Futility Closet - 108-The Greenwich Time Lady

Starting point is 00:00:00 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 a house made of tombstones to a clock made of straw. This is episode 108. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. As recently as 1939, a London woman made her living by setting her watch at the Greenwich Observatory and carrying the time to her customers in the city.

Starting point is 00:00:32 In today's show, we'll meet Ruth Belleville, London's last time carrier, who conducted her strange occupation for 50 years. We'll also sample the colorful history of bicycle races and puzzle over a stymied prize winner. With the great advances made in clockmaking in the 1600s, in the space of just a couple of decades, the accuracy of mechanical clocks went from plus or minus half an hour per day to just a few seconds. And that transformed almost every aspect of human life. With precise, accurate timekeeping, we could now use time as an independent variable in the investigation of nature, which means that it drove the scientific

Starting point is 00:01:10 revolution. And with marine chronometers that were now available, mariners could measure longitude accurately, which means they could map the world accurately, and that drove colonization. It really transformed everything. Socially, once we had good clocks, labor could be regulated by clockwork, where before it really couldn't. Transportation schedules could be made precise, and cultural and religious events could be made orderly. All these were new things that only became available with precise timekeeping. And punctuality itself became a virtue, which I think is not necessarily a good thing, even if you're punctual. Before, it wasn't really possible to be late, and now it was. One writer wrote, the transition from natural to artificial hours was of great social and psychological consequence.

Starting point is 00:01:52 Technology, a human creation, begins to govern its creator. And that's put us where we are now, where it completely oppresses us. I guess the telling of time is something like you so take for granted. You just so take for granted that everybody can know exactly what time it is. All the time and with great precision. And so you don't think how different society must have been when people couldn't know what time it was exactly. And it wasn't that long ago that that was the case. Yeah. But it's really changed everything and sort of invented the modern world.

Starting point is 00:02:20 In the early 1800s, good clocks were increasingly plentiful. But there's this fascinating period in the middle of the 1800s when it was possible to get a good clock, but not so easy to set it, which is a strange problem to have because now accurate time is just completely ubiquitous. I mean, everyone can have access to that information pretty readily. But back then, it was very hard to get. Ultimately, time is set by the stars. I mean, the one person in London who knew what time it was was the astronomer Royal, who could look through a transit telescope at the stars and be able to tell precisely what time it was. But there was no technology at the time for him to get that information out to everyone who wanted to know it.

Starting point is 00:02:55 There was no telephone, no radio, no electric telegraph. He had no way to disseminate that information. They had this one, I think, charmingly primitive solution. They had this one, I think, charmingly primitive solution. In 1833, they introduced what was called a time ball, which was physically a large ball that they mounted on a pole atop the observatory roof. And at 1 p.m. every day, they would raise it and drop it. And when it dropped, that meant it was exactly 1 p.m. And mariners in the Thames could see that without leaving their ships and then set their

Starting point is 00:03:21 marine chronometers so they knew precisely what time it was, which, again, was useful to them in measuring longitude and if you lived within sight if you were either a mariner on the thames or if you lived within sight of the time ball you knew what time it was but if you didn't you were left sitting in your parlor gazing mournfully at your new fancy mechanical clock and wondering what time it was the solution that gradually evolved as to how to fix that problem is that if you bought a fancy new mechanical clock you could go back to the watchmaker clockmaker that had made it and they had a regulator basically a clock in their workshop that was always set to the correct time

Starting point is 00:03:54 and that they use that because they're setting clocks all day long but that regulator clock could only be set by the astronomer everything ultimately goes back to the stars. So the watchmakers and clockmakers of London would have to go periodically to the Greenwich Observatory and say, pardon me, can you tell us what time it is? Understandably, the Astronomer Royal, a man named John Pond, got kind of weary of telling people constantly what time it was. And the clockmakers said, we totally understand that, but we need some kind of system because increasingly as people have more and more of these clocks and more and more of London's business and just personal lives, people's life in general is governed by precise and accurate timekeeping. People are just going to need to know this.

