Sugar and Spice, Is It Really Nice 💥 — riddles, saffron prices, and one very suspicious butler

Host: Margie B (@MargieAponte2) with co-host Ryan (@RyanJ8812) · Wed, 23 Sep 2026 · 1:25:40 · 5 speakers

TL;DR

• Margie B ran her Wednesday "Opening Up" hour as a three-part game show: dad-joke riddles, a facts block on what sugar and spice actually do to your body, then spice trivia and murder-mystery brain teasers.
• El Gato Satoshi (@Soy_tu_Satoshi) introduced herself to the room for the first time, from Mexico — and confirmed she is, in fact, a girl, despite what the cat PFP has led people to assume.
• Burningbush (@BurningBush_eth) showed up mid-riddle and cleared the entire board so fast that Ryan and El Gato asked for a handicap; he eventually started sitting out "to help the kids."
• Molly (@SanaeMolly) joined late from Morocco and turned the saffron segment into a cooking lesson — honey infused with saffron, year-old preserved lemons, roast chicken.
• Running gag of the night: the space's alternate title, a chicken-based pun Ryan vetoed on the grounds of taste.
• Closing riddle round ended in a genuine group investigation into why the butler was showering.

Highlights

[2:37] El Gato Satoshi introduces herself. Pulling up just to say hi, she told Margie her energy "is like flowing all over the place" across every space she's in. The two bonded over Mexican and Puerto Rican culture running parallel — the chancla, the food, all of it. Margie complimented the PFP; El Gato explained a friend made it for her, and that everyone who met her in the ecosystem assumed she was a guy.

[4:05] The title that didn't make it. Margie explained the origin of the space's rejected name: a cross-dialect misunderstanding about bichos — which in some countries means birds and in Puerto Rico means something else entirely — and a teenage Margie hearing a friend announce that birds were falling from the sky. She built a whole defense of the pun ("the dicks are chicken, it's chicken") before conceding [5:30] that Ryan exercised "the restraint" and shot the title down. Ryan clarified the original Uncle Corvis context at [6:20]: it was meant to be a bag of dicks you can eat.

[6:36] Babies, Takis, and the cultural starter pack. Margie asked El Gato about toddlers being handed extremely spicy snacks. El Gato's verdict [8:01]: salsa on a taco is fine, teaches the palate — Takis are full of ingredients nobody's body needs. Margie countered that Puerto Ricans skip the spice and go straight to the liquor, and told the story of her dad handing six-year-old her a screwdriver so no guy could ever take advantage of her. Her objection at the time: "Dad, but I'm not going out dating tomorrow."

[14:02] Burningbush arrives and immediately charms the room. Asked what's at the end of the rainbow — with gold already ruled out — he opened with "you are the real pot of gold in life," earned a "you're going to Hollywood," then delivered the actual answer at [14:51]: the letter W. He proceeded to take snake-towels ("his and hers"), heavy-forward-not-backwards ("ton"), the stapler, and Chicago in a row.

[18:22] Three-sevenths chicken, two-thirds cat, two quarters goat. Burningbush not only got Chicago but walked El Gato through the spelling out loud while Margie corrected his fractions in real time. El Gato's defense of her performance, a couple of riddles earlier at [16:31]: "I didn't prepare for this test." Her proposed fix was coffee with vodka in it, and Margie spent the rest of the night crediting every correct answer to another shot.

[27:16] The actual sugar facts. Margie's block on sugar priming the body for diabetes, hammering the heart, tensing blood vessels, and the high-fat-diet link to what she called type 3 diabetes and early Alzheimer's signs. Her practical takeaway [28:46]: there are 38 names for sugar; the ones ending in -ose or saying "sugar"/"syrup" are the honest ones, and the rest are being tested on rats — which she followed with a brief and unexpected aside about rats in the neighborhood asking directions.

