Futility Closet - 076-Get Out of Jail Free

Episode Date: October 5, 2015

During World War II, the British Secret Service found a surprising way to help Allies in Nazi prisoner-of-war camps: They used doctored Monopoly sets to smuggle in maps, files, compasses, and real money. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll tell the story behind this clever ploy, which may have helped thousands of prisoners escape from Nazi camps. We'll also hear listeners' thoughts on Jeremy Bentham's head, Victorian tattoos, and phone-book-destroying German pirates and puzzle over murderous cabbies and moviegoers. Sources for our feature on MI9's use of Monopoly sets to help Allied prisoners escape during World War II: Philip E. Orbanes, Monopoly: The World's Most Famous Game -- And How It Got That Way, 2006. Ki Mae Heussner,  "Get Out of Jail Free: Monopoly's Hidden Maps," ABC News, Sept. 18, 2009 (retrieved Sept. 27, 2015). Listener mail: Myths and legends surrounding Jeremy Bentham's auto-icon, from University College London. This week's lateral thinking puzzles are from Matthew Johnstone's 1999 book What's the Story? 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]. 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 cadillacs 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 76. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. The British Secret Service found a surprising way to help allied POWs in World War II. They gave them Monopoly sets filled with escape maps, files, compasses, and real money. In today's show, we'll tell the story behind this clever ploy, which may have helped thousands of prisoners escape from Nazi camps.

We'll also hear listeners' thoughts on Jeremy Bentham's head, Victorian tattoos, and phone book-destroying German pirates, and puzzle over murderous cabbies and moviegoers. You would not be listening to this podcast right now if it weren't for our amazing patrons. This show would definitely not still be going if it weren't for all the support from our fans. If you would like to join them and help ensure that we can keep bringing you your weekly dose of quirky history and lateral thinking puzzles, please check out our Patreon campaign at patreon.com slash futilitycloset, or see the link in our show notes. In 1940, a stranger arrived at the main factory of John

Waddington Limited in Leeds in England. Waddington was a printer and a board game manufacturer. The stranger introduced himself as E.D. Alston, and on his first visit, he didn't do much. He just kind of observed the character of the firm and just placed a small order for some calling cards. But a few weeks later, he returned and asked to speak in private with the firm's principals. He read them excerpts from England's Official Secrets Act and asked whether they'd uphold its provisions if they were asked to do so for their country. They agreed to do so and also never again to call Alston by his real name. From now on,

they were going to call him Mr. A. Mr. A. Is this mysterious enough for you? Turned out Mr. A worked for MI9, which is a branch of the British Secret Service that at the time was providing aid to escapees during World War II. Increasing numbers of British airmen were being held hostage behind enemy lines, and he wanted Waddingtons to help because they knew how to print on silk. Apparently, for hundreds of years, silk has been the material of choice for military maps. It doesn't tear or dissolve in water as easily as paper does, and it weighs practically nothing, so you can stuff it into a boot or a cigarette packet. And unlike paper, it doesn't rustle, so it's a very useful, durable material to print maps on. And Waddingtons had made a name for itself by being able to print on silk,

which is apparently a tricky business. They did it to print sort of high-end products like theater programs and celebration events for royalty, but they'd gotten good at it. They knew how to find the right grade of material with the right absorbency, and they knew how to the proper way to stretch it. Apparently, it's very tricky to print on silk. So the president of the company, a man named Norman Watson, created a small division of Waddingtons that began to print detailed maps of France and Germany on silk. The maps depicted much of Western and Central Europe. In fact, the Watsons later learned that every British airman carried one of these silk maps

in every mission he flew, either carried in a flight boot or sewn into his uniform so that if he went down, he'd know where he was and how to get out. In fact, after D-Day, foot soldiers carried them as well. There were just silk maps everywhere. Mr. A. told Waddington not to record anything about the project in writing. All the orders were transmitted verbally, just to lower the chance that the enemy would find out about it. Mr. A would either bring the maps to Leeds or Watson would go to London to collect them. Mr. A offered an armed guard at one point, but Watson declined because he was worried that it would arouse suspicion and worry among his workers, which I'm sure it would have.

