Futility Closet - 067-Composing Beyond the Grave

Episode Date: July 27, 2015

In 1933, violinist Jelly d'Aranyi declared that the spirit of Robert Schumann was urging her to find a concerto that he'd written shortly before his death in 1856. In this episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll describe the discovery of Schumann's lost violin concerto, as well as a similar case in which a London widow claimed to receive new compositions from 12 dead composers We'll also puzzle over how a man earns $250,000 for going on two cruises. Sources for our feature on Jelly d'Aranyi and Rosemary Brown: Joseph Macleod, The Sisters d'Aranyi, 1969. Erik Palmstierna and Adila Fachiri, Horizons of Immortality, 1938. Rosemary Brown, Unfinished Symphonies, 1971. Douglas Martin, "Rosemary Brown, a Friend of Dead Composers, Dies at 85," New York Times, Dec. 2, 2001. Michael Steinberg, The Concerto: A Listener's Guide, 1998. Nicolas Slonimsky, Slonimsky's Book of Musical Anecdotes, 1948. Here's the Schumann violin concerto played by Frank Peter Zimmermann, and here's a rather blurry interview with Rosemary Brown, in which she transcribes a composition for Beethoven. This week's lateral thinking puzzle is from Jed's List of Situation Puzzles. 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]. You can also 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 67. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. In 1933, a noted violinist announced that the spirit of Robert Schumann had asked her to find a concerto he'd written shortly before his death in 1856. In today's show, we'll describe the discovery of Schumann's lost violin concerto, as well as a

similar case in which a London widow claimed to receive new compositions from 12 dead composers. We'll also puzzle over how a man manages to earn a fortune by going on two cruises. Okay, these are two stories that have been linked in my mind. They've been in my notes for a long time. They both concern classical music composers who sort of came back from the dead, who died and then contacted mediums, I guess you'd call them,

from the spirit world in order to dictate new compositions, or at least that's how the story goes. The first one starts at a seance held in London in March 1933, where a number of people were present, including the Hungarian violinist Jeli Durányi. They were using what sort of amounts to a Ouija board. It wasn't formally that. You would invert a glass on a table, and it would shift around and spell out messages.

And they were doing this when they got a message from someone who said that he was anxious that Deranyi, this violinist, should find and play a posthumous work, a work of his that hadn't been published in his lifetime. So apparently this was a composer. For violin. He said, I wrote a piece when I was alive that didn't get published, and I want you to find it and play it. And they asked, who is this? And he said to everyone's surprise, Robert Schumann,

the famous German composer who had died in 1856, 80 years earlier. Wow, I was going to say, he waited a long time. Yes. She was quite an accomplished violinist, and she'd never heard anything about a violin concerto by Schumann. He'd never written one. And she asked if it was any good, and he said it was not one of his best, but he was anxious that she should play it. He said it was for violin and piano and probably in D major.

So she started asking around. She made inquiries among other London musicians, and none of them had heard that Schumann had ever written a violin concerto, and they didn't know how to find out whether one existed. So she wasn't sure what to do, and so at another seance in a couple weeks later, he showed up again and identified himself as Robert Schumann and said, remember what I asked you, tell Tovey. Well, the most famous Tovey in the music world at that time would have been a British musicologist named Sir Donald Tovey, who lived in Edinburgh. So she wrote to him and asked him if he knew anything about such a work, and he wrote back and said he thought such a concerto had been written, but he didn't know any details, and he didn't know who might own it at this point, or even whether it had been destroyed. So I'm compressing the story here, but basically

they did track it down. It turned out that Schumann had written a violin concerto toward the end of his life. He kind of fell apart at the end of his life and wound up in an asylum, and it was written toward the end there. The concerto was not entirely secret, but it was very little known. It had been mentioned in a couple of biographies. He'd written the piece in September 1853, intending that a famous violinist of the 19th century named Yosef Joachim would play it, which is a great coincidence because Joachim was Durrani's great uncle. Oh, so the plot thickens. So if very few people actually even knew he'd written this, then somebody couldn't have been hoaxing it at the seance, right?

