Futility Closet - 015-The Flannan Isles Mystery

Episode Date: June 23, 2014

In 1900 three lighthouse keepers vanished from a remote, featureless island in Scotland's Outer Hebrides. The lighthouse was in good order and the log showed no sign of trouble, but no trace of the keepers has ever been found. In this episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll explore the conundrum of the men's disappearance -- a classic mystery of sea lore. We'll also ponder the whereabouts of Robert Louis Stevenson's birthday, admire Esaw Wood's quest for a wood saw that would saw wood, and wonder why drinking a glass of water might necessitate a call to the auto club. Sources for our segment on the Flannan Isles lighthouse: Christopher Nicholson, Rock Lighthouses of Britain, 1983. "The Mystery of Flannan Isle," Northern Lighthouse Board, retrieved June 18, 2014. Mike Dash, "The Vanishing Lighthousemen of Eilean Mór," Fortean Studies 4 (1998). Sources for the story about Robert Louis Stevenson's bequest of his birthday: Robert Louis Stevenson, Sir Graham Balfour, Works, Volume 24, 1905. Elmo Scott Watson, "Famous Writer Gave Most Unusual 'Christmas Gift' in All History," Ironwood [Mich.] Times, Dec. 23, 1938. “Inherits Birthday,” Sherbrooke [Quebec] Telegram, Jan. 11, 1934. Here's the deed: Vailima, June 19, 1891. I, Robert Louis Stevenson, Advocate of the Scots Bar, author of The Master of Ballantrae and Moral Emblems, stuck civil engineer, sole owner and patentee of the Palace and Plantation known as Vailima in the island of Upolu, Samoa, a British Subject, being in sound mind, and pretty well, I thank you, in body: In consideration that Miss Annie H. Ide, daughter of H.C. Ide, in the town of Saint Johnsbury, in the county of Caledonia, in the state of Vermont, United States of America, was born, out of all reason, upon Christmas Day, and is therefore out of all justice denied the consolation and profit of a proper birthday; And considering that I, the said Robert Louis Stevenson, have attained an age when O, we never mention it, and that I have now no further use for a birthday of any description; ... And in consideration that I have met H.C. Ide, the father of the said Annie H. Ide, and found him about as white a land commissioner as I require: Have transferred, and do hereby transfer, to the said Annie H. Ide, all and whole my rights and privileges in the thirteenth day of November, formerly my birthday, now, hereby, and henceforth, the birthday of the said Annie H. Ide, to have, hold, exercise, and enjoy the same in the customary manner, by the sporting of fine raiment, eating of rich meats, and receipt of gifts, compliments, and copies of verse, according to the manner of our ancestors; And I direct the said Annie H. Ide to add to the said name of Annie H. Ide the name Louisa — at least in private; and I charge her to use my said birthday with moderation and humanity, et tamquam bona filia familia, the said birthday not being so young as it once was, and having carried me in a very satisfactory manner since I can remember; And in case the said Annie H. Ide shall neglect or contravene either of the above conditions, I hereby revoke the donation and transfer my rights in the said birthday to the President of the United States of America for the time being: In witness whereof I have hereto set my hand and seal this nineteenth day of June in the year of grace eighteen hundred and ninety-one. Robert Louis Stevenson. Witness, Lloyd Osbourne, Witness, Harold Watts. To Ide Stevenson wrote, "Herewith please find the Document, which I trust will prove sufficient in law. It seems to me very attractive in its eclecticism; Scots, English, and Roman law phrases are all indifferently introduced, and a quotation from the works of Haynes Bailey can hardly fail to attract the indulgence of the Bench." A bizarre coincidence: Just before we recorded this episode I discovered that Robert Louis Stevenson's cousin, David Alan Stevenson, designed the Flannan Isles lighthouse! I'd had no inkling of this in planning or writing the episode; the two stories are set literally a world apart. "The Story of Esaw Wood," by W.E. Southwick, from Carolyn Wells' 1918 anthology Such Nonsense!: Esaw Wood sawed wood. Esaw Wood would saw wood! All the wood Esaw Wood saw Esaw Wood would saw. In other words, all the wood Esaw saw to saw Esaw sought to saw. Oh, the wood Wood would saw! And oh, the wood-saw with which Wood would saw wood. But one day Wood’s wood-saw would saw no wood, and thus the wood Wood sawed was not the wood Wood would saw if Wood’s wood-saw would saw wood. Now, Wood would saw wood with a wood-saw that would saw wood, so Esaw sought a saw that would saw wood. One day Esaw saw a saw saw wood as no other wood-saw Wood saw would saw wood. In fact, of all the wood-saws Wood ever saw saw wood Wood never saw a wood-saw that would saw wood as the wood-saw Wood saw saw wood would saw wood, and I never saw a wood-saw that would saw as the wood-saw Wood saw would saw until I saw Esaw Wood saw wood with the wood-saw Wood saw saw wood. Now Wood saws wood with the wood-saw Wood saw saw wood. Oh, the wood the wood-saw Wood saw would saw! Oh, the wood Wood’s woodshed would shed when Wood would saw wood with the wood-saw Wood saw saw wood! Finally, no man may ever know how much wood the wood-saw Wood saw would saw, if the wood-saw Wood saw would saw all the wood the wood-saw Wood saw would saw. You can listen using the player above, or subscribe on iTunes or via the RSS feed at http://feedpress.me/futilitycloset. Many thanks to Doug Ross for the music in this episode. If you have any questions or comments you can reach us at [e-mail]. Thanks for listening!