Starting point is 00:04:34 So we need some kind of system to tell people in general what time it is. So Pond thought about this and he finally gave the job to his assistant, a man named John Henry Belleville, who was in fact the one who was in charge of the time ball and the transit telescope and the whole chronometer department. What he did was he just gave him basically a pocket watch, a chronometer that was made by one of the greatest clockmakers of the day, John Arnold and son. And what Belleville started doing is sending this watch. He'd set it very accurately by the information they had at the observatory, and it was certified, and then send that watch around in a messenger's bag with a list of names and addresses of people who had subscribed to this service. So if you ran actually any kind of business, but for the most part, clockmakers in London, you could sign up to have this bag arrive periodically at your shop, and you would

Starting point is 00:05:19 be for a fee given the privilege of opening the bag and seeing the accurate time to within a tenth of a second. This was the world's first time distribution service. Started in June 1836 without 200 clients, not only chronometer makers and watch and clock repairers, but banks and city firms, more and more industries, services needed this kind of information. The banks needed it because they needed to know the precise time for financial transactions. Also, interestingly, there were some private households who subscribed to this service because it was a status symbol to know the precise time for financial transactions. Also, interestingly, there were some private households who subscribed to this service because it was a status symbol to know the precise Greenwich time to within, I guess, because it was expensive or just it was kind of a new thing that people wanted to be able to say. You could just drop that casual into conversation that you knew

Starting point is 00:05:57 what time it was and that would impress people. I know exactly what time it is. Often in telling Henry's story, people say that he carried the watch himself around London. There's some doubt about that because it would have been quite onerous to carry it to all the 200 subscribers to the service. And we know he had a lot of other responsibilities back at the observatory. So it's more likely that at least part of the time he just sent it around by messenger. But one way or another, the clock traveled around London regularly and people looked at it to see what time it was. We do know that Henry must have carried the watch himself sometimes because it had originally come in a gold case, and he had it replaced with a silver one because, according to one late newspaper report,

Starting point is 00:06:33 his curious profession takes him occasionally to the less desirable quarters of the town, and I guess he thought he'd be less likely to be robbed of the watch if it looked a little less valuable. So that service just kept going down through the years, even as succeeding technologies threatened to overtake it. It just kept going. In 1849, the next astronomer, Royal George Airy, proposed delivering the time by electric telegraph, which is a new technology that had become available in the interval there. So under that system, he could send the observatory's time directly to whoever wanted it by wire. They would just install a wire that would take the accurate time straight to whoever wanted it.

Starting point is 00:07:10 You would think there might be a little bit of a lag, though, right? Because aren't the telegraphs manned by people or no? Well, this would just go—and it's a short enough distance that it would just go directly. And some people did subscribe to that, but Belleville kept sending the they called this watch arnold this chronometer because it was made by john arnold and so the watch had a name it was called arnold he just kept sending that around to london watchmakers each week because they kept wanting it uh i'm getting a lot of this from david rooney's book uh ruth belleville the greenwich time lady he rooney was curator of timekeeping at the royal observatory and his basic point is

Starting point is 00:07:42 that new technologies don't simply replace old ones. Like today we have the internet, but we also have television and radio and telegraph. All these old technologies still exist. And they're still used by people who find them useful. So this idea of sending the watch around was still valuable to people. I'm still seeing that the telegraph thing, there would be some drawbacks to it

Starting point is 00:07:57 because you would have to be available at your telegraph station the instant that the time came in and you'd have to be able to get your hands on whatever clock you were trying to be able to get your hands on whatever clock you were trying to set because if any time lapsed in between those things it wouldn't do you any good anymore that's exactly right and that's why people still subscribe to the old service because it's reliable right and the watch would show up and you wouldn't have to look at it the

Starting point is 00:08:17 instant it got there yeah if you looked at it five minutes later it would still be accurate and the telegraph is prone to breaking down and Even today, anyone who subscribes, if you're an early adopter of any new technology, anyone knows those services are valuable, but they're also sometimes unreliable and often expensive. Yeah. So this watch thing would be infallible as long as the watch didn't break. Right. Especially if you're running a business like a clockmaker or something, where you really do need to know this and can't afford any possibility of failure or delay. It just made sense to keep going with the old system. If your reputation, yeah.

