Futility Closet - 175-The Lone Woman of San Nicolas Island

Episode Date: October 30, 2017

In 1835, a Native American woman was somehow left behind when her dwindling island tribe was transferred to the California mainland. She would spend the next 18 years living alone in a world of 22 square miles. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll tell the poignant story of the lone woman of San Nicolas Island. We'll also learn about an inebriated elephant and puzzle over an unattainable test score. Intro: As construction began on Scotland’s Forth Bridge, engineers offered a personal demonstration of its cantilever design. In the 1880s, Manhattan's rationalist "Thirteen Club" held a dinner on the 13th of each month to flout superstition. Sources for our feature on the Lone Woman of San Nicolas Island: Sara L. Schwebel, ed., Island of the Blue Dolphins: The Complete Reader's Edition, 2016. William Henry Ellison, ed., The Life and Adventures of George Nidever, 1937. Robert F. Heizer and Albert B. Elsasser, eds., "Original Accounts of the Lone Woman of San Nicolas Island," in Aboriginal California: Three Studies of Cultural History, University of California Archaeological Research Facility, 1963. Travis Hudson, "Recently Discovered Accounts Concerning the 'Lone Woman' of San Nicolas Island," Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology 3:2 (1981), 187-199. Marla Daily, "The Lone Woman of San Nicolas Island: A New Hypothesis on Her Origin," California History 68:1/2 (Spring-Summer 1989) 36-41. Jon M. Erlandson, Lisa Thomas-Barnett, René L. Vellanoweth, Steven J. Schwartz, and Daniel R. Muhs, "From the Island of the Blue Dolphins: A Unique Nineteenth-Century Cache Feature From San Nicolas Island, California," Journal of Island and Coastal Archaeology 8:1 (2013), 66-78. Amira F. Ainis, et al. "A Cache Within a Cache: Description of an Abalone 'Treasure-Box' from the CA-SNI-14 Redwood Box Cache, San Nicolas Island, Alta California," California Archaeology 9:1 (2017), 79-105. Eighth California Islands Symposium, National Park Service, Oct. 25, 2012. Steve Chawkins, "Island of the Blue Dolphins' Woman's Cave Believed Found," Los Angeles Times, Oct. 29, 2012. S.J. Schwartz, "Some Observations on the Material Culture of the Nicoleño," in Proceedings of the Sixth California Island Symposium 2005, 83–91. Ron Morgan, "An Account of the Discovery of a Whale-Bone House on San Nicolas Island," Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology 1:1 (1979), 171-177. Louis Sahagun, "With Island Dig Halted, Lone Woman Still a Stinging Mystery," Los Angeles Times, March 5, 2015. "The Woman of San Nicolas Island," [Lake Providence, La.] Banner-Democrat, Dec. 28, 1901. Associated Press, "Traces of Prehistoric People are Found on Pacific Island," Dec. 14, 1940. Robert L. Carl, "The Lost Woman of San Nicolas Island," Western Folklore 11:2 (April 1952), 123-124. "A Female Crusoe," London Journal 69:1785 (April 26, 1879), 268-268. Ron Givens, "Island of Blue Dolphins Revisited," American History 48:1 (April 2013), 10. Emma C. Hardacre, "Eighteen Years Alone," Century Magazine, September 1880, 657-663. L.L. Hanchett, Lennox Tierney, and Austin E. Fife, "The Lost Woman of San Nicolás," California Folklore Quarterly 3:2 (April 1944), 148-149. C.F. Holder, "The Wind-Swept Island of San Nicolas," Scientific American 81:15 (Oct. 7, 1899), 233-234. Margaret Romer, "The Last of the Canalinos," Historical Society of Southern California Quarterly 41:3 (September 1959), 241-246. Clement W. Meighan and Hal Eberhart, "Archaeological Resources of San Nicolas Island, California," American Antiquity 19:2 (October 1953), 109-125. "On an Isle of Skulls," New York Times, Dec. 1, 1895, 29. "Relics of Vanished Race Found on a Desert Isle," New York Times, May 1, 1927, XX4. "Relic Hunt in the Pacific," New York Times, June 22, 1897, 1. "Old California Islanders," New York Times, June 16, 1897, 2. Gladwin Hill, "California's Little-Known Offshore Island," New York Times, Jan. 12, 1958, XX22. "Sea Lion Herds Bask on Island," Los Angeles Times, April 25, 1949, A1. S.J. Mathis, "The Lone Woman of San Nicolas," Los Angeles Times, Jan. 8, 1899, B11. Harold Orlando Wright, "San Nicolas -- Abode of Demons," Los Angeles Times, Nov. 29, 1931, K6. "Indians Once Lived on Channel Islands," Los Angeles Times, July 9, 1951, 2. "Centerpiece: Once Upon a Time There Was a Little Girl Stranded on a Channel Island," Los Angeles Times, Dec. 13, 1990, VCJ1. William Crosby Bennett, "Mrs. Robinson Crusoe," Los Angeles Times, Aug. 9, 1936, I3. William S. Murphy, "5,000-Year-Old Mystery Probed," Los Angeles Times, Dec. 20, 1970, C1. "Story of Lost Woman Retold," Los Angeles Times, Feb. 28, 1928, A14. Listener mail: Wikipedia, "Pasilalinic-Sympathetic Compass" (accessed Oct. 27, 2017). Toby Howard, "Progress at Snail's Pace," Skeptic, 1995. Daniel Hahn, The Tower Menagerie, 2004. Isabelle Janvrin and Catherine Rawlinson, The French in London, 2016. Laura Bannister, "Rare Beasts, Birds, and the Calaboose," Paris Review, Sept. 22, 2016. This week's lateral thinking puzzle was contributed by listener Robert Cairns. 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!

