Futility Closet - 087-A Sleuthing Cabbie, Edward VI's Homework, and a Self-Aware Crow

Episode Date: December 28, 2015

In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll share seven oddities from Greg's research, from Arthur Conan Doyle's encounter with a perceptive Boston cabbie to a computer's failed attempts to rewrite Aesop's fables. We'll also hear boxer Gene Tunney's thoughts on Shakespeare and puzzle over how a man on a park bench can recognize a murder at sea. 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 the items in this week's episode: Joseph Hatton, "Revelations of an Album," in The Idler, April 1897. Charles Dickens mentioned "MOOR EEFFOC" in an abandoned autobiography. Michael Quinion has a bit more at World Wide Words. Albert Pierce Taylor, Under Hawaiian Skies, 1922. "John Cazale," IMDb (accessed 12/23/2015). Ed Zern reviewed Lady Chatterley's Lover for Field & Stream in November 1959. John Strype, Ecclesiastical Memorials, Relating Chiefly to Religion, and the Reformation of It, 1822. Noel Williams and Patrik Holt, Computers and Writing: Models and Tools, 1989. Listener mail: "Yale Students Hear Tunney," Ottawa Citizen, April 24, 1928. "Lauds Gene Tunney," Lewiston [Maine] Daily Sun, July 11, 1929. 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. 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 in history, language, mathematics, literature, philosophy, and art. You can find us online at futilitycloset.com. Thanks for joining us. Welcome to Episode 87. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. In today's show, we'll review seven oddities from Greg's research, from Arthur Conan Doyle's encounter with a perceptive Boston cabbie to a computer's failed attempts to rewrite Aesop's fables.

We'll also hear boxer Gene Tunney's thoughts on Shakespeare and puzzle over how a man on a park bench can recognize a murder at sea. Normally on each show, I'll do one connected feature of 15 or 20 minutes, but this week, just for variety, I'm going to do a collection of shorter, unrelated items, and you can let me know what you think. There's no theme here, and they're in no order. It's just a bunch of miscellaneous items I've got. In 1894, Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes,

made his first tour of the United States, and when he arrived in Boston from Albany, New York, he met a cabbie there who seemed to recognize him. He gave him some advice about which hotel to go to, and he declined his fare and asked instead for a ticket to that evening's lecture. Doyle was surprised at this because he hadn't told him who he was and asked how he'd recognized him, and the cabbie said this. If you will excuse other personal remarks, your coat lapels are badly twisted downward, where they have been grasped by the pertinacious New York reporters. Your hair has the Quakerish cut of a Philadelphia barber, and your hat, battered at the brim in front, shows where you have tightly grasped it in the struggle to stand your ground at a Chicago literary luncheon. Your right overshoe has a large block of buffalo mud just under the

instep, the odor of a Utica cigar hangs about your clothing, and the overcoat itself shows the slovenly brushing of the porters of the through sleepers from Albany. The crumbs of donut on the top of your bag could only have come there in Springfield, and stenciled upon the very end of your walking stick in fairly plain lettering is the name Conan Doyle. Doyle said later, now I know where Sherlock Holmes went to when he died. He became a New York cabbie. Yeah, he said that leaves me free to write another set of adventures, but they must be confined to the locality of Boston, Massachusetts.

Charles Dickens, another famous Briton, famously worked in a factory when he was a boy, when his father was sent to a debtor's prison. When he wasn't working, he would drift miserably through the streets of London, and occasionally he'd go into a coffee shop in St. Martin's Lane. And there he would sit miserably and feel alienated from the whole wide world and look at a strange legend on the war that said more efok that's m-o-o-r-e-e-f-f-o-c more efok is coffee room spelled backwards it had been painted on the glass so that it would be readable from the street but because he was inside the room it read backwards to him and for the rest of his life that phrase always stood for him to that feeling we all know of alienation from the world as we see it he just felt entirely alone he wrote in an autobiography that he never finished if i ever find