Welcome to Futility Closet, a celebration of the quirky and the curious, the thought-provoking and the simply amusing. This is the audio companion to the popular website that catalogs more than 8,000 curiosities in history, language, mathematics, literature, philosophy, and art. You can find us online at futilitycloset.com. Thanks for joining us. Welcome to episode 15. I'm Greg Ross, the creator of Futility Closet, and with me is my wife and co-host, Sharon Ross. In today's show, we'll investigate the mysterious disappearance of three Scottish lighthouse keepers in 1900, ponder the whereabouts of Robert Louis Stevenson's birthday, and consider why drinking a glass of water necessitates a call to the auto club.

This week I want to talk about the Flannan Isles mystery, which is sort of a classic This week I want to talk about the Flannan Isles mystery, which is sort of a classic disappearance mystery involving three men who vanished from a Scottish lighthouse in 1900. It's a great story, but I think it's relatively little known, at least in America, and deserves, I think, you know, wider knowledge. It's a great story, and it's still intriguing even now. What happened is this. A lighthouse was built on Eileen Moore, which is the largest of the Flannan Isles, beyond the Outer Hebrides in the North Atlantic. It's about 80 miles from the Scottish mainland. It's a lonely area, and the lighthouse was built between 1895 and 1899, and was first lit on December 7, 1899, and then all the engineers and workmen

withdrew, leaving three keepers to man the lighthouse. And for a year, everything went fine. There was nothing really unusual to speak of. But then on December 5, 1900, almost at the first anniversary of the lighthouse's existence, strange things started to happen. The first one was that a steamer called the Arch Tor, bound from Philadelphia to Leith, passed close to the islands on December 5th, and her captain was able to spot the light. The lighthouse should have been seen flashing. He could see the light, but he couldn't see it flashing. It wasn't doing anything. So he reported that when he got to port, but nothing seems to have been done about it.

That was on December 5th. Three weeks went by, and then the relief vessel Hesperus anchored off the eastern landing of the island just to, you know, bring supplies and interact with the lighthouse men. And it was immediately clear that something was wrong at that point. Three things immediately struck them. First, there was a flagstaff that should have been bearing the flag, and that was Bear. Second, the landing stage where they were landing the boat should have been piled up with provision boxes to be taken for refilling, and none of those were there. And most disturbing, the lighthouse

men should have been there to greet them, and they weren't. And there were just no lighthouse men. There were three lighthouse men assigned to that lighthouse, James Ducat, Thomas Marshall, and Donald MacArthur, and none of them were there. The captain let go two successive blasts on the steam whistle of his ship. Nothing happened. He fired a distress flare into the sky over the lighthouse. Nothing happened. So he lowered a boat and a few men got to the island. One of them, Joseph Moore, who was a lighthouseman himself, climbed up these steep steps up the cliff and got to the lighthouse and found this. The entrance gate was closed, so was the entrance door, and so was the door inside that. He got inside and saw that the kitchen door was open, and through it he could see that the clock was stopped and the fire had not been lit for several days, and there was no one there.

