Futility Closet - 129-The Voynich Manuscript

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 storm-predicting leeches to an elephant-shaped hotel. This is episode 129. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. In 1912, bookseller Wilfred Voynich discovered an illustrated manuscript that was written in a mysterious alphabet that had never been seen before. The text bears the hallmarks of natural language, but no one has

Starting point is 00:00:36 ever been able to determine its meaning. In today's show, we'll learn about the Voynich manuscript, which has been bewildering scholars for more than a century. We'll also ponder some parliamentary hostages and puzzle over a tormenting acquisition. In 1912, an antiquarian bookseller named Wilfred Voynich was on a book-buying expedition in Italy when he made a historic discovery. He remembered later, book-buying expedition in Italy when he made a historic discovery. He remembered later, In 1912, during one of my periodic visits to the continent of Europe, I came across a most remarkable collection of precious illuminated manuscripts. For many decades, these volumes had laid buried in the chest in which I had found them in an ancient castle in southern Europe. While examining the manuscripts with a view to the acquisition of at least part of the collection,

Starting point is 00:01:21 my attention was especially drawn by one volume. It was such an ugly duckling compared with the others that my interest was aroused at once. The book was an illustrated codex of 246 pages long, handwritten on vellum that's been carbon dated to the early 1400s. It's illustrated with unknown plants, astronomical or astrological diagrams, and pictures of nymphs bathing in pools or tubs connected by pipes, which is all very mysterious. No one knows who wrote this book, which has come to be known as the Voynich Manuscript. We know that its ownership stretches back through the German Jesuit polymath Athanasius Kircher, and probably beyond him to the Emperor Rudolf II of Germany and the English astrologer John Dee. Voynich himself thought the manuscript had been

Starting point is 00:02:04 written by the English philosopher Roger Bacon, but this is now thought to be unlikely. All of this chain of ownership is disputed, as is a lot of things about this book. After Voynich died in 1930, another antique book dealer donated the book to Yale in 1969, which is where it is today. What fascinated Voynich was not the book's mysterious origins or the beauty of its artwork, but something else. He wrote, I found that it was entirely written in cipher. The book contains about 170,000 characters in an unknown language that has never been seen elsewhere, not in any other book or any other resource at all. The cryptography expert David Kahn says, it looks like ordinary late medieval handwriting. The symbols preserve the general form of letters of their time, which they are not. Nearly all of the text is made up of an unknown alphabet of 15 to 40

Starting point is 00:02:49 characters. I found all kinds of estimates of how many characters there are in this alphabet. The reason is that they're kind of hard to count because some of them are ambiguous. But it is an alphabet. There are no chapters, no subheadings, no obvious punctuation, and no signs of errors or corrections anywhere. We know the manuscript is written from left to right because the lines are aligned at the left side, and the text, strange as it is, does seem to follow rules. Certain characters must appear in each word, like English vowels do. Some of them never follow others. Some can be doubled while others cannot, and so on. Some words occur only in certain sections. Others appear throughout the document. Despite all of these clues, despite a hundred years of careful study, no one has ever been able to find a meaning in the text, or even to be sure that a meaning is there at all.

Starting point is 00:03:36 Of the 246 pages, about 220 of them are illustrated, and some can be unfolded to reveal yet larger illustrations. These are generally line drawings that have been overlaid with washes of color. Because no one knows how to read the text, people have begun to use the illustrations to divide the manuscript into six sections, just as a way to refer to it. So there's a botanical chapter with large illustrations of plants, an astronomical chapter with charts of celestial bodies and zodiac signs, a pharmaceutical chapter with plants and pots, and so on, a cosmological chapter, and there's a section of food recipes. Altogether, there are hundreds of illustrations, and they seem to be broadly similar to those that you see in other medieval works, but on closer inspection, that resemblance fades. There are some recognizable signs of the zodiac, but most of the illustrations are ambiguous and fanciful. It's hard to know

