Futility Closet - 084-The Man Who Never Was

Episode Date: December 7, 2015

  In 1942, Germany discovered a dead British officer floating off the coast of Spain, carrying important secret documents about the upcoming invasion of Europe. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll describe Operation Mincemeat, which has been called "the most imaginative and successful ruse" of World War II. We'll also hear from our listeners about Scottish titles and mountain-climbing pussycats and puzzle over one worker's seeming unwillingness to help another. 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. Sources for our feature on Operation Mincemeat: Denis Smyth, Deathly Deception: The Real Story of Operation Mincemeat, 2010. Richard E. Gorini, "Operation Mincemeat: How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victory," The Army Lawyer, March 2011, 39-42. Klaus Gottlieb, "The Mincemeat Postmortem: Forensic Aspects of World War II's Boldest Counterintelligence Operation," Military Medicine 174:1 (January 2009), 93-9. Gerald Kloss, "'Dead Man' Trick That Fooled Hitler," Milwaukee Journal, Jan. 28, 1954. "The Germans Fooled by False Documents," Montreal Gazette, April 30, 1954. Ewen Montagu, "The Debt the Allies Owe to the Man Who Never Was," Sydney Morning Herald, March 15, 1953. "Mourner for 'Man Who Never Was'", Glasgow Herald, Dec. 24, 1959. Listener mail: Highland Titles "Can You Really Become a Lord of the Scottish Highlands for Less than $50.00?", HG.org (retrieved Dec. 3, 2015). Links on mountain-climbing cats: Peter Glaser, "Die Katze, die das Matterhorn bestieg," Neue Zürcher Zeitung, July 6, 2015 (retrieved Dec. 3, 2015). "Hello Kitty? The Curious History of Cats Who Climb Mountains," One Hundred Mountains, Feb. 25, 2013 (retrieved Dec. 3, 2015). This week's lateral thinking puzzle is from Edward J. Harshman's 1996 book Fantastic Lateral Thinking 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. 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 catalogs more than 8,000 curiosities 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 84. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. In 1942, as the Allies prepared to invade Europe, they invented a fake British officer as part of an elaborate scheme to mislead the Germans. In today's show, we'll describe Operation Mincemeat, which has been called the most imaginative and successful ruse of World War II.

We'll also hear from our listeners about Scottish titles and mountain-climbing kitties, and puzzle over one worker's seeming unwillingness to help another. We would like to remind you this holiday season that books can make good gifts, easy to wrap and easy to mail or transport, and there just happen to be two futility closet books that you can consider. Both books are filled with short bites of fun reading, entertaining oddities, wacky inventions, amusing quotes, and stimulating brain teasers. Perfect for anyone who would enjoy learning about a doctor who took out his own appendix

or a proposal for using eagles as hot air balloon propellers. Find them on Amazon, where they will even gift wrap and mail them for you. In late 1942, as the tide was beginning to turn in World War II, the Allies began to plan an invasion of Europe. It seemed clear that attacking from England across the English Channel wouldn't be feasible that year, so they settled on an attack from North Africa. And there were basically two ways such an attack could go. They could go through Greece and Sardinia into the Balkans, sort of heading eastward, or they could go up using Sicily as a stepping stone into

Italy. Of those two plans, the latter one, going up into Italy, seemed much the better of the two. That just seemed like the obvious thing to do. If you can get into Italy, then you can open up the Mediterranean to Allied shipping and prepare for a full-scale invasion of the continent. into allied shipping and prepare for a full-scale invasion of the continent. So that makes the decision for the Allies easy. It's clear what the right course is. But it also presents a problem because it means that their enemies will also be able to look at a map and see that that was the obvious course and set up a defense of Sicily because it was just the obvious thing to do.

