Futility Closet - 158-The Mistress of Murder Farm

Episode Date: June 19, 2017

Belle Gunness was one of America's most prolific female serial killers, luring lonely men to her Indiana farm with promises of marriage, only to rob and kill them. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll tell the story of The LaPorte Black Widow and learn about some of her unfortunate victims. We'll also break back into Buckingham Palace and puzzle over a bet with the devil. Intro: Lee Sallows offered this clueless crossword in November 2015 -- can you solve it? Souvenir hunters stole a rag doll from the home where Lee surrendered to Grant. Sources for our feature on Belle Gunness: Janet L. Langlois, Belle Gunness, 1985. Richard C. Lindberg, Heartland Serial Killers, 2011. Ted Hartzell, "Belle Gunness' Poisonous Pen," American History 3:2 (June 2008), 46-51. Amanda L. Farrell, Robert D. Keppel, and Victoria B. Titterington, "Testing Existing Classifications of Serial Murder Considering Gender: An Exploratory Analysis of Solo Female Serial Murderers," Journal of Investigative Psychology and Offender Profiling 10:3 (October 2013), 268-288. Kristen Kridel, "Children's Remains Exhumed in 100-Year-Old Murder Mystery," Chicago Tribune, May 14, 2008. Dan McFeely, "DNA to Help Solve Century-Old Case," Indianapolis Star, Jan. 6, 2008. Kristen Kridel, "Bones of Children Exhumed," Chicago Tribune, May 14, 2008. Ted Hartzell, "Did Belle Gunness Really Die in LaPorte?" South Bend [Ind.] Tribune, Nov. 18, 2007. Edward Baumann and John O'Brien, "Hell's Belle," Chicago Tribune, March 1, 1987. Associated Press, "Authorities Question Identity of Suspect in Matrimonial Farm," St. Petersburg [Fla.] Evening Independent, July 18, 1930. "Hired Hand on Murder Farm," Bryan [Ohio] Democrat, Jan. 11, 1910. "The First Photographs of the 'American Siren' Affair: Detectives and Others at Work on Mrs. Belle Gunness's Farm," The Sketch 62:801 (June 3, 1908), 233. "Horror and Mystery at Laporte Grow," Los Angeles Times, May 7, 1908. "Police Are Mystified," Palestine [Texas] Daily Herald, May 6, 1908. "Federal Authorities Order All Matrimonial Agencies in Chicago Arrested Since Gunness Exposure," Paducah [Ky.] Evening Sun, May 8, 1908. "Tale of Horror," [Orangeburg, S.C.] Times and Democrat, May 8, 1908. "Lured to Death by Love Letters," Washington Herald, May 10, 1908. "Fifteen Victims Die in Big Murder Plot," Valentine [Neb.] Democrat, May 14, 1908. "Murderess," Stark County [Ohio] Democrat, May 22, 1908. "Mrs. Belle Gunness of LaPorte's Murder Farm," Crittenden [Ky.] Record-Press, May 29, 1908. "The La Porte Murder Farm," San Juan [Wash.] Islander, July 11, 1908. "Ray Lamphere Found Guilty Only of Arson," Pensacola [Fla.] Journal, Nov. 27, 1908. "Lamphere Found Guilty of Arson," Spanish Fork [Utah] Press, Dec. 3, 1908. Listener mail: "Text of Scotland Yard's Report on July 9 Intrusion Into Buckingham Palace," New York Times, July 22, 1982. Martin Linton and Martin Wainwright, "Whitelaw Launches Palace Inquiry," Guardian, July 13, 1982. Wikipedia, "Michael Fagan Incident" (accessed June 16, 2017). Wikipedia, "Isn't She Lovely" (accessed June 16, 2017). Wikipedia, "Body Farm" (accessed June 16, 2017). Kristina Killgrove, "These 6 'Body Farms' Help Forensic Anthropologists Learn To Solve Crimes," Forbes, June 10, 2015. This week's lateral thinking puzzle was contributed by listener Frank Kroeger. You can listen using the player above, download this episode directly, or subscribe on iTunes or Google Play Music or via the RSS feed at http://feedpress.me/futilitycloset. Please consider becoming a patron of Futility Closet -- on our Patreon page you can pledge any amount per episode, and we've set up some rewards to help thank you for your support. You can also make a one-time donation on the Support Us page of the Futility Closet website. 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!  

