Futility Closet - 050-The Great Tea Race

Episode Date: March 23, 2015

In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll follow the dramatic 14,000-mile clipper ship race of 1866, in which five ships competed fiercely to be the first to London with the season's tea. We'll also track the importance of mulch to the readers of the comic book Groo the Wanderer and puzzle over the effects of Kool-Aid consumption on a woman's relationships. Jack Spurling's 1926 painting Ariel & Taeping, China Tea Clippers Race, above, depicts two of the front-runners in the closely contested 1866 race to carry the season's first tea from China to London. The winner remained uncertain throughout the 14,000-mile course; the Shipping and Mercantile Gazette declared it "the closest run ever recorded ... an event of unprecedented occurrence." Our sources for that segment: Basil Lubbock, The China Clippers, 1914. Mike Dash, "The Great Tea Race of 1866," smithsonian.com, Dec. 15, 2011 (accessed March 16, 2015). The Shipping and Mercantile Gazette, Sept. 12, 1866. John T. Irwin, Hart Crane's Poetry, 2011. Filing Cabinet of the Damned reports on the significance of mulch to Groo the Wanderer. This week's lateral thinking puzzle was submitted by listener Nick Madrid. 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. 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 The 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 50. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. In today's show, we'll follow the dramatic 14,000-mile clipper ship race of 1866 as five ships competed fiercely to be the first to London with the season's tea. We'll also track the importance of mulch to the readers of the comic book

Grew the Wanderer, and puzzle over the effects of Kool-Aid consumption on a woman's relationships. A quick update on our Patreon campaign. We have now passed 70% of the goal that we had set for continuing the show. Our podcast is supported primarily through our amazing patrons, so if you value our 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 of our wonderful

supporters. We really appreciate every donation and pledge that we get. This is the story of the great tea race of 1866. I really like this one for some reason. I mean, I like all of them, but this one was just the more I researched it, the more fun it got. It's basically the story of a race in 1866, halfway around the world, to carry the first crop of tea from China to the ports of London. In the 1800s, English people loved their tea just as much as they do now, and the main center for tea production was China. Famously, the British East India Company had a monopoly on that trade, but they lost the monopoly in 1834. And after that, it became sort of just a competition among other different carriers to bring the tea around to London each year.

What happened was that people who sold tea to Londoners and to English people in general found that they could charge extra if they were able to say, this is the very first tea off the very first ship into the docks this year. People would pay more for that, understandably. So realizing this, the merchants turned to the freight companies that carried the tea and said, all right, here's a deal. Whichever ship is the very physically first one to come into the dock each year carrying the very first crop of tea from China will pay you a premium, whatever that is, say a pound, a ton, just some extra money to be the very first crop of tea from China will pay you a premium,

whatever that is, say a pound, a ton, just some extra money to be the very first one in. And once they had done that, they turned the whole thing into a race. It was never organized formally as a race, but that's what it was by any description. Well, yeah, once you offer a prize for being first. Every year there was this huge competition among these beautiful, gorgeously efficient, they were called tea clippers, clipper ships that were just, everything about them was designed for speed and efficiency, to load up at what's now called Wuzhao. It's Fuchao is what they called it in the 19th century. This port in China, they'd load up the T as soon as it was available and then start off on this breakneck race down through the China Sea,

the Indian Ocean, around Africa, and up through the Atlantic to get to England. This happened every year, and the tea races, as they were called, started in 1845 and went up through the 1870s. But the most exciting one and the most famous one, sort of the peak of this whole phenomenon, was in 1866, which is the one I'm going to talk about now, both because that was sort of the peak of public interest in it and because this particular race ended in just a jaw-droppingly close finish. It's astounding considering the technology of the time that it was as close as it

was. The whole thing started, there were a lot of ships vying for this, but really only five of them were the front runners. They were called the Ariel, the Fiery Cross, the Sarika, the Taizing, and the Taiping. And they were all sort of world-class T-clipper ships. The Fiery Cross, in fact, had come home first every year in this competition from 1861 to 1865, except for 1864 when the Sarika won, and that's another one that's vying in this same competition. One thing that strikes me about all of this is this is relatively recent. I mean, if you, or at least if I, think about the great age of sailing ships, you think of the 18th century.