Winston Churchill said everyone but a bloody fool would know that it's Sicily that they'd be going after. So there's no element of surprise there. Right. So ideally what they needed was some way to convince the Germans that they weren't going to do that. In other words, to prepare an invasion of Sicily, but somehow lead the Germans to think that they weren't going to do that. They would attack somewhere else. The question was how to do that or whether it was even possible at all. As it happened, just at that moment in September 1942, a plane had crashed off Cadiz in Spain and aboard it was a British

courier carrying top secret documents concerning an invasion in North Africa. In the plane crash, all the occupants were killed and the courier's body washed up on the Spanish shore. In World War II, Spain was nominally a non-belligerent. They weren't fighting in the war, but it was known that they were cooperating with the Germans and with German military intelligence. So the Spanish authorities returned the body of this British courier, and they found that the letter was still on it. So either the Spanish hadn't noticed it or had thought it was bogus, but in any case, that was a lucky miss because that did actually contain sensitive information. But as it happened, there was also a French officer aboard the plane who also washed

up on shore, and he had a notebook, too, that contained information that would have been interesting to the Germans. And it turned out later that a copy of that notebook had been sent up the chain into German military intelligence. So that made it clear, basically, that the Spanish, who were supposed to be neutral, were actually cooperating and sort of would occasionally pass stuff that looked interesting up into the German command. And that inspired a new plan,

unlikely as it sounds. The way they hoped to distract the Germans and lead them to think that they would be going after Greece rather than Sicily was that they would deliberately plant a second dead body off the shore of Spain, presenting it as a plane crash victim as before. This body would then drift ashore in Spain,

and the Spanish would discover secret documents there suggesting that the attack would go after Greece. This lets the Germans imagine that they had discovered this for themselves rather than it being telegraphed by the Allies. So just deliberately misleading them, yeah. This plan was called Operation Mincemeat. And let me editorialize here to say, if you think this sounds crazy, I agree with you. It's one thing to do a plan like this, which seems uncertain of success, if the stake is small.

But here it's no exaggeration to say that the course of the war and the future of Europe depend to some extent on this going well. And there's just a lot that can go wrong here. They don't know that the body will reach the shore or that the documents will be found or that they'll believe, the Germans will believe the sort of cover story of the appearances of any of this or choose to act on it even if they do. Right. And if they catch on that it's a ruse, then they might think, okay, they planted this deliberately. on that it's a ruse, then they might think, okay, they planted this deliberately, so the real thing must be the opposite of what they've planted, and it'll actually turn them on to the real plan by mistake. Yeah.

And the whole thing just sounds so sort of fanciful. Yeah. Like something you'd do in a movie. But they did plan to go ahead with it, and the first thing they needed was a dead body, and that's a tall order right there. They needed a body that would appear to have died at sea by hypothermia and drowning, and had floated ashore after several days. Oh. found a body, they couldn't inform the next of kin for the same reasons what they needed it for. They just have to say, we're sorry you've lost your son. Could we have his body? And you'll probably never

see it again. And we can't tell you why. It's for a good cause. So that's, it's hard to find, even in wartime, it's hard to find a body to use. A specific dead body. Eventually what happened was a coroner in London got the body of a 34-year-old Welshman named Glendore Michael, who had fallen on really hard times and was homeless and had coroner in London got the body of a 34-year-old Welshman named Glendore Michael,

who had fallen on really hard times and was homeless and had died recently in London. He had died by eating rat poison that had been smeared on crusts of bread. Someone had left that out to kill rats, and he'd eaten it. Oh, that's horrible. Either, no one quite knows why, either because he was so miserable that he deliberately was trying to commit suicide, or he was so hungry that he was just eating the bread and didn't realize that it had been poisoned but one way or another he wound up dead and the coroner said the the poison that they'd happened to use here was phosphorus which apparently stops the action of your liver that's what kills you but it doesn't really leave any traces so the coroner said uh if you can set this guy up convincingly so he looks

like he he died at sea and they do even if they do a post-mortem, they probably won't get suspicious. So this body has that going for it. Also, Glyndor Michael's parents were already dead, and no relatives were found, so they were clear on that score. So they have a dead body. Kind of good luck for them. I guess, in a... Macabre way, yeah.

