Futility Closet - 101-Jerome

Episode Date: April 11, 2016

In 1863 the residents of Sandy Cove, Nova Scotia, discovered a legless man on the shore of St. Mary's Bay. He spoke no English and could not tell them who he was or where he had come from. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll tell the story of "Jerome" and what is known or guessed of his past. We'll also learn about explosive rats in World War II and puzzle over a computer that works better when its users sit. 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 Jerome: Fraser Mooney Jr., Jerome: Solving the Mystery of Nova Scotia's Silent Castaway, 2008. "The Mystery of the Man at Meteghan," St. John Daily Sun, Sept. 8, 1905. Harriet Hill, "Mystery Fascinates," Montreal Gazette, June 14, 1963. Andrea MacDonald, "Legless-Man Mystery Revealed," Halifax Daily News, Aug. 30, 2006. Brian Flemming, "Maritime Mysteries Still Enthrall," Halifax Daily News, Sept. 5, 2006. Noah Richler, "The Legless Castaway," Literary Review of Canada, March 1, 2009. Ian Cameron, "The Frozen Man of Queens County," Canadian Family Physician, August 2009. Listener mail: Wikipedia, "Explosive Rat" (accessed April 9, 2016). This week's lateral thinking puzzle was contributed by listener Jed Link, who sent this corroborating link (warning: this spoils the puzzle). 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 the Futility Closet podcast, forgotten stories from the pages of history. Visit us online to sample more than 9,000 quirky curiosities from an invisible student at Georgia Tech to why Rossini took 12 years to reach his second birthday. Welcome to episode 101. I'm Greg Ross.. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. In 1863, the residents of Nova Scotia discovered a legless man on the shore of St. Mary's Bay. He spoke no English and couldn't tell them who he was or where he'd come from. In today's show, we'll tell what we know about the strange man they called Jerome and the guesses that have been made about his story. We'll also learn about exploding rats in World War II and puzzle over a computer that

works better when its users sit. In the early morning of September 8th, 1863, an eight-year-old boy named George Colin Albright looked out from his shack overlooking the beach at Sandy Cove, Nova Scotia. The tide was out, and he thought he saw an unfamiliar object near a large rock about halfway down the beach. At first, he thought it was a seal, but he got his brother to accompany him, and they found that it was a man, a man with no legs. He was motionless, just lying on the beach, and at first they thought he was the victim of a shipwreck of some kind, but they realized he was alive and ran to get their father. The lugless man was pale. He was apparently in his late teens or early 20s, and he was struggling on the sand. Both of his legs had been amputated above the knees, and when he saw people approaching him, he appeared frightened and tried to drag himself toward the water to escape from them, but they caught him and restrained

him, and he fought back, but they managed to pull him up the beach. He was coughing violently and soaked to the skin, and it was thought that if he'd spent a few more hours there without being discovered, it would have killed him. Exposure would have killed him. They dragged him to the Albright's house, and near the rock where he had lain, they found a small flask of water and a tin box with a chunk or two of the black bread known as hardtack or ship's biscuits. They couldn't get any information out of him. He didn't appear to speak English. They asked him where he came from, what his name was, his ship, and just got no answer, nothing they could make any sense of. So the Albrights took him in and took care of him over the next few days and found

he was not a very gracious house guest. He was angry and gloomy and unappreciative. They still couldn't make any sense of what he was trying to tell them. There was very little to go on just in terms of the circumstances of what they'd found on the beach, and he wasn't able to tell them anything. They came to believe that he spoke no English at all. Listening to his mumblings, they speculated that he was perhaps speaking French speaking French, Italian, Spanish, or perhaps even Latin. Sometimes it seemed that he was trying to make himself understood to them, but he didn't get any success at that and just would give up in frustration. So they had almost nothing else to go on. The amputations of his legs seemed to have been done

