Futility Closet - 049-Can a Kitten Climb the Matterhorn?

Episode Date: March 16, 2015

In 1950 newspapers around the world reported that a 10-month-old kitten had climbed the Matterhorn, one of the highest peaks in Europe. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll wonder whether even a very determined kitty could accomplish such a feat. We'll also marvel at a striking demonstration of dolphin intelligence and puzzle over a perplexed mechanic. My own original post about Matt, the kitten who climbed the Matterhorn, appeared on Dec. 17, 2011. Reader Stephen Wilson directed me to this page, which rehearses the original London Times story (from Sept. 7, 1950) and adds a confirming account from a Times reader that appeared on Sept. 10, 1975. Further sources: "A Cat Climbs the Matterhorn," Miami News, Oct. 19, 1950 (reprinting an editorial, I think, from the San Francisco Chronicle). "Cat-Climbing on the Matterhorn," Sydney Morning Herald, Sept. 9, 1950. "Mere Kitten Conquers Matterhorn," Spokane Daily Chronicle, Sept. 7, 1950. Here's a photo of the Solvay hut at 12,556 feet, where the kitten reportedly spent the first night of its three-day climb: Sources for our feature on porpoise trainer Karen Pryor: Karen Pryor, Lads Before the Wind, 1975. Thomas White, In Defense of Dolphins: The New Moral Frontier, 2008. This week's lateral thinking puzzle was submitted by listener David White. This episode is sponsored by our patrons and by The Great Courses -- go to http://www.thegreatcourses.com/closet to order from eight of their best-selling courses at up to 80 percent off the original price. Also by Loot Crate -- go to http://www.lootcrate.com/CLOSET and enter code CLOSET to save $3 on any new subscription. 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. Please consider becoming a patron of Futility Closet -- on our Patreon page you can pledge any amount per episode, and all contributions are greatly appreciated. You can change or cancel your pledge at any time, and we've set up some rewards to help thank you for your support. You can also make a one-time donation via the Donate button in the sidebar of the Futility Closet website. 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]. And you can finally follow us on Facebook and Twitter. 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 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 49. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. In 1950, newspapers around the world reported that a 10-month-old kitten had climbed the Matterhorn, one of the highest peaks in Europe. In today's show, we'll wonder whether even a very determined kitty could accomplish such a feat. We'll also marvel at a striking demonstration of dolphin intelligence and puzzle over a perplexed mechanic.

Just a reminder that this podcast is supported primarily through our wonderful patrons. This week we're sending out a big thank you to Rick Starbuck, our newest super patron, who has pledged a generous $10 an episode. If you value this show and want to give some of that value back, please check out our Patreon campaign at patreon.com slash futilitycloset. And thanks so much to all our terrific supporters. We appreciate every donation and pledge that we get. About three years ago, on December 17, 2011,

I ran an item on the Futility Closet website about a kitten who had reportedly climbed the Matterhorn. The Matterhorn is one of the largest mountains in Europe. It's close to 15,000 feet tall, and a kitten, as you know, is a kitten, and normally that doesn't seem plausible. But this was reported in the London Times, which is a very well-respected paper. The Times reported on September 7, 1950, that a 10-month-old kitten had climbed to the summit of the Matterhorn. The story was not bylined. It was just said to be written from our correspondent, but claimed that a black and white kitten that lived in the Hotel Belvedere at 10,820 feet,

so it had a bit of a head start. Ah, it didn't climb the entire Matterhorn. That's where mountain climbers would apparently tend to gather as they prepared to try for the summit. The kitten lived in that hotel and would watch these departing mountaineers all the time, according to this story, and apparently decided one day to try it himself. It was a male cat who was later named Matt for Matterhorn. And climbed, made his way slowly up. I don't even know how to tell this story.

Made his way up the mountain as far as there's a hut called the Solway Hut at the 12,556 foot mark. Okay. Which is, I'll put a photo even of that in the show notes. It's a hut that's clinging to an icy vertical wall. It's impossible to imagine any of this actually happening. But the hut is certainly there and human climbers use it. And then climbed, spent the night in the hut and then continued climbing the next day and spent some time in a gully above the shoulder there.

