Futility Closet - 030-The Oak Island Money Pit

Episode Date: October 20, 2014

Nova Scotia's Oak Island hides a famously booby-trapped treasure cache -- or so goes the legend. In this episode of the Futility Closet podcast, we review the many attempts to recover the treasure and wonder who could have engineered such a site, what might be hidden there -- and whether, indeed, it contains anything at all. We also puzzle over what a woman's errands can tell us about how her husband died. Sources for our segment on Oak Island: "The Secrets of Oak Island", Joe Nickell, Skeptical Inquirer, March/April 2000. Richard Joltes, "History, Hoax, and Hype: The Oak Island Legend", Critical Enquiry, accessed Oct. 19, 2014. Edwin Teale, "Mystery Island Baffles Treasure Hunters," Popular Science, May 1939. D'Arcy O'Connor, The Money Pit, 1978. The image above shows the dig as it existed in August 1931. Below is 27-year-old Franklin Roosevelt (third from right) at the 1909 dig:   This week's lateral thinking puzzle was contributed by listener Nicholas Madrid. You can listen using the player above, download this episode directly, 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 30. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. In today's show, we'll dig into the Oak Island Money Pit, the site of a fabled treasure that has eluded seekers for more than 200 years.

We'll also puzzle over what a woman's errands can tell us about how her husband died. Oak Island is a pleasant little island off the south shore of Nova Scotia, at about 140 acres. And it's famous, or I guess you could say notorious, for what's called the Money Pit, which is the site of what's purported to be perhaps a very great buried treasure that in maybe up to 200 years of digging no one has been able to reach. There are varying accounts of this for different reasons that I'll get into, but here's the basic classic story as it's most often told. In 1795, a young man named Daniel McGinnis was exploring the island when he saw

a tree that had an old tackle block on one of the branches, and below the tackle block was a circular depression in the sand, which made it look as though someone had buried something there. So he recruited two of his friends and started digging. After a few feet, they uncovered a layer of flagstones and saw markings from a pick on the walls. So they kept digging and discovered platforms made of oak logs every 10 feet. So it looked like this was rather elaborate. Someone had put quite a lot of effort into burying something, or digging a shaft at least. They got down as far as 30 feet and had to abandon the dig. or digging a shaft at least.

They got down as far as 30 feet and had to abandon the dig. But they came back eight years later. They'd formed a company called the Onslow Company with all three of the original discoverers and started digging again and dug all the way down to 90 feet. They were still finding layers of logs every 10 feet, as well as layers of charcoal, putty, and coconut fiber, of all things, at 40, 50, and 60 feet. So this is someone who had put quite a lot of work into this.

At 80 to 90 feet, they found a large stone that bore some mysterious symbols. And one attempt at deciphering it yields the phrase, 40 feet below, 2 million pounds lie buried. This is very intriguing. So they got as far down as 95 feet, and at the end of one day, someone jabbed an iron bar into the earth and struck something solid. So they planned to come back the next day and unearth that, whatever it was, and found to their great dismay that the shaft had flooded overnight with 60 feet of water. It appears that the ingenious

engineer who'd set up this whole thing had created some sort of hydraulic seal as a booby trap so that if someone tried to dig down to whatever it was down there, the shaft would flood to prevent them from getting in there. This is very elaborate. Yes. They tried digging the next year. That stopped them for that year, but the next year they tried digging a parallel shaft 14 feet away away got all the way down to 110 feet this is a lot of digging this is a lot of digging 110 feet would put them sort of opposite the supposed cache of treasure or whatever it was and they cut across horizontally and got within

two feet of it and that shaft flooded as well um so that stopped the onslow company basically someone noticed that this water that was flooding the shaft was salty, and it rose and fell with the tide, so it seemed to be connected to the sea. And according to some accounts, there was discovered a network of channels that were designed for this purpose, to sort of connect

the money pit with water communicating from the sea, presumably for this purpose. So that's it for those guys. But then in 1849, some investors formed a company called the Truro Company and dug all the way back to 86 feet. In the interval, which is about 50 years, the man who owned the land, John Smith, had just started farming again.

