find them on the way. Now then, sort your pieces into vague colour piles.

>> Andrew:

Yes. Yeah.

>> Alex:

And then put them in.

>> Andrew:

Put them in. It's easy, simple, easy. I was at work and I brought this up to people at work. Thinking that like, well, obviously this isn't the controversial question. And they were like, yeah, Andrew, it was pretty controversial. Someone likened it to playing monopoly. The level of controversy and I don't know, maybe that's just their household thing or maybe it's universal. But they were like, if you're solving a jigsaw with a person, apparently it's quite a fraught experience.

>> Alex:

Wow.

>> Andrew:

Do you.

>> Alex:

Yeah.

>> Andrew:

Do you, do you do like the first layer in from the edges first or do you make piles? Do you make little islands in the middle and join them together? Oh my God, I hadn't even considered any of this.

>> Alex:

That's mad.

>> Andrew:

So I see where Amy's coming from. How do you write an instruction book to cover the entire human experience?

>> Alex:

And I can see from, ah, you know, obviously we're a business advice podcast, so I had to think about this without businessman hats on.

>> Andrew:

Yep.

>> Alex:

And I can see from a, water on wines perspective, if you are not solving jigsaws. One, you're going to be dissatisfied with the jigsaw.

>> Andrew:

Yep. Yeah.

>> Alex:

Two, you're going to be dissatisfied with wine.

>> Andrew:

Yeah. The stakes for waspiring wine are way higher than a normal jigsaw company. Right.

>> Alex:

They could ruin wine.

>> Andrew:

They could ruin wine for somebody. They so much write off the entire californian region. Cause they were like, well, I can't find the edge piece, can I?

>> Alex:

And I guess if people are dissatisfied with jigsaws, if they're not finishing a jigsaw, they're not gonna get another one.

>> Andrew:

No, they ain't coming back.

>> Alex:

And crucially, they're not learning. Cause they're not doing the jigsaw to learn where the wine comes from in the region.

>> Andrew:

I don't do my age saws, for actually a reason similar to this. I'm almost scared to start. It's like. Cause I've started jigsaws before. Previously in an old flat I lived in with my friend Rose in Glasgow. We thought we'd get a jigsaw and make it. And it sat on our table for ages, half made, until eventually we just get it back to a charity shop. So maybe this. I'm so in my head now about what everyone else thinks about the world, but, maybe other people are in this situation as well, scared by a jigsaw, unsure if they'll ever finish it.

>> Alex:

I got a jigsaw for Christmas, Andrew.

>> Andrew:

Yeah, yeah.

>> Alex:

It was a petrol boys jigsaw.

>> Andrew:

I said, yeah, that as if I did. No, it's an awesome jigsaw. It's really cool.

>> Alex:

It's really cool. It had a lot of black pieces on it, though. But I went through the process of, like, I did the edges first and then I did the big colourful bits and then I filled in the black pieces. Now, one thing that I never do when I do a jigsaw is I never look at the picture.

>> Andrew:

Oh, you just, you're. That's.

>> Alex:

Yeah, I consider that to be cheating.

>> Andrew:

This is, this is, this. That's. That's madness.

>> Alex:

Yeah.

>> Andrew:

I just. It's so exciting learning how other people view the world. That was hard as well. It's just our two faces, right? Surrounded in darkness.

>> Alex:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

>> Andrew:

Like, big pixel faces, I imagine as well. If you're making that and you were listening to, like, the dancey, disco y music of Pet Shop Boys, you're in this, like, two contrasting vibes of, like, let's go out, let's. Let's freaking party. And then also, I'm gonna put these.

>> Alex:

Pieces in the right places.

>> Andrew:

Very, very gently, deliberately deep breaths. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

>> Alex:

So how can we help border mines?

>> Andrew:

I think we need to find a way to help people solve jigsaws. I guess they asked about what's the best way to solve jigsaws. And I guess it's just us trying to find solutions for that, right?

>> Alex:

Yeah, I guess we don't want to dictate how you do it, necessarily. Like, if you're not an edges first person, I'm gonna sort of put you in the same category as people who bite a kitkat without breaking off the fingers.

>> Andrew:

Absolutely anarchy, isn't it?

>> Alex:

Absolute anarchy.

>> Andrew:

Absolute anarchy.

>> Alex:

But if that's what you want to do, I will protect your right to do it. We got a pretty clear brief there. So I think there's two approaches to this, Andrew, with my business consultancy. Innovation consultancy. Hat on. yep. I think there is. Teach people how to do jigsaws better.