And at that point, another climbing party of regular human climbers passed this cat on the mountain on the third day and thought, that cat's never going to make it to the top. on the third day and thought, that cat's never going to make it to the top, and themselves reached the top at 14,780 feet, and the cat caught up to them, quote, meowing and tail up, and was rewarded with a share of their meal. The cat had gone up from the Swiss side. The mountain straddles the border between Switzerland and Italy, and the cat lived in a hotel on one of the ridges. There are four faces at the top of the Matterhorn, facing in the four cardinal compass directions.

So between any two pairs of adjacent faces, there's a little ridge. Okay. If you follow the northeast ridge down, it descends into Switzerland, and that's where the hotel was. This is my understanding. Switzerland and that's where the hotel was. This is my understanding. So the cat came up in Switzerland, reached the top and then went down into Italy and then was eventually carried back to its hotel where it lived happily ever after. According to all, this is all according to the story. I thought on the face of it, that cannot possibly be true, but it's all reported very earnestly. It's all, it's not reported as a hoax or a joke or anything but a straight news story.

I mean, they, they acknowledge that it's amusing that a cat would do this, but no one says, no one anywhere ever says this is preposterous. It wasn't run on April 1st or anything. Right, exactly. So at the time, this is back in 2011 when I was trying to research this, I went out looking for corroborating stories elsewhere, and I found two in smaller publications, one called The Canadian Nurse and one called The Veterinary Record.

They both picked up the story, but they both credit the time, so they're picking it up from the same source. The Canadian Nurse? Like, I can understand The Veterinarian Record, but The Canadian Nurse? Well, it's kind of a man bites dog story. It's just an amusing thing you can put in as a filler.

But the Guinness Book of World Records picked it up and cited the cat for its feet, and they would hopefully require some evidence. Yeah. But I couldn't follow that any further than that at the time. So I just ran it on Futility Closet saying, this seems patently impossible. Can anyone help explain it? And I just ran it.

The last line in my post said, is this preposterous? Do I overestimate the Matterhorn? Do I underestimate kittens? Can anyone shed any light on this? And I cannot remember whether anyone wrote in about that. Possibly no one did. Certainly nothing dispositive. You know, nothing that could make sense of it for me.

So I just kind of went on to other things and just let it float around out there. I can only think of four possibilities. One is that it was a joke or a hoax or something that didn't even begin to happen. Two is that it's some sort of reference to something that i don't recognize my benighted american sensibilities doesn't understand how the matterhorn works which is still possible three is that climbing the matterhorn might be used colloquially to mean you know climbing some distance up the slopes without actually necessarily reaching the summit so you could say could say a cat that went some way up had climbed the Matterhorn.

But the story explicitly says that it reached the top. And four, perhaps the Matterhorn is a lot easier to climb than I had thought. Or is it possible that somebody carried the kitten up, you know, and then claimed that the cat had gotten there itself? That's possible too, but... Sort of a joke or a misunderstanding, like somebody carried it up and somebody else saw the cat there and it's like, oh my gosh, this cat, you know. All of those are possibilities. We just don't know. And more likely possibilities than that

the cat actually climbed the Matterhorn, I think. I'm not really familiar with the Matterhorn. Is it like really icy? Is this cat climbing up ice or do you know? I mean... It's 14, I'll tell you. Shall I? It's one of the tallest peaks in the Alps. There are two summits, but they're nearly the same height, 14,692 feet high. We have a friend, I should say, who just climbed Kilimanjaro, which is 19,000 feet. It's quite a bit higher, but they're, I guess, at least comparable. And you know how much preparation it took him even to undertake that and how long it took. You can't imagine a 10-month-old kitten doing that.

So, yeah, the Matterhorn attracts a lot of mountaineers even today, but still a number of people die every year trying to get up. It's not something you can just stroll up. As I understand it, the most popular route to get up to the top goes along this Hornley Ridge, which is the same ridge where the hotel was located. But it takes quite a long time to reach the top. And it's dangerous. It's not something you can imagine.