So this whole thing kind of evolved in an interesting way. After they'd been making silk maps for a while, Mr. A. asked the Watsons to begin manufacturing decks of playing cards so that they could hide maps and escape instructions in these. They'd even put a tiny compass to be hidden in each box, and they'd give the boxes to airmen. At first, so they started making these playing cards and distributing them. At first, Waddington planned to stop making the cards after Norway fell,

because that was a source of one of their essential materials in making the cards. But Winston Churchill himself encouraged them to find a solution, and they actually found a replacement material made of linen. It turned out that Churchill and his wife played Bizzique, which is a two-player card game, and believed that card games were beneficial to British morale. Oh, I had no idea. Card games help win the war.

There was one other obstacle to continuing making the playing cards. MI9 wanted them to be highly flammable so that they could be set aflame with a lighted cigarette. I'm not sure why this is. I couldn't find in my research why that was important. At first I thought it was so that if you were shot down in Europe somewhere, you could start

a fire with these by touching them with your cigarette and they'd burst into flame. But if you have a cigarette, a lit cigarette, that means you have matches or a lighter or something. It wasn't quite clear to me why you would want explosive playing cards. They could use them as signals? And there's nothing on the playing cards that you wouldn't want to fall into enemy hands, right?

They would need to burn them so the enemies wouldn't see some information. No, they're just playing cards. They're just playing cards. Okay. Anyway, that's what MI9 wanted. At first, the Watsons were very nervous about this because that's the very opposite of what they typically wanted for playing cards they printed. That's true. You don't want your playing cards in your house to be highly flammable.

People are smoking and playing poker at the same time or whatever. Yeah, so what they wound up doing was having men standing by with fire extinguishers while they were manufacturing the playing cards. This gets increasingly surreal.

But fortunately, those were never needed. So, so far, so good. Now a downed British flyer would have a map and a compass and instructions on how to get to a safe location. And a deck of cards if you want to play solitaire. Right. That's true. I hadn't even thought about that.

Which are all useful if you get shot down behind enemy lines, but not so useful if you're actually imprisoned in an enemy POW camp. Because then you can't get anywhere to use them. Yeah. Here's where it gets really interesting. Waddington also happened to be the UK licensee for the Parker Brothers game Monopoly. I think that was entirely a coincidence. But MI9 got to thinking about it and decided that Monopoly sets would be an ideal way to smuggle cutting tools and bribe money into the Nazi POW camps.

cutting tools and bribe money into the Nazi POW camps. So Mr. A requested that Waddington construct special editions of Monopoly games with low-profile escape tools, maps, and compasses hidden inside the game boards. And just to be clear about this, it's not that they put compasses and maps loosely into the Monopoly box. They actually fit them physically into the game board itself. They're just very low-profile. they'd have to be very thin yeah uh which is kind of impressive engineering feat also they put real currency under the game's uh monopoly money which sounds charmingly low tech today but that was the clever scheme to get money into pow camps is just to hide it literally under a few stray dollars of Monopoly money inside a Monopoly set, which apparently worked.

And then the Red Cross would deliver these to Allied airmen in Nazi POW camps. That was the plan. Apparently, this was not the brainchild of Mr. A. Just for the record, as far as anyone can tell, it originated with another MI9 officer named Christopher Clayton Hutton. One map expert said, he was the first who had this idea to get maps into camps concealed in board games. It looks innocent. They wouldn't arouse suspicion. It just looked like someone was being charitable, which makes sense.

Norman Watson, the company president, asked how the games could get past inspection by the prison guards, which is a good question. And Mr. A told them that the nazis considered games and puzzles quote-unquote pacifiers that kept the prisoners docile and occupy them kept them from getting up to other mischief like okay we've covered in another episode right also interestingly uh the nazis had come to depend on red cross packages to supplement the prisoners' rations. Under the Geneva Conventions, you had to keep war prisoners fed, you know... Adequately.

Adequately. Yeah. And they actually, on their own, weren't keeping them up to that standard and had come to rely on having the Red Cross supply other food to bring them up there. That was important to the Nazis because if they fell below that level and were caught, then they couldn't exchange prisoners for goods that they needed. So the Nazis had a strong incentive to just accept, unless they looked really suspicious,

just to accept what the Red Cross gave them because it was helping them too. So the MI9 was fairly confident that the games would be accepted. The Watsons were glad to hear this. If you think of it from their point of view, they're the game manufacturer. If they're making silk maps and playing cards and those get somehow discovered by the Nazis, there's not a real big chance of reprisals because an angry nazi can't tell

where a given deck of playing cards was manufactured right but waddington's was the only uk licensee to manufacture monopoly boards so if an angry nazi discovers a doctored monopoly set he knows exactly where it came from and it's conceivable they would come back and exact some reprisal against them by attacking the factory or something so watson was worried that uh there could be some revenge raid killing their workers and potentially destroying the plant so they were glad to hear uh that that seemed relatively unlikely now um also this didn't fall on the red cross they didn't want to compromise the integrity of the Red Cross, so the MI9 also created some fake charity groups that would also smuggle the games into the camp.