skillfully, and his fingers were delicate and soft, which suggested a life of leisure, at least not one aboard a ship, for example. But that's all they really knew about him. Sandikov is a small community and not really set up to care for someone like this, and eventually they found taking care of him something of a burden and looked about for another home for him. He had a dark complexion, and because of the language that they heard him attempting to speak, they speculated that he might be Portuguese, Italian, or Spanish, in which case they reasoned that he was likely Catholic and might be happier in a Catholic community, happier there than in Digby Neck, which is mostly Baptist. As it happened, there was a large Catholic community a short distance away across St. Mary's Bay, so they arranged to send him there to stay with a man named jean-licola who was a soldier from corsica who lived in matagin there and was known to speak several languages so they shipped uh this legless mysterious legless man to matagin in february 1864 they started somewhere around

here to call him jerome no one knows that was his name to this day no one knows what his real name was but they had to call him something and he would make a sound occasionally that sounded like that. That was the best they could do. So that's how he's known to this day as Jerome, but no one knows who he really was. Jean-Nicolas arranged to have his rent and board picked up by the Nova Scotia government, and they lived together, the two of them, tolerably well for about six years. But then Nicolas left to return to his homeland around 1870, and Jerome was moved to stay with a family named Camus. There too, the provincial government gave them about two dollars a week to feed and clothe him, and they put up a donation box by the door. And he lived with them

for almost 40 years. He didn't die until 1912. Do they know if somebody found a language that he spoke and was able to ever speak to him? No. In all that time, no one really learned much more about him. He was sullen and uncommunicative. His story is somewhat forgotten now, but at the time of his death in 1912, he was the most famous anonymous man in the world. People would travel great distances to come and stare at him and ask questions, but they never learned anything more about him, really. It was sad to research this because he had such an empty life. He had no occupation.

He had no close relationships. He didn't read or speak the language of the strange country that he found himself in. He would sit by the stove in the Camus' kitchen all day long, and when the weather was fine, he would go out and sit on the porch in the sun. And as I say, strangers would come to stare at him and poke him and ask questions, which he hated, understandably. So he never attempted to learn the language that the other people were speaking around him.

No, it's not clear. Some people speculated that he was mentally defective. There was so little to go on. Yeah. And he kept to himself naturally so much anyway. Right. But no, he didn't seem to make much effort. He liked children, or at least he tolerated them better than grownups,

but that's the most you could say for it. That's the closest he ever got to anyone. It just seemed like a really sad, empty life. That didn't stop people from speculating about who he was or how he'd come to be there. This is based on almost no evidence. As I was doing the research, I finally just started making a list of all the guesses the people made over the years

about who he was and how he'd lost his legs. So just for the record, here's what I have in my list. He was a murderer or some other fugitive from justice. Some of these don't explain what happened to his legs, but these are what the guesses are. He was a spy or a traitor from the American Civil War, which is going on about the time that he was discovered. Yeah, and I was thinking about that, that you sometimes ended up with amputees after the Civil War. That's right. Or perhaps an officer from that were exiled for desertion or murder or treason. He was a European spy who'd been active in the Civil War and had been caught, and they'd removed his legs and then placed him on the East Coast there as an example to other European spies. Again, there's almost no evidence at all. Perhaps

he was a soldier in the French Foreign Legion, which was fighting for French control of Mexico in the 1860s and had gotten into some kind of trouble there and was fleeing punishment. Perhaps he was an exiled member of a royal family who had been mutilated and left for dead to clear the way to the throne. That's very dramatic. Or perhaps an exiled Habsburg prince. His obituary said he was believed by many to be a son of a nobleman of some foreign nation. But again, we don't know whether any of those is true. As to his legs, I found accounts that said variously that they'd been carried away by a cannonball, crushed by a mast that fell to the deck in the midst of battle somewhere, I guess in the Civil War, a pirate whose legs had been cut off,