Yeah, and kittens have such little tiny legs. And what would it be eating? Right. And what kind of cat has that kind of determination? It's not a cat-like thing to do. I mean, even humans have to spend a lot of time preparing and thinking and planning and cats don't do that. Okay, so that just kind of eventually faded from my mind. And I got a nice email from a reader named Stephen Wilson this week that brought it back to my memory again. He had found a summary of the London Times story on a website called Little House of Cats, which I'll put a link to in the show notes, which basically goes through the whole London Times story again. So we're still relying on that one source. One source. again so we're still relying on that one one source but as an interesting addendum uh apparently the times has or had a feature uh called 25 years ago where they would revisit stories they'd been

reporting 25 years ago so on september 10th 1975 they reprinted the story um the original story and got a letter in response from a reader named christopher simpson of burstall lester quote who remembered the story of the fearless feline well he gave the date of the kitten's got a letter in response from a reader named Christopher Simpson of Burstall-Lester, quote, who remembered the story of the fearless feline well. He gave the date of the kitten's climb as August 18th to 19th, 1950, and said the Italian guide who carried the kitten down the mountain in his rucksack left him at the Rionde Hut in Italy. Mr. Simpson, along with his guide Alfred Beiner, brought the kitten back with them to the Swiss side of the Matterhorn,

where he eventually reached his home in the Hotel Belvedere. Even more remarkable was Mr. Simpson's recollection that the kitten was just four months old when he made his ascent up the mountain. Is a cat foregrown at four months old? No, definitely not. I mean, kittens are pretty small at four months. So we're not even talking about a cat. It's a kitten. Yeah, four months old, that's a pretty tiny kitten.

So you would agree with me that that's not... I'm not just crazy for thinking this is unlikely. That sounds really implausible, especially for the cat to be four months old, that's a pretty tiny kitten. So you would agree with me that that's not, I'm not just crazy for thinking this is unlikely. That sounds really implausible, especially for the cat to be four months old. I mean, ten months sounds hard enough to swallow, but that would be much more full size at ten months than at four months. Okay, so I went out this week after getting that nice note from Stephen to see if I could find out any more about this, and did find that, in fact, this had been reported seriously around the world when it happened.

In this sort of lighthearted amusing isn't this fun story, but no one said it was crazy and everyone said it did actually happen. And nobody reported it as a joke or a hoax. No. Here's an editorial from the Miami News, October 19th, 1950, reprinting an editorial that I think originally ran in the San Francisco Chronicle. They basically say, hey, this funny thing happened, but they don't doubt it. And among other things, they say, quote, a man can't run up mountain slopes, but a cat can. Hence, we are not surprised that after

having spent the night in a hut at 12,556 feet, supping and breakfasting on mice, he beat a party of humans to the summit, 14,782 feet. It was rather bold of him, though, to descend by the much more difficult walls of the Italian side. So that's the same sort of tone, like, isn't this amusing, but it definitely happened. On the other side of the world, on almost the same day, the Sydney Morning Herald, in another editorial, had a similar thing, just in reporting this had happened and how acute it was. Quote, it is certain that more will be heard of this alpine kitten. Mount Everest looms on the far horizon, where it may stay on the level and try to swim the English Channel. Or again, it may challenge the St. Bernard dogs on their own ground by

carrying a flask of brandy around its neck to whiskey drinkers and others lost in the snow. And finally, this is a story that the United Press ran on September 7th, 1950. I picked it up from the Spokane Daily Chronicle. It's titled, Mere Kitten Conquers Matterhorn. And apart from the London Times story, this is the most straight, independent, earnest news report I've been able to find. So I'm just going to read this. This is from September 7th, 1950. The youngest conqueror of the 14,780-foot Matterhorn, one of Europe's highest peaks, gorged himself today with a feast of young mice and milk. The newest hero of the mountain climbing world is a black and white kitten. He's

only 10 months old. Astonished alpinists returning from a difficult climb up the sheer sides of the peak told about the cat's feet. His movements had been carefully traced by a number of climbers. Several days ago, the kitten, who has been named Matt, short for Matterhorn, apparently got bored with watching climbing parties leave the hotel on the Hornley Ridge where he was born. So without ropes, guides, pickaxe, compass, food, water, maps, and first aid equipment, he started up the steep slopes on which a number of persons have died. His first stop was the Solway Hut at 12,556 feet. He spent the night there and dined on fat, lazy mice. The next day, he pattered up the difficult shoulder, an overhang, and spent the night there and dined on fat, lazy mice. The next day, he pattered up the