So now they have a body, now they have to give it some convincing identity they decided on calling him acting major bill martin of the royal marines and said he was born in 1907 in cardiff in wales the rank of acting major was chosen because it's high enough that he might plausibly be can it would make sense that he'd be carrying top secret documents but low enough that the german authorities wouldn't be suspicious because they'd never actually heard of him. I see. Because they just made up this identity. I hadn't thought about that.

They would need like this whole backstory and everything. Which they created. And there's a whole lot of thought that went into making him seem like a real three-dimensional person. They gave him a snapshot of a fiancé, a fake fiancé named Pam. The photo was actually of a clerk in MI5 named Nancy Jean Leslie. They gave him two love letters and a jeweler's bill for a diamond engagement ring

costing about 2,100 pounds today. They gave him ticket stubs showing that with Pam he'd seen a musical comedy in London shortly before the trip, and they gave him a letter from his father who apparently disapproved of the match. Oh, wow. Very complicated backstory.

And they didn't have much time to do this. I mean, it's very convincing and detailed. They folded and refolded the love letters Oh, wow. Very complicated backstory. crossed in a saint christopher's medallion this is interesting because they they presented him as being roman catholic because he's going to wash ashore in spain a catholic nation and the hope there was that that might discourage the spanish from doing a post-mortem as it happened they did anyway but that was what the thinking was okay uh they also gave the dead body a pencil stub keys a used bus ticket a bill for four nights lodging at the Naval and Military Club, and a receipt for a new shirt. I wonder whose job it was, like, to dream all this up, you know? They did a really good job, though.

Yeah, I mean, it's very detailed. They also give him good woolen underwear in keeping with his rank, and they arrange for the dates on the ticket stubs and the lodging bill to suggest that he had left London on this plane on April 24th, so that if the body washed ashore as they planned on April 30th, the Spanish and the Germans could put this together and conclude that the plane must have crashed and he'd spent several days at sea. So he'd flown in from Britain and then crashed at sea.

The dates would line up. Also, in keeping with giving him some sort of personality, they tried to present him as somewhat careless. The ID card they gave him was marked as a replacement for one that had been lost. So in addition to being overdrawn to the bank, apparently he was prone to losing his ID card. He has a whole personality. Seems like a nice guy, though, for a non-existent person.

Now, the fake document that all this was in service of, they decided on would be a personal letter from one high-ranking British general to another, in this case from Lieutenant General Sir Archibald Nye, who was vice chief of the Imperial General Staff, to General Sir Harold Alexander, who was commander of the 18th Army Group in Algeria and Tunisia. So it's a personal letter between two high-ranking generals.

It was marked personal and most secret. And it basically did what I said. It described the coming invasion of Greece, and they said the Allies would be using Sicily as a cover target or a fake objective. Oh, that's clever, yeah. Which turns out to be exactly the right thing to do. Nye was chosen because he's high enough ranking that what he said must be true. In other words, he ranked too highly to be himself the dupe of some misinformation or cover plan.

Right, yeah. He's sort of believable because he's so high ranking. They drafted this letter and redrafted it multiple times and finally just got Nye himself to write it up, covering the points that they specified. And the letter also addressed some sensitive subjects like the awarding of American Purple Hearts to British servicemen, which was sort of impolitic at the time,

to explain why this letter hadn't been sent through normal channels and was just being entrusted to this one officer to carry it on a plane. So the cover story seems quite convincing, or so they hoped. In the letter, Nye wrote, quote, We stand a very good chance of making the Germans think we will go for Sicily. It is an obvious objective and one about which they must be nervous. And this, I didn't know anything about this,

but apparently this is a whole study, a whole discipline on the psychology of deception. You can't get your enemy to believe something he's not already disposed to believe, but you can play on his hopes and fears to sort of persuade him to believe something he wants to believe. In this case, the Germans legitimately feared that the allies would be coming up through Sicily because it seemed the obvious thing to do.