So if it was discovered, all the anger wouldn't fall entirely on the Red Cross. So as I said, they hired mechanics to cut precise openings into the cardboard liner of each game board to hide these tools. And as I said, the money pads had a few Monopoly bills on top and currency supplied by MI9 underneath. The currency was French francs, German marks, or Italian lira, depending on where the game was being sent. And then before leaving for missions, British airmen were told, strangely, it must have

sounded, that if they were captured, they should look for monopoly voids. If you're captured, they tell them before a mission, if you're captured and you find yourself in a Nazi POW, you can't look for a monopoly set. But they don't tell them why. They just say, look for a monopoly set. No, they didn't tell them. They said, but the airmen would say, well, okay.

They said, because you'll find all these tools and maps and things hidden in there. And the airmen would say, well, how do we know if the Monopoly set we find is one that has these things in it? And the answer was that they put a red dot on the free parking space. That was the actual high-tech solution to that problem in 1940, which worked as well. So once a PW camp accepted the games, the leaders there could assign a group of prisoners to make use of all these escape aids the files could be used to cut through barbed wire the map could guide anyone who escaped

to either entirely out to safety or at least to the locations of sympathetic partisans who could help them if they're still behind the lines and the compass would help them find their way and they could use the money to buy food and transportation as well as if they needed to, to bribe people who would otherwise endanger their progress. I keep trying to picture a really, really thin compass.

Like, I guess the ones I've always seen are a little thicker. I mean, you know, that you could fit a compass in a game board. Wow. Unfortunately, none of these actual boards have survived, so we don't know quite what they looked like. Or the compasses or whatever. From what I understood, they must have been somewhat thicker than modern boards, because that's just almost impossible.

But from what I understood, they just sort of, before they put down the paper, actual surface of the board, they would cut recessed openings into there. So all I know is they must have been somewhat thicker, but we don't know because none of them survived. Waddington actually printed six different maps because they were intending to send these to six different German camps in different locations. This was rather elaborate. So to make sure that each game reached its correct destination, there was this further sort of coded system that they

came up with. They would put a discrete little period after the name of a game space on each board that corresponded to the location where it should be delivered to. For example, a period after the name of a game space on each board that corresponded to the location where it should be delivered to. For example, a period after Mayfair meant that the game was intended for Norway, Sweden, and Germany and contained a map of Scandinavia and Upper Germany. A period after Marlabone Station meant that the game had been prepared for Italy and included a map of Italy and Italian currency, lira. I see. Because are, because it was a British version of Monopoly, it used London street names and regions instead of the Atlantic City streets

that are familiar to American players. But it's the same idea. You put a period after boardwalk or something and that would tell MI9, as they were delivering these games, which destination it should go to. And that seemed to work out fairly well. Barbara Bond of the UK's University of Plymouth,

who's writing a book on silk maps, told ABC News that escape maps were also concealed in board games, snakes and ladders, and in pencil. So this is news to me. Apparently they were playing snakes and ladders in Nazi POW camps. Is that like chutes and ladders? Yes, I think so. Oh, that's like a game for like five-year-olds. That's what I thought.

Unless there's another game by that name, which might make more sense. She said there's a whole industry going on. I don't think any of those have survived either, so a lot of this is just coming from the memories of people who were involved in the plan. So hundreds of thousands of escape maps were printed on silk, and she says this marked a change in the way the military viewed POWs. During World War I, if you were captured, you were just sort of considered out of commission, and they expected to get you back at the end of the war,

but you didn't really expect it to have an active role for the duration. But after Winston Churchill and some other people began to tell of their experiences as POWs' perceptions started to change, it was thought that the POWs still could be useful, could still do some work or hope to escape from their confinement. So not only, she says, was it their duty to fight if they were captured, it was their duty to escape. Ironically, secrecy was so high during the British war effort that MI9 never knew that Waddington's was also working for the army. Even when Mr. A secretly suggested this partnership,

he didn't know they were already working for the army, making shells, flares, and cartridges. And during the duration of the war, neither the army nor MI9 knew that they were both using Waddingtonons for their own purposes. That's how high the security was. Like, Waddingtons was very good at keeping a secret, apparently. Yeah. In fact, it wasn't until 40 years after the war that the British public was told that card games and Monopoly were used to aid escapees during the conflict.