But this is 1866. This is after the American Civil War. This is sort of the age of Twain and Dickens and the settling of the American West. So it's relatively recent. Those were the main five front front runners in this race and there was attention around the world even before it began on the contest in 1914 the British marine author Bass of Lubbock wrote in his book the China Clippers quote it is possible that no race ever sailed on blue water created so much excitement as the great tea race of 1866.

For some years past, the public interest had been growing until it had now come to pass that even those who dwelt in sleepy inland villages looked eagerly down the shipping columns of the morning papers for news of the racing clippers. It was just a worldwide... It's funny that it's not better known now, because that wasn't really that long ago, and it was a huge worldwide deal at the time. I wonder, there was probably like side bets and... Yeah, there were races, there were bets around the world in fact they would report the progress of the race by telegraph even as the ships were plying their way around the oceans to try to

get there so so there was betting not just in england but in hong kong and everywhere about the outcome i hadn't thought about that about the telegraph making it possible for everybody to keep up so much more you know more than they could have, you know, decades earlier. It's interesting because it's such, you kind of think of sailing ships as relatively low tech, but it's all, it's existing in the world at the same time with telegraphs and other kind of higher tech communication. It's just a really interesting time of history. I should declare at the beginning here that I have a favorite. I don't know why I can't defend this, but the Ariel just sounds like a really lovable ship. Her captain was named John Kay, and he called her, quote, a perfect beauty

to every nautical man who saw her. In symmetrical grace and proportion of hull, spars, sails, rigging, and finish, she satisfied the eye and put all in love with her without exception. Very light airs gave her a headway, and I could trust her like a thing alive in all evolutions. As I said, these ships were just designed in every particular for speed and grace and efficiency. The aerial could set 30 or more sails. She flew more than 26,000 square feet of canvas, making her just unbelievably fast. And they could get up to 11 or 12 knots in reasonable conditions in these ships, which have almost entirely passed away, which is sad. So at the start of this, all these ships were in the port at Fuzhou, and each is surrounded by Chinese lighters, these Chinese little ships that bring out the tea in actual handmade chests and pack it into your ship for you.

handmade chests and pack it into your ship for you. The aerial actually set a record in getting the whole cargo stowed in four days and managed to get out of the port before any of the other ships, which immediately created a panic among everybody else. In fact, the fiery cross was so worried about aerial's early departure from the port that he left as soon as his own loading was complete without even finishing the paperwork, which made everyone else furious. So they got out of the port and down the river,

the Min River, to sort of exit into the, begin the race into the China Sea. There's a sandbar there. Some of these are just happenstance, which is unfortunate. In order to get over the sandbar, you have to wait for the tide to rise. And Ariel had a somewhat deeper draft than the other. So she had to wait a bit longer, which means that Fiery Cross got out over the bar before she did and got a head start of 14 hours,

which is significant. That's a lot. But they're off. And basically from here on, Fiery Cross had this head start and three of of the other frontrunners, Taiping, Sirica, and what was the other one? There's one other that were, three were neck and neck. Ariel, Taiping, and Sirica were behind Fiery Cross. But they're all leaving on the same time. They're all leaving basically at the same time. And news reports were already beginning to appear in British newspapers. This was started at the early summer of 1866, June 11th.

How long did these races take in total, usually? I mean, like weeks or? About three months. Oh, three months. About 100 days, all the way from China around to London. Okay. So you'd think just chance and circumstance would tend to spread them out. Yeah, like 100 days.