And at some point, he'd filled in the hole. So they'd dig all the way back down again. Oh. There's an awful lot of industry surrounding this thing. Unfortunately, their shaft, they got down to 86 feet, and their shaft flooded also. But they sent down an auger, basically a big drill, and that passed through, get this, it got down as far as 98 feet and went through a spruce platform, then through 12 inches of empty space, 4 inches of oak,

and then 22 inches of what they called metal in pieces. When the auger came back up, there were said to have been 3 gold links attached to it, resembling an ancient watch chain. Anyway, the auger kept going down. So after they got through the metal in pieces, they went through eight more inches of oak, and then 22 more inches of loose metal, just like the first group,

then four more inches of oak, six inches of spruce, and then seven feet of clay without striking anything else. If you put that all together in your head, it sounds like there's a spruce lined chamber underground that has two possibly two treasure chests one on top of the other made of oak so the auger just passed down through one and then through metal right the other okay and then came

out through the bottom of the spruce chamber and just into the earth below anyway that's what some people think um so uh they couldn't actually reach that treasure, but that's certainly tantalizing. But that was pretty much it for the Truro Company. In about 10 years later, in 1861, a new company called the Oak Island Association made another attempt, and that unfortunately resulted in the collapse of the bottom of the shaft, either because of another booby trap or because there are natural caverns that appear in that area, and possibly with all this digging, it had just lost its support and just collapsed. You can decide which of those to believe, but it meant that the treasure was, if there was any, was even further away. So the Oak Island Association gave up in 1864 when it ran out of

money. I'm necessarily speeding up here because the same thing keeps happening over and over. Further excavations were made in 1866, 1893, 1909, 1931, 1935, 1936, 1959, and on toward the present day. None of them successful. No one's ever been able to come up with any treasure. And I would think, I mean, as the years are going by, you would think the equipment that they're being able to use would be more and more sophisticated, better equipment. Unfortunately, the whole dig site is more and more confused, which I'll get into in a second, because all these diggings are just sort of making a honeycomb of the whole area. Franklin Roosevelt, of all people, participated in the 1909 dig. I'll put a photo

of him. He was 27 years old in the show notes. He and some friends just got together $5,000 to invest in this, just sort of as a lark to try to find some gold during the summer. They approached it by lowering divers down into the hole, which was still flooded and ultimately didn't get anywhere. I hadn't thought about that. That's a good plan, though. Yeah. People have all tried all kinds of things. And this would all be sort of diverting and harmless, except that it ain't. At least six people have died in various accidents because this is dangerous work, however good your technology. So it's kind of worrisome that people might be doing this in the service of something that's not even there.

As I say, the site's become increasingly disordered and confused, but people are still digging now. At this point today, the site's been excavated all the way down to bedrock, but some people still say that if they lower cameras down into that area, they can glimpse chests and even human remains and tools, but none of this is brought back up to the surface. So you are thinking, suppose all this is true, which is not impossible. What on earth could it be? I mean, first of all, if you accept the whole story, then this 18-year-old Daniel McGuinness who discovered the tackle block in 1795, that means that whoever buried this did it at least in the 18th century.

Yeah. With 18th century technology. Right. Also, they engineered it, if all of this is true, at considerable expense. It must have taken a lot of time and planning. And that makes me wonder, how on earth did the buriers themselves expect to retrieve the treasure if it's all surrounded by booby traps like this, designed to flood the shaft or even, you know, release the treasure into some cavern below. And what treasure could justify such an investment?

You know, you wouldn't invest $2 million in burying a $1 million treasure. I mean, it must be enormous. As I was researching this segment, I made a list of all the different treasures that people have proposed that might be down there. So you can take your pick from this list. The most common one is a pirate treasure, perhaps from Captain Kidd or Blackbeard. But there's a whole list of other possibilities. Perhaps it was some treasure buried by Spanish sailors who were shipwrecked on the island.

It could have been buried by British troops during the American Revolution. Perhaps French army engineers were hiding the contents of the treasury of the fortress of Louisbourg after it fell to the British during the Seven Years' War. It might be Marie Antoinette's jewels, documents proving that Francis Bacon to be the author of William Shakespeare's plays, the Holy Grail, the Ark of the Covenant, lost treasures of the Knights Templar, secrets of the lost continent of Atlantis, and my favorite, one man was convinced that it was an inverted duplicate of the Great Pyramid of Egypt filled with wealth and documents explaining the origins of man, placed there by divine providence and destined to be located by 1958. So that one's a little behind schedule.

It's just very inventive. Yeah. So that's sort of the classic story and the classic mystery. And as I say, people are still speculating about this and trying to unearth whatever it might be. But the problem with all of this is that most of the accounts, most people who've heard of this have read it in some secondary account. And most of those accounts were written, the secondary accounts tend to rely on each other. And most of those accounts were written, the secondary accounts tend to rely on each other. And so they sort of retail a lot of sort of what turned out to be dubious details like the tackle block and the three gold links and the cipher stone and stuff.