Unfortunately, as I said, there's no visual or written record of what these games actually looked like, and we don't have any surviving copies of them. As I said, even Mr. A conducted all of his business with Waddingtons verbally, so a lot of this is just in people's memories. All we really have are a few reproductions of the games, some leftover silk maps, and memories of those people who were

involved, which are rapidly disappearing. Some of the silk maps from that era are still kept in libraries, homes, and museums around the world, but none of the original rigged Monopoly sets survives. After the war, everything was destroyed. In the 1970s, Norman Watson's son, Victor, was able to meet a few former POWs who'd used Waddington's maps to escape from a prisoner camp at Kolditz Castle near Leipzig in Germany. He said it was really exciting, but even Victor himself is now 80 years old and retired, so the day is soon coming when this won't be in anyone's

living memory anymore. So, the big question is how many prisoners, how many Allied prisoners actually managed to escape using rigged Monopoly sets? And the simple answer is, we don't know. The best estimate of how many people made their way out of Nazi

PW camps before the end of the war is 35 000 which is quite a lot yeah um and some fraction of those were helped by the monopoly sets but it's impossible to know precisely how many of those there were victor watson the son of norman watson the company president of the time says we reckon that 10 000 use the monopoly map he's obviously biased toward a high number, but if he, if he's off by an order of magnitude, there's still a thousand people who were helped by rig monopoly sets to get

out of Nazi POW camps, which is a great story. That's great. Phenomenal. We have some listener updates to share for some of the stories we've recently covered on our show. In episode 72, we reported on some famous people who've had some odd things happen to their corpses after their deaths, such as Juan Peron's hands being sawed off and stolen from his grave. Greg discussed how Jeremy Bentham's corpse was preserved according to his wishes and kept in a friend's office until it was eventually moved to

the Anatomy Museum at the University College London. Rob wrote in to say, the posthumous life of Jeremy Bentham is more exciting than you have allowed. His head was stolen by students from UCL's arch rival King's College London, and ransomed back. Of course, I had to find out what that was all about. Rob sent a link to a page that has stories about Bentham's corpse on the UCL website, and that states, it is said that Bentham's head was stolen by students from King's College London and used for an impromptu game of football in the college quadrangle. The site does go on to say that this is a myth, as The head is in a delicate condition and would have quickly disintegrated should anyone have tried to kick it around.

The head was, however, kidnapped by students from King's College in October 1975. It was returned unharmed following the payment of a ransom of 10 pounds to the charity Shelter. Bentham's head is now kept in special environmental conditions in the Institute of Archaeology. Archaeology? Yeah. You know what? I don't mean this as a joke, but

Bentham undertook all this because he didn't like the idea he wanted his remains to be useful after death, and he was serious about that. He was the founder of utilitarianism. In a weird way, he wouldn't necessarily disapprove of some of these things. I mean, his body is put to some use that benefits a charity. His head was, I guess, stolen and ransomed back.

You're right, but it benefited a charity, so it was put to use. I mean, I guess I'm half joking, but not entirely. That sort of actually is in keeping with the spirit of his whole project. He probably wouldn't have wanted his head used as a football, though, or soccer ball. I wouldn't think so. Rob went on to say, I'd always heard that Mr. Bentham had tie-breaking vote in the UCL council and always voted yes, but alas, this seems to be legend. The ACL site says, it is often said that Bentham is taken into meetings of the college council, the college's governing body, and that it is recorded in the minutes that Mr. Bentham is present but not voting. Sadly, it is not true that Bentham presides at meetings of the college council.

The site does note, as you did, that Mr. Bentham did attend the 150th anniversary of the founding of the college on February 10th, 1976. And the site goes on to say, Moreover, Mr. Bentham does every now and then accept invitations to events, providing he does not have to climb any stairs. In October 2006, he attended a dinner during the John Stuart Mill Bicentennial Conference held at UCL. Unfortunately, the stairs prevent him attending events in the Jeremy Bentham room. Oh, that's unfortunate. That is unfortunate. Apparently, they need a new Jeremy Bentham room that does not need stairs. I'm trying to picture with that. They just like wheel him in and he sits there. I don't know. He's in like a special case. So maybe

the whole case goes. I don't know. They didn't say. The website lists a number of stories about Bentham's remains. Apparently, there are quite a number of stories about the various things that Mr. Jeremy Bentham has gotten up to over the years. And at the bottom, it has a couple of stories that they've so far been unable to prove or disprove, such as that his head was stolen by students and found in a station locker in Aberdeen. Meaning that might be true. It might be true. They've not been able to confirm or deny it. So if anyone knows more about this particular story, they do ask you to please contact the museum curator.