According to the regulations, there should always have been at least one man in the lighthouse, and there was no one there at all. He hadn't met anyone in the stairs either. He hadn't seen a soul on the island. He later wrote, I did not take time to search further, for I only too well knew that something serious had occurred. He went back to the ship and told the second mate of his findings, and the two of them with the seamen returned to the light and couldn't really find anything amiss, apart from the fact that the men weren't there. Everything was in good order. There was no sign of violence. Nothing seemed amiss, really. The light itself had been cleaned and refilled, and they couldn't see any reason why it shouldn't be operating. It simply wasn't.

They couldn't find any sign of the keepers. So they all went back to the ship and gave their news to the captain, and he assigned four men to man the light that night and went back to the mainland to send a telegram to the Northern Lighthouse Board, which owned the light that night and went back to the mainland to send a telegram to the northern lighthouse board which owned the light and the following day they began combing the island looking for clues uh there wasn't much to comb the whole island is only 29 acres it's quite small and they found little that was amiss the the island kind of rises like a crag straight out of the sea there's not a shore properly. It's mostly surrounded by cliffs. So when they were building the lighthouse, they carved landings on the eastern and the western sides with concrete steps going up to the top just to be able to move things up and down. The ship, the Hesperus, had originally anchored off the eastern landing, and that was in pretty good order.

There were still ropes neatly coiled in their place. Everything seemed pretty much as it should be. But on the western landing, the opposite side of the island, the one that faced out into the Atlantic, there were signs of tremendous violence. Basically, the way it's set up, there's the steps coming down to the landing, and above that is set a crane,

which is used to lift things off of boats onto the landing. There was great signs of great violence. There are wooden box that was used to store ropes and crane handles that was up sort of on a level with the crane had been torn from its position in a crevice of the rock 110 feet above sea level, which is astonishing. And its contents were strewn about. Also, the iron railing that surrounded the crane itself had been bent in an alarming fashion, and a large block of stone weighing more than a ton, even above that, had been displaced. And along the clifftop, the turf had been swept away for a distance of 30 feet, and that was 200 feet above high water.

The superintendent who came to inspect this said that it's even worse than it sounds on paper. He said you sort of have to actually see this to comprehend the incredible scope of the violence. But there were no sign of the men. There were no bodies. There was a lot of violence to the equipment, but there was no sign of the men there. I suppose they would know if there had been some incredible storm. Well, I'm coming to that, actually. If you look at the logbook that was kept by the principal lighthouse keeper, this helps to fix the date of whatever it is that happened. It showed, first of all, that there was bad weather all through the month of December. Okay. But the

entries go up until December 13th, and then that's in the logbook itself, but on a slate next to it, ready to be added to the log, are further entries for December 14th and up to 9 a.m. on December 15th. So it seems that everything was pretty normal up till at least 9 a.m. on the 15th. Further, they found that dishes and utensils had all been cleaned and put away for dinner, which was the midday meal on the 15th. And so everything's normal up to the midday of the 15th. And so everything's normal up to the midday of the 15th. And then that evening, that night was the night that the arch tour, this other ship had passed by and seen that the light wasn't functioning. So that seems to say that something happened on the afternoon of December 15th, 1900. But the question is what that was.

And it would have had to have been pretty sudden because I mean, if you take the time to do your dishes, you, your dishes, obviously nothing seems wrong. Which seems significant. It means that things weren't gradually unraveling and getting worse and worse. Things right up until the middle of the day on the 15th, as far as we can tell, were entirely normal. A further puzzling clue there, though, each man had sort of his own favorite set of foul-we weather gear, either oil skins or a coat or something. And Joseph Moore, this relief lighthouseman, knew these other keepers well enough to know who wore what. So there were three different sets of recognizable outdoor clothes for bad weather.