A linguist, a military spy, a quantum physicist, and witches. All must travel in time to bring back magic. Take the trip, too. Read The Rise and Fall of Dodo by master storyteller Nicole Galland and the best-selling author of Cryptonomicon, Neal Stephenson. Check out The Rise and Fall of Dodo now at nealstephenson.com. 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 self-enumerating crossword to a fugitive doll.

This is episode 158. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. Belle Gunness was one of America's most prolific female serial killers, luring lonely men to her Indiana farm with promises of marriage, only to rob and kill them. In today's show, we'll tell the story of the Laporte Black Widow and learn about some of her unfortunate victims. We'll also break into Buckingham Palace and puzzle over a bet with the devil. Early in the morning of April 27, 1908,

a fire broke out in a farmhouse outside La Porte, Indiana, 60 miles east of Chicago. The house belonged to Belle Gunness, a 48-year-old Norwegian immigrant who lived there with three children. The townspeople raced to fight the fire, but it was raging before they got there, and it soon consumed the whole house. Afterward, as they searched for victims, the authorities found four bodies in the cellar. Three appeared to be those of the children, whose ages were 11, 9, and 5, and the fourth was that of a woman. But there were two odd things about the woman's body. For one thing, it seemed much smaller than Belle Gunness, and five, and the fourth was that of a woman. But there were two odd things about the woman's body. For one thing, it seemed much smaller than Belle Gunness, and for another, it was lacking a

head. Gunness had moved to Indiana from Chicago, where it appeared she had overcome a series of misfortunes. Two of her four children had died of a mysterious illness, and the confectioner's shop that she ran with her first husband, Motz, had burned down in 1898. With admirable foresight, though, Bell had insured the shop personally so they avoided a financial calamity. Three years later, Motz himself died of a mysterious illness, but again, good planning seems to have saved her. Motz died on the one day when his two life insurance policies overlapped so that when Bell grieved his loss, she had $8,500 to console her. In 1901, she moved to La Porte and bought the farm about a mile northwest of town, and the following year she married a new man, Peter Gunness,

who brought along his own children. Tragically, misfortune struck again. His infant daughter died a week after the wedding, while alone with her new mother. And within eight months, Peter himself died in a freak accident. Somehow a sausage grinder and a crock of hot brine fell onto his head at the same time. Fortunately, Belle had insured Peter too, and she received $3,500 for his death. Now in her 40s and raising three young children, Belle began placing matrimonial ads in Scandinavian-language newspapers published in America. She described herself as stout and womanly, which was a bit of an understatement. It was said she could lift a hundred pound hog under each arm. She said she

was seeking a Norwegian man of means to share the farm with her, and she required that he put cash down. Her mailman said she wrote eight to ten of these letters a day and received as many in return, and he said she got cranky when none arrived. In time, men began arriving at the farm from across the upper Midwest. The neighbors found their behavior odd. They'd be seen on the farm or in town, but abruptly they would disappear, and Bell's explanations for this seemed strange. In 1904, she told one inquiring neighbor that one man had left in the middle of plowing season to visit the St. Louis World's Fair. And the neighbors also noticed that when the men departed, they tended to leave their possessions behind, trunks, watches, and clothing, and never returned to retrieve them.

After the fire in early May, a man named Asle Helgeland arrived in town. Asle was a homesteading farmer from South Dakota, and he'd come to look for his brother, Andrew, who had been corresponding with Bell and had come for a week-long visit in January. He'd never returned home. Asle had written to Bell about this, but she had said that Andrew had simply gone away. That seemed unlikely. In Andrew's house, Asla had found 80 letters that Bell had written to his brother. And after hearing about the fire, he came to investigate for himself. When he arrived, he found farmhands digging near the ruins of the Gunness house, searching for the missing head of the woman victim. One farmhand, Joe Maxson, told Asla that Bell had sometimes told him to dig holes on the

