Futility Closet - 053-The Lost Colony

Episode Date: April 13, 2015

It's been called America's oldest mystery: A group of 100 English colonists vanished from North Carolina's Roanoke Island shortly after settling there in 1587. But was their disappearance really so mysterious? In this episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll trace the history of the "lost colony" and consider what might have happened to the settlers. We'll also visit an early steam locomotive in 1830 and puzzle over why writing a letter might prove to be fatal. Sources for our feature on the lost colony at Roanoke: James Horn, A Kingdom Strange: The Brief and Tragic History of the Lost Colony of Roanoke, 2011. Karen Ordahl Kupperman, Roanoke: The Abandoned Colony, 2007. Giles Milton, Big Chief Elizabeth: The Adventures and Fate of the First English Colonists in America, 2011.  Lee Miller, Roanoke: Solving the Mystery of the Lost Colony, 2013. Fanny Kemble wrote of her encounter with an early locomotive in a letter dated Aug. 26, 1830 ("A common sheet of paper is enough for love, but a foolscap extra can alone contain a railroad and my ecstasies"). It appears in her 1878 memoir Records of a Girlhood. She sat alongside engineer George Stephenson, who explained his great project and with whom she fell "horribly in love." At one point on their 15-mile journey they passed through a rocky defile: You can't imagine how strange it seemed to be journeying on thus, without any visible cause of progress other than the magical machine, with its flying white breath and rhythmical, unvarying pace, between these rocky walls, which are already clothed with moss and ferns and grasses; and when I reflected that these great masses of stone had been cut asunder to allow our passage thus far below the surface of the earth, I felt as if no fairy tale was ever half so wonderful as what I saw. This week's lateral thinking puzzle was contributed by listener Blaine, who sent this corroborating link (warning -- this spoils the puzzle). 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 in history, language, mathematics, literature, philosophy, and art. You can find us online at futilitycloset.com. Thanks for joining us. Welcome to episode 53. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. The lost colony of Roanoke has been called America's oldest mystery. In today's show, we'll see if we can figure out what happened to more than 100 English colonists who disappeared in 1590. We'll also meet an early steam locomotive in 1830 and puzzle over why writing a letter might prove to be fatal.

This podcast is supported primarily by our awesome patrons. If you would like to join them and help us pay our bills so we can keep making the show, then check out our Patreon campaign at patreon.com slash futilitycloset, or look for the link in our show notes. This is the story of the so-called Lost Colony of Roanoke, which was a very early attempt to establish a colony of about 100 English settlers on what's now an island off the coast of North Carolina, not far from where we are right now.

The outer banks of North Carolina are sort of a chain of islands off the coast, and Roanoke Island is one of those islands. And in the late 1500s, England was trying to establish a colony there. This is way back. This is late 1500s. This is Shakespeare's time before there really was a British empire. What happened was Queen Elizabeth was trying to establish a colony there in order to sort of vie with the Spanish, who were also establishing colonies there, and to sort of establish a base for privateers to harry their treasure fleets. Sir Walter Raleigh got a royal patent from Elizabeth, which meant he could be the guy who sort of oversaw this effort if he could establish that there was an active live colony there,

he could remain in charge. And with a series of expeditions, he found this Roanoke Island on the Outer Banks and built a fort there and began to try to establish settlers there. But this was notoriously hard to do. But finally, in 1587, he sent a group of 115 colonists with their governor, a man named John White, who started living in the fort or hoped to. started living in the fort, or hoped to. The earlier waves of colonists that they'd set up on Roanoke had had some conflicts with the local native Indians there, and White tried to re-establish relations with them on a friendly basis, but there were still some hostilities, and in fact one of the colonists was out looking for crabs and was actually killed by some of the Indians. So there was still some tension there. Also, the colonists were dismayed to learn from even the friendly Indians

that they wouldn't be able to help them through the coming winter because the Indians were having a hard enough time just subsisting on their own. So the colonists in general got spooked and understandably anxious by this and convinced White to go back to England to ask for help and get more supplies, which he reluctantly did. He turned around and left in the same year, 1587, leaving behind 115 columnists, the original ones plus the famous Virginia Dare, who was the first English child born in North America. When White left, he promised to be back in three months, but unfortunately,

he arrived in London at the same time as the Spanish Armada. England was going to war with Spain, and that caused such upheaval and so many distractions for the English that he actually wasn't able to return to the colony for three years instead of three months. But he finally got back, and on August 18, 1590, he arrived to find that the settlement was deserted. No one was there. There was no sign of a struggle or a battle, but there was no trace of the people who were, there were more than a hundred of them who had been living there when he left. I hadn't realized previously it was a three-year gap. Yeah.