I mean, if people didn't even know it existed. It's a very interesting story. It makes perfect sense if you believe in the spirit world. That is perfectly straightforward. Although he waited so long, but it took quite a long time to contact anybody about it. So he'd written it in September 1853, Schumann had, and it had never been performed publicly. I mean, he'd given it to Joachim, this violence he'd intended it for, and they'd sort of played it privately. But then Schumann had died

on July 29th, 1856, and that was sort of the end of it. What happened was that Schumann's wife, Clara, and Brahms, the great composer, and Joachim, the violinist, sort of put their heads together and said, this is good, but it's not up to Schumann's standard. Because as I said, he was kind of falling apart at that point. So they agreed that it shouldn't be published. And what they had wound up doing was that Joachim had just held on to it until he died in 1907. And then his family had donated it to the Prussian State Library of Berlin, And what they had wound up doing was that Joachim had just held on to it until he died in 1907.

And then his family had donated it to the Prussian State Library of Berlin with the stipulation that it not be published until 100 years after Schumann's death, which would have been 1956. Which is why no one had ever heard of it, because it just sat in a library with this sort of embargo on it. But if it was in this violinist's family, is it possible that she'd heard of it as a family legend or something? She says no. She says she'd never heard of it. And the people she'd asked about it, I mean, apparently it was very little known. In fact, it took her four years to track it down and get a copy of it because the library was so resistant. They were so, wanted to be faithful to this stipulation that they'd need not to release it until then.

But she did manage to get it finally with a lot of help, get the library to release it, and told Schumann at the next seance how much she liked it, and he told her he was delighted and advised her on how to start preparing it for performance. He was going to give the world premiere of this concerto. In the meantime, this whole affair had reached the press, who were very skeptical and made a lot of jokes about it. And Tovey, the musicologist, actually wrote a letter to the London Times in 1937 supporting her. He said, to me, as to many others to whom 19th century materialism is as obsolete as the phlogiston theory, it is mystery how two persons come to understand each other by ordinary human intercourse. And I'm not prepared to find anything more mysterious in other means of ascertaining what the minds of Schumann and Joachim have to say to us now. I assert my positive

conviction that the spirit of Schumann is inspiring Yeliy Deranyi's production of Schumann's posthumous Violin Concerto. The sense in which I make this assertion is my own private affair. So he was completely behind her and thought, apparently, that the seance really had brought this to light. and thought apparently that the seance really had brought this to light. While all this was going on, a German music publisher also got a copy of the concerto, which was sort of out in the wild now, and offered it to the famous American violinist Yehudi Menuhin for a performance to have him give the premiere. And this being the 1930s, Germany put its foot down

because it wouldn't have Schumann work premiered by a Jewish violinist with a Jewish conductor, which was what they were planning. Also, Duranje herself was Jewish, so they would have objected if she tried it herself. So what finally wound up happening is that a German violinist and conductor gave the premiere in Berlin on November 26, 1937. And then Yehudi Menyohin did it later in America. And then Duranje didn't get to it until February 16th, 1938, when she played it with the BBC Orchestra in London. So Schumann did get what he had asked for. She did find it, and she did perform it. It just didn't work out quite as smoothly as I guess he had hoped. And then the concerto was sort of quietly disappeared. It

apparently wasn't, or at least people at that time didn't think it really was that good. It apparently wasn't, or at least people at that time didn't think it really was that good. And stranger still, Schumann's spirit didn't appear afterward and give any comment about any of this. I guess it was just pleased that the thing had been brought to light. You can look at that however you want. It's been funny to research this story because I find that people fall into two camps, at least the sources I was able to find. People who believe in the spirit world just think, well, yeah, everything's just as it appears to be. And it makes perfect sense.