>> Andrew:

Yep.

>> Alex:

And then there is change the jigsaw itself. Change the concept of a jigsaw.

>> Andrew:

I think that's good, because once we raise this nation's sort of understanding of parasol jigsaws, then we can introduce more complex, more interesting ideas. Yeah, you know?

>> Alex:

Exactly.

>> Andrew:

I just want to throw a bunch of ideas out there. We can philtre them down. So you've played a PlayStation one, right?

>> Alex:

This has gone instantaneously to a place that I wasn't expecting. Yes, I have played the PlayStation one.

>> Andrew:

So in a PlayStation one, when you buy, like, spiral or whatever, in the little guidebook.

>> Alex:

Yeah.

>> Andrew:

There's a number you can call or.

>> Alex:

Like, a phone number.

>> Andrew:

Like a phone number.

>> Alex:

Wow.

>> Andrew:

That.

>> Alex:

Yeah.

>> Andrew:

And you can call that phone number, and you can get advice.

>> Alex:

How's that phone call go? Hey. Ring, ring. Ring, ring. Hello. Is that the. Is it an actual person? Or in the olden days, when you did phone those numbers, it was usually just a prerecorded message that would give you some form of cheat code or some bit of tip. But it could be a. Is it a person?

>> Andrew:

I think it's a person.

>> Alex:

It's a person.

>> Andrew:

And I think, it might have be Facetime.

>> Alex:

Yeah, I was gonna say, because otherwise, it's like, I've got. I've got a. I've got a piece that is a bit blue, and it's got three innies and one outie.

>> Andrew:

Oh, can you see the piece that's a bit red? You need that one. You need that one. Yeah. I think it's Facetime, and it's a great money maker because you can charge, like, one pound 69 a minute for that call.

>> Alex:

Oh, yeah. Now that there is a. A kind of unseen incentive there to make the jigsaw harder. So people have to phone this the line. And if you were an evil company.

>> Andrew:

Not Warren White, though.

>> Alex:

No. Warren. Wine?

>> Andrew:

No. No. So you're saying if they were evil.

>> Alex:

If they were evil, you could make a lot more money. Just make it really difficult. Okay, well, when you made the jigsaw itself really cheap. So the jigsaw is like two quid, but you end up spending 500 pounds in phone calls.

>> Andrew:

Yeah. You were given the jigsaws away for free. Understanding that costs a lot of money.

>> Alex:

Yeah.

>> Andrew:

Well, what do you. If that's for an evil jigsaw manufacturer, what do you bring to the table for a good one, then?

>> Alex:

What about if we made an app that you can just take a photo of the. Of a piece?

>> Andrew:

Yeah.

>> Alex:

And then it uses the gps and the image recognition and you just move your phone until the, silhouette of the piece on your phone is in exactly the right place compared to all the other pieces.

>> Andrew:

Oh, I actually meant to send you this, but that exists for Lego.

>> Alex:

No way.

>> Andrew:

Yes. You dump Lego bricks on a table, you take a picture of it and it goes from these 40 bits. You can make these seven models.

>> Alex:

Wow.

>> Andrew:

Yeah. So that's actually viable. Yeah, it's doable with the power of AI and cameras.

>> Alex:

Yeah. Pretty nice.

>> Andrew:

I actually like. I'm thinking about that more. And I actually really like that you.

>> Alex:

Make it really nice. Like, it's like highlighted in red the piece that you've got. And then you move your phone around the kind of tabletop and it goes green when you drop it in. You just slide the piece under the camera there.

>> Andrew:

That sounds like click noise as well.

>> Alex:

Yeah. And then you sort of make sure it doesn't move from that, from that position.

>> Andrew:

Because there is like, I can't remember what the app's called. It's a separate app. It's like goodreads, but for wine.

>> Alex:

Oh, yeah. Vivino.

>> Andrew:

Vivino, yeah. Is there an equivalent, but for jigsaws? Because this would be a good way of tracking what jigsaws you've done, how.

>> Alex:

Much knowledge you have.

>> Andrew:

Yeah.

>> Alex:

You could put it in there, in the Vivino app. So you can track your wines that you've bought and it shows them on the jigsaws that you've done.

>> Andrew:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

>> Alex:

That'd be really nice. Actually, you could make a really nice ar app for the completed jigsaws as well, where you have, like, the completed jigsaw out. And then it uses your vivino library to put the bottles of wine on the table from when you've drunk. It's like it knows which ones you've logged and it puts them out on the table for you.