Well, that's, it's funny you should say that, because people who've heard this story, you sort of get this vignette in your mind of it sounds like john white just dashed over to yeah to get some supplies and came back and was astonished to find that all his friends and famously the the only clue that was left is uh on one of the there was a tree that made up uh the right side of the the sort of gate into the fort and some of the bark had been removed from that tree and the a single word croato, had been carved into that space on the tree. But that's all they really had to go on. That sounds wonderfully atmospheric and dramatic and kind of enigmatic, but it had a particular meaning.

Croatoan was the name of an island a little bit further south in the Outer Banks where they knew some friendly Indians lived. where they knew some friendly Indians lived. And they'd established a plan before White had even left, saying, look, if you have to leave the fort, carve some kind of message on a tree saying where you've gone so I can find you again. I didn't know that either. Okay. And even better, he said, if you're in any distress, if you have to leave because of some immediate danger

or some real problem, carve a cross into the tree at the same time so I'll know you know that that was the case and there was no cross so it wasn't as a mysterious or b yeah as it sounds i've always heard the story and it makes it sound like is this whole big mystery thing but i didn't realize i had a whole system set up okay so it gets actually this point it gets much more tragic but this particular point isn't as bad as it sounds. Because there's no cross. He knew where Croatoan, what that referred to, and that's probably where at least some of these colonists had gone.

There was no cross, and there were signs that the whole fort had been sort of, a lot of the houses and habitations had been sort of dismantled, but it hadn't been done hurriedly. You could see that it had taken some time to do it. They'd built a palisade around the fort, which is sort of a wall made of timber stood on end and he found eventually that they had buried five chests of valuables three of which contained his own valuables because he intended to be a colonist himself and they had promised to safeguard his possession so this showed that they had been trying to do that and had time to think of these things. Right, yeah. It does show that they weren't, like, in desperate haste, at least.

Yeah. They, unfortunately, natives had since discovered these chests and dug them up and sort of plundered them, but that's not the colonists' fault. Right, right. So, actually, White declared himself greatly pleased, he said, of finding a certain token of their safe being at Croatoan. So he thought he knew where they were, and he thought they were safe and took this as a good thing. He didn't know why they'd left, but it seemed they'd done it in an orderly way.

It was a bit of a mystery why they would choose to go to Croatoan, which was, if you picture the Outer Banks, they're a chain of islands going, let's say, roughly north to south. If Roanoke's in the middle there, Croatoan is actually to the south. In their discussions, the colonists had said, if we go inland at all, we'll probably go north up to the Chesapeake Bay, which is the other direction. So that's a bit of a puzzle, but not a huge one. So White was pretty sure that what had happened is they'd just removed down south to Croatoan, and he would probably find them there. And in fact, planned to go down there and rejoin them, but a big storm was coming up and his crew refused to continue there, and he delayed a bit, and then with one thing and another,

eventually wound up having to go back to England without ever connecting with the colonists at all. Without checking out Croatoan. Croatoan, that's the problem, or the Chesapeake. So the problem is, this is the bad part, 12 further years went by before Sir Walter Raleigh decided to find out what had happened to them. That's because Raleigh's own personal and political fortunes were sort of fading at this time. He was eventually convicted of treason. That's a whole separate drama.

But it kept him for 12 years from going to check on them. So wherever the colonists were at this point, no one was coming to help them. Yeah. And that's a lot of time to go by and then to try to find traces of people. Right, exactly. So finally, in 1602, Raleigh managed to send another expedition led by a man named Samuel Mace, but bad weather turned them back before they reached the island. And then, as I say, Raleigh was arrested for treason, and that stopped him from sending any further expeditions. So no one connected with the colonists from that one day when White left saying,

I'll be back in three months, no European eyes ever said, you know, clapped on them again at all. Right. So it's not true that White was arriving, you know, expecting to be reunited with his friends and found this enigmatic word on a tree. But it is true that it's accurate to call this a lost colony because there were more than 100 English settlers there, and to this day no one knows for sure what happened to them.