Starting point is 00:08:48 Exactly. One thing that drove a lot of the changes in timekeeping in England, and actually around the world around this time, was standardization, particularly with railroads. If you and I in the old days lived in England in different villages, we would both set our time by sundial, which means that we probably actually kept slightly different times because we were in different locations, east and west. That didn't really cause any problem because it would take hours or days for me to get to you, and so it wouldn't really cause any dislocation. It didn't really upset anyone. But particularly

Starting point is 00:09:17 with the advent of railroads, now it was possible to get around the country much, much faster, and so there would be people would miss connections or miss meetings or other social engagements. And sometimes there would even be train collisions because trains were keeping slightly different times. So driven by the railroads, the railroads eventually started to just keep the same time throughout their networks just to avoid problems like that. And that over time gradually drove the keeping of civil time, just the keeping of time on church and public clocks and just in general daily life, people started to sort of standardize on Greenwich time. It just made

Starting point is 00:09:49 things run more smoothly that way. It wasn't the law of the land yet, but it seems by 1855, 98% of towns and cities had transferred to Greenwich meantime. It just seemed a smoother way to run things, which just made Henry's service more valuable because everyone was keeping time by the observatory now, whereas before it had varied a little bit. So valuable was this, in fact, that when Henry died in 1856, his wife Maria took over the service and kept it going. She would walk around with a watch in a handbag and deliver the time, the privilege of knowing the time, to her subscribers. In fact, she brought their daughter, Ruth, with her sometimes. Ruth said she remembered that some watchmakers couldn't afford

Starting point is 00:10:28 her mother's annual subscription fee so they would get the time at second hand, so to speak. She said, I myself have a sort of recollection of a firm in Clerkenwell where I went with my mother when I was a small child. After she had checked the regulators by the chronometer, we passed three or four people going into the shop, chronometer in hand, and my mother telling me that these people were working chronometer makers who paid a small fee to the big firm so that they might obtain the time secondhand. So the time comes down from the stars to the astronomer, goes to Maria's watch, she delivers it to the watchmakers, and other people will come in and get it from their regulator.

Starting point is 00:10:58 It's all from the same source, but it's, again, it's valuable information that people are willing to pay a fee for. It just sounds odd today. It's not clear what Maria charged for this service. The post office also distributed the time, and they charged about 15 pounds. Probably Maria charged about four pounds a year, which was a pretty good deal to have someone come to you personally regularly and tell you the time to within a tenth of a second. In 1880, Greenwich time finally did become the legal time for the whole of Britain instead of just sort of the de facto standard. And that just made the service even more valuable because everyone wanted to know.

Starting point is 00:11:31 There was now one time to be had and everyone wanted to know what it was. And increasingly in various industries, you know, more and more people needed to know precisely what the time was. And just four years later, there was actually an international conference held in 1884 to establish a prime meridian, a zero of longitude, which was set finally on Greenwich. So what we now know as the familiar system of sort of this global system of time zones and longitude was taking shape in the latter half of the 19th century. And even though all these were giant revolutions in timekeeping, just the organization of the world, the people still found enough value in this pocket watch that they kept subscribing to the service, which is interesting. Maria, as I said, carried the watch in a handbag. The electric signal was less reliable. There were other technologies. Sometimes now,

Starting point is 00:12:19 instead of just the telegraph, they would actually distribute the time by just an electric signal on a wire. But that would sometimes go wrong, too. it could be off by a second or two and sometimes wouldn't be received at all for days on end just any new technology is prone to to errors like that where if someone actually carries a watch to you it just goes much more smoothly um and what the bellaville's provided was just much more reliable the pocket watch that maria carried kept time to a tenth of a second and she got a certificate. Each morning, she went to the observatory to get it set, so her subscribers knew exactly what they were getting. In 1886, a competitor started up. The Standard Time Company was beginning to synchronize time, or hoped to, around London, just by electric wire like this.

Starting point is 00:13:01 And interestingly, a quarter of its business came from London pubs, which had to observe strict drinking hours, so they had to be able to cut people off at exactly a certain time. And this way, they could say, we're getting the time precisely from this time company, which gets it straight from the observatory. But that wasn't enough to put off Maria's subscribers. There was still quite a large demand for her service. In fact, she retired in 1892 at age 81. She still had at least 40 customers on her books. And she passed her service. In fact, she retired in 1892 at age 81. She still had at least 40 customers on her books. And she passed the service on to Ruth, her daughter, who amazingly kept up this service for 50 years. Every Monday morning, she traveled to Greenwich, where she