[30:14] The wasabi incident. Somewhere between an allergy PSA and a confession, Margie described mistaking a mound of wasabi for guacamole and taking two tablespoons of it off a spoon. She never got to swallow. Her mother, unmoved, laughed and called her afrenta — greedy. "Good for you, good for you."

[41:22] Pepper as currency. Ryan's contribution to the black pepper answer — that pirates stole more spice than gold — led Margie into preservation before refrigeration, and it paid off again at [56:27] when the answer to "what spice paid taxes, dowries and rent in medieval Europe" turned out to be the thing Ryan had said himself an hour earlier. His reaction: "Was it something I said?"

[1:04:42] Molly on saffron. Margie asked how many thousands of blossoms make a pound (75,000, at $500–$5,000 depending where you buy). Molly, joining from Morocco, offered to just send her some and pivoted into how they actually use it: honey infused with saffron, tea, roast chicken preserved with home-preserved lemons that have been sitting a year and gone jam-soft [1:06:05]. Margie, who had just Googled a picture for the jumbotron, admitted she'd never tasted it and thought it looked like hay.

[1:19:30] The car, the cliff, and the phone call. Ryan solved the murdered-wife riddle instantly — the police never told him where the crime scene was — prompting Molly's deadpan diagnosis at [1:19:38]. Then came Mr. Brown, killed on a Sunday afternoon, where Margie's "the chef, because it was afternoon" answer did not survive contact with the room: Ryan and Molly both held that you can serve breakfast at any hour, and the real suspect was obviously the butler taking a mid-shift shower to wash off the evidence. The debate escalated through Alfred, the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, and staff shower privileges before Margie called it.

Topic timeline

Notable quotes

• El Gato Satoshi [3:55]: "The Latin woman we're so strong, we're so spicy, like you say in this space."
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  0:38
• Burningbush [14:02]: "Margie B, you're at the end of the rainbow because you are the real pot of gold in life."
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  0:38
• El Gato Satoshi [16:31]: "I didn't prepare for this test."
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  0:38
• Margie B [47:39], on choosing a grilled cheese over yogurt: "I'm like, shit, give me my bread and give me my cheese. I'm like a rat. I love cheese."
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  0:38
• Margie B [1:14:00], on why salt is the most important seasoning: "Food just would taste like shit."
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  0:38
• Molly [1:19:38], on the husband who drove straight to a crime scene nobody told him about: "He watched too much true crime."
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  0:38

Who said what

• Margie B (@MargieAponte2) — host, quizmaster, and source of every tangent. Ran the riddles, delivered the sugar and spice facts, managed the jumbotron, and gave out hints so generous the room protested.
• Ryan (@RyanJ8812) — co-host and roll-call man. Steady answer machine (paprika, saffron, allspice, black pepper, Shakespeare), explainer of where the elements come from when stars explode [44:24], and the reason the space had the title it had.
• El Gato Satoshi (@Soy_tu_Satoshi) — first-time speaker from Mexico. Took turmeric, cinnamon, basil, and the fat-burning spices, described saffron from memory in two languages [57:55], and maintained that her brain needed more vodka in its coffee.
• Burningbush (@BurningBush_eth) — arrived mid-riddle, solved everything, then voluntarily benched himself so the rest of the class could have a turn.
• Molly (@SanaeMolly) — joined late from Morocco after a busy week. Brought the saffron expertise, took rosemary and parsley, uses pink Himalayan salt, and opened the case against the butler.

Worth a full listen

• [4:05] – [10:47] — The rejected-title story running straight into the babies-eating-Takis conversation and Margie's six-year-old screwdriver. The cross-cultural comparison between Mexican and Puerto Rican households is genuinely warm and can't be summarized without losing the timing.
• [13:22] – [24:58] — The full riddle round. Burningbush's streak, El Gato's escalating coffee-based excuses, and Ryan finally landing "and" after three read-backs work much better at speed than on paper.
• [1:19:30] – [1:22:50] — The Mr. Brown investigation, where the room collectively declined to accept the official answer and built a better case against the butler, with supporting evidence from Batman and Bel-Air.