property that she would later fill in. Osla urged them to extend their search to the surrounding land, and to his horror, they soon found the dismembered body of his brother Andrew, as well as the bodies of many other people. How many is uncertain. Stories claim that as many as 40 bodies were found, but more conservative researchers say 11 to 14, although it's possible that some were never found. Two of the bodies were identified as Andrew Helgeline and Ula Budsberg of Iola, Wisconsin. There were also eight unknowns, four adults of unknown sex, one woman, one man, one adult or adolescent male, and one adolescent of unknown sex. Many of the bodies were men, presumably those of

the suitors who had mysteriously disappeared on the farm. They also found the remains of Jenny Olson, a blonde teenager whom Bell had raised since infancy. That was a surprise. Bell had told neighbors in late 1906 that Jenny had gone to college, and more recently that she was on her wedding trip. Laporte was thronged with curiosity seekers as people flocked to Bell's out-of-the-way farm and newspapermen filed 100,000 words a day from the town. People flocked to Bell's out-of-the-way farm, and newspapermen filed 100,000 words a day from the town. Police arrested Bell's former hired hand, a man named Ray Lamphere, on suspicion that he'd started the fire.

Initially, he denied being near the house that night, but a rather self-possessed 16-year-old named John Soliam confronted him and said, you found me hiding behind a bush and told me you'd kill me if I didn't get out of there. Lamphere admitted to being Gunness' lover, but he said that they'd had a falling out in recent months. In the six weeks before the fire, she'd initiated four legal actions against him, one for trespassing, what was called a peace bond,

which I gather is like a restraining order, and one attempt to have him declared insane. So there'd been a massive falling out between them. Lamphere was tried in November 1908. He was convicted of arson for burning the house, but he was acquitted of murder because it turned out that the four bodies found in the burned-out cellar had not been killed by the fire. Their stomachs contained arsenic and strychnine, and there remained the puzzle of the woman victim's size. Bell had stood 5'7 and weighed

200 pounds. The woman in the cellar, allowing for the missing head and neck, was probably 5'3 and weighed about 150. Some witnesses said they had seen Bell driving a slight brunette woman to the house on the Saturday before the fire. That suggested a plot. Perhaps Bell had found a double for herself, hired her for some task on the farm, then poisoned her, removed her head to prevent identification, put her in the cellar with the dead children, and set fire to the house. A search of the cellar had turned up a pair of dentures, and a dentist identified these as belonging to Bell, but she could have planted those to convince investigators that the headless body was hers. Ray Lamphere went to prison, and he died there a year later of tuberculosis. As his health got worse, the state's attorney and prison officials

questioned him repeatedly. He said he knew nothing that might shed further light on the murders, but he told a fellow inmate that Bell had drugged the men's coffee, bashed their heads in, and cut them up. Then he said, I did the planting. As the evidence came in, it supported the idea that Bell had faked her own death and fled the farm. Investigators found that on the day before the fire, she'd kept her children home from school and gone into town, where she'd written a will and withdrawn most of the money from her bank account.

She'd also bought a lot of kerosene. That raises the question why she chose this moment to flee instead of another one. Apparently, she'd been doing this for years. One theory is that Ray Lamphere had participated willingly in the early murders, but had then become jealous of Andrew Helgeland, the last known victim, and had begun to fight with Bell about this. At that point, she would have had to worry that he might report the murders, and to compound her worry, in the spring of 1908, Asli Helgeland began sending her probing letters asking after his missing brother. If she had fled, no one knew where she'd gone. In the years that followed, she appeared intermittently like a ghost in reported sightings all around the country.

Eventually, people wrote to Laporte from all 48 states claiming to have seen Belle Gunness. The most notorious of these claims came from Los Angeles more than 20 years later in 1931. A housekeeper named Esther Carlson was tried for poisoning her employer to get $2,000 that he'd held in a bank account with her. Carlson gave her age of 61, which was about 10 years younger than Belle would have been at that time, but the two shared a physical resemblance and both of them were suspected of killing by poison. Carlson denied that she was Belle Gunness and cited a work history in Connecticut as proof. She died of tuberculosis before her trial began, but authorities tracked down two former LaPorte residents who were