And people in the classical music world who don't believe in spirits tend to focus on the concerto but overlook the fact that it came to light through a seance. And I can't find anybody in between who's sort of willing to look skeptically at what actually happened here, which is actually hard to believe. I mean, if you look at the story on the face of it, hard to believe. I mean, if you look at the story on the face of it, is that a violinist heard about this Schumann concerto, found out about it

ostensibly through his spirit at a seance, but looked into it and found out that... It really did exist. Yes, Schumann did write a little-known violin concerto. In the seance, he said it was in D major, turns out it's in D minor. I mean, there's a lot here. And she turns out to be... The concerto was written for a violinist who was her own great uncle.

Right. Which is kind of an enormous coincidence. Right. Well, that's the only other reason I think that if it's possible that she had somehow heard through the family about the existence of this thing. Yeah, I have to say that did. And I should stress this. Yeah. This shows up nowhere in my reading.

This is just my own cynicism. It occurred to me that if she did somehow learn that he'd written one and learned that there was this sort of stipulation that it couldn't be published until 1956,

then that would be one way, creating a sensation would be one way to put pressure on the library to release it ahead of time. Right, and it would get her publicity too. I mean, if she was the one

to premiere it, for example. But I just, I want to stress, no one's, I can't find anyone, actually, except the two of us, who are even suggesting that. But it is kind of a huge coincidence if you don't believe in spirits. Okay, that's the first story. The second one concerns a middle-aged widow living in London about 30 years later. In the 1960s, her name was Rosemary Brown. She came from a family that claimed to be psychic, and she herself believed she was psychic, and started to receive and communicate compositions

from not just Schumann, but a whole group of composers. I don't have any indication that she knew anything about the whole story I just told about Yelidurani. This is, I think, entirely separate. She said that the spirit of Franz Liszt appeared to her when she was seven years old. She wasn't frightened since she said she'd seen spirits quote, since I was a tiny child. This is from her 1971 book, Unfinished Symphonies. He came on that first occasion as a very old

man. His long hair was very white and he was wearing what I took to be a long black dress. At seven, I didn't know what a cassock was. But I remember thinking it funny that a man should be wearing something like that that his visit was so brief that I hardly had time to wonder about any of it before he was gone. For some reason, he never said who he was that morning. I suppose he knew I would eventually see a picture of him somewhere and would recognize him.

All he said that morning, speaking slowly because I was a child, was that when he had been in this world, he had been a composer and a pianist, he then said, when you grow up, I will come back and give you music. And he did that. She was sort of an indifferent musician. She'd taken piano lessons a few times and was working in a school kitchen in 1964 when she had an accident that broke some of her ribs. So she was laid up at home with broken ribs and couldn't do anything. She was practically immobile. And out of pretty much boredom, she went back to the piano and found at that moment that Liszt returned to her as he'd promised.

She recognized him immediately and Liszt acted, she said, like a sort of reception desk. Apparently Liszt is fantastically gregarious in the afterlife and knows all the composers and would come bring them to her and introduce them and they would start dictating music to her, so she said. In fact, there were a lot of them. She said there were 12 composers who would visit her at her home in London and give her new compositions. List himself, Chopin, Schubert, Beethoven, Bach, Brahms, Debussy, Grieg, Berlioz, Rachmaninoff, Monteverdi, and, as I said, Robert Schumann himself, who apparently had built up some additional compositions in the afterlife

and had to give them to someone. Schumann, at this point, maybe because of the experience with the violin concerto, was a bit more reticent to come himself. Sometimes Clara, his wife, would come for him. Brown wrote, I suspect that he is just a little embarrassed at trying to communicate, just as I'm a little embarrassed at playing for an audience. Also, I don't think his powers of concentration as regards communication are very good, really. His mind is inclined to wander off, and he becomes absorbed in something quite different from the music he has to give. She claimed that these composers, they'd show up, and they had different styles of communicating these compositions to her.