the victim of a shark, or the victim of some unspecified diabolic revenge that had been wrought by some powerful secret society. No one knows if any of that is true. There is, I think, what turns out to be a pretty good guess as to where he came from, but it doesn't shed any light on who he was. It just kind of extends the mystery. In 1905, when he was in his 70s, a New Brunswick engineer named C.O. Foss wrote a letter to the editor of the Yarmouth Herald saying that he'd encountered an elderly gentleman who told him he knew the history of this mysterious man. It turns out that almost 50 years earlier, there was a brief sensation in New Brunswick, which is the neighboring province in eastern Canada, over what was called the frozen man of Queens County. A man was found in late December 1859 in a frozen condition on a brow of logs, basically a pile of logs by the Gasboro River there, who was dying of exposure. He was discovered by a couple of brothers who were traveling there, and if they'd found him a bit later, he would probably have been dead.

They took him to Chipman in Queens County, where provisions were made for his care by the Overseers of the Poor, which was a committee of three citizens whose job it was basically to make sure that the poor in that area were housed and clothed and fed. He was described as insane and indigent and a foreigner who had been frozen for five days. There are two theories as to how he came to be in central New Brunswick in late December. One is that he'd come originally from the Adriatic and had been mentally defective since birth. When his family couldn't care for him, they made arrangements to send him away. Eventually, he arrived in St. John, New Brunswick,

made his way up the river to a lumber camp there, and then since it was late December, the Lagers went home for the holidays. He didn't know anyone and didn't speak the language, so he wandered away from camp and got lost and wound up nearly freezing to death that's one theory uh the other one is that he was a foreign sailor who came ashore in chatham or newcastle new brunswick and was attempting to get to saint john by walking overland by a route that was known to be very difficult especially in winter and he was traveling alone and no one knows quite what happened to him apparently he fell through some ice or in one way or another, his legs got wet in this bitterly cold weather. And then he had to spend the night in that condition before these brothers found him on the brow of logs.

So they took him to Chipman and the overseers of the poor looked after him from December 1859 to March 1861. And his legs were getting worse and worse in this period, and eventually were so bad that they had to amputate them. They took him to Gagetown to see a Dr. Peters there who did the amputation. A double amputation in 1861 was a very risky affair, and almost everyone who underwent it died. This mysterious man got through it okay it must have been terrifying and painful but he survived and eventually recovered enough that they could take him back to chipman but that's a still that only compounds the problem for the people in chipman because now they have he's healthy and his health is stabilized but now they have a severely

disabled man both mentally and physically and one who they can't communicate with. They don't know if he has friends or family that they can reach out to, and he's not from their parish. He came to be called Gamby after a sound that he tended to make. One historian finally noted years later that Gamba is Italian for leg, so if he was from Italy, as many people speculate, it's possible he was talking about his legs because he just made that sound. Anyway, just as with Jerome, they had to call him something and that was the sound he tended to make. So they called him Gamby. Between 1861 and 1862, the overseers began to beg the provincial government for help in supporting him. Here's an excerpt from a letter to Lieutenant Governor Arthur Hamilton Gordon from 1862. Now he is a heavy charge on said parish, the inhabitants

of which feel dissatisfied that they have to support a man whose maladies did not happen in Gordon from 1862. they didn't get the help they wanted from the provincial government. And apparently in 1863, things just kind of came to a head. The family that had been taking care of them just said, we can't do this anymore. And so they looked around for just some resolution to this problem. So finally, somewhat in desperation, in mid-1863, they struck a deal with a man named Colwell. The plan was that he would take him downriver to St. John and book a passage for him to Liverpool. Everyone thought he was from Europe, ultimately. No one knew quite where, but the thought was if we can get him back to Europe, maybe he can find his way back to where he came from or find friends or family there. Because we can't help him here.