Two of them were missing, but one of them wasn't. Donald MacArthur had a favorite coat that was in the locker. So that's confusing too. If all three of them had to leave because of some calamity, it's odd that two of them would dress for the weather and one of them would run out in his shirt sleeves. It's just another puzzle. So basically that's pretty much the picture we're seeing.

All three men left the lighthouse apparently on the afternoon of December 15th for some unknown reason and failed to return. And then the light was left unattended for another 11 days until December 26th when the relief boat, the Hesperus, arrived. But there were no clues to explain exactly what had happened. As I say, there were rules saying at least one man should have been at the lighthouse at all times, and yet all three were missing, and there was no sign of any of them. No bodies were ever found. And to this day, strictly speaking, that's all we know. No one knows what happened to them. It's a good mystery because there's so few clues, and it's such a small area, and so few even possibilities. That hasn't stopped people from speculating. We've had a century now, and you can imagine every possible idea has been floated. Murder-suicide, a sea serpent, kidnapping by

foreign agents, a giant seabird, abduction by aliens, or some supernatural force that was just disturbed and unhappy that human beings were trespassing on this lonely rock. There's no evidence for any of those things. The best guess, Robert Muirhead, who was the superintendent for the Northern Lighthouse Board, filed his report on January 8th after looking all over the island and thinking hard about it. And he said his best guess was that on the afternoon of December 15th, the three of them had gone down to the western landing and some big unexpected roller had come in and swept them off the face of it. All three of them had gone down to the Western Landing and some big unexpected roller had come in and swept them off the face of it. All three of them. But one guy wasn't in his coat.

Exactly. That's the puzzle there is why were two of them dressed for the weather and one of them not. So it seems like that's not quite the whole story. The best accounting of this whole and most thorough look at it that I've been able to find is by the meticulous Welsh historical writer Mike Dash, who says, quote, whatever happened to the three missing men, it must have happened to Ducat and Marshall first, and that MacArthur ran out of the lighthouse to aid them without waiting to don his coat. Yeah, that's what I was thinking. I'll put his paper in the show notes. It's from Fortean Studies in the 1990s. So something happened to two of them. One of them came running up to get MacArthur. They went running out and then something else

happened. Because you're supposed to leave one guy in the lighthouse at all times. So that would make sense to me that two of them went out leaving one guy behind. Yeah. Unless whatever, and then whatever was unfolding, it was so bad that the third guy ran out. Yeah. So the question is, what could that have been? Yeah, right. Great waves are certainly

possible. One of the things they found is that a life buoy had been fixed to one of the iron railings at a height of 110 feet above the water, and that was missing. At first they thought that it had been unfastened in order to use it, but on closer inspection they found that it had actually been torn from the railings, leaving scraps of canvas on there. So it's not just that the waves were barely reaching up 110 feet. Right. They were actually surpassing that with such force and volume that they could actually tear a buoy off the railing. One of the things Dash found is there was the principal keeper on the island

between 1953 and 1957 was a man named Walter Aldebar, who took a great interest in this and repeatedly took a camera out into terrible weather conditions to record the height of the largest waves. He says that on one occasion he was crouching on the shoulder of the island 200 feet above sea level, and he himself was nearly washed off the cliff. 200 feet. He says a coil of rope lying on top and too solid to be shifted by the wind was washed off.

So apparently on the side of the island that's facing the Atlantic, it's just tremendous seas coming in there. And if you remember, the lighthouse had only been there for a year. The lighthouse men who were manning it were experienced, but weren't familiar with these circumstances and may not have realized how bad the sea could get. How big the waves would actually get. So that is Dash's theory. He thought that what happened was this.