Right. But they hoped that wouldn't happen, and this sort of led them to indulge that hope and thought, oh, look, here's a letter saying they're actually going to go for Greece. That's good news. Let's just believe that. Anyway, I just think the psychology behind this is really interesting. So they have all this put together now. They put this letter in a briefcase, chain it to the corpse's wrist, put the body in

a steel canister filled with dry ice just to preserve it, and put the canister in a submarine in Scotland. The sub's commander, even the men on the submarine didn't know it was in there. They told him it contained top-secret meteorological device to be deployed near Spain. The canister was marked Handle with Care Optical Instruments. And the commander of the sub who was in on this said later he felt bad about that because some of the men might even have used the canister as a pillow, not feeling there was a dead man outside. So the sub took it down

from Scotland down to the coast of Spain to a little fishing town called Huelva, which is about 100 miles northwest of Gibraltar near Portugal. And that little town was chosen because it was known that there was a very active German military intelligence agent who lived there. The sub surfaced there quietly at 4.30 a.m.

on April 30, 1943. The sub officers sent there quietly at 4.30 a.m. on April 30th, 1943. The sub officers sent everyone else below deck, but the ones who were in on the plan dragged the canister up, took out the corpse, fitted it with a life jacket, and attached the briefcase and the papers. The sub's commander actually read Psalm 39, though that wasn't part of his orders.

It just seemed like the appropriate thing to do. That's very nice. And they pushed the body overboard where the tide could bring it ashore. And then as they were withdrawing half a mile to the south, they threw a rubber dinghy overboard just to make it look more like the plane crash, just to give more evidence that that's what had happened. And then the subcommander sent a message saying, mincemeat completed, back to the British authorities,

and just went on his way to Gibraltar. Sure enough, a local fisherman found the body at about 9.30 a.m. and was taken into Huelva, where it was delivered to this Upwehr agent, this German military intelligence agent, as everyone had hoped. Four days after the corpse was set afloat, the Spanish informed the British naval attaché in Madrid that the body of a Major Martin had been picked up by a fisherman in Huelva and given a full military funeral there.

They didn't say anything about the briefcase or the official documents. So they didn't return him, like they returned the othercase or the official documents. So they didn't return them. Like, they returned the other guy that had washed up, but they didn't return this one. Right. They just buried him in Welvo.

And they didn't say anything about the documents. The British authorities who were running the plan, meanwhile, had Martin's name included in a list of casualties that was published

in the London Times where they published the names of the lost service men. Ah, yeah. In case the Germans checked it there. And by coincidence, on the day they happened to do that, that list also contained the names of two other officers

whose plane had been lost to sea, which was just pure happenstance, but made the whole thing seem more credible. And also Martin's fake fiancée arranged to have a wreath laid on his grave. They let a few more days go by, and then the British attaché was ordered to make a cautious inquiry about the papers

to say to the Spanish, do you know that dead body you found? He had some papers. Do you think we might be able to get those back? You still look nervous and not really say why. Yeah. The Spanish officials put that request through channels and eventually returned the briefcase and its papers saying everything's here. The British took this back and examined it, and the envelopes that had contained the fake documents were actually still sealed, but they were able to tell that the documents had,

they'd fished it out through a gap in the seal, and presumably had made copies of them, and then managed to get them back into the envelope that actually opened it in returning. It's all very painstaking work. But it did appear that the Spanish had intercepted these documents and thought they were serious enough to apparently, hopefully to have sent them up the chain to the German intelligence.