So there is a legitimate mystery here. The guesses are basically that they were either killed or they sort of melted in and intermarried with the native population, or maybe some combination of those. Somebody eventually did get to Croatoan to look for them, though? I mean... No. No?

Not in time to find them there. I'll get to that in a second. Okay, okay. The first successful English colony in the New World was Jamestown, which was established in 1607. This is 20 years after the Roanoke colonists had been abandoned. And that one finally stuck. That was finally the first toehold that England got in the New World that was going to actually

help them grow into something greater there. And one of those settlers' specific assigned tasks was to find out what had happened to the Roanoke colonists. And in talking to the local Indians, there's a great chief there named Poitain who ran sort of a whole empire in that region. And he said what had happened is most of the colonists from Roanoke had come up and were living among a group called the Chesapeake, which wasn't quite in his domain, but it was nearby,

who they just lived peacefully together for years. And what Poitin said had happened is that eventually his priests had told him that someone was going to rise up from that group and overthrow his empire. So he sent warriors to go in and kill all of them, the Indians and the white people together, and presented some iron artifacts to the Jamestown people later on as sort of proof that there had been white men there. None of this proves anything conclusively. I was just going to say, how reliable did they consider this information? Because the artifacts could have come from some other source, and there are no archaeological evidence or bodies to confirm what he was saying.

But so much time had gone by, yeah. If what he said is true, it's really tragic, because this slaughter would have happened just before the Jamestown settlers had arrived. So this would mean for the Roanoke people, John White had said, I'll be right back. Yeah. And disappeared for 20 years. Yeah. And they kept waiting for some sign, for some help from England.

Yeah. 20 years almost went by, and they were all killed just a few weeks before the help finally came. Yeah. But as I say, we don't know that that's the case. There are other records. William Strakey, who was secretary of the Jamestown Colony, who's leaving a lot of these records of the interviews, said that four of these men, four men, two boys and a young girl, escaped from that slaughter and were living to the south with other Indians in stone houses of more than one story, which the English had taught them to build, and they were valuable because they knew how to work copper. All of this is sort of hearsay.

It's not necessarily false, but there's just no evidence to back it up, so we don't really know. And as I say, there was much later another chronicle that says that Powhatan had shown diverse utensils made of iron that sort of demonstrated that they had interacted at least with English colonists who presumably came from Roanoke. The John Smith, president of the Jamestown colony, sent a few missions to the south to find out if he could discover what had happened

on Roanoke or Croatoan, but couldn't find anything. And eventually they just sort of had to conclude that the colonists had been killed somehow, but never did get to the bottom of it. Also, there were reports of European captives being held at various Anglian settlements. Again, this is all sort of hearsay. Some reports that four English men, two boys and a girl had been cited at various other settlements and had been forced to beat copper. There are also a lot of reports that the settlers had intermarried with Indians and produced. There was one colonist named George Percy who reported he'd seen a young Indian boy of about 10 whose hair he said was of a perfect yellow with what he called reasonable white skin, which is a miracle amongst all savages. A lot of stories like that.

In 1709, the explorer John Lawson wrote that the Croatoan Indians had used to live on Roanoke Island and had white ancestors. He wrote, A farther confirmation of this we have from the Hatteras Indians, who either then lived on Roanoke Island or much frequented it. These tell us that several of their ancestors were white people and could talk in a book as we do, the truth of which is confirmed by gray eyes being found frequently amongst these Indians and no others. They value themselves extremely for their affinity to the

English and are ready to do them all friendly offices. It is probable that the settlement miscarried for want of timely supplies from England or through the treachery of the natives, for we may reasonably suppose that the English were forced to cohabit with them for relief and conversation, and that in process of time they conformed themselves to the manners of their Indian relations. Which makes perfect sense, and may well be what happened, we just, again, don't have actual archaeological evidence to back this up. And from the early 1600s right through the middle of the 1700s, there are a lot of reports of Indians with gray eyes or blonde hair and blue eyes, which again makes sense, but we just can't prove that that's what happened.