Starting point is 00:04:24 quite what they were intended to mean. The hairstyles and clothing in the illustrations date to the years about 1450 to 1520, which is compatible with the radiocarbon estimate, which came up with the years 1404 to 1438. But unfortunately, many of the people pictured in the illustrations are naked women in tubs of water, which are very hard to date. And the women tend to have distended bellies, perhaps being pregnant, and their anatomy is shown pretty frankly, which is actually unusual for that period when this was thought to have been written. So everything about that is mysterious, and no one knows what the meaning is of any of it. Of these six sections, the herbal section is the longest. It contains dozens of illustrations of plants, but strangely, none of those plants seems

Starting point is 00:05:06 to be clearly identifiable as a real existing plant, which is strange, especially if this is meant to be a reference work identifying the plants themselves. Indeed, except for the zodiac signs, practically none of the illustrations in the whole book can be definitely interpreted at all, and since we can't read the text, that's not much of a help in trying to make sense of the illustrations. No one can think of one topic that would occasion all these various kinds of illustrations, so it appears that the manuscript addressed multiple subjects. Overall, the book gives the impression of being a pharmacopoeia or a treatise in medieval or early modern medicine.

Starting point is 00:05:38 You might call it a textbook for magicians, physicians, pharmacists, or astrologers. In fact, back in those days, those different subject areas weren't really quite distinct things. But no one knows what to make of a text that no one is able to read. There seem to be three broad possibilities here. The first one is that there is nothing there. It's just a sequence of words without a meaningful message, perhaps even a deliberate forgery. The first thing to say about that is that if it's a hoax, it's probably an old one. The vellum or parchment on which the book is written has been carbon dated, as I said,

Starting point is 00:06:09 to the 15th century. So if you think about it, that means if it's a modern hoax, if it was made, if like, let's say, Voynich himself just came up with this to have an interesting book to try to sell to someone, he would have had to find 500-year-old blank parchment to write it on, which seems very unlikely and difficult to do. So we can probably exclude the idea that this was done in recent times. I'm guessing they would have looked at the inks, too, or the paints. And they did, yeah. And that's consistent. Ink ages in a certain way, and that's consistent

Starting point is 00:06:35 with this being centuries old. But maybe it's an old hoax. That's possible. Possibly someone, you know, it's a fraud that in old times, someone tried to use to deceive book collectors who began to flourish in the renaissance someone just came up with a fake mysterious looking book and said why look a mysterious manuscript would you like to buy it that would be a way to make some money a couple other topics or theories here that just came across in my reading that i just think are interesting one is that it was created by an autistic monk someone who had been capable of the really assiduous work of writing all this out, even though it doesn't have any underlying meaning. Another possibility that people have proposed is that it's glossolalia, what today we would call speaking in tongues.

Starting point is 00:07:12 Someone was just saying nonsense syllables for some other reason. And if you think about it, back in the 1400s, that might have been thought to have been divinely inspired. And so someone would carefully write it all out when in fact there's no important meaning. Yeah, I was thinking something similar, like maybe some form of mental illness, which would explain the plants not actually corresponding to any actual plants. Somebody very intelligent and educated, but who had suffered some sort of mental illness or brain injury. And so in that case, you'd wind up with a, I want to say, convincing-looking text that doesn't actually mean anything, and that would explain why today no one can find any meaning in it.

Starting point is 00:07:46 In each of these cases, the text would ultimately be meaningless. So maybe the reason we haven't been able to read it is that there's nothing there to read. Should we just dismiss the whole thing in that case? This was my first thought on learning about this stuff as well. If people have been trying this for a hundred years and no one's gotten anywhere, maybe there's nowhere to get. Maybe it just doesn't contain any meaning. This is where it gets interesting.