And to pretend that they hadn't seen them. Right, which tells you something right there. So a message was sent to Churchill saying, quote, mincemeat swallowed rod, line, and sinker. But now there's nothing to do but wait. They don't really know what's going on in there at this point. And in fact, the full story didn't come out until the German documents were captured after the war. But those showed that the German high command had correctly expected the Allies to invade at Sicily until May 1943. And then on May 9th, that viewpoint changed drastically. One German report said, quote, the genuineness of the captured documents is above suspicion. The suggestion that they have intentionally fallen into our hands, of which the probability is slight, and the question whether the enemy is aware of the capture of the documents by us

or only of their loss at sea is being followed up. So they completely bought it. The Germans accepted all of the personal details about Martin's identity and the whole story that Nye had laid out in his letter. And so what it came out with is that the German army concluded that the main Allied assault would be on Sardinia, with a subsidiary landing in Greece, that they'd be going east toward the Balkans. Interestingly, Joseph Goebbels, who was fluent in English, had private doubts about this.

He thought it might have been fake, but he kept those to himself. Hitler himself was convinced to such an extent that he actually overrode Mussolini, who himself was convinced that the Allies would come in through Sicily. So Hitler was completely sold on this. One report says, quote, the Fuhrer does not agree with the Duce that the most likely invasion point is Sicily. Furthermore, he believes that the discovered Anglo-Saxon order confirms the assumption that the planned attack will be directed mainly against Sardinia and the Peloponnesus. On July 9th, a message came from the German Admiralty to the Commander commander-in-chief of the Mediterranean saying, prepare for an attack on Greece. It said, quote, Sardinia and perhaps Corsica were the first targets.

The assault on Greece was most probable. So they started shifting their defense, just as the Allies had hoped, to defend Greece and Sardinia. They were fortified even at the expense of cutting down Sicily's defenses. So they'd been correctly planning for an assault on Sicily and moved those defenses over to the wrong target because all this was working so well. A group of German minesweepers and mine layers were transferred from Sicily. And in fact, three Panzer divisions were moved to Greece, weakening the Eastern Front, which no one was even thinking about.

I mean, they were so worried about this attack on Greece that they even took some of their arms from the Eastern Front, which helped efforts there. So it was just a spectacular success. It really was. And the Italian Navy was positioned to defend an Allied invasion of Greece. So what happened was the Allies actually invaded Sicily, just as they'd always hoped to, on July 10th, two and a half months after the body had drifted ashore.

And amazingly, even then, the Germans were convinced that was a feint. It was just fate that this was a false objective. They really did buy it. They were still bracing for an attack on Greece that never quite really came. The Germans kept their forces in Greece and Sardinia for two more weeks while this was going on, convinced that the main attack would come there, and waited until it was too late. Hitler was so sold on this idea that he ordered Field Marshal Erwin Rommel to command defense forces in Greece on July 23rd, nearly two weeks after the landings in Sicily.

So it was just a wild success, much more than I would have expected, honestly. So this all turned on the fact that Hitler wasn't a very skeptical person. No. And I guess that they'd done such a good job in presenting this fake story. Yeah, but it seems like other people had doubts, but that Hitler, once he decided something, he decided it. Yeah. And that sort of goes back to the psychology. Yeah. I think, psychologically, what happened is that he really wanted to believe this.

Wanted it to be true. Yeah. And if they presented a convincing reason to let him believe it, he would do it. So no one knows what would have happened if this hadn't succeeded. Right. But it seems likely that as many as several thousand lives would have been lost trying to fight our way up into Sicily if the Germans had been defending it. So the whole thing was a great success. Just as a little closer here, as I was researching this, I came across a little sidebar in a newspaper from 1953, an English reporter interviewing a German captain named Wilhelm Lenz, who was in on the German side of this. And Lentz was basically explaining to him what the

Germans had believed about what was going on here. And this German captain said, I have heard now that these papers were nothing more than a hoax, but personally, I find that hard to believe. And the English reporter said, I think it was your service that was hoaxed. And he explained the whole story behind this. And the captain just paused and said, I take off my hat. There wouldn't be a Futility Closet podcast for you to be listening to right now if it weren't for our fabulous patrons, who are the reason that this show is able to keep going. We really appreciate every pledge we get from our fans, and if you want to join them and pledge at least a dollar an episode,

then you'll get access to our activity feed, where you'll find outtakes and extralateral thinking puzzles, as well as our behind-the-scenes peeks into the show. The podcast takes us many hours to research and put together each week, so if you like Futility Closet and want to help us keep making the show, please check out our Patreon campaign at patreon.com slash futilitycloset, or see the link in our show notes. We have a couple of updates to share on past topics. We have a couple of updates to share on past topics. In episode 49, Greg asked whether the story of a kitten that reportedly climbed the Matterhorn could actually be true.