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 human cantilever to a club against 13. This is episode 175. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. In 1835, a Native American woman was somehow left behind when her dwindling island tribe was transferred to the California mainland.

She would spend the next 18 years living alone in a world of 22 square miles. In today's show, we'll tell the poignant story of the lone woman of San Nicolas Island. We'll also learn about an inebriated elephant and puzzle over an unattainable test score. If you grew up in the United States, there's a good chance that you read Island of the Blue Dolphins as a kid. It's a children's novel that tells the story of a 12-year-old girl, the daughter of an island chief, whose people are massacred by otter hunters. The ones who survive are taken to the mainland, and she's left alone on the island for 18 years, fending for herself. That book won the Newbery

Medal for its author, Scott O'Dell, in 1961, and it became required reading in many schools. The American conservationist Rachel Carson said, it held me spellbound from the first word. Well, that book is actually based on a true story that took place on San Nicolas, one of the Channel Islands, about 60 miles off the coast of Southern California. Today, the island is controlled by the U.S. Navy, but in the early 1800s, it was inhabited by a tribe of Native Americans known as the Nicolenos. That tribe had probably been there for 10,000 years, but as the demand for otter furs rose in the 19th century, a Russian company started to recruit native hunters from Alaska and send them to the islands where otters were common.

In 1814, there was a conflict between these Kodiak hunters and the Nicolenos. The hunters accused a Nicoleno man of killing one of their men. The hunters were outnumbered by the islanders, but they had better weapons, and in the end, most of the Nicolenos were dead. Before, there had been around 300 Nicolenos, and now there are only a few dozen, and more of them died because of diseases that were spread by the otter hunters. After about 20 years more, they were really struggling, so in November 1835, a Franciscan mission in Santa Barbara on the mainland sent a schooner to get the rest of them. There were now fewer than 20 of them. They hoped to send them to local Catholic families who could take care of them. By coincidence, the ship they sent was called Peores Nada, which means roughly

better than nothing. As they made this transfer, taking the people from the island to the mainland, somehow one woman was left behind on the island. Practically every popular account you'll read about this tells the same story. They say that a storm was gathering as they were loading the ship, and at the last minute, one woman realized that her baby had been left behind somehow on the island. She begged the captain to wait for her, but the storm was rising, and he gave the order to shove off, and in desperation, the woman jumped overboard and swam back to the island. She found her baby, but for one reason or another, the ship never came back to pick her up, and eventually her child was killed by wild dogs on the island, and she was left to

fend for herself. That story may be true, but there's no compelling evidence to support it. I think it's more likely that people just repeat it because it's dramatic. It just makes a good story. But it is certainly true that when the ship left, one person was left behind, a young woman who was probably in her mid or late 20s. And amazingly, that woman lived alone on this island for 18 years, from 1835 to 1853. During that time, the people on the California coast seemed to have known that she was there. Her story was reported in newspapers as early as the 1840s, and fishermen occasionally reported seeing a figure on the island as they passed by, but no one made an effort to reach her or to communicate with her. Finally, in 1850, Father José González Rubio of the Santa Barbara Mission paid a sea