There's one puzzle. I think, as I said, Croatoan is south of Roanoke, and the Chesapeake is north, so it's not clear why they would have removed from the fort to Croatoan, if that's what the word Croatoan on the tree meant. But a very good guess is that they did both. There's a historian named David Quinn who proposes that what happened was most of the colonists were moved in a body from the fort up to Chesapeake, because according to the original plan to live with the Indians there,

when it became clear that the English weren't going to come back and help them. And that may have taken several trips, but they apparently had a lot of time to arrange this, and there were all the signs that that's what they did. But they would have left behind a smaller body of people in the fort to greet the English if they ever did show up, and just to have a presence there. That would explain why they built a palisade, this wall of timbers around the fort.

For extra defense. Right, because there's a smaller group of colonists there, so they'd need sort of a better defended fort. And that they'd spent some time, that smaller group, living in the fort. But perhaps there were encroachments by hostile Indians or by Spanish explorers. Remember, Spain is now at war with England, so Spanish explorers wouldn't be friendly. So if the men in the fort then would feel somewhat threatened,

perhaps they chose at that point to remove south to Croatoan, which wasn't far away. Or they just eventually gave up. I mean, you know, after so many years, you know. Yeah, you couldn't blame them. After two years, you figure out, okay, they're not coming back. But according to the plan, they just carved the word Croatoan in the tree to explain that's where they're going. They didn't put the distress mark and just left to go to Croatoan Island.

And in fact, when White showed up and found the fort empty, it's entirely possible that there were two groups of settlers, one south of him and one north on Croatoan and one where Jamestown would eventually be in the Chesapeake, living perfectly happily, or at least peacefully, among the Indians north and south of him. He just didn't have time to go and discover them there. And then the storm came up and he was driven away

and another 12 years went by. We'll never know. As I say, it's been 400 years now and there's still no archaeological or any kind of definitive evidence. And at this late date, it seems unlikely we'll find any that'll tell us exactly what happened. But it's worth remembering that they had a total of 15 years to disappear. It's tempting. You tend to think of this as like, well, there must have been one awful stroke of misfortune that killed them. But like any group of people, they could have been

just sort of whittled away in this very difficult circumstances of living in mostly wilderness. Illness, injury, accidents, hunger, harsh weather, internal conflicts, Indian attacks, and perhaps encroachments by Spanish explorers. Or like you said, it might not even be negative. I mean, they might just have gone and intermarried with the Indians and began living with them. In fact, it's worth remembering that no 16th century English colony succeeded. All of them failed. So this is just one more of those. It would almost be surprising if they'd succeeded, especially given that they didn't get any help for 15 years. Finally, and maybe this sounds crazy, one thing that struck

me in researching all this is I think one reason this whole story has survived for 400 years is that the word Croatoan is creepy. It just looks enigmatic and strange and sort of foreboding. Even if you find out, oh, that's the actual name of an island, and they were directed to write the name of their destination on the tree, that makes a lot of sense. It still looks creepy. It just has a weird sound to it, yeah. And a lot of these pictures, illustrations you see,

I'll put one, I'll associate one with this podcast so you can see how it's typically done. There's an empty fort, and there's some puzzled-looking colonists there, and there's a tree with the word Croatoan on it. Croatoan Island is still there. It's not called Croatoan anymore. Today it's called Hatteras Island. And I think if John White had showed up and saw a tree that just said Hatteras on it, he'd think, oh, they must have gone to Hatteras. And he'd probably be right. That's very likely where at least a few of them had gone. But if this job has taught me anything, it's that what often survives in history, or at least in people's memories, is not an accurate record of the events, but just what makes the best story.

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That's thegreatcourses.com slash closet, or see the link in our show notes. Here's an encounter between an actress and a locomotive. The actress was Fanny Kemble, who was popular on the English stage in the early years of the 19th century. And the locomotive was an engine on the Liverpool-Manchester Railway, which was an early experimental railway line connecting those two English cities. It was only 35 miles long.

The great civil engineer George Stevenson had gotten permission to sort of build this experimental line just to try it out and see what a passenger-carrying, steam-driven railway line would look like and how well it would function. That was supposed to open this little experimental line in September 1830, but Fanny's father had connections, and so he was able to get the two of them a ride on the locomotive. They went just 15 miles on August 25th, 1830, and Fanny loved it. She wrote about this to a friend of hers the following day, and I'm going to read an excerpt from her letter.