I mean, yeah. So you'd have a frontrunner who would just sort sort of keep the lead and that's not at all what happened this was neck and neck all the way up almost all the way up until the very end uh the five ships all these five front runners all headed out for the sunda strait which goes between java and sumatra and then down along the coast of what's now called vietnam and past borneo uh occasionally they were so close that they'd actually see one another, see the men on each other's ships. Fiery Cross had started with a 14-hour lead coming out of Fuchao and actually reached

the exit of the China Sea in 20 days, which was quite fast. Taiping and Ariel were two days behind her and then Sirica another day after that. But already chance and the weather and other factors were starting to change that. The weather even things out in the Indian Ocean and the Cape of Good Hope. So you come down through the China Sea across the Indian Ocean and then down around the southern end of Africa and then back up into the Atlantic. By the time they reached the island of St. Helena in the South Atlantic, the Taiping with Captain

Donald McKinnon had overtaken the Fiery Cross, which had had this head start, and led her by 24 hours, and Ariel and Sarika were only a day further behind. So the fifth ship, Sightseeing, was actually behind and wound up coming in fifth. They were never really in the lead.

But the other four are really, it's anyone's guess who was going to win. Sarika, in particular, I mentioned, had won in 64 and was the newest and lightest of these ships. And her captain had this fiery tempter. So as they were crossing the equator, he passed Tai Ping, which was now in the lead. So they keep overtaking one another, and there's no clear winner. And Ariel was gaining two. So all four of them are neck and neck, and it's too close to call as they pass the Azores together on August 29th, with Tai Tsing 48 hours behind. So now they're approaching England, and it's still just four ships all the way. It's been basically, I think, 97 days at this point,

and they're all just about neck and neck. On September 5th, the Ariel sighted the Bishop Light, this famous lighthouse off the Cornish coast, and now they're speeding toward the English Channel, all four of them. Ariel's got every stitch of sail set, but it's still just neck and neck. It's too close. At daybreak, another ship appeared on her starboard quarter, and the captain said, instinct told me that it was the Taiping, and he was right. So they're now literally right next to each other, just racing up the English Channel at 14 knots. Ariel kept a slight lead all day, but it's Ariel and Taiping in the lead now, and then the Fiery Cross and Tsurika just behind them.

Yeah, 97 days at this point, and still too close to call. At 3 a.m. on the 6th, the aerial approach Dungeness began signaling for a pilot. You need a pilot. You can't just sail into the Port of London on your own because there's just too much traffic. You have to get a pilot to sort of conduct you through there, and then eventually get a tugboat to just, you know, make sure you can get through it without any incident. So you're not entirely under your own power at this point. But at 3 a.m. on the 6th, Ariel was signaling for a pilot. And Taiping came up fast and was astern at 5 a.m., which is only two hours later.

So they're both signaling for pilots now. At 5.55 a.m., a pilot boards Ariel and congratulated the captain on being the first ship from China that season. And, okay, the captain said, yes, and what is that to the westward? We have not room to boast yet because Taiping was right there. They'd both been racing for three months and were still neck and neck. By 6 a.m., both of the ships were underway

with Ariel about a mile ahead. They get to deal on the Kentish coast, which is sort of the unofficial finish line. And Taiping was only 10 minutes behind at that point. It's getting actually closer. And both ships now need a tugboat to get the final last little bit up the Thames into London. Both ships are

signaling for a tug, and by chance Taiping got the better tug. This is the same difficulty they had in getting out the Min River into the China Sea, getting over the bar. A lot of this is just luck of which tugboat you happen to get and which one is better. So Taiping got the better tug and took the lead as they were towed around the coast of Kent and into the Thames.

Taiping reached Gravesend 55 minutes before Ariel, but now they both had, so now the premium that I talked about goes to whichever ship literally physically gets into the dock first. Okay. And it's still too close to call. So it's still not over for Ariel yet. No. We're still pulling far. Now at this point, the tide is too low for them to get into the dock,

so they're both waiting to see which we can get in. There are different docks to choose from. Ariel arrived at the East India dock at 9 p.m., but still had to wait the tide. And Tai Ping went upriver to the London docks. And remember, Ariel has a relatively deep draft, so it has to wait a little bit longer. So Taiping, her shallow draft allowed her to get through the gates,

and a lock topped up to allow her to dock at Taiping docked at 9.47 p.m., and Ariel docked at 10.15 p.m., a difference of 28 minutes. And then Sarika managed to get in on the West India dock at 11.30 p.m., an hour and 15 minutes after the aerial. So just to sum this up, which is astounding, this meant that the three ships had left China on the same tide, sailed 15,800 nautical miles, which is about twice the diameter of the Earth, in a race that lasted 99 days,