The three of them, everything was normal up until dinner time, the middle of the day on December 15th, 1900. They finished dinner. MacArthur was washing up afterwards, and the other two went down to the west landing to secure these mooring ropes in this wooden box. Okay. They had been, the three of them, fined earlier for not securing that box, and so they would

have been anxious to get down there and be sure it was secure. Okay. And then the theory goes that a wave took one of them while they were doing this. The other one ran up the steps to get MacArthur, who ran out without his coat, but having finished the washing up after the meal. And the two of them ran down and then were taken by another wave wow and the bodies were never found that even in itself that's the best theory anyone's come up with but even that has a couple puzzles that remain if they left if the three of them left in haste why were the gate the front

door and the inside door all found to be closed it's possible that the wind could have closed them, and in fact that seems like what must have happened, but it's kind of creepy that it would have done so. It's almost as if the wind wanted the scene to be as mysterious as possible. The other puzzle is, it's understandable that one big unexpected wave could have come up and taken one of them, but when the other two came down, they certainly would have been wary of that happening again, even if they were trying to reach someone who was in distress down in the water. And yet a second wave come up.

So apparently that's maybe some combination of inexperience and terrible bad luck. But no one's been able to think of a better theory than that. Yeah. Except for sea monsters, right? Right. Or sea monsters, one or the other. So that's all we know. Three men disappeared from a lighthouse,

and all we have are pretty good theories as to what happened, but no certainty. It always seems kind of creepy when you have these stories and you just never know. Yeah. Yeah, this one gets compared a lot. Maybe someday I'll talk about this one, to the Mary Celeste, which is a much better-known case where this British brigantine was discovered just floating in the Atlantic in 1872, and everything seemed pretty, you know, to be in good order. There were no signs of violence or anything, but there were supposed to be ten people aboard, and none of them were there.

And to this day, no one knows what happened. In both cases, it seems reasonable to suppose that there's some perfectly mundane explanation for it. That we just don't know. But the fact that we don't know it still makes it kind of creepy yeah uh one just sort of additional cap on this thing is this robert muirhead who was the superintendent for the northern lighthouse board had to write up the final report which he presented in 1901 sort of supposing what must have happened and And he realized when he was writing the report, he writes at the end there, he had visited all of them as recently as the relief visit of December 7th.

And he says, he realized, I was the last person to shake hands with them and bid them adieu, which means that he was the last one to see them and then found himself a month later having to write up that they'd vanished and no one knew what happened to them. It's just kind of creepy.

The lighthouse is still there, but as of September 1971, it's been automated. So it can't happen again. If there are any ghosts on Eileen Moore, they have no one to haunt. We'll have a photo of the Flannan Isles Lighthouse in our show notes at blog.futilitycloset.com. This episode is brought to you by Trunk Club. I hate shopping for clothes, and I know I'm not alone in that. But with Trunk Club, you don't have to.

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I think it only took five minutes. You just give them your measurements and tell them basically what your style is now. They assigned me to a stylist named Emily Warner, and I spent no more than 10 or 15 minutes with her on the phone. I told her what I'm wearing now, and she asked a few questions. And then two days later, a trunk showed up on our doorstep that was full of wonderful clothes that looked better and fit better than the clothes I pick out for myself. Yeah, it really was impressive how well everything fit, like you said, better than some of the clothes you have in your own closet. And she put together combinations of things that I don't think we would have thought to put together, but they really worked. Yeah, everything did. So I had 10 days to

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It's not a monthly subscription service. They won't send you anything unless you explicitly ask them to. We should note that they only ship to the continental U.S. at this time. Try it yourself. Sign up online, then chat with your own dedicated stylist and see if the service is a fit for you. Go to www.trunkclub.com slash closet. That's www.trunkclub.com slash closet so they know we sent you. www.trunkclub.com slash closet so they know we sent you. From the North Atlantic, we go to the South Pacific. In 1891, a Vermont lawyer named Henry Clay Ide was appointed American Commissioner to Samoa in the South Pacific. So we went there in 1891 and met Robert Louis Stevenson, of all people. Stevenson's health was bad throughout

his life, and he found himself happiest in the South Seas because of the climate, and had just moved there for his own health just a year before. Anyway, the two became friends, and at one point I told Stevenson that he had a little girl back home in Vermont whose name was Annie,

and Annie was irate because she'd had the misfortune to have been born on December 25th, and she said she was thus cheated out of a birthday party like the other children have, which I'm sure she certainly was. My sister was born on the 23rd, and anyone born sort of in that time of the year, if you have a birthday, it gets folded in with everything else. There's so many other holidays and celebrations that you don't get the benefit of a proper party. And everybody's so focused on Christmas.