Iric Newth wrote in on the story, and I want to apologize in advance for any mangling that I managed to do of names and places from his email. Iric says, First, I would just like to thank you for your fantastic podcast. I only discovered it fairly recently and am now listening to your whole back catalog of casts. As a certifiable cat guy, I was, of course, fascinated by the story of the kitten that is supposed

to have climbed the Matterhorn in 1950. Like you, I tried to find more information, which only brought me back to the original time story. Then I googled in German, the main language in the area surrounding Matterhorn, and found some information which might be of interest to you. The source is a story in the respected Swiss newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung, published this July. In short, it doesn't unearth new information about the Matterhorn kitten.

What the article does mention is the very well-documented story of Tomba, a cat owned by the owners of the mountain hotel, Berg Hotel Schwanbach. Tomba was known for following mountain climbers up to the peaks of nearby mountains and is pictured on top of the Belmorn, 3,698 meters. And that's about 12,132 feet for those of us who think in feet yeah so that's pretty high um eric goes on to say in the mid-1990s tomba was a minor celebrity in mountaineering circles and was written about in japan and south africa as well as the u.s the noya zirkshire zaitung story also mentions another unnamed cat owned by the warden of a mountain hut situated in a pass between the Matterhorn and the Brighthorn. This cat was observed climbing the Brighthorn, taking about

10 hours to get there and back. On the peak, the cat refused to be carried down by climbers, even though its paws were sore from walking on the icy slopes. The Brighthorn is about 300 meters or a thousand feet lower than the Matterhorn, which seems to me pretty solid evidence that a house cat could reach this peak. So at least some cats do this. Apparently some cats do this. When I read that first story, I thought that can't possibly be right. I can't imagine our cat doing it, but I mean, you know, but she's a North Carolina kitty, and the idea of snow and ice is just not going over with her.

Eirik notes that this does still leave the question of whether a 10-month-old kitten could do this. You know, could a kitten get up the mat or what? But he says, based on my experience as a cat owner in a cold climate, I live in Oslo, Norway. I would say yes. The cat was born and raised at high altitudes and low temperatures and probably was well adapted to the climate and environment, even at this young age.

Anyway, thanks again for your podcast, and keep up the good work. So, we still don't have definitive proof that it happened, but it's looking rather plausible. Yeah, there seem to be quite a lot of reports of it. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, the story does get reported. I mean, the Swiss newspaper reported it as fact. I mean, this seems to be well accepted that this kitten climbed the Matterhorn. I guess I was thinking, too, that if you were just going to make up a story out of

whole cloth and try to sell it as a hoax, that's not the one you would choose. You know what I mean? Which certainly doesn't mean that it's definitely true. Right. Maybe there's something to it. It seems to be accepted. Kathy Willis wrote in with an update to our story on the tiny plots of Yukon land given away by Quaker Oats in the 1950s. Hello, Greg and fellow closeters. Whilst enjoying the Quaker Yukon land episode 79, as well as the interesting tiny plots of land follow-ups, it reminded me of this. One can purchase small plots of land in Scotland in order to obtain a title. You simply purchase one square foot of land, which comes with GPS grid coordinates and can be viewed on Google Maps, and you can then officially title yourself as Lord Laird or Lady of Glencoe. The whole thing is a land conservancy

effort. The website sounds convincing, but I'm not sure how entirely legitimate the title part of it is. And Kathy included a link to a group called Highland Titles, which sells plots of land in sizes ranging from one square foot to a thousand square feet. Basically, they bought some woodlands in Scotland and are selling plots of these woodlands to protect them from development and to help maintain them. The website for the organization states their goals as to create a unique and meaningful gift that delights our customers, to provide our customers with the thrill of land ownership, and to create, manage, improve, and maintain multiple nature reserves throughout Scotland.