now living in Los Angeles and asked them to view the remains, and they both swore the dead woman was Belle Gunness. In Esther Carlson's trunk, investigators found pictures of three children. Another former LaPorte resident was asked to view these and identified them as the three children who had died in the fire. Around the anniversary of this case, in 2008, some modern investigators looked into it again. One of them is Andrea Simmons, a LaPorte native and lawyer who was working on a master's degree in forensic anthropology. Simmons concluded that Gunness probably killed at least 25 people, starting in Chicago, where she poisoned her first husband, Mats Sorensen, and possibly two of their children, who at the time had been diagnosed with acute colitis. In La Porte, it appears she killed her

second husband, five children, and an unknown number of suitors. As I said, a conservative figure is 11. And then possibly she killed a woman to stand in for her own corpse as she escaped to Los Angeles, whereas Esther Carlson, she may have killed at least one other person. In 2007, Simmons led a team from the University of Indianapolis that exhumed the corpse that had been found in the farmhouse cellar, hoping to match its DNA to a sample they'd collected from an envelope that Bell Gunness had sent to one suitor. This would have shown for certain that Gunness had not died in the fire. Unfortunately, the DNA sample was too degraded to use. A descendant of Belle's grandmother from Norway offered her DNA,

but there wasn't enough money to get the samples examined. So there's no clear result there. What I don't really understand is how you could think it would have been Belle, because how would she have cut off her own head? Unless it was like her disgruntled lover had yeah cut off her head but but it seems like a very safe bet that the whole thing was contrived to make it look like she died in a fire but we just can't say that with absolute certainty but then that seems careless of her to have not included the head because if you were missing the head of the person the person couldn't

have died in a fire if their head isn't there. Yeah, I guess I don't know enough about forensics in 1908. Maybe she thought dental records would give it away. I don't know. No one ever found the head. They never found the... Okay, so that's even stranger. Yeah. But it seems...

I think you're right. It seems pretty clear that she got away, but the question is what happened to her. Whatever became of Bell, it seems clear that she spent years writing romantic letters to lure men to her Indiana farm, then collecting their money and killing them. News accounts called her the Lady Bluebeard, the American Siren, the Laporte Black Widow, and Hell's Bell. In 1990, Ted Hartzell, a reporter for the Laporte Herald Argus, got his hands on 11 of the letters that she'd sent to her suitors. Colin Thompson, who translated them out of Norwegian, said her diction, spelling, composition, and penmanship are shockingly poor. Her letters to Andrew Helgeline are literally too bad to be

believed. Thompson said she seemed to have dashed the letters off hastily. He compared her writing to that of a modern second grader. But somehow she knew how to appeal to lonely immigrants who missed their old lives in Norway. In his testimony at the Lamphere trial, Asle Helgeline recalled his brother Andrew. He said, he lived too much in imagination for a farmer in Dakota. He could not forget the fjords and mountains of his nativity. Anything that brought a touch of home with it moved him to melancholy. When the goddess woman began to write him letters, he was fascinated. She was a clever woman.

She wrote of the things he loved. She discussed Norwegian places and Norwegian ways. And she told him she loved him and he believed it, because the poor fellow was in that mood where he would have renounced richness in America for a crust at home. The widow held him spellbound. He loved her for her letters. Of her personality, he had doubts. I know that, but still he could not believe she was as he had been told. So he went to his death. Andru Helgeland corresponded with Belle for a year and a half before coming to La Porte. She urged him constantly to sell all his property, get cash, sew it into his underclothes, and come to her,

telling no one. In a 1906 letter, she wrote, My dear friend, have all the money changed into bills in as large a denomination as possible, and sew them real good, first on the inside of your underwear, and put a thin piece of cloth under, so it would not be noticed, and sew it good. Do not say one word about it to anyone, not even your nearest relative. She had written to Andrew Helgeline, I do not think you will leave me after you have first come here, that I am sure of. Osley wrote to his siblings in Norway. She lived in a very fashionable house, and all she had was fine, and this was what deceived Andrew. Nobody could think that a woman could be so false-hearted and manage this murdering so long time near the town border

without the authorities knowing anything. But she went regularly to church, and she had everything fine and great. Ula Budsberg left his home in Iola, Wisconsin in April 1907 with a $3,000 bank draft to Mary Bell. When his sons failed to hear from him, she told them that he'd gone to Oregon to buy a farm. Then, apparently to cover her tracks, she sent a letter to his home in Iowa, innocently asking what had become of him and saying that she was still willing to marry him. Other suitors included Herman Connitzberg of Chicago, George Berry of Tuscola, Illinois, Charles Ehrman of Newcastle, Pennsylvania, and Henry Gerholt of Scandinavia, Wisconsin. All of them visited Bell. None of them were ever seen again. Each gave her between $300,000 and