and they all docked in London on the same tide with less than two hours between them. In fact, the first two, the front runners, had 28 minutes between them. Even better than that, as I said, when you start to approach London, you have to get involved with pilots and tugs and other people helping you along. So unofficially, a lot of people regard a deal on the Kentish Coast as the unofficial finish line because that's where your your run is over and you start just sort of getting helped along ariel arrived at deal 10 minutes before taiping which if you work it out means that ariel's winning time was seven one thousandth of one percent faster than taiping's using 18th century clipper ship technology wow which shows you how unbelievably efficient these things were because they were all running right up to the physically possible limits of seaworthiness and seamanship and just efficiency in getting things around.

But it just astounds me that you can sail for 99 days across 14,000 miles and have a finish time that's only separated by 10 minutes. Well, I keep imagining if you were on the crew or the captain of the ship and you're like you're doing your best for you know 99 days every every hour of every day come on guys we've got to you know get this in yeah and then to lose by a matter of minutes yeah yeah yeah somebody had to lose well that's it's funny you bring that up let me just i should say the other two fiery cross and tai sing fiery cross had a this big head start at the beginning came in uh a couple days later. They were delayed by high winds and came in on the 8th and the 9th. So that disposes of what happened to all five of them.

But there is this sort of twist at the end. When they finally got to the docks, they did get the premium, but they learned that a steamship, the Earl King, had actually left Fu Chao seven days later after they had all taken off, but still managed to arrive in London 15 days before the first clippers, because steam is so much more efficient than sail. And that's sort of the kind of sad, ironic ending to all this, is that the age of steam is overshadowing all of this romantic dashing sailing ships.

And sort of marking the end of that era, they kept, well, I should say, what happened with the premium is the premium would go to the first ship to dock, which was the Taiping. But they were so nervous about the threat imposed by competition from steamships that the masters of the aerial and the Taiping agreed,

look, whoever they say docked first, just take it and we'll split the premium. Because they didn't want to give the organizers a chance to say, look, this was a dead heat. We're not going to pay premium to anyone. So that's what happened. The Taiping took the premium and they just split it with the aerial. But that shows already because steamships were already such a strong competition to these sort of grand tea clipper ships

that there was less and less interest in paying this premium because there was, if anything, an oversupply of tea now because the steamships could get there so much more quickly. So they had to be mindful of that. And in fact, that's the direction all of these things went. The tea races continued through the 1870s, but they found in 1870, for instance, when the clipper ships arrived in Fuchao to get their, you know, their tea to take it to London, they found more and more steamships there to come to

compete with them, and they themselves were less and less able to compete. The Suez Canal opened shortly after this, and that's much better suited to steam traffic than sail, because sail ships have to be tugged through there and it's just not well suited to them. And so the whole romantic age of clipper ships and these wonderful romantic races was sort of passing away. The last tea race that really caught public attention was between the Thermopylae and the Cutty Sark, this famous clipper in 1872. The Cutty Sark had actually been built in 1869 in the hope that this wasn't happening, that the steamships wouldn't overtake them, but it did. And in fact, now, the Cutty Sark, it's in a dry dock at Greenwich, is one of

the last vestiges of this era of tea clipper ships that you can actually see and touch. The others have sort of passed away. And in a funny way, don't seem ever to have existed anymore. It's kind of a more storybook that that era of history is so over now that it seems in some ways like it never really happened. I've always been interested in learning, and I find I learn best when I can choose a topic that genuinely interests me and I can pursue it in my own way. 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 with us. The Great Courses are engaging audio and video lectures taught by top professors and experts, and they're available in a whole variety of media. You can get them on CD or DVD through downloading or via their app.