myself in a very different kind of coffee room now but where there is such an inscription on glass and read it backwards on the wrong side as i often used to do then in a dismal reverie a shock goes through my blood and that phrase more effock has been picked up by other writers to describe that feeling gk chesterton used the term more effockish to describe the queerness that sometimes glimpsed in familiar things where something that you know you recognize before but it feels like you're seeing it for the first time you're disconnected from it jr tolkien wrote the word more effock may cause you to realize that England is an utterly alien land, lost either in some remote past age glimpsed by history, or in some strange dim future reached

only by a time machine, to see the amazing oddity and interest of its inhabitants and their customs and feeding habits. There's a term in psychology, j'aime-vous, which is said to be the opposite of déjà vu. Déjà vu is when you see something new and have the feeling that you've seen it before. Jamevu is the opposite of that, where you see something you know you've seen before, but you have this disconnected feeling as if you're seeing it for the first time. It doesn't feel familiar, yeah.

I think that's what he's describing. This next one is just a bizarre accident that happened on December 12, 1794. The American merchant ship Lady Washington was anchored at Honolulu when the English schooner Jackal arrived, and in a spirit of friendship and respect, the Lady Washington fired a 13-gun salute to greet her, which is fine, but the Jackal returned the salute and killed John

Kendrick, who was the captain of Lady Washington and was sitting at a table on the deck. Oh, no! It turned out the Jackal, one of its cannon had been loaded with real grape shot. Oh, no! And they killed several other men as well. They buried them on the beach the next morning. James Rowe and the mate of the Lady Washington at the time said later, quote, he had sworn since Captain Kendrick's death he would salute no vessel in a hurry except at a safe distance.

And it got me thinking that saluting is kind of an odd custom. It's the same. Attacking someone with a gun is a belligerent gesture. And saluting them is one of friendship and respect, but it's exactly the same thing. It's odd that we do that. I was thinking you could have made that into a lateral thinking puzzle for me. You know, when did a salute kill somebody or something? That's not a bad idea.

I can't do it now. John Cazale, the sad-faced actor who played Fredo Corleone in the Godfather films, died young. He died of lung cancer when he was only 42 years old. And by that time, he managed to make only five films. But interestingly, all five of them were nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. The Godfather, The Conversation, The Godfather Part Two, Dog Day Afternoon, and The Deer Hunter. And in fact, three of those actually won for Best Picture, the two Godfather films and The Deer Hunter. That alone would have made him a record holder for most, I guess you could say,

successful actor as far as Academy Award nominations. But he actually has one more. In 1990, when Francis Ford Coppola was beginning to make The Godfather Part III, he found some archival footage in which Cazal played Fredo Corleone and included some of that in the film, even though Cazal had been dead 12 years at that point. And they released the film with him in it, and he has a credit there. And that film, too, was nominated for Best Picture. So Cazal appears in six films, and all six of them have been nominated for best picture, including one posthumously, which is a real trick. That's quite a record.

Yeah, I don't think anyone's ever going to beat that one. For the November 1959 issue of Field and Stream, which is an American outdoorsman's magazine, Ed Zern decided to review Lady Chatterley's Lover, D.H. Lawrence's 1928 novel of social conflict and forbidden love. Here's his review. Although written many years ago, Lady Chatterley's Lover has just been reissued by Grove Press, and this fictional account of the day-by-day life of the English gamekeeper is still of considerable interest to outdoor-minded readers, as it contains many passages on pheasant raising, the apprehending of poachers, ways to control vermin, and other chores and duties of the professional gamekeeper. Unfortunately, one is obliged to wade through many pages of extraneous material in order to discover and savor these sidelights on the management of a Midlands shooting estate,