So they engage this man, Colwell, to take him to St. John and put him on a ship back to Liverpool. to Liverpool. It seems like kind of a long shot to ask a man who doesn't speak the language and has no legs and no money to find his way back to his homeland. Yeah, from Liverpool to wherever he needs to get to. But it just shows how desperate they were. And that's what Colwell purported to do. But almost immediately, rumors came out that, in fact, what he'd done was, instead of putting him on a ship to Liverpool, he had just taken him across the bay of fundy and left him on the beach in nova scotia where jerome was discovered so what we're saying in a nutshell here is that it's together yeah so what happens if you look at the timeline is that one uncommunicative legless foreigner disappears from new brunswick just as another one appears in nova scotia and the theory

is that it's the same man now no one knows that because the only person who could say it for sure is this man Colwell who had engaged to put him on the ship to Liverpool and he vanished after immediately afterward. So no one knows. It should be said too that there was a lot of condemnation in the media on the people of Chipman for letting this happen but that's not really fair they knew they didn't have the resources to support him themselves they appealed to the government they appealed to the people around them and couldn't get any help and though it was a long shot they thought if they could get him back to europe that might be the best outcome for him if there's a villain here it's really this man colwell and no one knows what happened to him or really what he'd done

presumably he was given money to book a passage on a ship too so he disappeared with that yeah so it's again no one knows for sure but it seems reasonable to suppose that gamby and jerome are Presumably he was given money to book a passage on a ship too, so he disappeared with that. Yeah. So it's, again, no one knows for sure, but it seems reasonable to suppose that Gamby and Jerome are the same man. Yeah. The thing is, even if they are, that doesn't really solve the mystery. It just extends it because now you have to ask, well, who was Gamby then? Who was this strange man? Well, it cuts some of the theories off your list, I suppose.

Yeah, that's true. He wasn't a pirate. But it comes down to this. An unknown man was making his way in December 1859 through the woods of New Brunswick in a very dangerous area to be traveling alone, got into trouble, and was discovered near death from exposure and wound up having his legs amputated. No one knows who he was. Okay, but it takes out the question of what happened to his legs, I suppose. Yes. So it's a little bit solved. And he must have been fairly young because you said they thought he was in his late teens or early 20s when they found him in 1863. That's right.

And this was four years earlier. He must have been really fairly young. Yeah. So that just makes you wonder who he was. By the way, that's another clue that they were the same, that Gamby and Jerome were the same man, that apparently there were two ways to amputate legs in 18, and both of them had been amputated in the same way. There's a lot of sort of— Yeah, circumstantial evidence. Right.

It seems to point to the idea that they were the same man. Anyway, as I say, that doesn't solve the mystery of Jerome, but it sort of extends it and just pushes it over into New Brunswick. And I don't think anyone has any—even a guess as to who the man ultimately was that became Gamby and where he had come from and where he was going. as to who the man ultimately was that became Gamby and where he had come from and where he was going. Researchers today agree that this man probably came from Trieste in northern Italy, but that's not known for sure. At one time or another, he's been said to come from Spain, Ireland, the United States, Poland, England, Sri Lanka, Portugal, and a whole host of other countries. No one knows for sure where he came from. And it's still a mystery, ultimately, who he was or where he was going. He just wound up with this terribly sad, empty life, sitting next to a stove in Nova Scotia for almost his whole life. His obituary in 1912, he died by coincidence on the same day that the Titanic sank. Oh, that's just a weird coincidence. Yeah, which I think he would have liked because it sort of took over the headlines and kind of,

all he wanted was privacy. To be left alone, yeah. And that's, finally they buried him under a wooden headstone that kind of rotted away and he finally got the oblivion he wanted. His obituary read, the people in this vicinity have given up the solving of the great mystery that closed today in death, thus ending one of the greatest secrets that ever occurred on this continent. We have a couple of updates from listeners on puzzles that we used in episodes from two and three weeks ago. So if you're a few episodes behind on the show and you want to be sure to avoid puzzle spoilers, go ahead if you're a few episodes behind on the show and you want to be