I love this because she has a really winning style, and also because she manages to explain this in a way that shows what it must have been like. This was just the beginning of the age of Steam before it transformed everything. So this is her first encounter with the Steam Engine, and it sort of shows what this must have looked like to someone who was used to a very different world, just encountering this new technology that's going to change everything. This is what she wrote. We were introduced to the little engine which was to drag us along the rails. She, for they make these curious little firehorses all mares, consisted of a boiler, a stove, a platform, a bench, and behind the bench a barrel containing enough water to prevent her being thirsty for 15

miles, the whole machine not bigger than a common fire engine. She goes upon two wheels, which are her feet, and are moved by bright steel legs called pistons. These are propelled by steam, and in proportion as more steam is applied to the upper extremities, the hip joints I suppose, of these pistons, the faster they move the wheels, and when it is desirable to diminish the speed, the steam, which unless suffered to escape would burst the boiler, evaporates through a safety valve into the air. The reins, bit, and bridle of this wonderful beast is a small steel handle which applies or withdraws the steam from its legs or pistons so that a child might manage it. The coals, which are its oats, were under the bench,

and there was a small glass tube affixed to the boiler, with water in it, which indicates by its fullness or emptiness, when the creature wants water, which is immediately conveyed to it from its reservoirs. There is a chimney to the stove, but as they burn coke, there is none of the dreadful black smoke which accompanies the progress of a steam vessel. This snorting little animal, which I felt rather inclined to pat, was then harnessed to our carriage, and Mr. Stevenson having taken me on the bench of the engine with him, we started at about 10 miles an hour. And she goes on to describe this 15-mile journey they took. I'll put a link to the whole account in the show notes, which is well worth reading. As I say, I just really like this account because

she manages to convey what this must have looked like to someone who had grown up in the very early years of the 19th century. And Fannie lived long enough, she was only 21 when she wrote this, that she saw how it transformed everything, the steam engine and the Industrial Revolution and everything that came with it. Looking back on this later, she called this little experimental railway, the first mesh of that amazing iron net, which now covers the first mesh of that amazing iron net which now covers the whole surface of England and all the civilized portions of the earth. This week it's my turn to be solving a lateral thinking puzzle.

Greg's going to present me something puzzling and I'm going to see what I can do with it, asking only yes or no questions. This puzzle was submitted by a listener named Blaine, and it's quite short. A woman is writing a letter. There's a power failure. She dies. How does she die?

Another she dies one. People are always dying. A woman is writing a letter. Okay. Does it matter where she is in any sense of the where? Yes. Okay. Does it matter where she is in terms of what state or country?

No. Does it matter where she is in terms of what kind of a building or lack of building she's in? Yes. Okay. Is that the most important part of the where? Yes. Yes. Okay. Is she in some sort of a structure? Yes. Yes. Okay.

Is she in some sort of a structure? No. Well, no. She's not inside. You wouldn't say she's inside something. No. Okay. She's outside.

Yes. Okay. Is she outside on flat ground? No. Is she outside on a mountain? No. Is she outside in water? No.

She's not on flat ground. She's not on a mountain. She's not on flat ground. She's not on a mountain. She's not on water. Is she on some sort of... Is she on something? Like she's on a boat. She's on an airplane. She's on a...

I guess airplane would be in. Is she on something man-made? Is she on something man-made? I will say no. You will say no? Is she on something man-made? I will say no. You will say no. Is she on, would you say she's on some sort of natural formation? No. No.

But is she on something? No. She's not on anything. Oh, is she free-falling in air? Is she in space? Is she in air, one or the other? Yes. Is she in space?

Is she in air? One or the other? Yes. I mean, okay. Would you say that no part of her is touching what we would call the ground or the earth? Yes, I would. No part of her. Okay.

So she's skydiving? No. Did she jump out of an airplane? No. Did she, was she ejected or fell out of an airplane? No. She didn't start off in an airplane. Correct?

Is that a question? She did not start off in an airplane. No, that's not correct. She started off in an airplane. Yes. She was in an airplane very recently. Yes. Okay.