and in this reviewer's opinion, this book cannot take the place of J.R. Miller's practical gamekeeping. He was being facetious. I would hope so. Elsewhere in a Q&A, one reader of Field and Stream had written in, when I became engaged, my fiance said she understood how much I love to hunt and fish and promised never to interfere. Now we're married and she nags me night and day to give up outdoor sports altogether. She says if I loved her, I'd gladly stay home. If this keeps on, I'm going to blow my brains out. Please give me whatever advice you can. And Zurn wrote, since trajectory isn't important here,

our recommendation would be a 35 Remington with 200 grain soft nose bullet. He had a sense of humor. When Edward VI succeeded to the English throne in 1547 at age nine, the clerk of the council, a man named William Thomas, sent him 85 questions on history and policy to answer when he could. Basically it was homework for a new king, a nine year old king to learn how to run a nation. Thomas wrote

for though these be but questions, yet there is not so small in one among them as will not administer matter of much discourse worthy the argument and debating. So here are some samples of those 85 questions questions for the nine year old Edward VI of much discourse worthy the argument and debating. So here are some samples of those 85 questions, questions for the nine-year-old Edward VI. Whether it is better for the commonwealth that the power be in the nobility or in the people. How easily a weak prince with good order may long be maintained,

and how soon a mighty prince with little disorder may be destroyed. What is the occasion of conspiracies? Whether the people commonly desire the destruction of him that is in flatterers are to be known and despised? How dangerous it is to be author of a new matter? Whether evil report lighteth not most commonly upon the reporter? Whether a puissant prince ought to purchase amity with money or with virtue and stoutness? Oh, that was a good one. I don't think I could answer that one.

That could take a couple years to answer. And whether it be not necessary sometimes to feign folly uh thomas closes by suggesting that edward keep those questions to himself since it is better quote to keep the principal things of wisdom secret till occasion requires the utterance it um i mean you can see how some of them like he just wants the the new king to be thinking like what is the cause of war like he just wants him to be thinking but some of them he seems to be taking a definite point of view on you know like what danger is it to a prince not to be revenged of an open injury like he seems to be that's a kind of biased question right just even in the question but it does show you

how much of running a state involves staying on the horse, not riding it somewhere useful, but just staying on it at all. You know what I mean? Yeah. I don't know if people realize that. I think it's probably hard. There's just so much of the job is just politics that it's hard actually to spare the time to think about policy.

I say that never having been a king. It certainly seems that way. Finally, here from Noel Williams and Patrick Holt's 1989 book Computers and Writing are some fables. In the early 1970s, a Yale artificial intelligence researcher

named James Meehan was trying to teach a computer to retell Aesop's fables just as an exercise. Sometimes these were fairly successful and sometimes they weren't. And in Williams and Holt's book, they include some examples of failed fables.

So these are unsuccessful fables written by a computer in the early 1970s. Once upon a time there was a dishonest fox and a vain crow. One day the crow was sitting in his tree holding a piece of cheese in his mouth. He noticed that he was holding the piece of cheese. He became hungry and swallowed the cheese. The fox walked over to the crow. The end. Oh, I don't see what the moral of the story is there. Yeah, I should say there's no moral to these. Much like, much as in real life, it's sometimes not clear what the moral is supposed

to be. That's not a really good story. Here's another one. Henry Ant was thirsty. He walked over to the riverbank where his good friend Bill Bird was sitting. Henry slipped and fell in the river. He was unable to call for help. He drowned. Aww. And here's one more. This one. You know, it sounds like it sounds like written by a very young child who doesn't yet grasp the concept of a story, you know, like how the story is supposed to go. I guess maybe that's sort of what they are. Here's one that's rather more complex psychologically. One day, Henry Crow sat in his tree holding a piece of cheese in his mouth when up came Bill Fox. Bill saw the cheese and was hungry. He said, Henry, I like your singing very much. Won't you please sing for me? Henry, flattered by this compliment, began to sing. The cheese fell to the ground. Bill Fox saw the

cheese on the ground and was very hungry. He became ill. Henry Crow saw the cheese on the ground and he became hungry, but he knew that he owned the cheese. He felt pretty honest with himself, so he decided not to trick himself into giving up the cheese. He wasn't trying to deceive himself either, nor did he feel competitive with himself, but he remembered that he was also in a position of dominance over himself, so he refused to give himself the cheese.