sure to avoid puzzle spoilers, go ahead and skip ahead a few minutes. But for the rest of you, James Nichols and Carl Abrahamson wrote in about the coal torpedo lateral thinking puzzle from episode 99. Carl said, on the topic of coal torpedoes, a similar device was used by the British during the Second World War using rats. Since the easiest way to dispose of a dead rat was to shovel it into the coal boiler, it was an easy way to make sure it would end up in the fire. The first shipment was intercepted by the Germans, but since it was then known, more time and resources were then wasted simply having to carefully dispose of actual dead rats than the explosions might have caused.

And James sent a helpful link to the Wikipedia article on explosive rats, which I have to say kind of made our day to discover that there is a Wikipedia article on explosive rats, something I definitely never knew before. According to Wikipedia, the explosive rat, also known as a rat bomb, was developed by the British Special Operations Executive, or SOE, in World War II. And basically, they just filled rat carcasses with plastic explosives and then sewed them back up with the plan of placing them near German boiler rooms in places like locomotives or factories or power stations. The hope was that the rat bombs would be tossed into the boilers, where with any luck, they'd cause the boiler to explode. As Carl noted, though, the Germans caught on to the plan before it could ever be implemented,

and so the plan was dropped. But the SOE concluded that the trouble caused to the Germans was a much greater success than if the rat bombs had actually been used. That's kind of diabolical. I wonder if the one inspired the other, if the Civil War coal torpedoes inspired them. Oh, that's a good thought. Yeah, how they came up with it otherwise. They're both such odd ideas. It would be surprising if someone came up with them independently. Maybe they did.

I don't know. Carl Sherman wrote in about the grass spraying puzzle from episode 98, saying, I cannot confirm what happened in Atlanta before the Olympics. However, I was stationed at McGuire Air Force Base in southern New Jersey from 1996 to 2000 and we would occasionally see that the grass had been spray painted. This usually signified the imminent arrival of a general or other dignitary and was met with the shaking heads of the airmen on the base who thought it a silly thing to do.

It seems like a government project, though, doesn't it? Who else but the government would spray paint grass green? So we don't know whether they spray painted for the Atlanta Olympics, but apparently they do it at least on some Air Force bases. Carl went on to say, since I'm writing to you, I'll also pass along a puzzle my daughter invented. She was nine at the time.

And this is Catherine's puzzle. A man is lying dead in a field next to a map. What happened? The answer is that he was very old and was skydiving and had a heart attack on the way down.

What about the map? According to Catherine, sometimes there are maps lying in a field. Fair enough. Carl says, I laughed at her red herring and I figured, well, you know, that's one way we can start trying to make our puzzles harder. We can just put in red herrings. So thank you, Catherine, for the puzzle. We've been getting in a number of terrific emails addressing some of the different topics that Greg raised in episode 99, such as turkeys in Turkey and finding spiders at night.

And we plan to start addressing these updates next week. So stay tuned for that. In the meantime, if you have any questions or comments for us, please send them to us at podcast at futility closet.com. And if there's any possible way to mispronounce your name, please do me a favor and tell me how you like it pronounced, just in case I read your email on the show.

And we also want to really thank everyone who sent in congratulations and good wishes for our 100th episode last week. Yeah, that was really great. That was really sweet of everybody. It's been pretty amazing to us that we've managed to make so many shows. But really, a lot of credit goes out to our fans

who've been supporting us in so many different ways. We really appreciate all the emails that we get and everyone who helps to spread the word about our show. So thank you, everybody. And of course, the people who've sent in donations or support us on Patreon have just been invaluable in keeping the show going.