The people who've looked most carefully into this, who've actually gone to Oak Island or gone through the documentary evidence, are actually the ones, I find, who come away with the most skepticism. There's a man named Richard Joltes who's got a wonderful site called Critical Inquiry who's done a lot of work on this. And he finds that there's absolutely no documentary or physical evidence substantiating the events of 1795 when Daniel McGuinness was supposed to have discovered the original pit, or any subsequent excavations until at least 1849, which is more than 50 years after the site was presumably, ostensibly, discovered.

So that means the whole original story of Daniel McGinnis finding the tackle block and starting to dig and the first company formed to do the digging, with the dug all the way down and discovered the cipher stone and flooded the shaft, all of that, none of that stuff is on the documentary record. There are no contemporaneous accounts of any of that happening. It's all told sort of retrospectively from the first accounts which show up in the 1840s. But wouldn't you think that Daniel McGinnis, I mean, he must have seen something. I mean, or do you think he made up the entire thing the dig and everything or

there's you can there's no definite answer to that but jolte says the money pit almost certainly began as a scheme to defraud investors oh the first three digs correspond to times of great public enthusiasm for treasure hunting. Oh. So it depends. The way I come out on this is you can set your skepticism dial anywhere you want. It's possible, as I say, that the whole classic story is true, all the way back to Daniel McGuinness. But depending how cynical you want to get, it's possible that in the 1840s someone wanted to capitalize

on this public enthusiasm for treasure hunting and sort of invented a story. Made up this whole thing. So there never was a Daniel McGuinness and a tackle block in this original dig that found the stones and the board? Possibly not. The cipher stone and the three gold links have sort of mysteriously disappeared, and there are varying opinions about whether they ever existed

and what they, you know, the details surrounding their discovery. The tackle block, you know, the details surrounding their discovery. The tackle block, for instance, there's a author named Darcy O'Connor who wrote a pretty comprehensive book about all of this in the 1970s. The tackle block is, he says, likely an apocryphal detail added to the story later. If you remember in the segments we've done about mysterious disappearances of people, the detail tends to be added that they had been in the middle of a meal that was discovered half-eaten on a table somewhere. And that's never true.

That's never accurate if you actually go into the details. It's just added because it's such a tantalizing, compelling detail. And that's possibly what the tackle block is. You can find elaborate descriptions of the tackle block in some of the write-ups of this, but they don't correspond to anything in the actual documentary evidence. Also, the notion that there were platforms of logs at 10-foot intervals doesn't appear in any of the earlier accounts. The earliest accounts just say that there were marks found at 10-foot intervals, not oak platforms.

The cipher stone, as I say, has disappeared, and no one knows whether the symbols, often if you read accounts in books these days, it'll show the mysterious runes or symbols that were on it. Those symbols that are commonly published today didn't appear in any documents earlier than the 1940s. So we don't know. It's confused. This is one detail I couldn't even get in trying hard to research all this. Some people say there was a stone of some kind that may have had some marks on it. Some people say that cypher stone didn't exist at all. That whole detail kind of bugs me because it doesn't make any sense.

If you didn't want anyone to discover the treasure, you certainly wouldn't put a marker at any point saying, hey, there's a lot of treasure here. If you did want to mark it, then you wouldn't do it in cipher. If you wanted to put a sign by the side of the road saying Chicago is 800 miles that way, fine, but you wouldn't put it in code that people couldn't read. There's just no reason to do that. Anyway, I can't prove one way or the other, but the point is that those symbols appeared only first in 1949 in a book by the explorer Edward Rose Snow, who sort of got them secondhand. And the stone has disappeared,

so make of that what you will. The engineer who made the borings on the island with FDR back in 1909 by 1911 had questioned the existence of the cipher stone and the gold links and attributed the whole thing to a natural sinkhole of all things. Which, the more you read about it, the more it sounds, at least to me, a bit plausible. Sinkholes and caves appear naturally in this area.