$23,000. Only one suitor got away that we know of. That was George Anderson of Tarkio, Missouri. When he arrived at the farm, Bell said she needed more money to pay off the mortgage before she could marry him. He wired home for more funds, but on his third night at the house, he woke from a bad dream to find her leaning over his bed and peering into his face. He cried out, she ran away, and he fled the house. But Andrea Simmons, the modern investigator, said, she was good, she was very good. Most of the men probably did not last the night. Jeff and Andy are two ordinary guys who were fed up with getting ripped off when buying razors, so they started Harry's to fix shaving. They bought their own blade factory to ensure quality, and now by taking less profit and

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a $13 value for free. You just cover shipping. To get your free trial set, including a razor handle, a five blade cartridge and shave gel, go to harrys.com slash closet right now. That's harrys.com slash closet. That's harrys.com slash closet. In episode 153, Greg told us about Tom Jones, a London teenager who had repeatedly broken into Queen Victoria's Buckingham Palace. Tom Rossati wrote to us, Hello, Sharon, Greg, and Sasha. Tom from Brooklyn here.

Love the podcast and have been waiting for an excuse to write in. The Buckingham Palace break-ins mentioned in episode 153 reminded me of a similar story that happened in 1982, where an unemployed decorator named Michael Fagan broke into Buckingham Palace, wandered around, ate some food, drank some wine, and startled the Queen. This was a, in some ways, amusing, but in some ways a bit alarming event, where the 32-year-old Fagan ended up in Queen Elizabeth II's bedroom in the early morning of July 9, 1982. Fagan had scaled a 14-foot wall topped with barbed wire and revolving spikes, climbed up a drain pipe to a flat roof, removed his shoes and socks to get across a narrow ledge, and entered an unlocked window into an office. He then wandered through the halls of the palace for 15 minutes or so until he found the queen's private apartments. In an ante room, he broke a glass ashtray into several pieces and entered her majesty's bedroom at about 7 15 a.m. carrying one of these glass

pieces. He later claimed that after seeing the ashtray, he got the idea of slashing his wrists in the presence of the queen. Fagin apparently woke the queen by opening some curtains near her bed, and I would think that this whole event must have been rather unnerving for her as she didn't know what his intentions might be. That sounds terrifying, the whole thing. I know. On being awoken, she pressed a night alarm bell, which no one answered. She then used a bedside phone to tell the palace telephone operator to summon help,

and then had to call again when still no one arrived. I just can't imagine what might have been going through her head. It sounds like a dream. Before the police got there, the queen had managed to attract the attention of a maid who got Fagin into a nearby pantry on the pretext of getting him a cigarette. A footman who had been exercising the dogs showed up, and while the queen tried to keep the dogs away from Fagin, who was starting to act agitated, the footman kept him in the pantry by giving him more cigarettes until the police finally arrived. An article that appeared in the Guardian soon after this incident notes that Fagin was reported to have made at least 12 visits to the palace, telling his wife that he was going to see his girlfriend,

Elizabeth Regina, or basically Elizabeth the Queen. Apparently, Fagin's mother spoke of her son's girlfriend called Elizabeth and said that Fagin had said she had four children like him, but was a bit older than he was. Queen Elizabeth has four children. Fagin's father called his son a royal fanatic and said, He was a very happy-go-lucky person, and I think he would have put the queen at ease straight away. He could smooth talk anyone. I somehow don't imagine that the queen actually would have felt at her ease at any point during the incident, but it did sound to me like she did handle it

with considerable presence of mind. Yeah, considering. That'd be the last thing you'd expect if you were the queen. Yeah. In the year or so before this particular event, there had been several other incidents reflecting poor security at Buckingham Palace,