Starting point is 00:08:04 Modern analysis shows that the distribution of letters and words in the manuscript isn't random and shows some patterns associated with natural language text. It's possible using modern principles of statistical analysis and information theory, you can look at the pattern of words and letters, even if you don't know what they mean, and sort of see whether they match what we tend to see in natural language. So it's probably not nonsense. We can rule that out. Right. of see whether they match what we tend to see in natural language. So it's probably not nonsense. We can rule that out. Right.

Starting point is 00:08:25 The book came to light, remember, in 1912, and the techniques that are used to study these patterns weren't developed until the 1930s, which is very, very interesting. So if you think about that, it seems impossible that Voynich himself or anyone earlier than that could have faked this text because they wouldn't have had the knowledge to make it resemble natural language so closely. Right. Especially back, you know, it resemble natural language so closely. Right. Especially back, you know, someone did this in 1408.

Starting point is 00:08:48 Right. They wouldn't have been able, they didn't begin to understand these patterns in text to have been able to fake them so convincingly. But somebody could have still, like, maybe invented their own language? Yeah.

Starting point is 00:08:59 That's in our theory. We're coming to that. Okay. Further, though, none of the text has been decoded. Recent studies have shown that distinct vocabularies are used in each of the book's six sections. Remember, I said there's one on botany and so coming to that. Okay. Further, though none of the text has been decoded, recent studies have shown that distinct vocabularies are used in each of the book's six sections. Remember, I said

Starting point is 00:09:08 there's one on botany and so on like that. If you study the text closely, certain words accompany the plant illustrations that aren't used near the astronomical diagrams, for instance, which is exactly what you'd expect in a meaningful text that was organized by topic. That supports the idea that the text itself is meaningful. Also,

Starting point is 00:09:24 it's much more trouble, you would think, than a simple hoaxer would go to to fool, say, Rudolph II. If you were just trying to come up with some fake mysterious book to sell to someone, you wouldn't go to such incredible, even if you had the tools, even if you were doing this today, you probably wouldn't go to this much trouble to write out 246 pages of carefully statistically arranged letters to make it appear convincing. There's better ways to spend your time. The University of Bedford linguist Stephen Bax writes, why on earth would anyone waste their time on creating a hoax of this kind? It's just not credible. The British linguist Gordon Rugg

Starting point is 00:09:54 thinks these arguments are overblown, though. He thinks the manuscript is just a compilation of meaningless lines of letters. In fact, he was able to make a convincing facsimile by arranging meaningless syllables using a grid, and he suggests that a single person could create a text with this technique as long and complex as the Voynich manuscript in three months. One person could do that, he says. The Austrian physicist Andreas Schinner backs this up. He found unnatural regularities in the word order of the manuscript that just don't occur in any known language, so it just doesn't match what you'd expect to find in meaningful text. But everywhere and always, as is the case with the Voynich manuscript,

Starting point is 00:10:29 other researchers dispute these findings. They say these arguments don't prove the manuscript is a hoax, and they don't explain all the statistical properties that people are finding in the text. So that's the first theory, that it's just meaningless, and there are reasons to doubt that. The second big possibility is that the text is meaningful, but it was written originally in an existing natural language, most likely Latin or German, and then encrypted somehow.

Starting point is 00:10:50 Someone deliberately applied some technique to prevent outsiders like us from making sense of it. As I mentioned, the manuscript was carbon dated to the early 15th century, but it might have been created

Starting point is 00:11:00 as late as 1608, which is the earliest confirmed date in its history of ownership. We're fairly certain that's valid, that someone owned it in 1608. If you look at the history of cryptography, what people knew about hiding messages in that time, it's not very sophisticated. It was probably either just a simple substitution cipher or anything as complex as a polyalphabetic cipher. The encryption method can't be too complex, whatever they used, because the statistical properties of natural language are still evident in the text. I mean, they can't have really mixed it up too much, because if they did, you wouldn't be able to