Liszt would control her hands. The New York Times quoted her as saying, I seemed to lose control of my hands. It was as though someone were guiding them. Chopin would tell her the notes and push her hands to the right keys. Schubert tried to sing, apparently with kind of a bad voice. And Beethoven and Bach would just dictate the notes to her, and she'd write them down with a pencil. I see.

So she did make copies of these so that other people could see them. Yeah, and she started sharing them with the world. She said all these composers spoke to her in English. So over the years, she accumulated 400 pieces of music in six years. Songs, piano pieces, some string quartets, incomplete ones, and the beginning of an opera, and partly completed concertos and symphonies. So all kinds of music were being dictated to her. And she'd either record them herself or at least share the manuscripts with the world,

anyone who was interested in seeing them. There's some disagreement about how much musical training she herself had. No one thinks it was extensive. She said she had about three years altogether with intervals in between. She couldn't play by ear. She couldn't extemporize. She had no record player or radio in her home, and she never went to concerts. Some people say she had a bit more than that, but no one thought certainly she was the equal of Bach or Beethoven.

And did, like, musicologists look at this music to see if it matched the styles it should match? And the general—she appeared on some BBC radio shows at first, but then started to appear on television as well. She was on Johnny Carson at one point. A lot of this stuff is on YouTube if anyone's interested. I'll put some links in the show notes. Generally, she got a lot of ridicule for this. The compositions weren't terrible, but the general consensus seems to be

that they were sort of warmed over rehashings of existing compositions. There was nothing really new there, and it's sort of what you might expect to get from someone who is sort of aping the style of an existing composer without doing anything new. The best praise I think I was able to find is from the British composer Richard Rodney Bennett, who said, if she's a fake, she's a brilliant one and must have had years of training.

He says, some of the music is awful, but some of it is marvelous. I couldn't have faked the Beethoven. Apparently, he himself was running into trouble with one composition and asked her about it, and she asked Debussy, who gave a suggestion, and he did it, and it worked. Make of that what you know. Wow. Anyway, whatever you think about all of this,

it was an awful lot of work on her part. She said, the work involved has been tremendous. I have had a very limited musical education, which meant that I was unpracticed in the straightforward technicalities of writing down notes and unacquainted with the knowledge of how to orchestrate. And all the while, there has been the task of keeping in contact with beings from another world, the world of spirit, who sometimes do not come through as clearly as one would wish. She doesn't seem to have considered herself a fraud. In other words, she really did seem to believe whatever you think was really going on here.

She herself really did seem to believe that she was doing what she professed to be doing. Uh, the forward to her book is written by the Bishop of Southwark who met her first at a recital after a recital at a dinner. And he wrote in the forward, I think it would be fair to say that, uh, no matter what the explanation may be, nobody at that dinner would want to question her integrity. She's convinced that she is in touch with Liszt and other great composers. She sees them, talks to them, and becomes a channel for their most recent works. So for whatever it's worth, here's a few glimpses. In the book, she goes through and describes each of these composers as she experienced them. Schubert, she says, wore

spectacles on the first time he appeared to her, apparently so that she would recognize him, quote, because obviously they do not need glasses on their side. She says, I've actually heard the end of the Unfinished Symphony and it is very, very beautiful. So that's encouraging. I don't know if she actually managed to write it down for him, but it's out there somewhere. Beethoven, you'll be pleased to know, is no longer deaf. Quote, one day he was talking to me so gently and quietly that I felt very moved and very humble, and I said to him, Beethoven, I love you. He just looked at me with the suspicion of a smile and said quite seriously, of course. Of course.

I want to know how they all learned English, but okay. I don't know. Apparently, you can actually see there's at least one YouTube video I found where she's actually communicating with Beethoven on camera. He's dictating something. And she doesn't make any big show of it. She doesn't pretend to see him standing there. She just sort of, I don't know how you'd even say it, perceives it and starts writing down with a pencil.