So you can learn something new however it works best for you at home, on your or DVD through downloading or via their app. So you can learn something new however it works best for you at home, on your commute, or while you're working out. We're currently watching their course, Understanding the Inventions that Changed the World. And I'd mentioned last week we were about to learn about the crossbow. My primary associations for the crossbow were medieval Europe and Game of Thrones. So I was really surprised to learn that in China, crossbows date back to the 6th century BCE or possibly even earlier. Crossbows not only gave armies a great advantage in fighting, but they also gave common soldiers a very effective weapon for themselves, and that had great sociological implications and quite an impact on Chinese history. The course understanding

the inventions that changed World, ranges from the significance of pottery in 18,000 BCE to the development of the internet and some of the political implications and uses of social media. I just can't imagine too many people who would feel that they didn't learn quite a bit from it. The Great Courses offers more than 500 courses on many topics including history, science, and philosophy, as well as self-improvement subjects like cooking, photography, and meditation. They're celebrating their 25th anniversary, and they have a special offer for Futility Closet listeners. You can order from eight of their best-selling courses, including Understanding the Inventions That Changed the World, at up to 80% off the original price. This is a limited-time offer, so check it out

today. Go to thegreatcourses.com slash closet to check out the special introductory offer for our listeners. That's thegreatcourses.com slash closet, or see the link in our show notes. In episode 48, Greg told us about the Paris Herald running the same letter to the editor every day for 18 years. Jim Finn wrote in to say, your story on the repeated printing of the temperature conversion letter to the editor brought me back in time to my own youth in the 80s and one of my favorite comic books, Grew the Wanderer. In one of the early issues of that book, they used the word mulch, resulting in several readers questioning its meaning in their letters to the editor. The response was a consistent, accurate description of the process and it became a running gag between the readers and editors for

years. Jim sent in a link to the article from this story from the filing cabinet of the damned, which explains that in issue number four of Grew the Wanderer, the word mulch was used several times, and that caused a few readers to write in asking what that was. What mulch was. Yeah, what mulch was. I guess in the 80s, people didn't know what mulch in asking what that was. What mulch was. Yeah, what mulch was. I guess in the 80s, people didn't know what mulch was. I don't know when mulch was invented. I don't know. Mark Evanier ran three of these queries on the letters page of issue number nine, and

each time he answered with a precise and technical definition. This is his definition of mulch. Mulching is a process of inbred fertilization which employs certain decomposed organic materials, including but not limited to animal sediment, to blanket an area in which vegetation is desired. The procedure enriches the soil for the stimulated plant's development, while at the same time preventing erosion and decreasing the evaporation of moisture from the ground. Okay. Fair enough.

So he ran that entire definition three times on the letters page of that issue. And after that, many of the issues had letters asking what mulch meant. Each time, Evanier would run the same lengthy definition. But soon after that, the word mulch began showing up in more of the stories. So Gru's battle cry during this period was often, I kill, I fray, I maim, I mulch. This apparently went on for years, culminating with a character's dog being named Mulch. And after that, the joke kind of morphed into Evanir printing letters from readers asking what Mulch meant and his refusing to answer. So in issue after issue, he would have these questions and his identical refusal to answer the question.

Sometimes he would run that several times in the same letters page. So a filing cabinet of the dam notes, thus, a new running gag was born from the decaying corpse of the old one, which obviously is quite appropriate for mulch. Poetic. So thanks to Jim for his email and to everyone who writes in to us. We've actually been receiving a fair amount of email about last week's story about the kitten who reportedly climbed the Matterhorn, and I do intend on presenting an update on that in next week's show. Yeah, thanks for sending that. Yeah, I'm still reading through and processing all the emails on that that have been sent. So tune in next week to hear the update on that.

And if you have any questions or comments for us, please email us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. all right our lateral thinking puzzle segment this week greg's on the hot seat and feeling the pressure um i'm gonna give him a puzzling scenario and he's gonna try to figure it out asking only yes or no questions this week's puzzle was sent in by Nick Madrid. We haven't done a Nick Madrid puzzle in a little while. And he notes that it's been real fun listening to us grappling with some of his previous puzzles and says on a recent episode you observed

that lateral thinking puzzles have a tendency to involve untimely death. For a bit of variety, here's a puzzle that doesn't involve anybody dying at all. So no deaths at all in this puzzle. Here's at all. So no deaths at all in this puzzle. Here's your puzzle with no deaths. Good.