That sounds good. In answer to the question of what you can do with the land, they say, as the new Laird, you can come and find your plot, take a walk in the woods, take a photograph of your estate, and picnic by the river. They note that the land is managed as a nature reserve, so you can enjoy bird watching and fungi spotting. I didn't know that that was a whole thing, but maybe it is. As well as general country pursuits. You can also plant a tree on your plot, and if you have a larger plot, 100 square feet or more, you can pitch a tent and camp there. So your neighbors there would also be Lairds of Glencoe, right?

Yes, there would be apparently lots of Lairds, Lords, and Ladies of Glencoe. Kathy notes that there are various groups offering some form of this land and title deal in Scotland, but there's some controversy over the issue. She included a link to a Scottish law firm that's written a whole article about it. And the law firm says that since the plots of land are too small to be officially registered,

you can't really be said to own one. That's like the Quaker Oats thing. Yeah. The law firm likens it, they liken it to owning a star. Like there are these gift things where you can supposedly buy a star for someone who gets a certificate saying that they own this star.

But at least in the case of the Scottish land, you do seem to be buying at least some rights to the land. I don't know how many rights you actually get to these stars. You can't certainly go picnic or camp on them, which you can to your land in Scotland. which you can to your land in Scotland. As for calling yourself a lord or lady, the law firm states, in Scotland, anyone can, subject to requirements of good faith,

call themselves whatever they like, including laird, lord, lady, or for that matter, duke of earl. However, simply calling yourself lord or laird does not make you a lord. You cannot render yourself a peer of the realm simply by changing your name, and you won't acquire a right, say, to use heraldic devices like coats of arms. This is something which Scots law still takes very seriously, and the use of unauthorized arms

is a criminal offense. Wow. Yes, so we definitely don't recommend that you say that you can have a coat of arms or try to use a coat of arms, at least where any Scottish official can see you. That's really interesting. Yeah, they take that very, very seriously. So, you know, what it means to be able to call yourself Lord or Lady of Glencoe, you can't use a coat of arms with it. And although there seems to be some concern that some of these outfits may be misleading their customers as in terms of you know how much do you own this land or whether you're now a laird of something um from what i was able to find about the highland titles at least it seems that they have um satisfied customers on customer review sites and their nature reserve has a rather high rating on tripadvisor so i guess

it's just kind of a fun thing that you can do even if you can't claim a coat of arms or make yourself a peer of the realm they still be worth doing so thank you to everybody who writes into us and if you have any questions or comments for us you can send them to us at podcast at futilitycloset.com Greg's going to be solving a lateral thinking puzzle today. I'm going to present him with an odd-sounding situation, and he has to work out what's going on, asking only yes or no questions. Okay? Yes, ma'am.

Okay. This puzzle comes from Edward J. Harshman's fantastic lateral thinking puzzles, so let's hope it's fantastic. It has to be. It has to be. Give me a hand, said Bill, struggling with a tall figure. Instead of coming to Bill's aid and joining the struggle, Charlie simply passed something to him. Thanks, said Bill, not at all surprised or upset by Charlie's nonchalant action.