>> Andrew:

There's a lot of really nice stuff there, but probably got facts about the wine, actual above the actual finished jigsaw. highlighting the ones that you need to go drink as well. You haven't done already. Yeah.

>> Alex:

That's a nice little extra that you get inside your jigsaw solving app. what about if we bagged up the jigsaw puzzle pieces into smaller collections? So actually, one jigsaw is actually made out of 20 smaller jigsaws. And you do the 20 smaller jigsaws and each smaller jigsaw makes a big piece that then fits together in the big jigsaw puzzle.

>> Andrew:

That's a very good idea. That's. That's all another Lego is actually a pretty good metaphor for this. This is another situation that requires very complex stuff. Yeah, complex building. But with Lego, they actually provide instructions. Lego thought do that. Exactly. I bought Ivy making the Lego Concord, and there's 2000 bits. And you wouldn't expect all those bits to be in one box. They bagged them up into smaller bags now. Yeah. So the first 100 bits were in one bag and the next 100 in another bag. It'd be madness. Of all the bits were just rattling.

>> Alex:

Loose, loose in the box.

>> Andrew:

But for some reason, with a jigsaw.

>> Alex:

Just all comes in there.

>> Andrew:

All comes in one. Right. So you. I think that's excellent idea. You bag them up into 200 bits and you solve them 200 at a time. And if you're a purist, you know.

>> Alex:

You just tear all the bags open.

>> Andrew:

Tear the bags open. Yeah.

>> Alex:

I like this idea that you can have these smaller bits, but when you put those bits together, they make a bigger jigsaw puzzle piece, because then you could then put that into an advent calendar where each day you get the small pieces that make the big piece.

>> Andrew:

On my list of ideas, it's almost the opposite of that, which is the box comes with twelve bits, only has twelve bits. And then you can break those twelve bits into smaller bits. but I guess we're coming from two different directions to the same place of. You can do ten bits and ten bits and ten bits. I like that.

>> Alex:

It's nice. It's tidy.

>> Andrew:

I mean, I guess that is dictating how you would solve a jigsaw, because it's like, well, there's no creativity there of only doing the edge pieces or only doing the middle bits first.

>> Alex:

Maybe Andrew, though, that creativity and that kind of chaos is actually detrimental. And, maybe there should be a more unified way of completing a jigsaw.

>> Andrew:

You think it's bad for the learning experience.

>> Alex:

Yeah. If you're learning about wine from a jigsaw or learning about anything from a jigsaw, you probably want to do that in a structured way.

>> Andrew:

Yeah.

>> Alex:

Like, there's probably a useful, structured way of doing that. And maybe we should standardise the way that people do jigsaws to make that learning process easier another way.

>> Andrew:

I guess you just sell multiple versions of the same jigsaw. We've bagged this jigsaw up for the edge shoes first, and we've bagged this jigsaw up for the middle bits first, and then you can choose which way around. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

>> Alex:

That's nice. I kind of just want to force everyone to do jigsaws in the way that I do jigsaws, though.

>> Andrew:

Impose that viewpoint.

>> Alex:

Yeah. Maybe when you're at school, you get taught, this is the jigsaw method, this is the water and wines jigsaw method. This is how you're going to do.

>> Andrew:

It from now on, specifically for water and wine. I guess at that point it's just water if you're in school.

>> Alex:

Yeah, that's true.

>> Andrew:

It's just this is the water method of solving a jigsaw.

>> Alex:

Well, I don't know, because kids love to think that they're, you know, more grown up and that they're. That they, are more adult than they are. So maybe giving them access to the water and wines jigsaws, but not the actual wine, is the way to go. And then that's aspirational as well. Like in the same way that Microsoft will give students and pupils of schools free Office 365 accounts, because then that's aspirational for them when they grow up. They're like, oh, well, I've used Office 365 my entire life, so I'm going to continue to use it even though it now costs me money. Maybe water and wines are dishing out free jigsaws to school kids because that's setting them up to be able to do the jigsaws in the future.

>> Andrew:

That's really interesting from the jigsaw perspective, from also the wine perspective. M because then they're making their jigsaws, they're getting their Vivino phone app out ar ing the jigsaw and realising there's 19 bottles there they haven't drunk.

>> Alex:

Yeah.