After drinking some raspberry Kool-Aid, a woman is feeling childish and nostalgic. She phones her best friend with whom she has not spoken in six months. Eventually, the woman receives an apology from her 10-year-old nephew. What's going on? Okay. When you say the woman receives an apology that's the woman who places the call yes she has a nephew yes who apologizes to her yes um has the nephew put something in the kool-aid yes something that it's not kool-aid yes and something that it

induced her to what lowered her inhibitions enough to make her want to call her friend? Not exactly. Was this a prank? Would you call it a prank? On whose part? The nephew's part. Yes, yes. Okay.

So he saw that she made Kool-Aid and he put something into it that affected her, would you say, judgment? Maybe. Yeah, maybe. Something she wasn't aware of right okay was it um i don't even know how to ask this was it alcohol yes oh all right do i need to know more than that about what it was no okay now if you put alcohol in the kool-Aid. Do any of them, she really made the Kool-Aid just for no other reason? Just sort of? She didn't make the Kool-Aid, but yeah, I mean. Okay.

And he spiked the Kool-Aid. Yes. As a prank. Yes. Not intending her to call her friend. Right. Just as a prank. Yes.

She called her friend. Yes. So then the reigning question is okay when the nephew apologized was that of his own volition was it because he realized something had happened or yeah okay it wasn't that the woman the woman's friend had somehow fingered him as spiking the kool-aid right okay uh so the woman called her friend and what said something embarrassing or fingered him as spiking the Kool-Aid. Right. Okay. So the woman called her friend and what, said something embarrassing?

Or she regretted calling the friend afterwards? After drinking some raspberry Kool-Aid, a woman is feeling childish and nostalgic. She phones her best friend with whom she has not spoken in six months. Eventually, the woman receives an apology from her 10-year-old nephew. So you have to make sense of that whole scenario. Okay. Do I need to know who made the Kool-Aid? No, it doesn't matter.

Do I need to know more about the woman, her occupation, or the location, or anything like that? None of those things that you mentioned. Not her occupation or the location. Her relationship to her childhood friend, other than just being friends? Are these real people? Did this actually happen? No. Okay.

Okay. Let's stick with one line for a while, shall we? I tend to just wander around. She calls her friend. Yes. They have some conversation. Yes. They haven't spoken in six months.

Correct. Is it because of some falling out? Not exactly. They were prevented from talking? No. Do I need to know more about the friend? I mean, her identity or occupation or location or their history? History.

Their history. Okay, more than just the fact that they're childhood friends. Yes. Were childhood friends. I never said they were childhood friends. Oh, her friend. She phones her best friend with whom she has not spoken in six months. Why did I think childhood friends? Okay.

I don't know if they're childhood friends or not, but they don't have to be. Okay. Okay. Phones her best friend with whom she has not spoken in six months. Yes. Is the six-month interval precisely important? It's just some time. Some time, yeah.

Okay. precisely important it's just some time some time yeah okay cool i called i'm not sure how to go about this so they were friends their best friends uh-huh but they haven't spoken in six months right not because of a falling out you wouldn't say that exactly but because of some some event not some technological right right or other circumstance that prevents them from talking it's not that they want to speak and can't that's correct it's that they aren't yes is there some emotion there like they they're choosing not to. Right. Both of them? No. All right. So the woman who's drinking the Kool-Aid, has she been the one who sort of severed, can I say severed the relationship?

Yes. So they've been friends. Yes. And then she cut it off six months ago. Yes. For some reason I need to figure out. Yes. And because the nephew spiked the Kool-Aid.

Yes. And because the nephew spiked the Kool-Aid, she feels, I guess, nostalgic enough to want to go ahead and call her again? That's not exactly right, but I mean, that's close enough to get you going. But yeah, this all ties together and makes sense. Okay, was that the nephew's intent in spiking the Kool-Aid? No. He just spiked it as a prank? Yes. And that's all I need to know?

That's all you need to know about his end of things. Okay, so it would help me then to find out why she had sort of cut off the friendship? No. He just spiked it as a prank? Yes. And that's all I need to know? That's all you need to know about his end of things. Okay. So it would help me then to find out why she had sort of cut off the friendship? Yes. So there's some history there to work out. Yeah. Are there other people involved?