He couldn't think of a good reason why he should give himself the cheese, so he offered to bring himself a worm if he to give himself the cheese. He couldn't think of a good reason why he should give himself the cheese, so he offered to bring himself a worm if he'd give himself the cheese. That sounded okay, but he didn't know where any worms were, so he said to himself, Henry, do you know where any worms are? But of course he didn't. And this goes on for quite some time. Meehan finally wrote, the program eventually ran aground for other reasons. I was surprised it got as far as it did. We tell you in most of our shows that this podcast is supported by our listeners, and if you've been listening to our show for a while, you'll know that there's a Patreon campaign that we talk about. But there are also several other ways that you can help support the show if you want to. You can make a one-time

donation on the website at futilitycloset.com. Just look for the donate button on the sidebar. And we can always use help spreading the word about our show. So if you like the podcast, please consider recommending it to your friends or giving it a rating on iTunes or other podcast directories. And if you'd like to join our Patreon campaign, for a dollar an episode, you get access to our activity feed, where you'll find outtakes and extralateral thinking puzzles, as well as behind the scenes comments and updates on Sasha, the show mascot. You can find more information on that at patreon.com slash futility closet, where you can use the link in our show notes.

Thanks so much to everyone who helps keep Futility Closet going. In episode 68, Greg asked if anyone knew whether it was really true that Gene Tunney, an American boxer who was the world heavyweight champion from 1926 to 1928, actually lectured on Shakespeare at Yale in the late 1920s. Greg had seen that fact cited in multiple sources, but thought it seemed unlikely. It did fit in with an anecdote about Tunney that before a 1926 fight with Jack Dempsey, Dempsey thought he was sure to win since a spy reported to him, it's a setup. I seen the lug reading a book. And it took us a little time, but we finally have an answer to the question of whether Tunney had lectured at Yale. Ed Kitson sent in links to

two newspaper articles on Tunney from 1928 and 1929. And according to these articles, Tunney was actually rather well-read and very interested in literature and 1929. And according to these articles, Tunney was actually rather well-read and very interested in literature and good music. Not really what you expect from a boxer, but there it is. Good for him. And apparently on April 23rd, 1928, he accepted an invitation from a professor of English literature

at Yale University to speak to the professor's class. Apparently this professor was a close friend of Tunney's, and that might partly explain the situation. That he was invited for that reason? Yeah, I'm guessing. Like, that's how the guy even maybe knew that Tunney would be appropriate

to speak to an English literature class. Or possibly they became friends because he spoke there. It's possible. And I guess he just thought he wanted a world heavyweight champion. I'm guessing too. I don't know. The Ottawa Evening Citizen reported that Tunney spoke to the class

about his study and great appreciation of Shakespeare and wondered whether Shakespeare would have been a boxing fan. Tunney is quoted as saying to the class, I wonder whether he would have liked me to have risen in the seventh round when i was down in my last battle with dempsey whether william shakespeare would want that so apparently he discussed shakespeare in boxing um so all in all it

might be overstating it a bit to say that he lectured on shakespeare at yale uh apparently it was a more informal talk that included Shakespeare among other topics, but you know, it's reasonably close to what happened. Yeah, I mean, I'm impressed. It's more than I've done. That's true. And then in episode 82, Greg told us about an inept gang of crooks that attempted to steal Abraham Lincoln's body in 1876 so they could hold it for ransom. We have an interesting follow-up to that story that was sent in by Gareth from Buenos Aires. Gareth wrote, I've been binge listening to all the episodes in your podcast for the past week or so and I'm finally done. And I have to say

that's the first thing in Gareth's email that was pretty amazing. That apparently he's listened to all 80 some of our podcasts in about a week. In a week. Kind of like, wow. It's more than 10 a day. That's impressive. Anyway, Gareth goes on to say, Your episode on the plan to steal Lincoln's body reminded me a lot of a case that I had to study for a class on constitutional law.