>> Andrew:

Not that I'm encouraging underage drinking in any way, but I guess it's more like you're teaching people about nice wines earlier instead ah. Of when they go turn 18 and buy a four pound 50 bottle from Tesco, they're like, I need this 75 pound bottle of the good stuff. Of the good stuff.

>> Alex:

Because I know that this is gonna be premium.

>> Andrew:

Yeah, yeah.

>> Alex:

Then water and wines are also seen as doing, like, CSR because they are helping with learning in schools as well.

>> Andrew:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

>> Alex:

They're helping to teach people stuff in schools. And, if, again, popping my evil hat on. If you're an evil company, then water and wines could make their jigsaws in such a way that their methodology only solves. Their jigsaws can only be used to solve a water mine jigsaw. You take that to a wasjig.

>> Andrew:

That ain't working.

>> Alex:

And that ain't working.

>> Andrew:

You base the whole thing on colour of the grape.

>> Alex:

Yeah.

>> Andrew:

Then it's like, well, there ain't no grapes in this other one, is there? Yeah, I like this. We're heading down an interesting path of, well, what? How do you do that? How do you make it unique, this learning method? We need to enter the break soon.

>> Alex:

Let's do that now.

>> Andrew:

Let's do that now.

>> Alex:

And then we come back.

>> Andrew:

Yeah. What ad do we have today, Alex?

>> Alex:

We have a very appropriate ad this, this week. Oh, actually, yeah, it's pretty good. it's wine based.

>> Andrew:

Ooh, timely.

>> Alex:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it is. It's very good. so this is the. It's wine hat. That's what the company's called. Just wine hat.

>> Andrew:

Just wine hat.

>> Alex:

Just wine hat.

>> Andrew:

All lowercase.

>> Alex:

All lowercase, yeah.

>> Andrew:

Very classy.

>> Alex:

Exactly, yeah. And, it is a large brimmed hat that has cup holders all around the edge of it. that fit a wine glass perfectly. Or you can get a champlain flute version of this as well. slightly more expensive because champagne is slightly classier. But, yeah, wine glasses all around the edges of it. And then on the top of the hat, it has a special eight way straw that goes into the eight wine glasses that are around the brim. that comes down the middle of the hat and straight into your mouth.

>> Andrew:

That is classy. Classy stuff.

>> Alex:

It is, it really is. Because, the designers of wine hat, ah, realised, that when they were once at a tasting restaurant and there was a wine flight that went alongside the tasting restaurant, that, there were a lot of wine glasses cluttering the table around them the whole dinner time through. and they could make a lot more table space for dishes, if they just popped the glasses in the hat.

>> Andrew:

That's excellent. And I guess as well, if you're eating dinner, tasting menu, your hands are busy, you know, you're knife and fork, you don't have a third hand for your wine. This is excellent.

>> Alex:

I think it is a really clever idea. now, one of the questions that I can imagine you ask, you're thinking there is wine comes in different glasses. Obviously, I've spoken already about the champagne flute. and if you're having a wine flute, you might have a glass of champagne, then you might have a white, and then maybe a rose, and then a couple of glasses of red, and then a dessert wine, and then possibly a brandy as well. Although most people wouldn't count that as a wine, but it might appear as part of a wine. Floyd. and that makes it difficult with the wine hat that only has one type of glass holder on it. But there are little adapters that you can buy that allow you to change the glasses that are, you know what.

>> Andrew:

It'S classy stuff and I expect nothing else from wine hat classy organisation. My one question is, I guess a lot of, the flavour, taste of wine comes in the smell, you know, and I guess just about the very nature of a hat. The wine in wine hat is quite far away from your nose. Is there a second straw, potentially, that clips into the wine and goes more to your nose so you can smell the wine and then a second straw to drink it?

>> Alex:

the nasal straw. The nasal straw that does actually exist? Yeah. There is a tube that you can get that comes down from the top of the hat, and plugs into the nostrils directly so that you can get a good whiff of the wine. Now, in order to try and aerate the wine a little more and to get the air, ah, moving and down the nasal pipe, there are small fans attached as well, which, I'm not gonna lie, can make the hat a little bit noisy. but in your average fancy restaurant setting, most people are wearing a wine hat these days. So it's just a gentle low hum in the background.

>> Andrew:

You get used to that sort of white noise. Right. It's actually quite soothing, I find. I think this is actually a really brave company. I think it's, taking a big risk here. You know, hats filled with alcohol kind of have a bad image. They aren't seen as classy, but this is like real visionary stuff. Really brave to try and disrupt that market and really change the public perception of drinking alcohol from a hat. Alex, if any of our listeners have a business idea that they would like to share in this ad break.