So it's all kind of low key, but apparently he was present to her in her mind and could communicate. So I guess maybe language doesn't really, I don't know how that works. He just sends the thoughts to her. Bach, somehow not surprisingly, is very stern and doesn't seem to have any sense of humor at all. When he comes to the house, it's just for work, work, work.

Debussy once came dressed in a sheepskin jacket with a straw hat perched on his head. Okay. That's almost all she has to say about him. Greed reminds me of a big, shaggy dog, and I mean that in a very complimentary way, because I love dogs, particularly big, shaggy ones. She once asked Rachmaninoff what he thought of modern Russia.

He said, Russia is a very great country, and she will become even greater if she practices non-aggression. This was in the 1960s. She actually had dinner with Leonard Bernstein and his wife at one point and showed him nervously what she claimed to be a Rachmaninoff piece that had been given to her. And he played it through with the piano and said that he generally bought it. There was one bar that he thought wasn't quite authentic, but the rest of it, to my own surprise, he thought was creditable, at least for Rachmaninoff. Anyway, in researching all this, the part that really delighted me is that Donald Tovey, who was the English musicologist whose Yeliduranyi had approached for help in finding the Schumann

Violin Concerto, turns up dead in this story. He had helped them track down the Schumann Concerto and wrote that irate letter to the London Times saying that, of course, there's a spirit worlderto and then wrote that irate letter to the London Times saying that of course there's a spirit world and then died in 1940 and then showed up here, dead, from the spirit world communicating with Rosemary Grant. And I don't have any indication that she knew about this whole Durrani business before. Possibly

she did. I don't know. He appeared to her hoping to dictate a book called Immortality. He had still very strong opinions about the spirit world even after death. He appeared to her on the night of January 1st, 1970. She was having trouble sleeping, and he showed up and said, well, as you can't sleep, we may as well do some work, and started dictating notes for an album sleeve. He said, basically, that there was more to all of this than just trying to entertain humans, that these composers are trying to communicate

the idea that there really was life after death and that humans ought to conduct themselves with more forethought with that in mind he said they were the musicians were attempting to establish a precept for humanity that life continues after death and that quote the knowledge that incarnation in your world is but one stage in man's eternal life should foster policies which are more far-seeing than those frequently adopted at present, and encourage a more balanced outlook regarding all matters. Which I guess we haven't done. Did he speak English?

Because that's, I mean, that's pretty clear, explicit English for, you know, if he... Yeah, he was British, so that's okay. Oh, I couldn't remember which nationality he had been, okay. But Rosemary Brown died in 2001, so ironically she didn't finish the book Immortality for him. Oh. And that means that probably Robert Schumann, if he's still been composing out there somewhere, is probably looking now for another outlet for his composition.

So if there are any mediums or people attuned to the spirit world, you might try to connect with him because he's probably got something to say to you. This podcast is supported primarily by our awesome patrons. Greg does such a good job with his feature stories that it's easy to overlook how very much time goes into creating one. He spends many hours a week tracking down various sources, reading them, and then integrating Thank you. look for the link in our show notes. Every pledge is really appreciated, and if you pledge at least a dollar an episode, you get access to our activity feed, where you'll find behind-the-scenes comments, outtakes, and extra-lateral thinking puzzles, plus updates on what Sasha, our show mascot, has been up to lately. Thanks so much to everyone who helps support Futility Closet.

Today, Greg's going to be trying to solve a lateral thinking puzzle. I'm going to present him with an interesting sounding situation and he has to figure out what's going on asking only yes or no questions. Are you ready? Yes. Okay this comes from Jed's list of situation puzzles. Here's your puzzle. A man takes a two-week cruise to Mexico from the U.S. All right. Shortly after he gets back, he takes a three-day cruise, which doesn't stop at any other ports. He stays in his cabin all the time on both cruises. As a result, he makes $250,000. Wow. Yeah, very lucrative.