including one where Fagin himself had entered the palace on June 7th, spent most of the night inside, and drank half a bottle of wine until they had caught him on July 9th. The police hadn't had any way of identifying who that intruder had been. But after the July 9th incident, the opposition spokesman Roy Hattersley asked about the additional security

that had been introduced at the palace over the previous several months saying, since that resulted in a man getting into the Queen's bedroom, how bad was it before the improvement? And it had surprised us some that it wasn't considered a criminal offense for Tom Jones to have broken into Buckingham Palace in the 1840s. But even more surprising, it still wasn't a criminal offense when Michael Fagan did it in the 1980s. So he wasn't charged with trespassing in the Queen's bedroom, though he was initially charged with the theft of the wine on his previous entry,

until those charges were dropped when he was committed for psychiatric evaluation. And apparently it wasn't until 2007 that it became a criminal offense to trespass in the palace or on its grounds. But it's possible that if they hadn't put him in for a psychiatric evaluation, he might have been charged only with stealing wine. Yes, and he had stolen the wine the previous visit, so apparently they didn't charge him anything for showing up in the queen's bedroom with a broken piece of glass in his hand. Like, he wasn't charged with anything for that. It's funny, too, another parallel with the Jones case is that

they both put a lot of effort into getting into the palace, but once they were there, it was sort of wandered around aimlessly. Yeah. Not quite sure what to do. It's a strange thing. Yeah. I just thought it was really weird that he sort of saw the queen as his girlfriend or at least represented her that way to other people. Yeah.

Okay, and now I will warn you that I'm going to update some puzzles, and this is in case you don't want to have any puzzle solutions spoiled for you. some puzzles, and this is in case you don't want to have any puzzle solutions spoiled for you. Also in episode 153, Greg had given me a puzzle about a contributor to a musical album that had never set foot on earth. James Cooper, who has a delightfully easy name for me to pronounce, but still nicely sent in a tip for getting it right, just to show he's been listening, wrote and said, I was listening to episode 153 this morning and realized an alternative answer to the lateral thinking puzzle. Not knowing about the Lennon Ono recording, I really thought Greg was going to reveal the answer to be the newborn baby on Stevie Wonder's Isn't She Lovely, as I'm sure the child didn't set foot on earth by the time of the recording.

Isn't She Lovely is a song by Stevie Wonder on his 1976 album Songs in the Key of Life. And in the song, he celebrates the birth of his daughter, Aisha, and the song starts with the sound of a baby crying, at least on the album. Greg and I knew the song but weren't familiar with the crying part as that wasn't included on the radio version of the song. So I guess I would have had as much trouble guessing this answer as I did the Lennon answer since I didn't know about Lennon using his baby's heartbeat on his song. He's right though. Aisha wouldn't have set foot on earth when that was recorded. Right. So it is a good alternative answer. Tim Ellis and Kevin Kult both wrote in with the same alternative answer to

the puzzle from episode 154, where a couple comes across some dead bodies lying on the ground, and not only do the police not investigate, but they just leave the bodies where they are. Kevin actually had the fun idea that I should give the puzzle to Greg again with the exact same setup, but make him guess a totally different answer. Unfortunately, Greg had seen Tim's email before Kevin's came in, so we couldn't try that out, but it would have been fun to see how he would have handled it. before Kevin's came in, so we couldn't try that out, but it would have been fun to see how he would have handled it. Kevin said of his new version of the puzzle,

Yep, dead people. At this point, it's a tradition, and gave us his answer. The couple had strayed onto a forensic body farm, a research facility where anthropologists and other scientists study decomposition using actual corpses. There are currently six such facilities in the U.S., with the largest in Texas at 26 acres. Such areas are typically surrounded by privacy fencing and razor wire, but it's not unthinkable to imagine that someone adventurous could stray in by mistake. Thank you again for

the podcast. Supporting the Patreon is some of my best spent money each month. And thank you, Kevin. And Greg and I hadn't heard of body farms before, but they do make a great lateral thinking puzzle And thank you, Kevin. versus in water and so on. Prior to the development of the first body farm in 1981, pig remains were commonly used as a stand-in for humans, but obviously there are a variety of differences between humans and pigs. The first body farm was started at the University of Tennessee and was the only one in existence for about 25 years. But the information gained was so useful to anthropologists and law enforcement that five others were started in the U.S. and one opened in Australia near Sydney in 2016. Since decomposition can vary significantly in different climates, there are efforts to open research facilities in other countries such as the