Starting point is 00:11:32 see these patterns of natural language in what we have. But it's been studied by many cryptographers, including American and British codebreakers, during both world wars, and despite 100 years of trying, no one's ever been able to decipher it which doesn't make much sense if it was encrypted you think it would be done with a fairly simple technique and no one we should have been relatively easy for us to crack it certainly in a century of trying and no one's been able to also critics say the text has too many features that are just out of keeping with natural language in the voynich text some words are repeated five times in a row which you just don't see i mean certainly you don't see that in english and even longer strings appear with only the odd change of individual letters. In English,

Starting point is 00:12:07 that would be something like brought, bought, bow, though, tough, through, trough. It just doesn't happen in natural language. You don't ever see that in an English book somewhere. That's not what you'd expect to see. One cryptographer, Mary Dimperio, says the text just doesn't act like natural language. Another possibility then is that it's a code. It's a series of symbols that are meant to be looked up in a code book, which we don't have. That's unlikely because such a system is very cumbersome to read and write at any length. Certainly you wouldn't fill a 246-page book with codes to be looked up elsewhere. And the Voynich text appears to have been written smoothly without pauses. If you were going to write out a book of, say, Morse code symbols, you'd be continually looking up to double-check your codes, and handwriting experts

Starting point is 00:12:48 can tell when you've done that because of the quality of the handwriting. And this is very smooth. People who know about this say that it was written very, I guess, volubly, just it's very smooth. So it seems to argue against the idea that this was a code. Another possibility is steganography, which I think I've mentioned before. Steganography is basically the attempt to hide a message in a way such that its very existence isn't suspected. That you shave someone's head is the classic example and write a message on his scalp and let the hair grow back and send him through the enemy's gates. They don't even suspect that a message is there. In this case, what that would mean is that the book is mostly gibberish. It's just meaningless, but there's one particular section that's got a special message in it.

Starting point is 00:13:24 That would be hard to figure out. That way, if someone was sort of suspicious, they would look through it and say, couldn't find anything, as we can't, and give up. Because you don't know what the right part to look at is. Right. And the way you'd reveal that, just for example, would be to put a special grill over it that has certain holes in it that just reveal certain letters. The problem is that the letters in the book aren't arranged on a grid. certain letters. The problem is that the letters in the book aren't arranged on a grid. And one researcher points out the whole point of steganography is to conceal the very presence of a message. And the last place you'd hide a secret message is in an ostentatiously mysterious

Starting point is 00:13:53 book. You just wouldn't go about it that way. And put in lots of drawings of naked women so nobody will look at it. Yeah, it's going to attract as much attention as possible of people who are trying to figure out what you've hidden. It just doesn't make any sense. So that gets rid of the cipher possibility. The third broad possibility is that the text is meaningful and it's written in an unknown language, a language that either didn't have an original alphabet So if you're a monk or whoever did this, you were working from a text originally written in Chinese, and instead of copying over the Chinese characters, you substituted in some way, these odd characters that we do find in the text. Another possibility is that it's an entirely artificial language. William Friedman, who's a very widely respected American cryptologist who helped create the National Security Agency actually spent three decades working on this manuscript. Someone once asked

Starting point is 00:14:47 him why he spent so long on it, and he said, because it hasn't been read, just as George Mallory allegedly said, because it's there when asked why he climbed Mount Everest. Friedman came to think that it was a treatise composed in an artificial language, a language constructed deliberately for human communication. And the American cryptologist Craig Bauer agrees. He says it must be a made-up language where it would have been broken years ago, which makes perfect sense. If it was simply encrypted in some way, someone would have figured it out by now, you would think.

Starting point is 00:15:14 One problem with this theory is that the first artificial languages that we know of arose in the middle of the 17th century, which is after this book was written. It's possible that this book contains one of the very first artificial languages, but if that's true, then there's very little chance we'll ever decipher it without some additional resources to help explain it to us. That is a possibility. Some genius back then created his own language and wrote a book in it, and he's the only one who knew, or he was part of some group that knew how to read it, and we just don't. As I mentioned, the statistical analysis shows the text seems to resemble natural language, and this could be a phonetic rendering of an Asian language.