Okay, the first cruise to Mexico is two weeks? Yes. And the second cruise is how long? Three days. Three days. Three days. And doesn't stop at any ports. Okay, the cruise to Mexico is on a ship? Yes.

Like an ocean-going vessel? Yes. And the second cruise, something tells me, is not. That's incorrect. Oh, really? It's not like an aircraft or a spacecraft or something? It is not. I'm sorry. It's a, so just to be clear, it's a ship. It's not like an aircraft or a spacecraft or something? It is not. I'm sorry.

So just to be clear, it's a ship? It's a ship, yes. Just like the first ship? Yes. Oh, there goes that plan. Okay, so he takes a... Do I need to know what the destination was in Mexico specifically? No.

Or what he did there? No. Is his occupation important? No. Oh, yes, actually. I'm going to say yes to that one. I changed my mind. Yes. Did this really happen? Not that I'm aware of, no. Okay, a man... Is the time period important? No. Uh, yes, actually. I'm going to say yes to that one. I changed my mind. Yes. Did this really happen? Uh, not that I'm aware of.

No. Okay. A man, is the time period important? No. A man takes a three week, two week cruise to someplace in Mexico. Yes. At some time. Yes.

Comes back. Yes. Is he doing his occupation while on that trip? I'll say yes. Is he doing it while the ship is traveling or just when he gets to Mexico? That's a no-yes or no question. Is he performing his occupation

while the ship is traveling? I'll say yes. Occupation on a ship. Is he doing it while they're in Mexico as well? Sure. And on their way back? Sure. Wow.

Is he doing it on the second cruise as well? Yes. Do any of you know the destination of the second cruise? Uh, no. That second cruise, does it have a destination? Well, it doesn't, like, stop anywhere. I mean, I don't know how cruises work. It goes out for three days and comes back to the same port.

Okay. But he never leaves his cabin? He never leaves his cabin. Is he ill at any point? No. Is there a reason I need to know why he doesn't leave his cabin. He never leaves his cabin. Is he ill at any point? No. Is there a reason I need to know why he doesn't leave his cabin? No. He just doesn't happen to? Yes. And then they get back. Do I need to know anything beyond what happens after they arrive back in the U.S. the second time? Not necessarily. But he gets paid $250,000. Yeah. Would you say he won this money? No.

He earned it. Yes. Earned it as part of his occupation. Yes. Okay. Would you... Okay. I'm stuck on this illness thing.

He wasn't quarantined in the cabin? That is correct. He could have left his cabin. Okay. But he wouldn't... Let's say he took the second cruise, but not the first. Would he still have got the money? No. And let's say he took the first cruise, but not the first. Would he still have got the money? No.

And let's say he took the first cruise, but not the second. Would he have got the money? No. So something happened on the first cruise. Uh-huh, uh-huh. It's true. I don't know how to say it. It sort of paid off or enabled him to earn the money on the second cruise.

Sure, yes. Would you say he earned the money on the second cruise? You wouldn't say he earned it on the first? I wouldn't say either of those things. It took the both of them. It did take the both of them. Would it help me to pursue who awarded him, gave him the money? Probably not.

That might be difficult for you to pin down. Okay. Is he a criminal? Yes. Are other people criminal? Yes. Are other people involved? Yes. Okay. Wow, this is odd.

Goes to Mexico. Could this have happened if the first cruise had touched at another country besides Mexico? Possibly, yes. Is he a smuggler? Yes. He's a smuggler smuggling something from Mexico to the United States? Yes. Okay, so the first cruise he goes to Mexico, gets whatever it is.

Well, he doesn't. He never leaves his cabin. No, I'm saying the first time. Right, but he never leaves his cabin on both cruises. Oh. He never leaves his cabin, but he's a smuggler. Yeah, but you know what? It would work.