>> Alex:

Yeah.

>> Andrew:

how would they get in contact with us?

>> Alex:

Well, Andrew, they should email us, on brainsontheoutsidemail.com dot M. Andrew, I was just thinking over the ad break that one of the joys of doing a jigsaw puzzle is doing it with your friends.

>> Andrew:

Yeah. Yeah.

>> Alex:

Unless, those friends are bad at jigsaws.

>> Andrew:

Yeah. They're doing it the wrong way and.

>> Alex:

They do it the wrong way.

>> Andrew:

You got pretty hung up in the first half of everyone doing it your way. So I could see how this is an issue that could affect you.

>> Alex:

It is like if you're getting in my way while I'm on the jig. Yeah, it's a bad time. Yeah. but I did think, did make me think that, you know, a nice thing is to have dinner. Nice. Maybe a nice lasagna and a couple of glasses of red. And then for us to clear aside, they just shove the dishes onto the floor and slap the jigsaw down.

>> Andrew:

One perfect swiping motion.

>> Alex:

Yeah.

>> Andrew:

All your la cruze all over the.

>> Alex:

Floor and just dump it out there and just slap the jigsaw down. and that feels like quite a nice time. You know, you've had a few glasses of reduced putting the puzzle pieces in. You're having some jokes. It's all good in time. You smacking anyone who's putting the pieces in wrong or doing the wrong process. But it's also really disappointing if you don't manage to get the jigsaw finished in the evening.

>> Andrew:

Yeah, yeah.

>> Alex:

You know, so that'd be a second 3rd session. You either have a second 3rd, 4th session or everyone stays there way longer than you want them to. you want to get it done good and quick. and I did wonder whether water and wines could provide one of their sommelier jigsaw puzzle makers for an evening. Ah. you could just rent them in.

>> Andrew:

Bring a friend as a service.

>> Alex:

As a friend. Yeah, just bring them in and they're just like, no, no, no. That piece goes there.

>> Andrew:

Yeah. Are they there to provide any, any other service that they allow to chat with you or they're gonna talk with you or it's just like, no, I think it depends what goes there.

>> Alex:

It depends what you've told your friends. Right.

>> Andrew:

I guess it's like Uber and Uber plus or whatever it's called.

>> Alex:

Yeah, exactly. I think that'd be quite nice, actually.

>> Andrew:

As we are innovation consultants offering this innovation consultancy, Zari. I think this thing about jigsaw consultants who would come and be like, who teach you how to do it? You know? Okay. No, that. Because there, that one, that was me. Put them close together.

>> Alex:

at this point, I just want to remind everybody that while we are innovation consultants, we don't actually get paid for this gig. We're doing it out of the goodness of our own hearts for the well being of the world.

>> Andrew:

It's really just so people stop interfering with your jigsaws, really, isn't it, Alex?

>> Alex:

Really is.

>> Andrew:

You have a way wants to go down, and we're going to make that happen somehow.

>> Alex:

So, Andrew, in the second half of this year, I thought maybe we'd talk about materially changing the jigsaw.

>> Andrew:

Yeah.

>> Alex:

how could you change the jigsaw? To make it not necessarily easier, but to make it more obvious about how you should solve it. Put it together. Yeah.

>> Andrew:

This is interesting because I guess where there's, there's lots of elements. Here we go for, like, is it making them more whiny? Are we sort of doing difficulty settings? I like, difficulty settings, but my mind immediately, champ, when you said this was around, could you put bits of jigsaws in bottles of wine? So as, like, as you drank your wine, your bottle of wine, you'd be getting bits of a jigsaw to make at the same time.

>> Alex:

This reminds me of that, have you ever had bong bong grape?

>> Andrew:

Oh, yeah.

>> Alex:

The korean juice has got bits of grapes in it. And if you don't know they're in there, it's very disturbing.

>> Andrew:

It's shocking. That first time the bit comes in, you're like, oh, my God, what's that? Why is there grape in my mouth?

>> Alex:

Yeah, you really need to put a big sign on it that say that there are jigsaw puzzles in here. Otherwise it's gonna be a funny, weird mouth. Crunchy time, but, yeah, that's nice. I was thinking about scratch and sniffden.

>> Andrew:

Right.

>> Alex:

So, you know, because a lot of wine, as you send the break there, is about getting the scent of the wine. Like smelling it, tasting the, getting the aromas. And you can just put them on there.