Starting point is 00:15:46 That's a possibility. But no one's been able to actually establish one, and there appear to be no examples of Asian symbolism or science in the illustrations, which is what you'd expect to find if the book somehow was associated with the East, if not produced there. So those are the three possibilities. It's meaningless, it's encrypted, or it's plain text in a language that we haven't identified. Unfortunately, even modern computer analysis has been unable to rule out any of these three possibilities, so we're still standing at the same crossroads we were

Starting point is 00:16:12 about 100 years ago. Patterns in the text suggest a rich linguistic structure, and as the British intelligence officer John Tiltman said, the text is too elaborate and consistent to be either a hoax or the work of a lunatic. But in a century of trining, no one's ever been able to find a meaning in it. This suggests that maybe meaning wasn't the ultimate purpose of the book's creator, and this occurred to me too as I was researching all this. Andreas Schinner, the Austrian physicist whom I mentioned earlier, wrote, perhaps the Voynich manuscript is the once-in-a-lifetime masterpiece of a habitual forger, or simply a special kind of artwork created with no immoral motivation. He cites the Codex Seraphinianus, a book created in 1980 by the Italian architect Luigi Serafini,

Starting point is 00:16:55 which resembles a visual encyclopedia of an extraterrestrial world which is written in an incomprehensible curving script. I'm not sure anyone's even tried to decipher that, but it wasn't offered as a puzzle with a meaning. It's just a piece of art. It's a piece of art, so the language itself is part of the artistic rendering. Maybe the Voynich manuscript is like that, simply a beautiful, mysterious thing made for its own sake. Schinner writes, obviously there is some artistic or even philosophical attraction in the creation of a phantasmagoric book that has no inherent meaning, and therefore can take on any one. Futility Closet is supported by our wonderful patrons. We just wouldn't be able to commit to the amount of time that the show takes without

Starting point is 00:17:43 the support that we get from our listeners. And today we're sending out a big thank you to Paul Bouvarp, our newest super patron. So thank you to Paul and to all of our patrons who help keep us going. If you would like to join them, you can check out our Patreon campaign at patreon.com slash futilitycloset. Any amount that you can contribute helps us to be able to keep making the show. And if you pledge at least a dollar an episode, you get access to our activity feed, where you'll find post-show discussions, outtakes, peeks behind the scenes, and updates on what Sasha, our trusty show mascot, has been getting up to lately. Again, that's at patreon.com slash futilitycloset, or see the support us section of the website.

Starting point is 00:18:28 I have some updates to some older lateral thinking puzzles. Unfortunately, some of these will spoil the answers to the puzzles, so if you're rather behind and don't want any puzzles spoiled, then skip ahead a few minutes. Jeffrey Chavez wrote and said, I'm a newcomer to Futility Closet, so I'm catching up on episodes. The designated survivor topic came up in the Lateral Thinking Puzzle in Podcast 97. I recently learned of a somewhat related designation in England, the hostage MP. And Jeffrey sent this from the Wikipedia article on the subject. During the state opening of Parliament in the United Kingdom, one member of Parliament, known as the hostage MP, travels to Buckingham Palace before the Queen travels to Parliament.

Starting point is 00:19:07 The hostage is released upon safe return of the Queen. This tradition began when the monarch and Parliament were on less friendly terms. I bet. And I have to admit, I wasn't really up on the state opening of Parliament and how it's carried out in the UK, but it turns out it's a rather elaborate ceremony to officially mark the start of a session of Parliament. There are several parts to the whole affair, all steeped in history, such as the searching of cellars, where the cellars of the Palace of Westminster are searched, as they have been since the gunpowder plot of 1605 failed in its aim to blow up the Houses of Parliament and kill King James I. Other parts of the ceremony include the arrival of the Royal Regalia,

Starting point is 00:19:46 where the imperial state crown is carried to the Palace of Westminster in its very own state coach, following a particular prescribed route, and is then displayed along with the Great Sword of State and the Cap of Maintenance in the Royal Gallery. And as Geoffrey noted, there is the delivery of the parliamentary hostage. Before the monarch leaves Buckingham Palace, the treasurer, comptroller, and vice chamberlain of the queen's household, all of whom are government whips, will deliver ceremonial white staves to the queen, and then usually the vice chamberlain is retained as the hostage until the monarch is safely returned.