Yeah. So she was quite right, I think. Stevenson heard about that and got an idea and went back to his plantation on Samoa, which was called Valima, and wrote the following magnificent document. Valima, June 19, 1891. I, Robert Louis Stevenson, advocate of the Scots Bar, author of The Master of Ballantry and Moral Emblems, stuck civil engineer, sole owner and patentee of the palace and plantation known as Valima in the island of Opolu, Samoa, a British subject, being in sound mind and pretty well, I thank you, in body, in consideration that Miss Annie H. Eyde, daughter of H. C. Eyde, in the town of St. Johnsbury, in the county of Caledonia, in the state of Vermont, United States of America, was born out of all reason upon Christmas Day, and is therefore out of all justice,

denied the consolation and profit of a proper birthday, and considering that I, the said Robert Louis Stevenson, have attained an age when, oh, we never mention it, and that I have now no further use for a birthday of any description, have transferred, and do hereby transfer, to the said Annie H. Eyde, all and whole, my rights and privileges, in the thirteenth day of November, formerly my birthday, now, hereby, and henceforth, the birthday of the said Annie H. I. To have, hold, exercise, and enjoy the same in the customary manner by the sporting of fine raiment, eating of rich meats,

and receipt of gifts, compliments, and copies of verse according to the manner of our ancestors. And I direct the said Annie H. I. to add to the said name of Annie H. I. the name Louisa, at least in private, and I charge her to use my said birthday with moderation and humanity et tamquam bona filia familia, the said birthday not being so young as it once was and having carried me in a very satisfactory manner since I can remember. And in case the said Annie H.I. shall neglect or contravene either of the above conditions, I hereby revoke the donation and transfer my rights in the said birthday

to the President of the United States of America for the time being. In witness whereof, I have here to set my hand and seal this 19th day of June in the year of grace 1891, Robert Louis Stevenson. So he wrote this up.

He gave it to Henry Eyde the next day. Henry sent it off to his wife with an explanation, and his wife hung it on the tree where Annie found it that Christmas morning and was delighted with it, you can imagine she'd been freed from a birthday on December 25th and got to meet Robert Louis Stevenson by letter at least

she wrote a letter of thanks to Stevenson and they started up a correspondence, she sent photographs and drawings of herself and apparently raised some metaphysical questions, which is interesting if you give up your birthday, it would seem, you must either vanish instantly or live forever. But it's not clear which. She asked him some of these questions. We don't have her letter, but we have his response.

He said, You are thus become a month and 12 days younger than you were, but will go on growing older for the future in the regular and human manner from 1 13th of November to the next. The effect on me is more doubtful. I may, as you suggest, live forever. I might, on the other hand, come to pieces like the one horse Shay at a moment's notice. Doubtless the step is risky, but I do not in the least regret that which enables me to sign myself your revered and delighted name father. Two years later, Mrs. Ide, Annie's mother, actually brought her daughters

all the way across the world to visit their father in Samoa. So they got to meet finally. And as luck would have it, they arrived on the 12th of November, which is one day before their shared birthday. That was just good fortune. So the next day, right after she arrived, she was guests at a huge feast. Stevenson was very well known on the island, so they were going to have a big party for him anyway and hadn't realized he'd bequeathed his birthday. Right, so it's not actually his birthday anymore. So she sat beside Stevenson at the end of the dais and received many fine gifts and finally got this wonderful birthday she'd always hoped for.