Can anyone do this, do you suppose? Like, could I just have my body embalmed, like leave instructions and then... Probably. You could do anything you want with it? I could... Or I could tell you what to do with it? Do you sitting in the living room and pretend you're there? Yeah. We could like try to do with it. I could tell you what to do with it. I could leave you sitting in the living room and pretend you're there. Yeah.

We could, like, try to do the podcast. I would just... That might be a little boring in places where it's your turn to solve the puzzle or something, but... Hunes Bacar Varela from Salta, Argentina, had something to add on the subject of the theft of Juan Peron's hands. He says that in the first few months after the discovery of the missing hands in 1987, the main line of thinking in the public and press was that the hands were stolen for the purposes of opening a vault in a Swiss bank that used fingerprint scanners. Hunes says, of course, no one could ever prove that, but it was widely known that Peron had a lot of money in Switzerland.

That's really. I hadn't heard that theory. That's kind of, I mean, I remember when you mentioned it in the show, we were like, why would they steal his hands? But I guess that's an idea. But Peron died in 1974, and that was 13 years before his hands were stolen. So I was wondering, you know, would fingerprints really still be usable after moldering for 13 years? It was actually, you know, it was just a weird event and nobody's ever been charged with the crime and the hands have never been recovered. So they're somewhere. They're

somewhere or some, you know, nobody knows. But why would you do that? I don't know. There's several theories about the crime, including that it was like a ritual of a Masonic lodge. Or there's this anthropologist who thinks that Peron's hands were seen culturally as the symbols of his power. So it was this whole symbolic gesture. But it's just all speculation. Nobody's ever come forward to, you know, say why. They did try to hold the hands for ransom, but didn't get anywhere. So I guess at this late date, we'll

probably never know the truth. Guess not. In episode 73, Greg told us about the sensational Victorian case of the Tichborne Claimant, where a butcher from Australia claimed to be the long lost aristocrat Roger Tichborne. It was a bit of a confusing case as there seemed to be a certain amount of evidence both for and against the butcher's claim, but one important piece of evidence turned out to be a friend from school testifying that Roger Tichborne had distinctive tattoos that the claimant did not have. Dr. Matt Lauder wrote in to say, thanks for the great episode on Tichborne. I've been a fan of yours for a long time and it's great to finally have an excuse to email you. I'm a historian of tattooing in Britain, and particularly the birth of a professional tattoo

industry in London in the 1880s. The Tichborne trial coincides quite nicely with the rise in popularity in tattooing in the West, more generally, after the opening of Japan following the Meiji Restoration. And based on my reading of the trial and its discussion in the media, I think it has a key role to play in driving popularity of tattooing amongst the moneyed classes. The twist in the Tichborne trial, of course, was that, perhaps contrary to stereotype, the wealthy aristocrat was tattooed, but the lowly butcher's son was not. It seems to me that this tacit authorization of tattooing amongst the middle and upper classes at a time when there was some stigma towards the practice

was one of the factors which got enough people with a disposable income interested in the practice such that professional tattoo studios began to emerge a few years later. In any case, it really does seem that tattooing was never quite as marginalized amongst the British as it was in That's interesting. Matt adds, There were a few other interlinked events, including the tattoos on Edward VII in 1861 and George V in 1881, but Tichborne was so widely reported and in such breathless tones that I'm sure it had an effect. Yeah, I mentioned that at the time.

This was just, it's hard to even convey what a huge deal this was at the time. Apparently. Because most people haven't heard of it today, but it was just this giant sensation, and I'm sure he's right that it would have that sort of effect because it was so widely reported. Yeah, and it's interesting that it would have all these different sociological effects. At the time, we discussed the class warfare aspect,

but apparently it even gave rise to tattooing. In last week's show, we heard about Felix von Luckner, a German nobleman who managed to wage war in a supremely humane manner in World War I. Greg mentioned at the end of the story that in addition to his other fine qualities, Luckner was reportedly able to tear up phone books with his hands. Yes. Paul Bordius wrote and said, thank you for podcast episode 75, The Sea Devil, about Felix von Luckner.