If there were a sinkhole, it would have had the same appearance that the original money pit is said to have had. It would have looser earth in the surrounding soil, and it would contain the remains of blown down trees. I'll give you a couple examples of things that actually happened on the island that sort of support this theory. In 1878, a woman named Sophia Sellers was plowing on the island when the earth suddenly sank beneath her oxen, creating a hole that's known locally as the cave-in pit. That was about 100 yards east of the Money Pit and directly over what's called the Flood

Tunnel, which is the tunnel that leads out ostensibly to the ocean. That's one. Even more sort of telling, I think, is in 1949, some workmen were digging a well on the island at a point where the earth was soft, and about two feet down they found a layer of field stone and then logs of spruce and oak. That sounds a lot like the original accounts of Daniel McGinnis. And, in fact, those workmen thought their immediate suspicion was that another money pit had been found because it sounded so similar,

and that was just a natural sinkhole. Because remember, the notion that there were carefully built oak platforms is not in the early accounts so you can as i say you can make up your mind about how much of this to believe it's as i say it's not impossible that the whole original classic story is entirely true i think that's not been disproven but it seems like there are some good reasons to doubt whether at least some of it is true. And as I say, not a single gold coin has been brought up for all this digging and everything. They haven't, you know, you said people are still trying to dig it today, though, we're still looking into it today, privately owned today. And I think there are still

investors looking at it. But the problem now is that it's a mess it's a whole honeycomb with you know decades after decade of shafts tunnels drill holes borings dynamite what happens is each of these uh concerns starts with a plan starts digging say it digs a shaft and then that floods and then they tend to proceed sort of ad hoc after that they think well let's dig a parallel shaft over there and they do that and they keep going until they run out of either time or money. And at that point, they pack up and go home. But they rarely make any kind of documentary record of what they've done. Oh.

So the whole area is now just shot through with collapsed shafts and flooded. And the actual location of the original so-called money pit is now somewhat uncertain. No one's even sure quite where it was. location of the original so-called money pit is now somewhat uncertain no one's even sure quite where it was so uh you can make up your mind what to make of all this i'm afraid that unless someone actually reaches it we may never know what the whole truth is yeah i think it's kind of interesting the psychology behind this whether there's treasure down there or not when you first hear about these things people have been digging for 200 years. Your first thought, my first thought was, well, if people have been working for that long on this, there must be something to it. People

wouldn't do this for no good reason. And there's a sort of social proof, you know? Yeah. So you tend to think, you tend to assume that other people's behavior is well-motivated, even if there's not a lot of evidence behind what they're doing. Right. Yeah. I think the opposite, which is if people have been digging for 200 years and haven't found anything, then maybe we should think there's nothing there to be found

and people just really like the idea of it. Yeah, so you can make up your own judgment. We'll have photos of the Oak Island dig site as it existed in 1931, plus a photo of the 27-year-old Franklin Roosevelt at the 1909 dig in our show notes at futilitycloset.com. For anyone who hasn't yet seen our book, you should head on over to Amazon and check it out.

Look for Futility Closet, an idler's miscellany of compendious amusements. It's full of hundreds of short, intriguing tidbits, a tantalizing mix of historical oddities, quotes, wordplay, paradoxes, and puzzles, sure to keep your brain amused. See why other readers have described it as awesome and addictive, and small increments of joy. This week it's Greg's turn to try to solve a lateral thinking puzzle. He's going to get to ask yes or's turn to try to solve a lateral thinking puzzle. He's going to get to ask yes or no questions to try to solve a situation and figure out what's actually going on in it. This week we have another puzzle from Nicholas Madrid,

who's given us a couple of excellent puzzles in the past, and we'll see how this one goes. Are you ready? We'll see. I know, it's really hard to feel ready for this. Okay, here's your puzzle. One morning a woman performs three errands. Ready? We'll see. I know. It's really hard to feel ready for this. Okay. Here's your puzzle. One morning, a woman performs three errands.

First, she buys a pair of sunglasses. Next, she sells her husband's entire wardrobe at the thrift store. Wow. Then she has a meeting with her divorce lawyer. She returns home in the afternoon to discover her husband's body on the front lawn. How did he die? Really? That's what you're giving me. That's it. That's what you get. Okay. Is woman's identity important? No. Is the man's identity important? No. Does either of them have an occupation that

I need to know about? No. All good questions. Okay. She buys a pair of sunglasses, sells his wardrobe. Yes. And then what was the third thing? She has a meeting with her divorce lawyer. Okay. She buys a pair of sunglasses, sells his wardrobe. Yes. And then what was the third thing? She has a meeting with her divorce lawyer. Okay. Does she intend to divorce her husband? Yes. Do we need to know specifically why?

Was there some occasioning? Possibly, yeah. Okay. It could help, but it might be difficult to figure out. Okay. Let me come from a different direction. Would all the following things have happened if she skipped buying the sunglasses? Is that just a red herring?

Is that important? You've asked like three different questions. All right. Ask one question. The first thing she did was buy a pair of sunglasses. Yes. If she hadn't done that, would her husband still have died? Yes.