>> Andrew:

What? Maybe this is too hard, but I guess an element of Walter and wines is teaching people about wine regions. I guess if it were scratch and sniff or they had some taste to them, it could be more like teaching you to be a sommeliere. Cause it'd be like they don't go together by colour or shape. They go together by taste, by taste, by flavour, by smell, by other elements of things.

>> Alex:

I bet that would actually be all jokes aside, incredibly interesting. Like, across one region of France, how does the taste of wine change across the region?

>> Andrew:

Oh, yes. Yeah.

>> Alex:

So good. And then if you like that jigsaw that, you know, the Bordeaux jigsaw and the Loire Valley jigsaw and the Rhone valley, you know, like, how are they different as well? That would also be really interesting to see.

>> Andrew:

Do they. I don't know if it's too hard for. If they don't clip together normally as well.

>> Alex:

Yeah.

>> Andrew:

Or if it has to just be. They're just squares that taste and smell a certain way and you sort of line them up.

>> Alex:

I wonder whether some people would find it easier if the pieces tasted the same. Like tasted, you know, if you put them together by taste, would that be easier than putting them together by sight, by what they look like?

>> Andrew:

But picture well, I guess with the wine m. various flavours are quite subtle. So I guess it would really force you. It would force you to train your senses to do it.

>> Alex:

I think water and wines make a whiskey jigsaw as well. that would be very clear, like, oh, that's a whiskey one.

>> Andrew:

This is a pt one floral.

>> Alex:

Like, put in the different. Oh, ah, yeah, I be really good. If you want to make the jigsaw easier, though, make it more obvious where the pieces go. Can you do something where all the pieces are different sizes as well as being different shapes? So it's clear, like from the top left corner, this is where the big pieces are. The bottom right corner is. This is where the really small pieces are. Top right is where long pieces are, and bottom right is where tall pieces are.

>> Andrew:

Oh, that's really clever. They sort of merge.

>> Alex:

Yeah.

>> Andrew:

Big to small, going diagonally. So. Well, this is a big bit. So it has to be kind of up there.

>> Alex:

Yeah. So it gives you a region.

>> Andrew:

We're kind of crafting a pretty good jigsaw here. There's like, the bits are just by size of region and they, taste like the region they're from.

>> Alex:

Oh, it's pretty good. I also thought, like, jigsaws are traditionally 2d. You look at a picture from the top down and obviously you want that to be the case with a wine region because you want it basically a map with wines on it. But you could make it follow the terrain.

>> Andrew:

Okay.

>> Alex:

So it's like got a three dimensional element to it. And then that would also make it easier because you'd be like, oh, well.

>> Andrew:

This is a hill. So this go with the other hill, this peak bit. Yeah. And this is a down bit. And this is a peak.

>> Alex:

Yeah.

>> Andrew:

Adding different shapes in that is quite interesting.

>> Alex:

Yeah.

>> Andrew:

More clear and more visually interesting as well.

>> Alex:

I have a nice, little wooden jigsaw upstairs. It's made out of wooden pieces. Got, like, 500 wooden pieces in it. And they're mostly, you know, jigsaw shaped pieces, but they've got quite a lot of depth to them. But every now and then, I think there's, like, ten pieces in there that are related to the puzzle. Sorry, the picture.

>> Andrew:

Right.

>> Alex:

So it's a steam train picture. So there's like, a tiny steam train puzzle piece, and there's a tender piece, and there's, like a pile of coal and some smoke and, like. And those are scattered throughout the jigsaw. It's really nice.

>> Andrew:

So those bits, they aren't shaped like a jigsaw, but they are shaped like a train.

>> Alex:

yeah, like a train. And all the other jigsaw pieces fit around them. It's really cool. Yeah, it's really. My gran famously would hide a jigsaw piece from every jigsaw puzzle that she did so that she could guarantee to be the last person to put a.

>> Andrew:

Jigsaw puzzle piece in that evil, fucking evil, evil genius.

>> Alex:

I wonder if there's a jigsaw that you can make that where every piece is the last piece. So it's like each piece that you put down makes a complete picture, and then you put another piece down and it's like, oh, this is another complete picture. Maybe it's like a series of concentric rings or something. So you get the joy of having put a puzzle piece down every time.

>> Andrew:

So each bit you add on it reveals more, but it's still completed in its own way.

>> Alex:

Yeah, I don't know how that would work.