captain named Thomas Jeffries $200 to go and find her. Jeffries failed, but he said that on the island he'd found many sea otters and seals, and that news attracted a Santa Barbara fur trader named George Nidever. In April 1852, Nidever and Jeffries went back to San Nicolas. About 200 yards from the beach, they found the footprints of a human being, probably of a woman, they wrote, as they were quite small. The footprints were dry and hard, so they'd probably been made during the previous rainy season. They also found three small circular enclosures, which seemed to have been abandoned but had been visited maybe a few months earlier. They wanted to explore the island further, but a storm forced them to leave.

That fall, Nidever returned with a companion named Carl Dittman, again to explore the island looking for otter. After the last trip, Nidever had told several people that he'd seen these footprints, and Father Gonzales of the mission asked him to keep an eye out for the Indian woman the next time they came to the island. Dittman found some more footprints this time, as well as seven or eight wild dogs. Nidiver was afraid the dogs had eaten the woman, but in a tree they found a basket made of grass that contained several skins, a rope made of sinew, some bone needles, and other items. And after some thought, Nidiver scattered those around.

He told Dittman that if they found on their next visit that these had been replaced in the basket, then at least they'd know that the woman was alive, even if they couldn't find her. And then they left to visit some other islands in the group, but a storm prevented them from returning to San Nicolas on that trip. The following May, 1853, Nidever and Dittman returned to the island with a group of men. The items they found were back in the basket, which had been returned to the tree, and they found more footprints on the beach as well as a spring surrounded by footprints. And Dittman found several huts made of whale ribs, although those had apparently been abandoned. And then he spotted the woman. She was farther on, sitting in another enclosure, stripping blubber from a piece of seal skin and muttering to herself and occasionally looking in the direction of the

other men, who she'd apparently been watching. When Dittman approached her, the dogs began to growl, but she sent them away without looking at him. The rest of the men came up, and Dittman presented himself to her. She smiled and bowed and chattered to them in a language that none of them could understand. They all sat down, and she roasted some roots and invited them to eat. It appeared that she'd lived in this spot on the island for some time. It was well chosen.

It was near the best springs and the best hunting areas for fish and seal, and it had a good view of the rest of the island. They later learned that during the raining season, she lived in a cave nearby. She'd woven bottles out of grass to hold water and made needles and fishhooks out of bone and ropes out of sinew, probably for snaring seals as they slept on the rocks. Nightever wrote, the old woman was of medium height but rather thick. She must have been about 50 years old, but she was still strong and active. Her face was pleasing as she was continually smiling. Her teeth were entire but worn to the gums, the effect no doubt of eating the dried seal blubber. She made no motion either to run away or to seek their help. Nidever went through the motions of putting her things in baskets and

putting these on his back and he said, Vamoose. And she understood immediately what he meant by that and began to gather her belongings. She had a dress made of cormorant feathers, a necklace, needles,

a fish hook, and a bone knife. And then she just followed them to the boat and they all returned to the ship where they fed her. For about a month, she stayed in their camp while they hunted otter on the island.

She made no attempt to get away but would work on her baskets and offer to make herself useful whenever she saw an opportunity. On their way back to Santa Barbara after all this, they were caught in a violent storm, and she indicated that she intended to stop the wind. She knelt and prayed, facing the direction of the wind, and she continued to do that occasionally during the day until the gale ended. And then she looked at them and smiled. As they neared the city, an ox cart came in sight, and she clapped and danced and pointed at it. Night of her son arrived on horseback, and night of her rights. Her delight at the sight of the horse was even greater than that manifested

at the sight of the ox cart. As soon as she got out of the boat, she went up to it and began examining it, pointing at this part, then that, and talking and laughing to herself. Finally, she pointed at the horse, and placing two fingers of her right hand astride the forefinger of her left, she imitated the motion of a horse. I guess she'd never seen that before. From the beach, they took her to Nidiver's house. She was in good health, and she seemed curious and happy. No one could understand the songs she sang or the four words that she used repeatedly. They later worked out that the words meant hide, man, sky, and body,