The gist of the case is as follows. law. The gist of the case is as follows. In 1881, a group of five men entered the Recoleta Cemetery in Buenos Aires and took the body of Inés de Dorrego, who was the sister-in-law of Argentinian national hero Manuel Dorrego, out of the family crypt. Instead of taking the body hundreds of miles away like they planned in the Lincoln case, they just hid the casket in some other crypt nearby. The following day, Inés' daughter received the ransom note signed by Los Caballeros de la Noche, the Knights of the Night, but it doesn't sound silly in Spanish, asking for a bunch of money.

The police went to check if the body was indeed missing, and they quickly found where the body was hidden. I think they noticed the other crypt's entrance was forced or something like that. Apparently this gang of crooks was no more competent than the ones who attempted to steal Lincoln. gang of crooks was no more competent than the ones who attempted to steal Lincoln. Gareth explains that the crooks in this case were apparently convicted of theft, but they fought the conviction and were granted an appeal on the basis that a body couldn't be considered property and thus you can't steal it. Yeah, it seems like a law on this was largely unformed at the time. Yeah, I mean, that's exactly what Gareth says.

He goes on to say, just like in the Lincoln case, grave robbing wasn't a thing that was in our penal code at the time, but this case prompted it to be included. The fact that this happened just five years after the Lincoln case made me wonder if they may have taken inspiration from it, or perhaps both the groups had a common inspiration. That does sound awful similar for things that are not related. I mean, my understanding is that body snatching was not all that uncommon in the 1800s, but it wasn't usually that they were stealing a particular person and holding them for ransom. It was more taking dead people to be used as cadavers in medical schools or to perform experiments on them. In fact, I have a gruesome story here that I didn't manage to fit into the Lincoln kidnapping episode, but I might as well throw it in here. And it actually relates to another US president, William Henry Harrison. Well, it's interesting. The president was William

Henry Harrison. His son was named John Scott Harrison, who didn't really have, he served a couple terms in Congress, but wasn't really a politician. He spent most of his life quietly on a farm in Ohio. He died in 1878 and was interred there. And as you say, there were many more body snatchings then than there are now, because one big reason is that medical schools needed cadavers desperately, and it was thought to be sort of desercation or sacrilege to use dead human bodies. So it wasn't legitimately legal. So there were all kinds of schemes usually to obtain dead bodies. Yeah, and there was sort of an underground, to use that phrase, market in cadavers to supply them to medical schools.

So as a result, when they buried John Scott Harrison, they took some measures to just secure the grave and actually put a guard over it. But as it happened, even so, an adjoining grave was discovered to have been robbed, and that was a man named Augustus Devon, who just happened to be buried next to John Scott Harrison. So the next day, Harrison's son and a friend of Devon went to Cincinnati to see if they could find the missing body. Presumably, it had been stolen to be retailed to some medical school somewhere, probably in Cincinnati. So they visited several medical schools there and didn't find anything and were about to give up when at the Ohio Medical College they noticed a tautened rope leading into a chute in a dissecting room there and turned the windlass to pull up what was down there, and it turned out to be a naked body, not of Augustus Devon, but of John Scott Harrison.

In other words, Harrison's son had been just going with a friend of his to see if they could find his father, not expecting that he was personally involved in this at all, but when they pulled up the body, it was the body of his own father. Wow. Even though that had recently been buried, and as I said, his grave was secured, and there was actually a guard standing over it.