difficult shoulder, an overhang, and spent the night there. He was seen by a party of climbers who decided he never could get over the difficult slopes to come. The climbers set out, leaving the cat behind. When they reached the top, congratulating one another that they had made it, they heard Aquarius meowing. There was Matt. He had beaten them there. Matt looked for something to eat, but found nothing but snow. With a switch of his tail, he walked off down the even more dangerous descent into Italy. The cat made his way to the Prince of Savoy hut, where he found a fine feast waiting for him, more fine fat mice.

And that's where the Spokane Chronicle cuts it off, or maybe more, to the story. But if you count that with the London Times story, that's two independent reportings of essentially the same facts. They differ about small things, about whether he got to the top first first and whether he was carried down the Italian side or walked down it. And whether they fed him. And whether they fed him. But everyone seems to agree that this cat took it into its head to climb independently on its own initiative from the Hotel Belvedere up to the peak

and then down the Italian side and then was carried back home again. to the peak and then down the Italian side and it was carried back home again. So that leaves me just as confused as I was at the beginning. And I think the same four questions remain, that either this whole thing was a joke or a hoax, although I found all these different reports from around the world that don't seem to take it that way. It's a reference to something I don't recognize, which doesn't again seem to be the case because these are, again, reports from around the world. Someone else somewhere ought to be as confused as I am, and there don't seem to have been in 1950.

Three, that he'd climbed it but didn't reach the summit. Every report I can find says he definitely reached the summit. And four, that somehow the Matterhorn is easier to climb than I thought, although that last report I read says explicitly that people die trying to do this. Yeah. Maybe it's easier to climb for cats somehow. I don't know. So I throw myself on the listener's mercy. I just need help understanding this. All I can find is reports. It just seems on the faces like this is something that's got to be impossible. But every report I can find says that it did happen, including, you know, independent reports corroborating one another. So if anybody out there knows more about the Matterhorn or mountain climbing abilities of

cats or this specific incident, you should please write to us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. One of the things I like about this job is that I get to learn all day long. That's why I was glad The Great Courses wanted to be a sponsor of our show. I used to listen to their courses before they even signed up. The Great Courses are engaging audio and video lectures that are taught by top professors and experts, and they make them available in a whole wide variety of media, CDs and DVDs, or you can also watch them by downloading them or through

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at Sea Life Park in Oahu, Hawaii. And this particular incident happened in the mid-60s. I think it's 1966, but it's certainly somewhere in through there. She was training two rough-toothed dolphins. One was named Malia and one was named Hu to do a sort of show for spectators at the park. It's sort of the same kind of show that a lot of us have seen at various places where they're trained to go through a series of feats or behaviors for the audience just to show how dolphin training works. And normally that went very smoothly, but this one particular day it seemed to go strangely badly and they couldn't understand why. Each of the dolphins had been trained

separately to go through a separate routine of behaviors. Malia usually went first and did a training demonstration where they would play a sound cue of a certain kind and that would lead her to do, for instance, a jump. She could jump upside down or do a corkscrew or the sort of look ma no hands business of coasting with her tail in the air, all those in response to sound cues. And then she would jump through a hoop that was held 12 feet in the air, which is quite high, which is apparently a very difficult behavior to train. And then they would put her back in her enclosure and take out the other dolphin named Who, who would wear blindfolds, which aren't what we conventionally think of blindfolds, but just sort of a device to cover her eyes. And then they would lower a maze made of pipes into the water, and she would find her way through it just using sonar because she couldn't see.

And then also still wearing the blindfolds, she would retrieve these three sinking rings. They'd drop three rings into the water, and she would go down, locate them, again using the sonar, and then collect them onto her rostrum, her beak, and then return them back to the trainer. We've all sort of seen these sorts of things elsewhere. Yeah, and it's kind of impressive that they do these things. Yeah, even when things go well, it's kind of amazing that they can do them. And the spectators generally seem to like it.