I attended Trinity School in New York City, and I remember hearing him address a student assembly sometime in the late 1940s. My recollection is that he was introduced as Count von Luckner, the Seawolf. Unfortunately, I don't remember one word of his talk, but I do remember that at the end, he did tear a Manhattan White Pages phone book in half. It must have been at least an inch and a half thick, and I think he started by first cracking the spine that makes me so happy so apparently that was completely true he did tear phone books with his hand and that was a really colorful story but in some ways that was the craziest part of it so it's wonderful to have someone write it and validate that specific detail and i imagine that to a school child it's like the talk yeah yeah whatever this guy did something but lucky just

tore a phone book that was 70 years ago and he still remembers it. I think that's fantastic. It is just wonderful, the things that our listeners have to share with us. Thanks to everyone who wrote in. And if you have any questions or comments, you can send them to us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. I'll be trying to solve a lateral thinking puzzle. Greg is going to give me an odd-sounding situation, and I have to try to figure out what's going on, asking only yes or no questions. This is from Matthew Johnstone's 1999 book, What's the Story?

What's the Story? A man gets into a cab and tells the driver his destination. They do not know each other other and neither says anything further. The driver turns into a deserted lane where he shoots the passenger dead. Why? Oh, we haven't done a fatal one in a little while, so somebody always has to die. Okay, alright. A man gets

into a cab. Does it matter where this takes place? No. Are there any specific characteristics of either man that I need to know about? Depends what you mean by that. Depends what I mean by that. Okay. Doesn't matter where. Does it matter when this takes place?

No. No. By a cab, you mean like a vehicle that's being driven for hire? Yes. A motorized vehicle? Yes. Okay. Not like a London cabby, you know hire? Yes. A motorized vehicle? Yes. Okay. Not like a London cabbie, you know, horse-drawn carriage kind of thing.

Right. All right. A man gets into a cab and asks to be taken to a destination. Was there something about the destination that he asked to be taken to that caused the cabbie to have an emotional reaction? Yes. Yes. Did he ask to be taken to the cabbie's wife have an emotional reaction? Yes. Yes. Did he ask to be taken to the cabbie's wife's house or something? Yes.

Oh, my goodness. And he realized that this was his wife's lover or something? I should have been counting questions there. Yes. The cab driver had known for some time that his wife was having an affair. The destination the passenger had given was the driver's own address. Oh. I should have been like, that was remarkable.

Okay. Fortunately, knowing you, I've got another one picked out here. Okay. This is from the same book. A woman takes her husband to a Western. During the final showdown, she pulls out a pistol, shoots him, then casually removes the body from the theater without anyone being the wiser. How?

We got a lot of deadly ones. If that wasn't a death for two minutes. Okay, people shooting people. Okay. All right. I'm sorry. I was just too distracted by the fact that, okay, we got somebody shooting somebody else. A woman takes her husband to a Western, meaning a movie set in the West. Yes.

Okay. And you said during the final... During the final showdown, she pulls out a pistol, shoots him, then casually removes the body from the theater without anyone being the wiser. How? Well, because she just timed her pistol shot so that the noise of the movie would mask it, right? No, that's not it. That's not it.

That seems so obvious. I mean, it's like she waited until somebody on screen was shooting, and then she fired her gun. But then how did she get the body out of the theater without anybody? Oh, how did she get her body out? How did she get the body out of the theater? Okay. Is this a regular movie theater? Or is there, I mean, is there something, is there something, okay.

Is this a movie theater? Yes. Yes. Is there something about the movie theater that's unusual or that I would consider unusual? Yes. Yes. It's a movie theater for people who are blind. No.

No. Okay. That would be something to see. Okay. But there is, oh, is it a drive-in? Yes. It's a drive-in theater. Yes.

That's it. They were the drive-in movies. She simply drove out. Well done. That's two in like three minutes. Yay. All right. Well, apparently we need more puzzles.

Yes, we always need more puzzles. So if anybody has a puzzle they would like to send in, you can send them to us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. That wraps up another episode for us. If you're looking for more Futility Closet, check out our books on Amazon or visit the website at futilitycloset.com where you can sample over 8,000 fascinating tidbits. 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 want 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 always 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.