The show takes such a commitment of time to make that we really thought we were going to have to stop because we just couldn't afford to keep going, given how difficult it's been for us to get consistent advertising. So thanks so much to everyone who's pitched in to help make the difference so that we could do the last 100 shows. And I guess here's to the next 100. It's my turn to try to solve a lateral thinking puzzle. Greg is going to give me an odd sounding situation and I have to work out what's going on asking only yes or no questions. This is from listener Jed Link. All right. An IT guy receives a perplexing call from a client who reports being unable to log into their system when they're standing up. When they're sitting down, there's no problem. Skeptical, the IT guy sits down at the station

and logs in with no problems. When he stands up, though, he gets invalid password just as reported. After a long debugging session, they discover the cause of the problem. What was it? Okay. Presum session, they discovered the cause of the problem. What was it? Okay. Presumably, I mean, obviously, they can reach the keyboard and everything while standing up.

They can't log in while standing up. Does this have to do with anything that is on the person or persons of the people involved? Like that is actually physically on their person? Like they've got a cell phone in their pocket or anything that they've got on them? Okay. Does this have to do with when you're standing up, you're somehow interfering with a signal from something? No. Okay.

Does it matter what they're trying to log into? No. Does it matter what they're trying to log into? No. Does it matter what the password is? Does it matter if there's capital or lowercase letters involved? I can't say. I don't know in that much detail. Oh, okay. Or numbers instead of letters. I mean, so do I need to know some specific about the password, like that it had numbers instead of letters or anything like that? No, nothing that specific. Okay.

Does it have anything to do with the specific heights of the people involved? No. Does it have anything to do with where the people are, like they're on the International Space Station? No. No? No? No? Oh, phooey.

Look of revelation in your eyes. I'm sorry. No, that's not it. Oh, I wanted them to be there. Okay. So it doesn't matter where they are specifically. Right. Anything about the setting important?

No, I'd say no. Okay. Nothing about the country or that they're near mountains or anything like that. Okay. I'll say just for the record, Jed found this on Reddit in a subreddit called Tales from Tech Support, and apparently this really happened. This really happened. Does it matter the time period?

Uh, no. Would it help me to understand better? Actually, no. Just for the record, it happened in a factory making heavy machinery, probably in the eighties or early nineties, but I'd say it's, it could happen as well today. Oh, it could happen as well today. Okay. But that rules out a lot of things if it was, yeah, that's right.

There aren't smartphones involved or, um, okay um okay oh can't log in while standing up and you said it doesn't matter what what what uh equipment they're trying to use to log in with like the keyboard or the computer or what they're trying to log into we'll ask that again does anything about the equipment they're trying to use to log in to or with matter? Yes. Oh, something does matter. Okay. I must have asked something different than I thought I did.

Okay. What they're trying to use to log in with? Yes. The keyboard? Yes. Something about the keyboard matters? Okay. Where the keyboard is physically placed? No. What the keyboard is made out of? No.

The height of the keyboard? No. The size of the keyboard in general? No. But something about the keyboard, something to do with the language that the keyboard is in or that they're trying to use? No. Something about the keyboard. Does it matter whether it's a wireless or wired keyboard? No. Does it matter what the keyboard is attached to? No. So the main thing I need to work on here, equipment-wise, is specifically the keyboard.

Yes. Not the keyboard in combination or conjunction with something else. And I'll, maybe this is a hint, I'll tell you, it's not a very technical answer. You don't have to know a lot about IT in order to solve the puzzle. Would you say there was a problem with the keyboard? Yes. Was the keyboard somehow not registering certain keys at some times or in some situations?

I think I would say yes to that, yes. So certain keystrokes were not being registered properly in certain situations. Correct. You'd say that? Yes. And that had to do with something with standing up versus sitting down. Were they standing on the cord to the keyboard, you know, like some wire or cord or something?