but these are the only four words of her language that were ever translated. The fathers at the mission looked for Indians who might know her language, but they failed. The other Nicolenos who had been taken from her island 18 years earlier had all scattered and died out, and no one was ever found who could translate her speech. To this day, her Native American name is unknown. Even historians refer to her as the lone woman of San Nicolas Island. She seems to have been the last surviving member of her tribe. Night of Her's house was crowded with people who wanted to see her. She'd sing and dance for them,

putting on her dress of bird skins. Visitors gave her gifts, but she didn't seem to value those and would just pass them on to Night of Her's children. Several people suggested exhibiting her in San Francisco, but he turned them down since his family had become attached to her. Local newspapers reported on her. The Daily Democratic State Journal of Sacramento wrote, the wild woman who was found on the island of San Nicolas about 70 miles from the coast, west of Santa Barbara, is now at the latter place, meaning Nidaver's house, and is looked upon as a curiosity. It is stated that she has been some 18 to 20 years alone on the island. She existed on shellfish and the fat of the seal and dressed in the skins and feathers of wild ducks, which she sewed together with sinews

of the seal. She cannot speak any known language, is good-looking and about middle age. She seems to be contented in her new home among the good people of Santa Barbara. Nidaver's family took good care of her, but her health got worse rather quickly, and after only seven weeks on the mainland, she died. She'd been in good health when she'd arrived. Nidaver claimed it was the unfamiliar nutrient-rich food that killed her, but it seems to have been dysentery. Before she died, Father Sanchez baptized and christened her with the Spanish name Juana Maria. They buried her in an unmarked grave on the night of her family plot at the Santa Barbara Mission Cemetery,

and Father Gonzales Rubio wrote in the Mission's Book of Burials, On October 19, 1853, I gave ecclesiastical burial in the cemetery to the remains of Juana Maria, the Indian woman brought from San Nicolas Island, and since there was no one who could understand her language, she was baptized conditionally by Father Sanchez. The Navy became the island's custodian in 1933, and since then, archaeologists have found a few traces of her life on the island. They found, finally, the cave that she lived in during the rainy season and some redwood boxes containing stone blades, harpoon points,

bone fish hooks, and other implements that are thought to have been hers. But most of her life there is just a cipher. She must have had a lot of lonely adventures there in 18 years, dealing with disasters, injury, sickness, hunger, bad weather, who knows. She must have had hard-won victories, moments of joy and sadness, interactions with the animals on the island, hopes and dreams, regrets and disappointments, but we'll never know what any of those were. What was a wonderful day for her? What did she look forward to? What were her own private thoughts about what had happened to her? It's all that is just permanently lost. We'll never know. The archaeologist Clement Mayen wrote that details of a woman's life on the island can never be known because no one could be found to translate for her, but given her extraordinary life, the lone woman could no doubt have told a story which would eclipse Daniel

Defoe's tale of Robinson Crusoe. Futility Closet is supported primarily by our fabulous listeners. If you'd like to help contribute to our celebration of the quirky and the curious, you can find a donate button in the supporters section of the website at futilitycloset.com. Or if you'd like to make a more ongoing donation to our show, you can join our Patreon campaign, where you'll also get access to some extras like outtakes, discussions on some of the stories, more lateral thinking puzzles, and updates on Sasha, the official Futility Closet podcast.

And for one of our Patreon supporters who beseeched me to say the following to serve as a reminder to him, here it is. Don't forget, Patreon contributors can join us on Patreon for some after-show discussion. So you know who you are and consider yourself reminded. The extra discussion for this week's show should be up on Thursday. For anyone else who's interested, you can check out our Patreon page at patreon.com slash futilitycloset or see the link at the website. And thanks again to everyone who is a part of Futility Closet. In episode 169, we told the story of John Harrison, the English clockmaker who dedicated his life to helping sailors be able to determine longitude while at sea. While I would be surprised to learn that many Americans were familiar with Harrison, some of our listeners in the British

Isles let us know that he is definitely remembered in that part of the world. Seamus Sweeney wrote to let us know that John Harrison's watch figured prominently in an episode of a popular British comedy TV series called Only Fools and Horses. The show follows two brothers through their many outlandish get-rich-quick schemes that never work out for them. And in one of the final episodes, they discover that they had Harrison's last watch all along without realizing what it was. Apparently, they thought it was a Victorian egg timer. The watch is sold in a Sotheby's auction for many millions of pounds, and there must be some kind of twist after that because Seamus says, I won't say any more to spoil it for you or any of