Starting point is 00:20:18 Apparently the hostage is actually kept under guard, but treated pretty nicely, while waiting through several more acts of the ceremony, which culminates with the queen reading a prepared speech in an appropriately formal and neutral tone. The tradition of the hostage began with Charles I, who had a rather contentious relationship with Parliament to the extent that he was eventually beheaded in 1649 during a civil war, and a copy of Charles I's death warrant is still displayed in the robing room used by the queen when she arrives at Parliament as a reminder of what can happen to a monarch who attempts to interfere too much. That's really grim.

Starting point is 00:20:51 I didn't know any of that. Yeah. I mean, I don't imagine that the current queen is truly in much danger from the Parliament, but still. No, but they leave a warning posted. Oh, oh. The whole thing. Just that would be a tradition. It really, it must have been incredibly tense at the time.

Starting point is 00:21:05 Yeah. And it's just, I mean, it's interesting to us as Americans, because I mean, we just, our history just doesn't go back that far. No, we don't have anything like that. Not yet. And we don't tend to have anything, I think, that's that formal and prescribed and elaborate. Yeah. But we don't have state regalias and such, I suppose.

Starting point is 00:21:24 We're developing them. We will soon enough, I'm sure. Fred McCoy wrote in about the lateral thinking puzzle in episode 125, whose answer involved two pairs of identical twins marrying each other, producing cousins that were genetically similar to siblings. Fred said, I solved this as soon as it was stated, because I remember an article on NPR about two pairs of identical twins marrying who bought identical or mirror image layout homes near one another who decorated

Starting point is 00:21:49 them identically etc. What always made it stick in my memory was that the grown children talking about being told their cousins were genetically the same as their siblings. I guess I cheated by knowing an actual similar case. Thanks for your always fascinating podcast and website. And I don't know if this is the story that Fred had in mind, but I did find a story that NPR had covered about two pairs of identical twins who married each other at a double wedding after they all met at their summer jobs in 1946. In this case, the four of them actually bought a house together and the two sisters gave birth to their first children three weeks apart. I would imagine that the cousins in this case would have particularly felt very similar to siblings,

Starting point is 00:22:27 especially all living in the same house and some of them being so close in age to each other. And it turns out that there are other cases of identical twins marrying. For example, the Telegraph reported in 2008 on a pair of identical twins from Texas who got engaged on the same day, were married in a joint ceremony, and built side-by-side homes to live in. One of the two couples even had identical twins of their own, which the telegraph says is a million to one odds of happening. And these twins actually had met at a twin day festival, which are held to celebrate identical twins. And I would guess that the existence of such festivals would help increase

Starting point is 00:22:59 the chances that these kinds of situations would occur. Yeah. So I'm sure there are even more of these cousins who are genetically like siblings. We haven't heard of any situation of such cousins donating an organ to an ill cousin, though, so that part of the puzzle at least still seems to be more theoretical. And in the last episode, I had to solve a puzzle involving how a pear gets into a brandy bottle. I won't spoil that puzzle since it was just last week's episode, but I will say that Dave Meyer sent in a link to a great article on just how it's done, and we'll put that in the show notes for anyone who wants to learn more about the rather labor intensive process. Interestingly, the article notes that the only decent way to get the pear

Starting point is 00:23:40 out of the bottle is to just break the bottle. So not quite the same level of sophistication as getting it in there in the first place. Thanks so much to everyone who writes into us. And if you have any questions or comments for us, please send them to podcast at futilitycloset.com. It's Greg's turn to try to solve a lateral thinking puzzle. I am going to give him a strange sounding situation and he has to try to figure out what's going on asking only yes or no questions. This puzzle was sent in by Jake Gaitler who said, I've been working through the podcast back catalog and I particularly enjoy the lateral thinking puzzles, especially Sharon's maniacal laughter which Greg just ain't getting it.