In the same way? Yes. Okay. still have died yes in the same way yes okay um i'm asking you answering your questions exactly as you're asking okay so don't assume anything more than what you've asked does does buying the sunglasses connect to these other things i mean is it part of all right does she intend to use the sunglasses as sunglasses? Yes. Does she use them? Probably.

Irrelevant. Does she use them before her husband's death? No. She uses them after? Yes. To disguise her appearance? No.

To protect her eyes from light? Yes. From sunlight? Yes. This happens after he dies? Yes. Did she intend for him to die no do i need to know specifically how he died it could help

but you don't i mean you could attack this from several different directions okay his occupation is important is the geography or the setting or the um yeah it yeah. I need to know about that. Yeah. Okay. Geography, like the location on the Earth. Yeah. I mean, it's set in a specific place. Okay. In, uh, in this country?

Yes. In the, can I narrow it down as much as far as the state or the city? Yeah. Nicholas has it in a specific state and that, that, uh, is okay east of the mississippi no uh okay uh west uh let's say east of the rocky mountains yes in the great plains i mean yeah yeah so not in the south right uh where are we in the Dakotas? You know what? And if you're just in that area that's close enough, he's got it in a specific state, but that area of the country is good enough to answer this. Sort of on the prairie in the plains?

Yeah. Okay. But his occupation doesn't matter? Correct. But his cause of death might? Yes. Well, it does, yeah. Is that related to the geography?

Yeah. His death is? Yes. is the way he died? Yes. Okay, we're getting somewhere. Was he doing something that I need to know about when he died? No. When he wasn't skydiving or firefighting? Right, correct.

Yeah, nothing specific like that. Okay. Did he, would you say he died violently? No. Did he, was he murdered? No. He wasn't killed by another person? Correct.

Are there other people involved in this that I need to know about? No. Just the two of them? Yes. Okay, he didn't die in a fall, he didn't drown? Correct. Or an accident, some kind of auto accident or something like that. Correct. None of those.

Old age, heart attack? No. Some natural cause like that? What do you mean by a natural cause? Well, I guess some biological event happened, like a stroke or a heart attack or something like that, as opposed to being attacked or hurt by some injury? No, to all of... No, to all of that?

Yeah, not like a stroke or a heart attack and not like attacked or a violent injury. An illness, would you call it? No. You said you wouldn't call it an injury? I would not call it an injury. But you wouldn't call it an injury i would not call it an injury but you wouldn't say it was natural causes well depending how you define natural causes and you defined him as like a stroke or a heart attack so define them differently um is his age important no No. Okay. She came home to find him dead. She came home to find his body on her front lawn.

But he hadn't fallen. I mean, he hadn't fallen out of the sky or out of the house. Right, right. Had he fallen because his clothes were missing? Is it connected with that? No. I mean, would he have died if she hadn't sold his clothes? Yes. He would have died if she hadn't sold his clothes yes he would have died yes and she sold the clothes because she intended to divorce him she was angry with him yes and that's why she sold the clothes yes do we need to know what

happened to the clothes no she was just getting rid of them yes okay and i don't need to know who she sold them to. Right. Or anything more than that. Right. Was she surprised to find him dead? Yes. Did she understand when she saw the body how he had come to die? Probably.

Really? From looking at it? I mean, could she tell from its appearance? Or just she sort of deduced from the circumstances what must have happened? I'm not sure. It could be either one of those. Okay. But probably more deducing, but I'm not a medical examiner.

All right. You say there's some history here. They'd had some fight or disagreement? Not necessarily. Something led her to want to divorce him. Yes. Yes. And she bought the sunglasses intending to use them after the divorce?

I mean, after selling his clothes? No. Well, possibly. I don't know. She bought the sunglasses with some purpose in mind. She was going to travel? No, no, no, no. She intended to be in the sun, and that's why she wanted the sunglasses.

Not exactly like that, no. She bought them for some other reason. You said to protect her eyes. Right. Was she going to be doing something that would expose her to bright light that wasn't the sun? No, no, no, no. No, to protect her eyes from the sun. Okay.

So that's why she bought them. Yes. And you say that has something to do with the intended... Yeah, it's not like a complete red herring. It's in the puzzle for a reason. Okay. Okay. But she's not traveling.

She's not... Right....going to be exposed to any more sun than she would normally be exposed to. Right. Well, why else would you go buy sunglasses? Well, I think to establish an alibi or something. No, no, no. Why would you go buy sunglasses? Why would anybody go buy sunglasses? Well, because I intend to be in the sun.