What is happening? Okay. A tall figure. Uh-huh. Is that a living creature? No. Oh. All right. By figure, they mean sort that a living creature no oh all right by figure they mean sort of a human shape sure form yeah but it's not alive correct give me a hand is it like a

scarecrow or something like that is it if it's not a scarecrow it's not a scarecrow but it's a representation of a human form yeah yeah um give me a hand so what's the first guy's name uh Bill asks for the hand give me a hand Bill's trying to uh I don't know how to say this

set it up stand it up no yeah maybe like it's a statue or something he's erecting it's not that

not a statue but and he's asking for help because he's having trouble doing it single handed right and Charlie's the other guy yeah passes him I guess a tool or some implement that helps him accomplish this on his own no that's not really because he's having trouble doing it single-handed. Right. And Charlie's the other guy? Yeah.

Passes him, I guess, a tool or some implement that helps him accomplish this on his own? No, that's not really what's going on. You said passes him something. Passes him something, yeah. Passing meaning hand, meaning transfer some object to Bill. Yes. That Bill then uses to do whatever he was going to do. Yes.

I feel like I've maybe misled you a little bit in one of my answers, but... Well, let me figure it out. Yeah. Okay, let's go back to this figure. I'm not sure. Okay. Yes. I feel like I've maybe misled you a little bit in one of my answers, but... Well, let me figure it out. Yeah. So, okay, let's go back to this figure. I'm not sure. Okay. Yes. The figure is a representation of a human being. Is it of a specific person? No. Do I need to know their occupations?

Somewhat. I don't even know what you'd call their occupations, technically, but... Are there other people involved? No. Did this really happen? Probably, possibly, at some point. Is the setting important, or the geography, or anything like that? The setting. The setting.

Is it... I forgot what you said. This is a representation of a real, specific person? Not a specific person, no. So it's not like Santa Claus or something? Right. Because Santa Claus would be a real person. Well, it's a person with a, you know what I mean, with a particular identity.

Well, we actually have children who listen to this show. So yes, Santa Claus is a real person. Okay. The setting's important. Yeah. Meaning like a home or a office or a shopping center? Right, meaning like that. Is it a public place?

Yes. Is it a place of commerce? Yes. Is it a store? Yes. A particular store? No. But I mean like not just a generic store, but like a hardware store or something like that?

Okay, then yeah, a particular store. A store that sells a particular kind of goods? Yes, yes. And these guys work there? Yeah. So it would help me to work out what kind of goods. And these guys work there? Yeah. So it would help me to work out what kind of store it is? It would, but it would help you more, I think, to discover what the tall figure is. The figure is part of the store's decor?

I mean, is it part of a sales effort that they think will attract customers? Yes. Yes. as part of a sales effort that they think this will attract customers? Yes. Is it like a car dealership? No, no, no. I'm picturing one of those inflatable... Oh, no, no, not like that.

But something like that. They're erecting something to attract attention, would you say that? Not attract attention, not necessarily, but no. But to attract customers? No. To decorate the store? That's not all. None of that's quite right.

They think that in putting this up, it'll help the store sell whatever it sells. Yes. I'll go with that. But you wouldn't call it like a machine or an implement for actually doing the selling itself. Would it help me to figure out what Charlie passes passes yeah you could i mean there's there's lots of ways to attack this is it um it's would you call it a machine or implement or something no you wouldn't call it that i would not uh a measuring device no some way to affix it to a wall or to stand it up no no nothing no, no. Nothing like that at all.

Give me a hand. Is that what he said? Give me a hand. He says, give me a hand. Is it a hand? Yes. So Bill gets the hand and affixes it to that figure? Yes. Do we need to do more than that?

Yeah. I mean, so what is it? What kind of store? It's like a mannequin. It is a mannequin. It is a mannequin and clothing store. That's exactly it. Okay.

So it's give me a hand, and he passes them the hand. I should have thought of that. And nobody died. That's why it seems so obvious in hindsight. If anybody has a puzzle they'd like to send in for us to use, you can send it to us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. That's another show for us. If you're looking for more Futility Closet, you can check out our books on Amazon

or visit the website at futilitycloset.com, where you can sample more than 8,000 recipient evulgations. At the website, you can also see the show notes for the podcast and listen to previous episodes. Just click Podcast in the sidebar. If you'd 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,

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