Starting point is 00:24:24 And I'm hoping it doesn't sound maniacal. Yeah, you might get one of those in about five minutes. Jake says that he remembers this puzzle from his childhood. One night, a man goes to the woodshed. While there, he picks something up, but then he loses it. So he takes it into the house.

Starting point is 00:24:40 Once he gets it into the house, he has a hard time getting it back out. When he finally gets it out, he drops it and loses it again. What is it? Uh, let me begin. Okay, is this, uh, is the man's identity important? No. Is his occupation important?

Starting point is 00:24:58 No. Is the location important? No. A man, are there other people involved? No. All right. A man goes to there other people involved? No. All right. A man goes to the woodshed? Yes. By that is meant a woodshed? I mean, there's not some special tricky meaning there? Correct. What you think of as a woodshed. Goes to a woodshed to get something. It doesn't

Starting point is 00:25:18 say. He just goes to the woodshed. While there, he picks something up. Right. But drops it. But then he loses it. Okay. Stop right there. Okay. Stop right there. Pick something up. Right. But drops it. But then he loses it. Okay. Stop right there. Okay. Stop right there. Picks something up. Yes. But loses it.

Starting point is 00:25:30 Yes. Is this a tangible physical object? Yes. Not like a shadow or something? Yes. Good. That's a good guess, but no, it's tangible. Picks up, meaning raises it from some surface it had been resting on.

Starting point is 00:25:44 I'm just looking for all kinds of tricks here. Yeah. Vaguely, yes. Like if it was a coffee cup or something, you would pick it up. Right. Is that the sense in which we mean that? Somewhat. Okay.

Starting point is 00:25:56 Drops it. Picks it up in his hand. No, picks it up, but then he loses it. Picks it up in his hand? Yes. Picks it up in his hand. Does it matter if this is a woodshed? I mean, does it have to happen in a woodshed?

Starting point is 00:26:06 It doesn't have to, but that's actually a clue. Is the time period important? No. Did this really happen? Possibly. Goes to the woodshed, picks something up in the woodshed. Yeah. But it's not like he picks up tuberculosis or something, right?

Starting point is 00:26:25 It's an object? It is an object, but it's maybe not exactly like you think of as pick up a coffee cup, but it's close to that. Drops it, meaning he drops it. No, no, no. I didn't say he drops it. Then he loses it.

Starting point is 00:26:37 Loses it, but doesn't drop it. Yeah, he drops it later in the puzzle. Picks it up, loses it. Well, let me just get the whole thing then. Sure. Goes to the woodshed, picks it up, the puzzle. Picks it up. Loses it. Well, let me just get the whole thing then. Sure. Goes to the woodshed, picks it up, loses it. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:26:50 Goes back to the house. Takes it into the house. Once he gets in the house, he has a hard time getting it back out. When he finally gets it out, he drops it and loses it again. Gets it out. So he loses it in the woodshed. Yes. But then picks it up again.

Starting point is 00:27:12 No. What is it that he does in the house? He takes it into the house. Takes it into the house and drops it again. No, when he gets it into the house, he has a hard time getting it back out. And when he finally gets it out, he drops it again. No, when he gets it into the house, he has a hard time getting it back out. And when he finally gets it out, he drops it. Is this some trick on the pronoun it?