Wow, that would be a shock. Still stolen anyway, and I can't imagine what that's like to pull up the naked, dead body of your own father, not expecting that would be the last thing he was expecting at the time. The body of Augustus Devon, just to close the loop there, was later found preserved in a vat of brine at the Medical College of the University of Michigan. So this was happening a lot, and this was such a sensational case that it actually finally got some legislation going, at least in Ohio, to sort of legitimize the trade in cadavers to remove the incentive for body snatchers to do this sort of thing. So everyone was returned

finally to their graves there. But it's kind of a gruesome story. By an interesting coincidence, John Scott Harrison's son, Benjamin, also became president of the United States. So John Scott Harrison's claim to fame, really, even though he led a pretty quiet life, was that he was both, he's the only person who's both the son and the father of U.S. presidents. And unfortunately, the only thing he's remembered for is that his body was stolen after death. Well, thanks so much to Ed and Gareth and everyone who writes in to us. And if you have any questions or comments for us, please send them to podcast at futilitycloset.com. Greg's going to be trying to solve a lateral thinking puzzle.

I'm going to give him an intriguing-sounding situation, and he has to try to figure out what the story is behind it, asking only yes or no questions. Are you ready, dear? Yes, ma'am. Okay. This comes from Jed's list of situation puzzles. A man sitting on a park bench reads

a newspaper article headlined Death at Sea and knows a murder has been committed. Wow. A man sitting on a park bench, you said? Mm-hmm. There's a newspaper headline saying Death at Sea. Yes.

Okay, so there's obviously some back story here. Is this true? No. Probably not. Is the man a human being? Yes, the man is a human being. Does it matter

that he's on a park bench? I mean, could you just... All right, so a man... That part doesn't matter. A man sees a newspaper story saying death at sea. Yes. Does it matter where this happens?

No. Is the man's identity important? Meaning... His occupation or his... Yes. Something about his identity is important. Okay. And obviously there's other people involved.

Yes. Including one of them being dead now. Does it matter where this happened, apart, aside from the park bench? He's just on land somewhere. Do you want to know more about the newspaper or the contents of it? No. No. Is the specific wording death at sea important?

No. newspaper or the contents of it no is the specific wording death at sea important no does the death at sea headline mean that a human person has died one or more people have died yes on the ocean somewhere somehow yes um and that's enough to let him know the article's enough to let him know he knows that a murder has been committed okay the murder he knows that's been committed, that's the person who died at sea? Yes. Is it one person? One person. Okay, is it someone he knows? The victim?

The victim, no. Is the murderer, is he right that it's a murder? Yes. Okay, is the murderer an acquaintance of his? I'll say yes. Okay, did that person tell him something that led him to make this connection? Is the murderer an acquaintance of his? I'll say yes. Okay. Did that person tell him something that led him to make this connection? Not exactly.

Okay. Death at sea. So what he's getting from the headline is just the fact that someone has died at sea, and that alone is enough. That and whatever backstory there is is enough to tell him. And does he get that just from the headline, not from reading the story? No, I think reading the story helped him, too. Okay, so he couldn't get it just from the headline. That seems unlikely.

Yeah, I mean, he might have. But, yeah, I think reading the story really helped him. All right, so there's this man, there's the murderer, and there's the victim. Are there other people I have to know about? No, that's it. Is this man in law enforcement or is he a detective or something like that? No. But he's an acquaintance, I think you said, of the murderer.

Yeah. Is the murderer's— Broadly defining acquaintance. Is the occupation of the murderer or the victim important? The murderer or victim, no. And they were together at sea, the murderer and the victim? Yes. At sea meaning on the ocean?

Correct. In some kind of vessel? Yes. Like a boat or a ship? Yes. Do I need to know specifically what body of water this was in? No. Or the time of year?

No. Geography, anything like that? No. They were just at sea? They were at sea. Do I need to know specifically how the murderer of year? No. Geography, anything like that? No. They were just at sea? They were at sea. Do I need to know specifically how the murderer, the murder was committed? No, not, I don't think you need to know specifically. Like he pushed someone overboard or shot him or something?