I'm trying to think of a hint. But it has to do, so when they were standing up, that's when they couldn't log in? Right. And does it have to do with maybe then the angle that their fingers are touching the keyboard or coming to the keyboard at? Because when you're standing up,

you'd be at a different angle than when you're sitting down. Yes, that is part of it. The angle is part of it. And would this have applied to anybody who was standing up versus sitting down at this keyboard? No. In fact, interestingly, Jed's write-up says production ground to a halt as people

realized this was going on and everyone surrounded the terminal to try to understand what was going on. Everyone wants to try if they're affected. It turns out that most people can log in just fine, but there are certain people who can't log in standing, and there are quite a few who can't log in regardless of standing or sitting. Okay. Would it help me to understand what the characteristics they had in common for the people that couldn't log in? No. That wouldn't help? I mean, it would if we knew them,

but I don't have that technical detail. You don't need that. It's not gender or height or something that I could work out some pattern. No. But some people, and it has to do with maybe how you type on a keyboard, sitting versus standing? Yes. Or how some people at least type on a keyboard, sitting versus standing? Yes. Does it matter because it's a difference of whether you're using all your fingers or just your index fingers?

Possibly, yes. Does it have to do with a matter of the of whether you're using all your fingers or just your index fingers? Possibly, yes. Does it have to do with a matter of the pressure that you're putting on the keys? Whether you're using a right hand versus a left hand? It had to do with this specific keyboard. This specific? So was there something unusual about this keyboard? Yes.

Atypical about this keyboard? This wouldn't have happened with just any. So it wasn't a typical QWERTY keyboard? Or you don't know? I can't answer that. Was it what I would call a keyboard? Yes. Were the keys arranged in the typical QWERTY fashion that I'm used to?

No. No. Was it one of those where they're arranged like an alphabetical? No. A split keyboard? No. Does it matter?

I mean, should I keep trying to pursue what was different about this keyboard? Yeah, I'm trying to think of a way to... Oh, was it for blind people? It's a Braille keyboard. No, it looked like... I'll say it looked like a standard QWERTY keyboard. It looked like a standard QWERTY keyboard, but it wasn't.

Almost. There was some difference. Does this have anything to do with a specific key, like the space bar or... Yes. One specific key? No. A group of specific keys? Yes.

Follow that. The shift key? No, no, no. You don't need to know the specific key, but try to figure out how big the group is. The number keys? All of the letters? No. Fewer than 26?

Yes. Fewer than 10? Yes. Fewer than 10. Yes. Keep going. The vowels, like fewer than five? Yes. Fewer than five keys were affected. Yes.

More than one. Yes. Two keys. Yes. Exactly two keys were affected with a problem? Yes. And it had to do with an unusual design of the keyboard? No. No.

No. That two keys had gotten swapped somehow. Yes. So it was what people's, but when one, why standing up versus sitting down? That's the last piece of it. You've got the key. Is that two, I'll just say. Two keys had gotten swapped somehow.

As a joke, someone had swapped two of the keys. But why would that have a bearing on standing up versus sitting down? As a joke, someone had swapped two of the keys. But why would that have a bearing on standing up versus sitting down? Well, because when you're sitting down, you just type without looking at the keys with using all your fingers, touch typing. And when you're standing up, you're hunting and pecking. And relying more on what's written on the keys. Relying more on what's written on the keys.

Yeah. It turns out that some joker had pulled out two keys from the keyboard and switched their places. Both the user and the sysadmin had one of those letters in their password. They were both relatively good at typing and didn't look down at the keyboard when typing when sitting, but typing when standing is something they weren't used to and had to look down at the keyboard, which made them press the wrong keys. Some users couldn't type properly and never managed to log in, while others didn't have those letters in their passwords and the switched keys didn't bother them at all. Wow, that was hard. Apparently that really happened. That's really funny that that really happened. So thank you, Jed, for sending that in.

Yes, and if anybody else 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 episode for us. If you're looking for more quirky curiosities, you can check out our books on Amazon or visit the website at futilitycloset.com, where you can sample more than 9,000 absorbing tidbits. At the website, you can see the show notes for the podcast and listen to previous episodes.

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