Starting point is 00:13:35 checked the chronometer against the observatory clock and got a certificate showing how accurate her clock was and then set off on her rounds. She walked the whole way among these 40 firms, which is a lot to visit in one day. She said she didn't visit them all in 40, all 40 in one week. Sometimes she called once a fortnight. She said, on average, I make about 30 calls each Monday after visiting Greenwich, and it's a hard day's work. There were only two electric time suppliers in London at the end of the 1800s, the Royal Observatory itself, which didn't have any private clients, and then this Standard Time Company, which did, giving it to private homes and businesses. But she kept going along and kept pretty much most of her clients into the beginning of the 20th century. She said in 1913 to the observer,

Starting point is 00:14:14 as to synchronized clocks, that is these clocks that are set automatically by an electric wire, doubtless they are of service to the general public and possibly to those who sell cheap watches, but to the high-class scientific watch and chronometer maker, Greenwich Mean Time is And that's not just puffery. She's really saying even now in 1913, no one can reliably give you the time to the tenth of a second except me. There are these newer technologies, but they're just not as good. The telegraph can break down. Even if your telegraph doesn't break down, you have to rent a telegraph line, which is expensive. even if your telegraph doesn't break down you have to rent a telegraph line which is expensive by 1930 you could get a radio receiver and the bbc had started broadcasting six pips at the top

Starting point is 00:14:50 of the hour and even the striking of big ben you could hear in your living room by radio but an earlier wireless set was expensive and you had to also buy a large aerial and a license which is expensive whereas with ruth you could just pay her a fee and she's bring the watch to your door in fact david rooney author of, says, even in the 1930s, market workers in East London received a daily time signal from knockers up who would blow dried peas through pea shooters at their windows. This is a technology or just a system that had gone up at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, maybe 200 years earlier. But Rooney's point is, that's an old technology, but it works fine. It's probably inexpensive. If the guy with the pea shooter is reliable, you can just tell him,

Starting point is 00:15:26 shoot peas in my window every dawn to get me up. And if that works fine, why would you change it? I'm just imagining your resume and you put timekeeping pea shooter on your resume. Someone was doing that in the 1930s. Arnold was now more than 130 years old. So Ruth got a backup. She said to one customer, I've bought Charles today since Arnold is not very well. Uh-oh.

Starting point is 00:15:46 But General Arnold was doing astonishingly well for a watch that had been built in 1794. He got astonishingly accurate time. What finally sort of paid to Ruth's business was the speaking clock, which was a telephone service that went live in July 1936, where you could call a phone number and a beautifully modulated woman's voice would give you the time precisely every 10 seconds. That was fantastically popular right from its start. It took 20 million calls in its first year. But even then, Ruth was proving her reliability just a few months later that December, the post office, which also distributed time, blamed a faulty phone line from the Royal Observatory for an error of two minutes. So these competing, more advanced technologies were still more prone to error than she was

Starting point is 00:16:28 and i imagine that not absolutely everybody had a phone line although i guess most businesses would or a wireless set i mean all these things are slow coming online ruth finally gave up her rounds probably in 1939 no one quite knows she was about 86 years old then this was after the start of world war ii so after world World War II had started, there was still a woman carrying a watch and a handbag around London telling people the precise time, and they would pay for it. She still had 50 subscribers at that point. She was found dead in bed at age 89 in December 1943 with the watch next to her. It appears that she died from carbon monoxide poisoning.

Starting point is 00:17:00 She'd turned down her gas lamp to conserve gas, and the flame had gone out. So she just died of inner sleep, apparently, of carbon monoxide poisoning and with her the service stopped when she died she had no heirs so she was london's last time carrier altogether her family the bellevilles her father her mother and herself had run the service for more than a century using the same silver cased chronometer arnold which is now on display in the clockmakers company museum in london's guild hall arnold had been made in 1794 and Ruth had died and the watch finally ran down in 1943. Another way to see that is that this three-person family had kept the same watch accurately set and wound

Starting point is 00:17:36 to within a tenth of a second for 149 years, which Rooney says is 4.7 thousand million seconds. In fact, I'll give Rooney the last word here about just talking about Ruth Belville and this whole phenomenon. He says, Ruth provided what no electrical wire could, the personal touch. People are inherently social animals, and in commercial relationships, as in any others, good service creates long-lasting human bonds that are difficult to break even when new technological alternatives are available. The Belville service eventually became an institution, but that is not why it lasted so long. It lasted because it worked, because Ruth was good at what she did, because what she did was necessary for her customers. But in the end,