>> Andrew:

This is why I don't want to. We shouldn't. We shouldn't go back. We should always go forward. But this is why I like the bag idea, where it's, like, the last bit's very clearly marked in a special last bit bag for you ought to argue over.

>> Alex:

This is the last one.

>> Andrew:

Yeah.

>> Alex:

You could have as many bags as there are people doing the puzzle, and then whoever finishes their bag first gets the last piece.

>> Andrew:

It's also on the bags. It could be like, okay, this is a corner. This is a middle bit. This is all the red bits. So then you could. Everyone could just do the bit of the style they wanted to like. Yeah, it's nice.

>> Alex:

I like. It's flexible.

>> Andrew:

Yeah.

>> Alex:

Lots of ideas to it. You got any other good ideas for the future of jigsaws in general. I'm interested in, like, where you could go with jigsaws in general.

>> Andrew:

So you get wine subscription services. Why not jigsaw subscription services? Oh, where you get like 100 bits from five different jigsaws every month. And, after about a year, then you finally have the five complete jigsaws.

>> Alex:

Oh, wow.

>> Andrew:

That is evil. Genius. That is kind of evil, because then you have the. Then as soon as you're locked in, you basically have to go through the whole subscription. Otherwise you only have half of a jigsaw.

>> Alex:

I mean, if you were gonna be evil. Yeah, you'd do that, but you wouldn't give away the names of the wines until the last.

>> Andrew:

Until the last bag.

>> Alex:

Ah.

>> Andrew:

Or if water and wines could, like, partner with a wine manufacturer or whatever, they could put bits. The wine could come with bits. Not in the slight difference. My last idea of having lots of bits of. It's not the entire jigsaw, in a bottle of wine.

>> Alex:

Right.

>> Andrew:

It's like three bits out the side. So if you buy it, where to buy five different balls of wine, you would then have an entire jigsaw.

>> Alex:

Oh, water and wines could sell you the. Like the frame.

>> Andrew:

Yeah. Yeah.

>> Alex:

And then you buy the wine bottles to put those in.

>> Andrew:

Yes.

>> Alex:

Oh, that's real good as well.

>> Andrew:

So it would always be the same bits that would come with a bottle of wine. But what bits you got would depend on which bottle of wine you bought.

>> Alex:

That's the, monetizable.

>> Andrew:

We kind of have a big grab bag of ideas here. Do you think we could pull together into one singular product, one singular pitch that we can give back to water and wines as our suggestion?

>> Alex:

I think, the app, I think there's something pretty good in there.

>> Andrew:

Yeah.

>> Alex:

I think you could pull together some features from some of the things that we've talked about into a really quite a nice jigsaw water on Wines app.

>> Andrew:

I think there, you could even separate out the solver and the Ar thing. I think the idea of having a finished jigsaw and putting your phone at it and it on your phone shows different balls of wine popping out of it. I think that's a genuinely achievable thing.

>> Alex:

I think it's really nice. I love the idea of the three dimensional jigsaw as well, which showed the terrain, also. And you could do that. You could, like, use ar, couldn't. You could scan the jigsaw and it's like. And the AR version of it is all nicely animated and it's like, three dimensional and it's showing you what the average weather across the year is like. So you can learn about why the wine tastes a bit like it does. And you could dig into, like, what is the soil here? What kind of grapes are grown over here? Why does it taste like this? And it's popping that information up at you. It'd be real nice.

>> Andrew:

It's fun, it's kind of playful. It kind of could link into actual wines out there in the real world. You've drank these three. You can imagine going to a shop and scanning, like, a bottle of wine and be like, oh, yeah, this wine is in this jigsaw. Oh, yeah. There's some interesting collect collector's feature thing before you even get into, like, well, this comes with three jigsaw pieces for another set. This is actually just quite nice about being a goodreads or, what's the vin, the wine out?

>> Alex:

Vivino.

>> Andrew:

Vivino sort of jigsaw ar world.

>> Alex:

I think there's a really nice crossover between Vivino and water and wines, where it does use that real data that you've put into. Vivino projects it onto the jigsaw. But, yeah, I love that. Walking into the shop, you scan the label and it's like this. You haven't drunk this wine yet, but it's on one of your jigsaws.

>> Andrew:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

>> Alex:

Oh, yeah. That's. That's real nice.

>> Andrew:

Is there. We're already fleshing this out, but is there like a. Why would you do that? What's the benefit of you going to the shop and scanning it? What are you getting out of that interaction? Is it like, is there something where if you do that, enough, you get money off the jigsaw? Is there something that's like, get money off the wine or there's an exclusive jigsaw if you get enough wine or just pure the joy of the collection.