He pushed someone overboard. Okay, so do I need to know the genders of any of these people? Does that matter? Somewhat. It's not crucial, but yeah yeah i happen to know the genders but do i need to know the relationship between the murderer and the victim yes are they married yes ah okay so a man and his wife go to sea on a ship and he pushes her overboard yes and that gets reported in a newspaper and the guy who reads that says, uh-huh, there's... He knows it's a murder because the newspaper article basically just says a woman fell overboard and was drowned.

Right. But the man reading the newspaper is like, no, that was a murder. I know that. So the difference is intent, I guess. The guy on the park bench knew that this man had a reason to kill her. Is that it? No. Okay. He pushed her overboard

and it looked plausibly like she just fell. Yes. So... But the man on the park bench knows that it was murder. But he knows that... It's not like this guy was a friend of his who said,

I hate my wife, I'm going to kill her. That's correct. It's not like it. No, that's not it. So I'm trying to work out if it wasn't intent or motive somehow, what could he have known that would have led him to to know that this was a murderer okay you said the man on the bench yeah i needed to know more about him you do there's something

about him you need to know is he related to either of the other two no is he acquainted with well you said he's acquainted with a murderer, but not necessarily with the victim. Correct. And you say there aren't other people involved. Right. You said his occupation. Is important. But he's not in law enforcement. He's not.

Is he in a clergy? No. Is he in transportation? Is he like a captain or seagoing person himself? No. transportation is he like a captain or seagoing person himself no um is he involved in the media somehow or in the reporting of information in any capacity no but he knew the murderer in his professional capacity that's how he knew the murderer. Is he a doctor? No. Knew the murderer in his professional capacity. Right. And that's what gave him the clue. The clue, exactly. That this was a murder. Yes. Even though all he had to go on was that this man had pushed his wife over, was that this woman had fallen over. Yes, that's all he had to go on,

and he knew from something, from doing his job that that the man it murdered his wife i like the puzzle okay not a doctor not a clergyman not a reporter of any kind not in transportation not in the way i think you were saying it to me is he in transportation in some other way well probably not i don't know depends how you define things. Okay. We sometimes define things differently, but that's closest. Would you say it's a white-collar job?

Yes. Jobs are always hard to just build out from that. I know, I know. And I'll give you a clue. This is an older puzzle, so it's an occupation that still exists but isn't used as much anymore.

Okay. I mean, the occupation does still exist but it's not as prominent as it used to be i think that's going to take forever for me to try to figure out the job unless that's essential to it yeah that's how he knows the man and that's where he got the piece of information so the man was going on a sea voyage with his wife and what professional might he have gone to before the sea voyage um well depending on where the sea voyage was headed he could have been a travel agent yes a travel agent reads yes a newspaper reads yes death at sea yes and that's important he's a travel agent and that's how he knew the murderer in his professional occupant so this man had come to him to book this yes oh i see okay so it was two tickets outbound

and one back exactly yes that's exactly it um the man is a travel agent. He had sold someone two tickets for an ocean voyage, one round trip and one one way. And the last name of the man who bought the tickets is the same as the last name of the woman who supposedly fell overboard and drowned on the voyage. The answer to this puzzle says that this may have derived from something from Alfred Hitchcock if the following Hitchcock quotation is accurate. And the quote is, If you take your wife on a sea voyage, buy her a round-trip ticket no matter what your plans may be. Now, I couldn't actually find that quote anywhere attributed to Hitchcock, so if anybody knows if Hitchcock really did say that, I think it's a delightful quote. Yeah, it's a great quote either way.

So if anybody knows that, they can write into us. And if you have any puzzles you want to send to us, please send them 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 frappant furlies. 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 or by clicking on the donate button on the sidebar of the website. If you have any questions or comments about the show, you can reach us by email at podcast at futilitycloset.com. Our music was written and produced by Doug Ross. Thanks for listening, and we'll talk to you next week.