And why would you suddenly need them? Because I'm going to be in the sun. I don't know where that's coming from. I think of another reason. Okay. All right. Is she not normally in the sun? Is she intended to be exposed to more sun after this than she normally

coming at this from the wrong angle i'm afraid okay um all right how can you figure out his cause of death yeah how can you die there's not natural causes and yet no no i said it is natural causes but not like you were saying not like a stroke or a heart attack okay Okay, and not a disease. Correct. How else can you... Not a stroke, not a heart attack, not an injury, not an illness. Nothing you would call an illness or a disease. Not suicide.

Right. And not murder. Right. And not misadventure. Right. And this murder. Right. And not misadventure. Right. And this wouldn't have happened in Florida. That's why you had to... Does it involve extremes of temperature?

Yes. Okay. Did he freeze to death? Yes. Because she'd sold his clothes. No. No. That's a good guess.

No. No, that's a good guess no no all right that's not it he froze to death because he couldn't get into the house no he froze to death because he was exposed to very cold temperatures because they live on the plains where temperatures get very low right yeah and this must be connected to her selling his clothes, right? Try to put things in order. What order did everything happen in? She bought the sunglasses. Yes. And then she sold his clothes. Yes. And then discovered him dead.

And then discovered him dead. What are you missing? I'm missing why she bought the sunglasses. When did he die? He died. Well, we don't know she came back to discover that he right died on the lawn that he was dead on the lawn so we don't know he bought them she bought them sometimes before he incorrect she bought them after he died she knew he. No, she did not know he was dead. She bought the sunglasses after, I mean, before she discovered he was dead.

Right. That's correct. So she bought them. I'm missing it. When did he die? Figure that out. He died after she bought the sunglasses. No, I keep saying no, he didn't. But then you say she bought the sunglasses. No. I keep saying no.

He didn't. But then you say she bought the sunglasses before she realized he was dead. That's right. There's a difference between when he died and when she realized he was dead. Okay. Work on that. He died. Yes.

She didn't realize he was dead. Correct. Meaning he was lying on the lawn of her house and she didn't realize he was dead. Meaning he was lying on the lawn of her house, and she didn't realize he was dead. And why would that be? In Minnesota. Because she thought he was lying out there for some other reason? No. No.

She thought he was sunbathing in January? No, but what else happens in January in Minnesota? It snows. Yes. So he was buried under snow. Yes. snows yes so he was buried under snow yes he froze to death was buried under snow yes i don't still don't get the sunglasses why would you suddenly need sunglasses when you hadn't needed them previously because the there's more sun yes because it would happen if there's more sun and And there's snow in Minnesota. Oh, all right, the snow melts. She went out to buy some, let me just put this together.

Yes, yes. So what happened first? She bought the sunglasses. What happened before that, though? Well, the weather warmed. No, he died. He died, he was buried under snow. Right.

She does not know. That he's dead. Right. So what does she think has happened that he's left her yes she gets angry and sells his clothes yes it's a warm sunny day um after it's been cold and snowy and returns to find the snow has melted and that he hasn't left her but his body's on the lawn yes okay nicholas says after a night of drinking he staggered home and passed out on the lawn. Yes. Okay. Nicholas says, after a night of drinking, he staggered home and passed out on the lawn just before a blizzard struck. His body lay hidden under the snow for several days. His

wife assumed he had simply skedaddled, and so instead of reporting his disappearance, she hired a divorce lawyer. The first sunny day after the blizzard, the snow melted and exposed his body. Okay. Anyway, if anybody else out there has a puzzle that you'd like to send in for us to try to use, you can send them to us at podcast at futilitycloset.com that's another episode for us if you'd like to help support our show so that we can continue to produce it there are a few things you could do that could really help us out for one thanks to everyone that's already been spreading the word about us. Continuing to recommend us to others is a really big help for us. Also, if you or someone you know would like to be a sponsor or buy ads on the podcast,

please write to us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. Another way to help support us is to click on the donate button on the sidebar of the website. If you're looking for more Futility Closet, check out our book on Amazon or visit the website at futilitycloset.com where you can sample over 8,000 fascinating diversions, perfect for filling 5 minutes or 50. At the website, you can also see the show notes for the podcast and listen to previous episodes. Just click on podcast in the category list. You can reach us by email at podcast at futilitycloset.com. Our music was written and produced by Doug Ross. Thanks for listening, and we'll talk to you next week.