And I guess she could imagine it was all for her since it's not his birthday anymore. And legally, I guess it was. And they repeated that the following year and even added a dinner party in the evening. But then Stevenson died in December 1894, so that was the end of their shared celebrations. Anyway, I'm delighted to say that Annie kept her end of the bargain. She grew up and married a congressman, in fact, but honored Stevenson's birthday on November 13th every year. And, in fact, toward the end of her life, bequeathed his birthday to her niece, her sister's daughter, the British author, Anita Leslie, who's the daughter of the Irish poet Shane Leslie. And Anita, too, honored Stephenson's birthday.

She told a reporter in 1934, My aunt has always kept her birthday on the day that RLS gave her. She will do this, of course, for her whole lifetime. When it comes to me, I shall do the same. My own birthday is November 21st. When I inherit RLS's birthday, my own will join the limbo of forgotten things. I've been thinking about this this week,

and it seems to me that once Stevenson's birthday became unmoored from Stevenson, so to speak, and he bequeathed it to someone else, then it's a piece of property like anything else. He gave it to Annie, Annie gave it to Anita, and presumably it's someone's property now. And if that person's honoring it, then fine. But under the terms of Stevenson's initial document, it seems to me if they're not, then it devolves onto the sitting president of the United States. So I'm not an attorney, but it seems to me that

Barack Obama's birthday is November 13th, as long as he's in office. Only if somebody else isn't using it. That's right. But what happens to Barack Obama's original birthday? Presumably it's not November 13th. I don't know. So does he have two birthdays?

He either has two, which would make him age twice as fast, or he inherits his own again when he leaves office. So his own is suspended while he's in office. That's my guess. Okay, I think so. If you're an attorney, write in and tell us what you think. We'll have a copy of Robert Louis Stevenson's birthday bequest in our show notes. A poem.

The Story of Esau Wood by W.E. Southwick. This is from Carolyn Wells' 1918 anthology, Such Nonsense. The Story of Esau Wood. Esau Wood sawed wood. Esau Wood would saw wood. All the wood Esau Wood saw, Esau Wood would saw. In other words, all the wood Esau saw to saw, Esau sought to saw. Oh, the wood Wood would saw, and oh, the wood saw with which Wood would saw wood. But one day Wood's Wood saw Wood saw no wood, and thus the wood Wood sawed was not the wood Wood would saw, and O the wood saw, with which wood would saw wood. But one day wood's wood saw, wood saw no wood, and thus the wood would saw,

and was not the wood, wood would saw, if wood's wood saw, wood saw wood. Now wood would saw wood, with the wood saw, the wood saw wood, so Esau saw the saw, the wood saw wood. One day Esau saw, saw saw wood, as no other wood saw, would saw wood, would saw wood. In fact, of all the wood saws, wood ever saw saw wood, wood never saw wood saw, that wood saw wood, as the wood saw wood saw saw wood, wood saw wood, and I never saw wood saw, Carolyn Wells writes, No man may ever know how much wood the wood saw, wood saw, wood saw. If the wood saw, wood saw, wood saw. All the wood the wood saw, wood saw, wood saw. At the end of that, Carolyn Wells writes, Well, you don't have to read it. So we had some listeners write in to say that they really enjoyed hearing Greg try to solve a lateral thinking puzzle on the show last week.

You did very well. I did terribly. It was a hard puzzle. This week, I'm going to be the one in the hot seat, which is why I'm being very sympathetic to Greg for having done it last week. So that means Greg's going to give me an odd-sounding situation, and I'll have to figure out what the underlying explanation is by asking yes or no questions. And like he had last week, I'll have three minutes

to try to solve the puzzle on my own. And after that, I'll start getting hints. And hopefully at some point, I will eventually be able to solve the puzzle. But you're better at these than I am. I know. But it's like this time pressure. It's like, wow. Okay. All right. All right. Yeah, I guess so. This is from Orrin Brecker's 2010 book, Lateral Thinking Puzzles, and he says this is actually true. He says it happened after a party in a Leicestershire country estate. You ready? Okay. Joan and her boyfriend Fred, who lived in Stockport, were invited and given one of the ornate, if old-fashioned, bedroom suites for their stay.