Starting point is 00:18:13 even the Greenwich Time Lady could not stop the passage of time. This episode is brought to you by our patrons and by Harry's, who remind you that a Harry's shaving set will make the perfect Father's Day gift. It looks cool, it feels special, and it's something that your dad will actually use. I've mentioned Harry's before, until I started using their German-engineered razor blades, I'd forgotten what a close shave a good blade will give. Their limited-edition Father's Day shave set includes a matte black razor handle, a chrome razor stand, Harry's Moisturizing Foaming Shave Gel, three of Harry's handcrafted blade cartridges, and a travel cover, all for $40. Plus, it comes in a sleek box with the option to add custom engraving and a personalized card. Harry's also offers shaving

Starting point is 00:19:00 sets at different price points, starting at $15, so you can get one for yourself as well. Harry's offers a close, comfortable shave with five German-engineered blades, a flex hinge, and a lubricating strip. The quality is guaranteed, you'll get a full refund if you're not happy, and shipping to the U.S. is free for all Harry's shave sets. Go to harrys.com right now and redeem a special offer for fans of this show. Harry's will give you $5 off your first purchase with promo code CLOSET. Don't wait, economy shipping for Father's Day ends on Thursday, June 9th, so act now. That's h-a-r-r-y-s.com and enter code CLOSET at checkout to get $5 off. Get dad something he'll actually use this Father's Day. In episode 105, I described six-day pedestrian races from the 1870s and 80s and how many of

Starting point is 00:19:49 the competitors drank champagne in the mistaken belief that it was a stimulant. These multi-day walking races gave way to multi-day bicycle races starting in the 1890s, and I noted that I didn't know whether the cyclists also drank champagne during their races. Nick Noyes wrote in to say, In your piece about foot races, you mentioned that pedestrians often drank champagne to help their performance and wondered if cyclists did the same when cycle races became popular. Indeed, they did. Tim Moore, in his fascinating and horrifying book on the Tour de France, French Revolutions, mentions alcohol as a common fuel for bicyclists. It's speculated that riders

Starting point is 00:20:25 metabolized it so quickly that it didn't harm their coordination, but that's hard to believe. The Tour de France cyclists would raid cafes drinking everything in sight. Louis Mala depicts a raid in his documentary Viva la Tour, so the raids were occurring well into the modern era of cycling. The Tour de France is probably the most well-known bicycle race of our times. It's a multi-stage race that developed out of the popular six-day bicycle races and has been held primarily in France since 1903. The modern version of the Tour de France consists of 21 day-long segments or stages over a 23-day period and covers about 2,200 miles or 3,500 kilometers. The Viva La Tour that Nick mentions is a 1962 documentary on the Tour.

Starting point is 00:21:10 The Tour de France is generally considered to be a brutal test of endurance. In his autobiography, Lance Armstrong called the race a contest in purposeless suffering. And according to what I could find out, it seems that nick is quite right and drinking alcohol was quite common in the tour de france i still don't know for sure about the indoor six-day bicycle races though it seems like a good bet given the drinking that occurred in the walking races that preceded them and the tour de france races that followed them a number of sites that i looked at mentioned tour racers drinking alcohol citing a number of reasons for the practice, such as that for decades it was believed that water would bloat your stomach and impair your performance so you'd be better off with other beverages, or that there were sometimes restrictions added to the race about how many bottles of water a rider could have. were added just to make the race even tougher, but they led to the raids that Nick mentioned,

Starting point is 00:22:09 where domestiques or helper riders would raid stores and cafes for anything liquid to bring to the racers to drink. Some sources say that these types of raids were occurring as recently as the 1970s. And other sources mentioned that for a few decades, alcohol was also used by the cyclists to dull the pain of the grueling competition and thereby hopefully improve performance. But they might have been drinking it just because it was technically legal since it wasn't water. Right. Apparently the riders could only carry so many bottles of water with them as best as I was able to find, just as some arbitrary restriction to make this like more challenging. Yeah. An article in the New Yorker magazine cites Benyo Maso, a Dutch sociologist and historian of cycling, on substance use in earlier tours. Although Maso acknowledged what he called the incredible amounts of booze used by the racers in earlier decades,

Starting point is 00:22:54 he also noted a number of other substances used by the riders in the early races, such as strychnine, cocaine, and morphine, as well as various homemade potential performance enhancers like bull's blood and the crushed testicles of wild animals. I didn't actually see whether those actually helped or not. Somebody must have thought they did. After World War II, stimulants such as amphetamines were widely used by the cyclists and weren't actually declared illegal until the mid-1960s. That sort of surprised me to find that out.