U.K. where currently they are having to rely on research conducted in different conditions or are still using pigs or other animals. So there you go. You can now make one lateral thinking puzzle, do double duty and give it to your friends or family twice and make them guess two different answers. And I would think that would be even harder to do than just having to guess the first answer because now you might have that answer stuck in your head and you have to come up with yet another completely different one. Yeah. So that would be challenging. So thanks so much to everyone who writes in to us. And yes, I do still appreciate it when you let me know how to pronounce your name. If anyone has ever managed to say your name incorrectly, then please do me a favor and give me some tips on getting it right

when you write in to us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. closet.com. It's Greg's turn to try to solve a lateral thinking puzzle. I'm going to give him an intriguing situation and he has to figure out what's going on asking only yes or no questions. This puzzle comes from Frank Kroger who said, if the puzzle actually makes it on the show, you can pronounce my name any way you want. Oh, good. And suggest that I try channeling any of the German actors from the TV show H Oh, good. And suggest that I try channeling any of the German actors from the TV show Hogan's Heroes. So sorry, I didn't really watch that show very much. So it might not have gotten that German enough sounding. But Frank's puzzle was based on a children's book, a German children's book that in English would be

Tim Thaler or The Traded Laughter. And this tells the story of a boy who trades his laughter to the devil in exchange for the ability to win any bet he makes. Okay, you got that so far? Good story. or the traded laughter. And this tells the story of a boy who trades his laughter to the devil in exchange for the ability to win any bet he makes. Okay, you got that so far? Good story. There are two stipulations. If Tim places a bet and doesn't win, the contract automatically becomes void and he gets his laughter back.

If he tells anybody about the deal, he'll lose his laughter forever and will no longer win any bet. Okay, got it. After a while, Tim realizes that he misses his laughter forever and will no longer win any bit. Okay. Okay. Got it. After a while, Tim realizes that he misses his laughter and wants it back, but he has no idea how to go about doing that. Eventually, he meets a particular person and realizes that now he has a way to get his laughter back,

provided that the devil keeps to his word. What was Tim's solution? That's a great puzzle. That's great. I like, I mean, I don't know if I'll be able to solve it, but I really like it. Okay. So the two rules were, if he tells anybody about this, he loses. He loses his laughter forever and will no longer win any bets.

Right. Okay. And the other rule was, if he places a bet and doesn't win, the contract becomes void and he gets his laughter back. Okay. That sounds like that's the key. If he places a bet and doesn't win, he'll get what he wants here. Yeah.

He gets his laughter back. You say he meets someone. That's true. Yes. That's critical for the solution. He meets a particular person. Not just anyone. Right.

A particular person. Yes. Okay. Because it sounded like we were headed towards some clever logic puzzle where it would work with anyone. Yeah, it's sort of a kind of a logic puzzle, but you need a particular person. A particular person, yes. Okay, okay. To make this work.

Okay, all right. So the rule was, if he places a bet and... I'm sorry, say it again. The first rule. If he places a bet and doesn't win, the contract automatically becomes void and he gets his laughter back. Okay. So he wants to place a bet

that he doesn't win. Yeah. But the bet can be about anything. It doesn't have to be about the deal. Well, right. The contract, in the contract, the bet can be about anything. It doesn't have to be about the deal. Well, right. The contract, in the contract, the bet can be about anything. Okay. So he just needs to place a bet that he loses.

Yeah. All right. So let's figure out who he meets. Is it a relative of his? No. Is it someone who's related in any way to the devil? No. Is the person's of his? No. Is it someone who's related in any way to the devil? No. Is the person's occupation important?

No. Is his relationship to the person important? I mean, does he know them already? He hasn't met them before? He doesn't know them. Okay. So he places a bet. He makes a bet with this person.

Yes. And loses it, I'm guessing. Well, it's even before that. Even before he loses it that... That he gets his laughter back? That he would have to. I'm trying to think how to say anything. Okay, no, no, no.