The puzzle would work the same way if he goes to Mexico and gets the the thing that would work too we'll say that that's close enough okay i'll probably put it together i guess goes to mexico and gets whatever it is do we need to know probably do specifically what it is no okay it's something yes and conveys it back to the u.s successfully um would you say? Be more specific. Okay, he goes, I don't know what to, let's say, can I say it's like a Jules or something? Yeah, whatever it is. It's just contraband.

Goes to Mexico and gets it. Yeah. And then brings it with him back to the United States. Yes. He brings it back to the United States when? I mean, you're not being on the oh sorry sorry on the second on the second leg of the first cruise he goes out to mexico okay they arrive in mexico he gets the contraband whatever it is gets back on the ship and comes back to

the united states right uh the ship comes back to the ship comes back with him aboard in his cabin yes all right there's a weird business about the stay in his cabin. Okay. And then he goes on the second cruise. Yes. Which doesn't go to Mexico. Correct. Doesn't really go anywhere. Doesn't.

It just, right. Goes out in the water. Comes back. Stays on his cabin there as well. Yeah. Does he still have the contraband with him at that point? Yes. Is he doing something?

No. With it? No. He's just got it with him. Is he just passing time on the second cruise partly but not not completely is he evading the authorities somehow yes on the second cruise yes maybe not as actively evading as you mean though okay okay but if he okay then say this if he hadn't gone on the second cruise he might might have been caught by whoever catches contraband. Yes, he needed to do the second cruise to make this all work.

And then the $250,000 was just his benefit from smuggling this stuff. Right, right. So you're just saying that he got away with it because he took the second cruise. Right. So the second cruise was crucial to the whole plan. You say there are other people involved. Are there other criminals? Well, yeah.

I mean, is it somebody, the puzzle has it that somebody brings the contraband to him in his cabin and he never leaves the cabin. But it's close enough if he goes and gets it himself in Mexico. On the first cruise? Yeah, yeah. Okay. So that's irrelevant, really. Okay, I see. So the question then is just what happened.

Why does he need to take the second cruise? Right. Which has no destination. Do I need to know who else is aboard the cruise? No. Or what the authorities are doing while he's cruising? No. Is he just, would you say he's hiding out?

He's just hiding from the authorities for the duration of that cruise so they won't find him? That's not really it, no. He's just hiding from the authorities for the duration of that cruise, so they won't find him? That's not really it, no. And you say, I don't need to know more about what the contraband is specifically. Correct. You do not. So it's not entirely to do with just the passage of time. Right. It's not. Is he changing his appearance or his identity somehow?

No. Is he preparing? Would you say he's preparing to do something when the second cruise arrives back at the US? no, there's a distinction between cruises that make stops in ports and cruises that do not it's important that the second cruise does not make any stops

it's important that the second cruise does not make any stops. Right. Does it have to do with, you know, passports or the legalities of crossing between different countries? Yes. Okay. But he goes to Mexico. On the first cruise.

Yeah, but I'm saying he successfully went to another country on the first cruise. Yes. And what happens when you come back to the U.S. after you've been to another country and you've been able to get off the ship? Oh, customs. Yeah. So put this together. So you'd have to go through customs on the first one because it stopped at another country. And he's coming back with contraband now, so he can't declare everything he's bringing with him.

Right. Do they let him pass onto the second cruise without going through customs? Oh, no. cruise without going through customs oh oh um no he he he goes he goes through customs after the first cruise okay but leaves the contraband aboard the ship yes and then okay and then passes through customs and he's done with the first leg yes and then okay oh that's clever and then sets out on the same ship for a second pointless cruise that won't have to. That's good. Yes.

And they won't have to go through customs on their way back because they didn't go anywhere. Right, exactly. And then he can smuggle his contraband into the U.S. So he just left the contraband aboard the ship and then went back and picked it up. Yes. I like that one. That is clever. Okay, we're not advocating that anybody actually drive it.

No, but that's a really good idea. It is a really good idea. And if anybody else has puzzles they'd like to send in for us to use, you can send them to us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. That's another episode for us. If you're looking for more Futility Closet, you can check out

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