Starting point is 00:27:32 No. So you're referring to a thing. Yes, we are referring to a thing all the way through. And it's the same thing all the way through. But there are obviously some phrases in here that could have multiple meanings. Yeah. Getting it out. Yeah. Getting it out. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:27:53 I'm just trying to think of other clever meanings that phrase could have. Yeah. And these all, all the its prefer to the same thing. They do. And it is a physical object. And the woodshed is actually germane and it's not i keep thinking the other way to go with this is something abstract like a reputation or a shadow or something right and that's clever and that right but that's not it it is something

Starting point is 00:28:18 it is a physical object yes um there aren't people involved. Time period is important. His identity isn't important. You said the woodshed is a clue. It is. Picked it up. So he, in the woodshed, he drops it. No, he doesn't drop it in the woodshed. Loses it. He loses it.

Starting point is 00:28:40 Loses it in the woodshed, but then goes into the house and still. Takes it into the house, yes. So he loses it and then takes it somewhere. Yes. Without picking it up again. Correct. Loses it. What might you pick up in the woodshed?

Starting point is 00:29:00 Fleas. That's clever. There's all kinds of clever ways to go at this, but none of them apply. Yeah. An ax. No. I mean, something as obvious as that. Is it one thing?

Starting point is 00:29:11 It's one thing. So not plural like fleas. Is it some sort of collective object like wood? No. You know what I mean? No, it's one thing. One thing. object like wood no you know what i mean no it's one thing one thing one thing that you might possibly find in a woodshed and then lose and then take and then yes have trouble getting out yes yes is it a living thing no out. Yes.

Starting point is 00:29:44 Yes. Is it a living thing? No. Getting out. I'm just thinking I'm trying to think of what one thing could take all those. Yeah. It's obviously different meanings of the phrases but something pretty small that you

Starting point is 00:30:02 might pick up in a woodshed with various meanings of pick up. That's what I'm having trouble with is. Yeah. Obviously, as all these different actions have multiple meanings. Right. Yes. That's what the whole thing turns on.

Starting point is 00:30:18 Yes. But pick up. Yes. And I said it's not exactly like you said about picking up a coffee cup. No, I understand. I'm just trying to think of other meanings. Or get out. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:30:34 Yes, definitely this is something that once you pick it up, you want to get it out. Once you pick it up, you want to get it out. Yes. That sounds like a good clue. Yes, and it's something you would be more likely to pick up in a woodshed, although it doesn't have to be a woodshed. But once you pick it up, you would want to get it out. Fire?

Starting point is 00:31:00 No. There's all these different ways you can go at it. I know, I know. Does it have anything to do with temperature? No. There's all these different ways you can go at it. I know. I know. Does it have anything to do with temperature? No. It does have something to do with wood, though. Um. A splinter or a sliver or something.

Starting point is 00:31:20 A splinter. Yes, exactly. But does that work? He picks it up accidentally, right? And then loses it because it's too dark in the woodshed to see it. So he takes it into the house where there's better light. Once in the house, he has a hard time getting it out, removing the splinter from his hand. That's what I couldn't find out.

Starting point is 00:31:36 And then he drops it and loses it again. That's clever. That's good. And I managed not to laugh maniacally. And the woodshed is a good clue. I mean, in hindsight, it was like, oh, that should have been clear. It is a good clue. So thanks, Jake, for that puzzle.

Starting point is 00:31:48 That was actually a very cute puzzle. Yes. And if anyone else has a puzzle they'd like to have us try, please send it to us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. That's another episode for us. If you're looking for more quirky curiosities, check out the Futility Closet books on Amazon or visit the website at futilitycloset.com where you can sample more than 9,000 tantalizing tidbits.

Starting point is 00:32:11 At the website, you can also see the show notes for the podcast and listen to previous episodes. If you like our podcast and want to help support it, either with a one-time donation or through an ongoing pledge, please see the Support Us page at the website. You can also help us out by telling your friends about us or by leaving a review on iTunes or other podcast directories. 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 performed by Doug Ross. Thanks for listening, and we'll talk to you next week.

Futility Closet - 129-The Voynich Manuscript

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