Okay, so he meets someone and makes a bet with that person. Yes. And in the end, he has his laughter back. Yes. Okay. Yes, that's a good way to say it. But you're sort of hedging around the idea that it's the bet that fulfills the first rule of the contract. It is the bet.

It is something about the bet. But it's also, this would only work with a very particular person. Okay. No, I understand that. Yeah. But I'm just trying to think. Yeah, but it is the bet. They had to make a bet.

And he lost the bet. Well, that's what I'm saying. It's, you don't even have to get that far. It's as soon as the bet is placed. He gets his laughter back. He would have to, yeah. Okay. What was the second rule again, just so I have it?

If he tells anybody about the deal, he'll lose his laughter forever. So he can't, he can't. He can't just explain I have it? If he tells anybody about the deal, he'll lose his laughter forever. So he can't... He can't just explain, I need to do this. Right, exactly. Please let me lose the bet. Okay. So just to square that away, he doesn't tell anyone at any point about the bet? He does not.

That's correct. Okay, so we're done with the second rule. Right, yes. You don't have to worry about that. Right. So it just means he can't collaborate with somebody and work collaboratively with them. Okay, so it sounds like what we're zeroing in on is that he finds a way to conceive a bet that he must lose.

Not exactly. He doesn't even... You see what I'm saying? If you could think of some bet that just even, in principle, he's bound to lose. I see. He doesn't even have to place it. That's true. He can just present that to the devil and get what he wants.

And I suppose you could come up with various bets that you just can't possibly win. Right. But that's not what happens. But that's not it. That's not what happens. Right. He doesn't even propose the bet, specifically. The other person does.

The other person proposes the bet that he loses. That he's going to lose. And the other person doesn't know about this whole contract. Right. Because they haven't been told about it. Right. Okay. But there's something specific about this other person that's really important.

Okay. And they're not related to him or to the devil. Is this person's gender important? No. Or age? No. You said occupation isn't. Correct. Okay. So it sounds like you have to figure out exactly what the bet was. Yes. Is it something reflexive about the bet concerns a contract or, you know what I mean? No. Is it a bet about some future event? Like they're wagering over whether something will happen um a sort of but not not like uh an independent future event that you have you know that has nothing to do with the two of you like who's going to win an election right it's not

like that not like that is it about you know laughter about something we've already been talking about yes all. All right. So he meets someone who I understand, I still haven't figured out who that is. Right, right. That person proposes a bet. Yeah, you don't need to know that person's specific identity, but there is something about that person that you need to know, but it's not like their specific identity. Okay. Yeah.

Okay. That person proposes a bet. Proposes a bet. There's something to do with laughter. Yeah. The guy, what's the name of the guy? Tim. Tim accepts this bet. Yeah. The guy, what's the name of the guy? Tim. Tim accepts this bet.

Yes. And loses it. Well, won't be, yeah. Or would lose it. Right, right. And thus gets his laughter back. Right, and so the contract would have to be broken. So all I got to figure out then is what bet could be placed that he would lose.

Yes, and it has to do with laughter. Well, is it about whether he will laugh yeah and then what's the particular characteristic for the person placing the bet who who's believes he's going to win one because he's noticed that tim never laughs so the bet is i bet i can't make you laugh okay but then there's something else. Oh, beyond that? Yeah, there's one other particular stipulation that this man has a particular history, that something particular has happened to him too.

Oh. Oh, is it that the devil has made the same contract with him? Yeah, so he believes he's going to win all bets, right? Oh, that's clever. So now you have two people who each have a deal with the devil that they're always going to win their bet, right? Yeah. And he bets Tim a bet that you can't laugh.

And if Tim can't lose the bet, right? But in order to win the bet, he has to be able to laugh. So the contract becomes void. That's really good. And Tim gets his laughter back. Is that what happens in the story? I mean, that's the whole thing? Tim says that the novel suggests

that the devil would have to refuse to fulfill the contract, in which case the contract becomes void, because Frank says that the only other thing that could happen is that Tim would win the bet and get his laughter back and keep winning bets. So the best thing for the devil to do would be to not fulfill the contract

and let it just become void. I really like that. So thanks to Frank for that puzzle. And if anyone else has one they'd like to send in for us to try, please send it to us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. That's our show for today. If you're looking for more quirky curiosities,

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