>> Alex:

Yeah, I think collectivist, like, completionist.

>> Andrew:

Yeah.

>> Alex:

Stuff. You're going to tap right into that. You could totally do it. So that if you. If you tap enough wines, you know, in shops, that you get 10% off your next jigsaw from modern wines. That's totally doable.

>> Andrew:

Actually, you said. And it's that collectivist thing, you've bought this jigsaw. And I was like, I trust water and wines to be good sommeliers.

>> Alex:

Yeah.

>> Andrew:

Actually, if it's on that jigsaw, I want that wine.

>> Alex:

Yeah.

>> Andrew:

It's almost like a marker quality of like, oh, yeah. Yeah, I've scanned this wine ass on that jigsaw, or the other way around. I built a jigsaw, and now I want to go look for that wine. I think that's. That's quite interesting.

>> Alex:

It's really nice. And, like, water and wines could do specific. Like, there are some famous sommelier in the world and, like, your jigsaw is set up by them. Like, it's set up by them. This is the. I, don't know. I can't think of a famous sweat, but, you know, this is. The sommelier from the Ritz has pulled this together for you. This is the wines that they would drink from this region.

>> Andrew:

I guess there's an issue there of, like, you now you have to physically make this jigsaw, but now there's, like, an element of, well, maybe it's just a virtual jigsaw. You've drank the five wines this guy has recommended, and you've created a. Virtually created a jigsaw on your phone, I guess.

>> Alex:

Yeah, it's just an overlay, isn't it? On the top of the. You've. You've bought the Bordeaux jigsaw. Now, do you want the Bordeaux jigsaw information from the guy at the Ritz, or do you want the guy from, you know, the. I'm trying to think of another freaking hotel. The Waldorf Astoria.

>> Andrew:

Yeah. I love this, but I have. Does this. Does this answer Amy's question about the best way to solve a jigsaw? Would it just, ah, to wrap up, what is the best way to solve a jigsaw?

>> Alex:

The best way to solve a jigsaw is definitely pull out the edges and get the corners.

>> Andrew:

Yeah, get the corners.

>> Alex:

work from the outside in and then do the colourful bits that are clearly, obviously doable.

>> Andrew:

Yeah. You can force that with bags. Yes, that's it. Well, I hope. I hope we helped Amy out there.

>> Alex:

Yeah, I hope we helped Amy out. And water and wines. I think there's some, again, some good ideas in there.

>> Andrew:

Yeah.

>> Alex:

Ah, I think there are some bananas ideas in there, but, you know, that's what. That's what people listen to the show for.

>> Andrew:

Exactly. I just like thinking of weird apps.

>> Alex:

Yeah.

>> Andrew:

Yeah. Now they're at the end. We have to thank Rich and Disney Marsh for the amazing theme song.

>> Alex:

I love our, theme song. It's so good.

>> Andrew:

It's so good. If someone else listened to the show, loved the theme song, and wanted to show their gratitude, how could they do that? Alex?

>> Alex:

I can think of three ways. Andrew. I can think of three ways. The first way is open the podcast app of your choice and press our five stars button. Leave us a rating. Leave us a review.

>> Andrew:

Yes.

>> Alex:

That's way number one. Way number two is turn to the person sitting right next to you right now, whether you're on the bus or at work or at a funeral or in a church or in jail or down the supermarket, and say, hey, if you listen to brains on the outside, it's extremely funny.

>> Andrew:

Yep, I think that would definitely work.

>> Alex:

And then the third way is to get an envelope and put 4000 pounds in cash in it and to post it directly to us. If you email us at brains on the outsidemail.com, i will give you an address.

>> Andrew:

That last one, actually, I do love the five stars. I do want you to tell your friends. But that last one would really fucking help us out, guys.

>> Alex:

Four grand in an envelope.

>> Andrew:

Not bad. Not bad.

>> Alex:

We don't get paid for this. Water on wines. Don't give us any money. A whole episode about them. so someone's gotta pay for it.

>> Andrew:

Someone's paying for it.

>> Alex:

Someone's gotta pay for it.

>> Andrew:

Alex, you have one final business idea.

>> Alex:

Yes, Andrew? What about a leadership book that teaches you how to crash a business into the ground? Keep your brain on the outside.

>> Andrew:

Keep your brain on the outside.

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Alex Waterston

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Andrew Blance

Host