Well, I don't know if she was in an airplane two days ago flying someplace. She was very recently in an airplane. Correct. There was a power failure. Yes. And now she's dead. She's dead because she hits the ground really hard? Yes.

Okay. But you said she didn't fall out or was ejected out of an airplane. Did the whole airplane hit the ground with her in it? Yes. Oh, so she wasn't in something. She was in an airplane. You asked if she was on something. Yes, but I asked if she was in something.

But, okay. Okay. I think I got that right. Okay. Okay, so she was in an airplane. There was a power failure. The airplane hits the ground. Is there more to it?

She's writing a letter. She was writing a letter in the airplane. Oh, it matters what the letter was or who the letter was to? Yes. Does that have something to do with the power going out? Was she using an electronic device that you're not supposed to use while the airplane is going and that messed everything up? No. Oh. Okay. So does it matter who she was writing the letter to?

You mean, does it matter to her death? To the power going out? To this whole puzzle? I sort of can't answer that. Does it matter what her occupation is? Yes. Was she the pilot? Yes.

She was the pilot of the airplane? Yes. Oh, was she writing a suicide note? No, but that would admirably solve the puzzle. Um, okay. She was a pilot of the airplane. Is it because she was distracted by writing a letter that something bad happened? No.

Okay. Does it matter what she was writing in the letter? Like, what the content of the letter was? Uh, yes. Did she... Okay, does this take place during a particular time period like war or something uh no i mean it happened i know when it happened but no it was the true story yes oh okay so there's a female pilot of a plane yes is there a co-pilot that i need to worry about nope um and she's writing a letter. Was she suicidal? No.

Was she... I don't remember. Does it matter who the letter is to? I'm going to say no. Depends what you mean by does it matter. Is it to a specific person? No. Is it to...

Does she know she's going to die and so she's writing a letter to whoever finds it? No. She's writing a letter but not to a specific person. Does her nationality matter? No. Is there some other letter, but not to a specific person. Does her nationality matter? No. Is there some other characteristic about her that I need to figure out? Not really, no. She's writing a letter. It doesn't matter to who. It's not to a specific person. The power goes out on the plane. The plane crashes and she dies. Yes. Does the method in which she was writing the letter important? Yes.

But you said it's not that she was using an electronic device. That's correct. Was she using paper and pencil? No. Was she using paper and something else? No. She was writing a letter not on paper and not on an electronic device. She was writing a letter on... It matters what material the letter was being written on?

Yes. Is it something that the letter was being written on? Yes. Is it something that people would typically write letters on? No, it's not. That I'm not thinking of? And this is, it's not the case that she knew she was in trouble, so she was trying to compose, you know. That's right. Her last letter or something. Oh, was she writing a letter, like a letter of the alphabet?

Yes. A character? And it matters which one? Not particularly, no. But was she painting it? Nope. I mean, okay. Do you know what she was using to write the letter with?

Yes. Implement? And is it something we would usually describe as a writing implement no um is it something sharp no um um is it something that would leave a color like if she's using lipstick or her makeup or uh not in the sense that you're thinking i don't know not Um, so she was putting a letter on something in the plane? Or was she sky? She was, she was writing a letter in the sky. She was a sky writer.

Yes. That's it. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. Um, you got, you got the second half first. Ha ha ha ha. Uh, the woman's name was Suzanne Asbury Oliver. She was employed as a sky writer for Pepsi in the 1970s for his advertising campaign. She would go around the country and write Pepsi on the sky.

And she said, I was just at the top of the E when both engine systems went dead. The plane became a glider, and so I just guided it back to the airport. And Blaine just suggested that instead of that, in the grand tradition of lateral thinking puzzles, he had her crash to the ground and die. So we killed her. But the ground. Oh, so we killed her. But the rest of it is true. She was at the top of an E and couldn't finish writing her letter. Wow.

Well, that would have been scary, too. Yes. Well, thank you so much, Blaine. And if you'd like to send in a puzzle for us to use, you can send them to us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. That's one more episode for us. If you're looking for more Futility Closet, 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 absorbing distractions. At the website, you can see the show notes for the podcast and listen to previous episodes. Just click Podcast in the sidebar. If you would like to support Futility Closet, please consider becoming a patron to help keep us going. You can find more information at patreon.com slash futilitycloset. You can also help us out by telling your friends about us 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.