The party lasted the whole weekend and was a delightful affair. Catering was superb, and the congenial atmosphere turned the get-together of old friends into an unforgettable experience. On Monday morning, most guests had departed, and Joan and Fred prepared for their journey home. Having finished their packing, Joan looked around as if searching for something. She finally turned to Fred and asked jokingly, you haven't by any chance drunk the glass of water on the dressing table? Fred nodded, and all of a sudden, pand ammonium. Joan had to phone the Automobile Association's rescue service. Less than an hour later, an AA man arrived, hitched her car to his breakdown van, and towed the embarrassed couple home where they arrived after a two and a

half hour journey. What happened? That's a very long, confusing setup. Okay, so the problem is that he drank a glass of what appeared to be water that he shouldn't have drunk. Yes. Was it actually water in the glass? Yes. Just water? No. There was something else in the glass besides the water?

Yes. The key to the car? No. A liquid? No. A solid? Yes. One solid object in the glass?

Multiple solid objects? Yes. Does it matter how many? Yes. The specific number matters? I would say so, yes. Fewer than ten? No. I mean, yes. Sorry, yes.

Fewer than ten. Two? Yes. There were two solid objects. Were they identical? Nearly so, yes. Okay. And he drank them? Yes. Is he going to be in medical problems, or does that matter? No, yes. Okay. And he drank them? Yes. Is he going to be in medical problems or does that matter? No, he's not.

I mostly need to figure out why then they couldn't start their car because he drank something that they needed to start their car? No. Something they needed to get the car to operate properly? No. Something they needed to get into the car? No. Something they needed to help guide their way home? No. Something they needed to help guide their way home. No.

Something that would prevent the car from operating properly if he's in the car with this in his stomach. No. No. Okay, are the objects made out of metal? No. Plastic? Yes. Only plastic?

I don't know. I can't say I don't know. And they must be small enough to be swallowed by a man. Yes. Are they objects you would enough to be swallowed by a man. Yes. Are they objects you would normally find in a car? No. Objects you would normally find in or on a human being?

I can't really answer that. Objects you would normally find in somebody's purse or wallet? Never mind. You can rephrase that. I might have a better chance. Would these normally be kept in somebody's pocket or carried about on their person somehow? Yes. Yes. Because these objects, if these objects were just missing, if they had been thrown in the trash, would they still have had to call the automobile club? Yes.

Does this matter what year it happened? No. This is very hard. They were unable to start their car? No. They were unable to safely operate their car? Correct. The objects had something to do with the safety operation of their car?

Yes. Fuses? No. Would the lights have worked operation of the car? Yes. Fuses? No. Would the lights have worked? Of the car? Yes. Would a specific system have not been able to work properly? No.

No, that's not the case. That's not the case. Some safety system in the car would not have been able to work properly. No. No, that's not the case. But they would have been unsafe to drive the car without these plastic objects. Right. Without them being able to use these plastic objects as they were intended to be used.

Correct. Because these plastic objects were unavailable, the car could not be operated safely. But it could be operated. Yes. Just not safely. That's three minutes, so I'm giving you a hint. Okay. Was this something that the driver would need so the driver would be able to be safer? Would it matter who the driver of the car was?

Yes. It does matter who the driver of the car was. This is some, oh, like hearing aids. It was somebody's hearing aids. That's not it. Oh, but it's something like that? Yes. No?

Contact lenses? Yes. Oh. He drank her contact lenses. She couldn't drive because she was too ne-sighted to operate the car legally. And her husband didn't drive. And no one else was available to drive the car. So without the contact lenses, neither of them could get home.

So the only way to get there was to get the car towed. Oh, my gosh. You did very well. You got it. That's a strenuous workout. That's less than four minutes. It's way better than I did. Good for you.

Well, we'll try another one of these next week, and Greg will be back on the hot seat. Okay. Well, that's it for another episode for us. You can see our show notes at blog.futilitycloset.com, where you can post comments or questions, listen to past shows, and see the links and images mentioned in today's

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