No. Just the two of them. So something happened to the two of them in their relationship? Not exactly, no. No, not really. Sorry. Do you want to finish the sentence before saying no, not really? Or should I just cut you off? Like, okay, stop right there.

Okay, so there aren't other people involved. So something happened. Yes. They were friends. And this woman, would you say she got angry? No. Hurt? No.

Was there a misunderstanding? No. But, oh, so the, so she. And this all ties together. You keep saying that, but I don't see what there is to tie. I'm trying to be subtly helpful, but it's apparently too subtle. Well, you said the nephew doesn't, his goal isn't to try to get them together again. That's correct.

You don't need to know anything more about the nephew or his motives or anything. And there's no one else involved. Right. So there's nothing else to tie together except the two women. Are they both women? They are both women. So there's nothing more to tie there that I can see. Yes, there is.

What other element are you not tying in? All right. You say their occupations and identities aren't important. Is the location important? No. Is the time period important? No. What else is usually um do i need to know more about the call the actual technology that used to make the calls

just a telephone call right you don't need to know anything about that um and she wasn't prevented somehow from making the call so it's just that she had cut off the friendship and now she's re-establishing yes. Yes. And the nephew apologizes. For spiking the Kool-Aid. Right. And the effects of spiking the Kool-Aid. Okay. Does that, I think I said this before, does that mean that, okay, so the woman places

the call to her estranged friend. Yes. And somehow that conversation leads her to realize that her nephew spiked the Kool-Aid? No, no, no. Okay. So I don't need to pursue that. Yes. And somehow that conversation leads her to realize that her nephew spiked the Kool-Aid? No, no, no. Okay, so I don't need to pursue that. No. Because you say the call eventually leads to the nephew... Not, not, yeah, I mean the whole situation leads to the nephew apologizing. Just because she goes to him and says, you spiked the Kool-Aid, I've realized... No. No. No, There's something bigger going on than that. Okay. Um.

Man, I thought I was doing so well on this one. You were. What element aren't you tying really into anything? Well, there's only three people. Okay. There's the call. There's this history, which I haven't dug into yet, of the two women's friendship. What other element in the puzzle did you uncover? Uh, feelings of childhood nostalgia? No. A woman places a call. A woman drinks uh feelings of childhood nostalgia no

a woman places a call a woman drinks a boy yeah yeah feeling childish and nostalgic she places a call to her best friend with whom she hasn't spoken in six months which we've established because they had some history right but you you uncovered an important piece of the puzzle that you haven't really tied into anything well there i need to find the piece of the puzzle that you haven't really tied into anything. Well, I need to find the source of the estrangement, but that's it. Yes, but you're... Give me a hint. The alcohol. You're not tying in the alcohol enough. Okay. The nephew put alcohol of some kind that I don't need to pursue into the Kool-Aid.

Yes, yes. As a prank with no... Everything ties together, though. The alcohol is more important than they're giving you the importance of. I don't need to know the kind of alcohol. Correct. Does she have some history with alcohol?

Yes. Ah. Is she an alcoholic? Yes. Was she in recovery? I mean, she hadn't drunk for a while. Yes. Does that have something to do with the estrangement between her and her friend?

Okay. Was her friend an alcoholic? Yes. So the two of them were alcoholics together. And this woman decided to stop drinking. Right. The nephew unknowingly, I guess, spiked the Kool-Aid? Or without realizing the consequences.

Not knowing his aunt would drink it necessarily. And she drank it and wound up calling her old friend. Her old drinking buddy. Yeah. knowing his aunt would drink it necessarily. And she drank it and wound up calling her old friend. Her old drinking buddy. And I guess he or one of them realized afterwards that she'd been off alcohol and he'd reintroduced it into her life. Exactly. Is there more to it than that?

No, that's it. Okay. Nick says, I hope that's lateral enough to be puzzling. I was afraid I'd make it too lateral and it would bend around to being posterior. So thanks so much to Nick. And if you have a puzzle you'd like to send in for us to use, please send it to us at podcast at futilitycloset.com.

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