But this one particular day, for reasons they couldn't understand, things seemed to go wrong. Malia went first and came out and did everything she was asked to do, this back jump, the corkscrew, and coasting with her tail out. But she did them in the wrong sequence, and she seemed very agitated or nervous or excited. There was just something wrong. I guess it's hard even for a trainer to read dolphins. They couldn't quite tell what was going wrong. And because this was in front of an audience of spectators, they sort of had to go on with the show.

They couldn't tell if maybe she wasn't able to hear the sound cues properly. When they got to this high hoop jump, normally she'd jump through this hoop that was held 12 feet in the air, she fell far short of that. She did try for the jump, but just couldn't get through it. So the trainer lowered the hoop to about 6 feet, and she went right through it, but without waiting for the signal first. So something is still wrong, and they still can't tell what it was.

She still seemed nervous, but her part of the show was over, so they just put her back in her enclosure so she could just wait and watch and see the next dolphin named Who come out and do this blindfold business, hoping for better results there. But the same thing seemed to be wrong, whatever it was. The second porpoise came out, and they had difficulty, first of all, getting her to accept the blindfolds. They kept falling off, and they'd have to get her to go down to the bottom of the tank and retrieve them. That happened twice. Finally, they got the blindfolds on and lowered this maze of pipes down into the water.

She got through that and then they put these three sinking rings into the water. And she did manage to get all the rings, but normally she could get them in one go. And here she had to retrieve them one at a time. And still seemed agitated and nervous, and something just seemed distinctly wrong. But they again couldn't tell what the problem was. So finally they came to the end of the show, and Karen Pryor just told the audience, Something seems to be wrong today. I don't quite understand why Malia got her sound cues mixed up,

and who wouldn't really accept the blindfolds very well. So she sort of apologized for that, and the show ended, and the audience started to get up to go. And Ingrid Kang, the trainer, came to her and said, you know what happened? She said no, and she said, we got the animals mixed up. Someone put Malia in who's holding tank and who in Malia's holding tank. They look so much alike now that I never thought of that. Before, who had been somewhat smaller but had been growing, so now they were sort of indistinguishable. So they were each trying to do the other's routine without ever having done it before? Yeah, just to explain

what that means, because it's kind of incredible. Each of these dolphins had been trained to do a separate repertoire of behaviors, not each other's, and had only been able to observe the other through the gate of their own enclosure during the training. But had never done it themselves before. Yeah, the only overlap in the training at all, Karen Pryor says, is that Malia, the forest dolphin, had been conditioned to accept blindfolds if they were put on her. But that's it. She had never gone through the maze or retrieved the rings or anything. Yeah, okay.

And the other one had never actually jumped through a hoop held high up off the water. Right, which that hoop trick apparently takes, in particular, normally takes weeks to train. So they did this for the first time, each of them, in front of a paying crowd of spectators, without ever having been trained or rewarded for this behavior before. And probably not understanding why they're suddenly being asked to do it and both did it gamely and did it well enough to fool their own professional trainers into thinking that they were the other animal without wow and they could tell something was wrong but otherwise they were completely fooled which is kind of amazing in her book karen prior writes i stopped the departing audience and told them what i they had just. I'm not sure how many understood or believed it. I still hardly believe it myself. I actually read about this not in Karen Pryor's book,

although I have that now, but first in a book by the philosopher Thomas White that he wrote in 2008 called In Defense of Dolphins. White is interesting. He teaches conventional philosophy, but he also spends part of his time working with the Wild Dolphin Project, which has been studying a community of wild Atlantic spotted dolphins in the Bahamas. And he's been doing that for more than 20 years. So apart from doing sort of regular philosophy, he sort of does a lot of thinking about dolphins in particular and just how their minds work and what it means about philosophy of mind and things like that. And he makes the point that this, even though it wasn't intended as a experiment, you know, it just sort of happened.