Starting point is 00:23:26 After a well-publicized death in 1967 of British cyclist Tom Simpson during the race, which was attributed partly to amphetamine use, a five-time tour winner Jacques Antille told a French sports newspaper, you'd have to be an imbecile or a hypocrite to imagine that a professional cyclist who rides 235 days a year can hold himself together without stimulants. Of course, in more recent times, there have been a number of scandals involving a different class of performance-enhancing drugs known as EPO, but that's a whole other story. And so, it turns out that as grueling as the Tour de France is,

Starting point is 00:24:02 and I don't think anyone would dispute its strenuousness, apparently there are those who feel that even more difficult bicycle races are needed in this world. Sean Lawley tweeted at us, check out the Race Across America for some multi-day bike race craziness. So Race Across America started in 1982 and is a transcontinental bike race across the United States, making it about 3,000 miles. The Tour de France is a stage race, which means that the cyclists are timed for each stage with rest breaks in between. But Race Across America is a continuous race. The clock starts at the beginning and stops at the finish line. So while the distance covered in the Race Across America is almost 40% longer than the Tour de France,

Starting point is 00:24:50 racers need to complete the distance in about half the time. That sounds impossible. It does, doesn't it? There are relay versions of the race across America in which the distance to be traveled is split among team members, which sounds a little more reasonable, but the most prestigious division seems to be the solo racers who have to complete the 3,000 miles themselves in under 12 days. The fastest tend to do it in under eight days, which means that the solo racers generally ride for 22 hours a day. Maybe they need bull's blood. All the racers do have a support crew that handles all of the logistics required by the cyclists, such as providing food and water, as well as navigation, bike repairs, and medical help. Also, they have vehicles following the riders at night with flashing lights to ensure their safety. So that's all pretty pleasant.

Starting point is 00:25:31 But just in case you think that having that kind of support team makes the race just too easy, there is a similar race that's even farther and requires you to compete without receiving any kind of support at all, not even for safety measures. And that's the Trans Am bike race that follows a route of about 4,400 miles using the Trans America bicycle trail that Greg and I mentioned back in episode three because we had both walked it virtually. Oh, that's really interesting because I know what that looks like now. Yeah, you do.

Starting point is 00:26:00 The Trans Am bike race was started in 2014. And that year, the winning rider took less than 18 days, though last year's winner needed almost 19 days. As I recall, it took us both about two years to rock it, but we weren't sort of doing it day and night. Um, the race's website says, if you have a wild itch to cycle day and night, then perhaps this is for you. Um, I'm assuming the use of bull's blood is optional, and we don't recommend drinking alcohol while racing in any of these

Starting point is 00:26:30 races. That's just our personal opinion. So now we move from grueling bike races to surviving a shipwreck. In episode 105, Greg told us about a French physician's attempts to prove that a shipwreck victim could survive on a diet of seawater, fish, and plankton. Doug Moffitt wrote in to say, many, many years ago when I was taking computer science in university, we had a professor from England. The professor had done a computer simulation of boats floating around the South Pacific to see if the Polynesians could have colonized the islands at random. They took into account prevailing wind and current patterns and things like survivability of people in small open boats.

Starting point is 00:27:09 To get survival data, they contacted the British Navy to see if they had kept records on sailors in lifeboats and how they survived. One question they asked was what effect cannibalism would have on survival of the cannibal. The answer was that digesting protein required water and a person was much more likely to die of thirst cannibal. The answer was that digesting protein required water and a person was much more likely to die of thirst than hunger. So as the Navy put it, we recommend that our chaps not eat

Starting point is 00:27:32 one another. So there you have it. Futility Closet does not recommend cannibalism. So thanks so much to everyone who writes in to us. If you have any questions or comments, please send them to us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. And please let me know how to pronounce your name. It's Greg's turn to try to solve a lateral thinking puzzle. I'm going to give him an odd sounding situation and he has to try to figure out what's going on asking only yes or no questions are we ready i think so okay this puzzle was sent in by listener tommy haunton here's the puzzle a woman wins a contest and excitedly tells her friends the good news but discovers that she is unable to claim the prize why is this true yes uh do I need to know where it happened or when? No. A woman wins a contest

Starting point is 00:28:28 Yes. And excitedly tells her friends about it but discovers that she's unable to claim the prize? To claim the prize, yes. Alright. Would it help me to know exactly what the prize was? Yes, obviously. No. So it's not because it's like a yacht or something and she has no place to put it.