the listeners who have not seen it, but it's definitely worth a watch. No pun intended. So if anyone has access to the show Only Fools and Horses, you may want to check out the episode called Time on Our Hands. Heather Baker wrote, Dear Greg, Sharon, and Sasha, who may be the best podcast ever. I am very late to the Futility Closet party and have slowly been listening to past episodes on my walk to and from work. Your content is amazing and I am in awe of all the hard work and research you put in. Finally, I have caught up enough to listen to a recent podcast, 169, about John Harrison. This was especially interesting for me as I used to live on a street called John Harrison Way in Greenwich, London. The street, built around the time of the millennium 2000, is in a series of

streets on the Greenwich Peninsula in southeast London named after famous horologists and astronomers, Edmund Halley Way being close by. John Harrison Way actually lies 0.03 of a degree east of the Greenwich Meridian line, which is pretty cool. Equally, at night, a green laser light can be seen from Greenwich Hill and the Royal Observatory, which follows the Greenwich Meridian Line. Thank you for choosing John Harrison as a topic on your amazing podcast. It was lovely to hear more information about my street's namesake. Keep up the brilliant work.

And the green laser line at night does make for a very striking image. So we'll have a picture in the show notes if anyone wants to see that. I think it's great that they named that street after Harrison. Of all the streets you can name after Harrison, that's the one. Right. I wonder if there's a John Harrison way anywhere in America. If anybody lives on one in the USA, please let us know. Richard Holt wrote, I listened to your John Harrison episode and was delighted as I have lived in his village my whole life and went to John Harrison's school. My one gripe is that you never mention the village he belonged to and where he did all of his work, which is Barrow-upon-Humber. He's the village's most

famous son. I thought the world would be introduced to this little village through your podcast. Okay, Richard, well, now hopefully it has been, and we send out our best regards to all 3,000 and some residents of Barrow-upon-Humber. One of the crazier or perhaps more satirical methods that had been proposed in the 19th century to let ship's captains know the time while at sea was to bring a wounded dog aboard the ship but keep its bandage ashore and then dip the bandage into a special powder at noon each day, which would supposedly cause the dog to yelp. Dan Cash wrote, I was listening to the latest podcast about determining longitude and how one proposal was to distress dogs in order to discover midday,

and it put me in mind of the snail telegraph. It seems that once snails mate, they are permanently linked by a psychic connection which the vastness of the globe cannot break. Therefore, it should be possible to glue a set of 26 alphabetically labeled male snails to the bottom of a bowl and take their slimy wives as far away as you like in another bowl. Torture the snails in your bowl in sequence,

and the corresponding ladies will weep bitter tears for the abuse their counterparts are receiving, or whatever grieving snails do. The order in which the snails react will spell out the message you're intending to send. will spell out the message you're intending to send. And this idea of a snail telegraph seems to have been mostly the invention of a French occultist named Jacques Benoit, who around 1850 tried very hard to convince people that he really could create a telegraph based on snails. He was proposing that snails developed permanent telepathic links with each other after mating, and that this could be used as the basis for means of communication that would be more instantaneous and more reliable than the telegraph. And this would have been a big deal if it were actually true, and he managed to convince a

patron to fund him while he worked on developing it. Working on it, he claimed, with the help of an American collaborator who he was in snail telegraphic communication with. So if that isn't proof, what would be, right? What in the world would put that idea into your head in the first place? I don't know, but apparently this idea went way back. There were people trying to do telegraphs based on taking flesh off of someone's arm and somebody else taking it far away and thinking if they passed electricity through it, that the original person would feel it. I mean, there seemed to be this idea of psychic connections between things, kind of like with the dog and the bandage. I guess that would be really useful

if it worked. It sure would be really useful if it worked. So even if it sounds outlandish, it's maybe still worth pursuing on the chance that it works. In Benoit's case, after a year or so, his patrons started to wonder just what he was paying all that money for and demanded a demonstration of this great snail telegraph. So Benoit set up a pretty flimsy demonstration of the thing, but that actually did totally convince a journalist who then wrote a glowing newspaper article about it. The patron, however, was not as impressed and demanded a more rigorous test of the concept. Benoit agreed. They set a date, and when the time for the test came, Benoit had vanished. The idea for the snail telegraph was actually briefly revived in 1871, possibly based on that earlier newspaper account. This was during the Paris Commune uprising against the government, and the revolutionaries needed a secure method of communication, and apparently snails were once