He says the experience shows that, or suggests that Malia and who have sophisticated cognitive abilities, he says, if their training were attributable entirely to conditioning, if they just been sort of mindlessly delivering a behavior in response to the stimulus, because they expected to get a reward, Then if they were presented with a mistaken cue, as both of them were here, you'd expect them to do nothing, right? He says either that or they

might mistakenly do what they themselves had already been taught, or they could offer random or innovative behaviors. And that's not what happened. He says, quote, the fact that these two dolphins did none of these and instead tried to do what they were being asked to do suggests that their actions were the product of cognitive abilities that are stronger than their disciplined formal conditioning. He says it looks like they were each apparently came to understand on their own spontaneously and informally the behaviors and the cues that the other one was learning. And so they could deliver it when, when it seemed to be expected and they seem to be self-motivated to do this. They hadn't been led to expect a reward. These were all just, all they had done is observe the other one being trained. It's just very impressive.

It's really similar to the kitten in some ways, um, because apparently the kitten watched other people climb the Matterhorn and didn't expect a reward for it, but thought, well, they're climbing the Matterhorn, I suppose I should go do that too. That's funny you say it, because the news stories explicitly say that. Like it kind of watched all these human mountain climbers leave the hotel and go up the mountain and eventually just follow them. So we just have here two very good examples of observational learning. Right.

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slash closet and enter code closet or see our show notes for the link. This week I'll be attempting to solve a lateral thinking puzzle. Greg's going to pose me some unusual sounding situation and I'm gonna do what I can with it asking only yes or no questions. This one was submitted by listener David White. He says he's adapting it from a puzzle he heard given on the NPR program Car Talk years ago. Jeff had a problem that required him to have his car towed to the garage. After his car was dropped off, Jeff walked to a nearby restaurant to have lunch while he waited. During his lunch, the mechanic at the garage called Jeff and told him, I'm sorry, I can't seem to find anything wrong with your car. Jeff replied, well, I'm not surprised to hear that. After a further explanation from Jeff, the mechanic said, oh, I see. Sure, I can get that fixed. A few hours later, the problem was fixed and Jeff drove

his car back home. What problem had been fixed? Okay. This is an automobile that was towed to, like, full size that people would drive inside of. Yes. Like, not a model car. Right, correct, yes. A passenger car like we own that we drive around in? Yes. Okay, so not some not a model car. Right, correct, yes. A passenger car like we own, that we drive around in? Yes. Okay, so not some specialty kind of car. Correct. Just checking. Okay.

The mechanic could not initially find a problem with the car. Correct. Jeff had had the car towed to the garage. Is that because he could not get the car to start? No. Is that because he felt that the car would be unsafe to drive? No. Is that because he thought that he would be unsafe to drive it?

Like, that his driving the car would be unsafe? No. No. Is that, okay. Is Jeff the usual owner, the usual driver of this car? Yes. Is he intending to still be usual driver of this car? Yes. Is he intending to still be the driver of this car? Yes.

So they're not trying to, like, is it that they're trying to specially outfit the car to accommodate some kind of disability or disadvantage? No. No, so they're not trying to, like, outfit the car for people that can't use their feet any longer. No, good guess. Or have a hearing impairment or something. Okay. All right. feet any longer. No, good guess. No, that's not it. Hearing impairment or something. Okay.

All right. Jeff had the car towed to the garage because he thought it would be unsafe to be driven there. No. Because he... Can Jeff drive? Yes. Did he feel it would be unsafe for him to drive the car to the garage? I feel like there's something to do with safety here. No. Is there something to do with safety here? Yes. Yes. It would have been unsafe for somebody else to drive the car? No. It would have... Okay. He had the car towed to the garage because there was some kind of safety issue.

The answer to that question is yes. Safety concern. Yes. With Jeff. What do you mean with Jeff? Safety concern applying specifically to Jeff. Like somebody else would have been safe to drive the car, but not Jeff. No, that's not correct.

Okay. There would have been a safety issue. Okay, there was some safety issue with the car. No. No. There was some safety issue with where the car was going to be driven or how it was going to be driven. No. That's all no. No. No. There was some safety issue with where the car was going to be driven or how it was going to be driven. No. That's all no. No. But there's still some safety issue. It's not that the car needs to be fixed. It's something needs to be changed to make it safer

to be driven. No, that's not right. That's not right. Something needs to be fixed. You would say that something needs to be fixed about the car? No, I would not. No, you would not right. That's not right. Something needs to be fixed. You would say that something needs to be fixed about the car? No, I would not. No, you would not. But not that something needs to be changed. Something needs to be added. No. Something needs to be taken away.