Starting point is 00:28:47 Right. It's not like that. She can't claim it because she doesn't have, is it like a lottery ticket? She needs some actual proof that she'd entered the contest? That's not the reason. That's not the reason. That's not the reason. Is it something to do with physical constraints, like she can't get to the location where she

Starting point is 00:29:03 would claim it? Nope. physical constraints, like she can't get to the location where she would claim it? Nope. A contest, you said? A contest. Okay. Was it a...

Starting point is 00:29:16 Well, that won't help me. That can't possibly help me. Was it like a drawing, like just sort of a lottery where she had an equal chance with other people, or did she... Well, answer that. Yes, I would say she had equal chance with other people. So she well answer that um yes i would say she had equal chance with other people so it's not that she had to perform some task or something correct she just entered a contest like a drawing you'd say something like something like that something random chance right not like right she had to tap dance okay right and won that meaning they just drew her name or drew her ticket whatever

Starting point is 00:29:43 it was no that. That's not. I mean, nobody drew something. Okay. I mean, but. But she was just selected from among a group of entrants at random. No. I don't think you'd say she was selected. But I think the bigger answer to your question of what I think you're going for is yes.

Starting point is 00:29:59 At the at random part, I'll say yes, too. Right. It's not a drawing kind of contest, but. All right. Okay. Maybe that doesn. But it's not a drawing kind of contest, but... All right, okay. But maybe that doesn't matter. She won a prize. Well, she won a contest that would enable her to claim a prize. All right, okay.

Starting point is 00:30:15 Well, I'm saying, because she didn't get to, she was unable to claim the prize. Got it, okay. So she won a contest. She won a contest that should enable her to claim a prize. And she expected to be able to because she told her friends she was excited that she'd won the contest. Yes. Yes. But you're saying it wouldn't help me to figure out what the prize is.

Starting point is 00:30:33 It would not help to figure out what the prize is. Is her occupation important? No. Is her identity important? No. Are other people involved besides her and her friends and the contest people? No other people besides that group that you've named. Are her friends important?

Starting point is 00:30:47 Yes. Oh, really? Really? Okay. I just stumbled into that. Good for you. So she wins a contest. If she hadn't told her friends, could she have claimed the prize?

Starting point is 00:30:58 Yes. What the heck? Okay. Okay. Are her friends' occupations important no okay was she disqualified because she told her friends no um okay so she told her friends did her friends then do something yes with that knowledge yes that you wouldn't say disqualified i wouldn't say disqualified? I wouldn't say disqualified. Her friends told someone else? I don't think so, by what I think you mean, but... Okay, she told her friends, hey, I won a contest.

Starting point is 00:31:34 Yes. And they said they did something with that information. Yes, one of them in particular. Not all of them, necessarily, but one of them in particular did something. Oh, that one claimed the prize in her place? Yes. This really happened? This really happened.

Starting point is 00:31:49 It was a woman had won $100 in a contest sponsored by Tim Horton's restaurant chain earlier this year. She posted a photo of the winning coffee cup on her Facebook page, but the contest redemption code was visible in the photo. So when she went to claim her prize, she found out that apparently one of her Facebook friends had already redeemed the code online. Apparently the company took pity on her and gave her the money anyway. And Tommy says, just read it today on, ironically enough, social media.

Starting point is 00:32:24 Based on a true story and with a nice life lesson, be careful what you share with others. So thanks, Tommy. And if anyone 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. If you've been enjoying our podcast and learning about the unexpected drawbacks of posting on social media, please consider becoming a patron to help support the show. The podcast is a big commitment of time to research and produce each week, and if it weren't for the support that we get from our incredible patrons, we would have had to have given up on making the show quite some time ago.

Starting point is 00:32:59 If you want to help out, please check out our Patreon campaign at patreon.com slash futility closet or see the support us page on the website if you're looking for more quirky entertainment check out our books on amazon or visit the website at futilitycloset.com where you can sample more than 9 000 sapid furlies at the website you can also see the show notes for the podcast and listen to previous episodes 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.

Futility Closet - 108-The Greenwich Time Lady

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.