You're trying so hard. No. All right, I can try less hard. Okay, so it is not that the car needs to be fixed, changed, have something added, or have something taken away. That's all correct. That's all correct. But something is still done to the car? No.

Nothing is done to the car. That's right. But something was done to the tow truck that towed the car to the garage. Yes. Okay. Does Jeff own the tow truck? Yes. Very good. Jeff is the tow truck? Yes. Very good.

Jeff is the tow truck driver. Jeff is a driver of a tow truck? Jeff is a driver of a tow truck. And he towed a car to the garage. No. No. He towed his car to the garage. I thought, read me the puzzle again. Jeff had a problem that required him to have his car towed to the garage. After his car was dropped off, Jeff walked to a nearby restaurant to have lunch. Okay, wait, wait, wait.

Jeff had a problem that required him to have his car towed to the garage. Right. Jeff owns a car. Yes. There was a problem with Jeff's car. No. Jeff had a problem that required him to have his car towed to the garage. He had a problem with the tow truck, and in order to drive the tow truck safely, it needed to somehow be towing a car. God, you're so good. I'm so good. I feel

like I don't know what I'm doing. Yes, that's all correct. That's all correct. So I have to figure out what kind of problem you could have with a tow truck so that you could drive the tow truck while it's towing a car, but you, oh, something to do with the rear lights of the tow truck? Like you wouldn't see it breaking or you, like the directional to do with the rear lights of the tow truck? Like you wouldn't see it braking or you, like the directional lights were out or something. Okay. So you're on the right track, but no. So, so, okay. So it's safer to drive the tow truck when the tow truck has a car behind it than to drive the tow truck without the car. Yes. Well, why would that be? And it's got nothing to do with the rear lights. Okay, I have no idea.

Something to do with the brakes? Yes. Something to do with the brakes. And how does towing a car help? It makes the whole thing heavier? I'm really at a loss here. Something to do with the brakes of the tow truck. Correct.

But not the brake lights. That's right. You're very close. He thought it would be easier to brake the tow truck if it was towing a car. Right. Because they were going to have somebody in the car who would apply the brakes of the car. Yes, my God. Oh, my gosh.

This is really complicated. Oh, my gosh. Okay, I want like three gold stars for this. You should get them. Do I have it? Am I done? You basically have it. I'll read it to you.

I can't believe you got that in about six minutes. I think I lost ten pounds trying to solve that. Here's David's write-up. What the mechanic hadn't realized was that the problem wasn't with Jeff's car. It was with a tow truck. Jeff is the owner of a towing company, and unfortunately the brake lines on his truck have failed. The garage is only a few blocks away, but since his tow truck has no working brakes, there's no way Jeff can drive it there safely. But throwing caution to the wind, Jeff comes up with another plan. He hooks up the front wheels

of his own car to the tow truck and rides in the raised car while his wife carefully begins to drive the tow truck. Whenever they come to a stop sign, Jeff applies the brakes, which are on the rear wheels, on his car, bringing it and the tow truck to a stop. Jeff and his wife leave both the car and the tow truck at the garage and walk downtown to lunch. Unfortunately, the mechanic is confused about which of the two vehicles needed service. After Jeff explains the situation, the mechanic repairs the tow truck, which Jeff's wife later drives home, followed by Jeff in his car. Okay, I don't recommend anybody try that.

Yeah, David says don't try this planet, huh? Definitely do not. Okay, terrific. Thanks, I don't recommend anybody try that. Yeah, David says don't try this planet. Definitely do not. Okay, terrific. Thanks, David. And if anybody else has a puzzle they'd like to send in for us to use. Yeah, send us more puzzles. We're running low. Yes, we always can use more puzzles. Please send them to us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. That wraps up another episode for us. If you're looking for more Futility Closet, you can check out our books on Amazon. Follow us on Twitter or Facebook. Or visit the website at futilitycloset.com, where you can sample over 8,000 intriguing diversions. At the website, you can also see the show notes for the podcast and listen to previous episodes.

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or by clicking the Donate button on the sidebar of the website. If you have any questions or comments about the show, 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.