again given a chance to prove themselves. Unfortunately for the revolutionaries, the snails weren't any more reliable than they had been 20 years earlier, and as far as I can tell, that was the last of the snail telegraph, other than in works of fiction. In his email, Dan also had a comment in reference to the animals kept at the Tower of London that we had also discussed in episode 169. Read the Tower Menagerie, not all animals sent to the Tower of London died violent deaths. King Louis of France gave Henry III an elephant he had captured during the Crusades. Since long before Hannibal, elephants had been synonymous with power,

and therefore Henry was pleased to receive it and sent it back to London. This was the first elephant ever seen in Britain, so it was quite the cause celebra. Unfortunately, however, nobody knew what it ate or drank, so they gave it prime steak and a gallon of fine wine every day to keep out the cold. While it lived, the elephant cost the treasury more than 24 pounds per year, which doesn't seem much until you consider a fully equipped knight would cost 16 pounds per year, and a craftsman would earn around two pence a day. So it was a relief to the king when it died young from an alcohol-related illness. Stay well and give Sasha a scratch behind the ears from me. The menagerie kept at the Tower of London by several British kings does have a very

colorful history with a number of surprising anecdotes connected with it. And this one that Dan notes started in 1255 when King Louis IX gave Henry III an elephant. And for many accounts, it was really only given wine to drink, though the accounts vary some as to whether it was given wine all year round or just for part of the year, and whether this was done out of a belief that it would help protect the poor pachyderm from the cold. Given the total ignorance of the British for how to care for an elephant, I suppose it's not too surprising that it only lived for two years, though perhaps it's a bit of a surprise that it made it even that long. Similar to the elephant story, there are several reports of Tower of London ostriches being fed nails out of some weird belief that that is what they ate. When you read these stories, the general impression is that the exotic animals in the menagerie were not at all what we would consider well cared for. And it actually is pretty distressing to read how badly or ignorantly they were treated.

or ignorantly they were treated. That ostrich thing rings a bell for me. Sometime years ago, I think, on Futility Closet, on the website, I did an item about someone went through the crop of a dead ostrich and found all kinds of strange things. I mean, maybe that's where that belief came from, is someone had found a nail in a dead ostrich and thought, oh, that must be what they eat.

Right, and in the accounts that I read, too, it was also possibly they saw an ostrich accidentally eat a nail, that must be what they eat. Right. And I read, in the accounts that I read too, it was also, you know, possibly they saw an ostrich accidentally eat a nail or happened to eat a nail or whatever. But somebody came up with the idea that this was what you needed to feed ostriches. But steak and wine, you can't possibly think that that's what elephants eat. Yeah. I mean, maybe they thought wine was safer, perhaps, to drink than water of those days. The best of anybody's guesses is the thing about keeping out the cold,

because the elephant came from Africa, and Africa is much warmer than England, and so the elephant might be cold. Give it some wine. I don't know. I don't think they have any really clear accounts of what people were thinking, but that's the best guess. One other story about the menagerie that I saw cited several times was that of a polar bear who fished in the Thames nightly for his dinner

while on a long iron chain for a leash. This apparently was started as a cost-cutting measure since feeding it was so expensive, but you do have to wonder what the people who lived in that area made out of that. 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 extra thanks to everyone who has been sending tips on how to best pronounce their names. It's my turn to try to solve a lateral thinking puzzle.

Greg is going to tell me a strange situation, and I have to figure out what's going on asking only yes or no questions. This is from listener Robert Kearns. The highest possible score on a test is 400 points. No one has ever gotten a score of 400 out of 400, regardless of what their answers are. Why? Okay. Is this like a medical test rather than a test you take in school? Would you say it's some kind of medical test?

No, it's not. And you'd be like dead if you had 400 of whatever. That's really good. I like that answer. I wish that's what it was. Darn. Okay. Would you say that this is a test vaguely in the area of like an exam that you would take at school, that kind of test? Yes. It is. Broadly. Broadly speaking. Okay.

Because there's lots of different kinds of tests. Okay. Hmm. Would you say that this test is taken by students? Or should I find another word for the group of people that takes the tests? Okay, let's back up. Would you say that this test tends to be taken by some group of people that I could put a label on, like students? Yes.

Yes. Would you say that the best label for that group would be students? Yes, I think so. Oh, okay. College students? No, maybe, sort of.. Oh, okay. College students? No, maybe, sort of. Maybe, sort of. Maybe, sort of.

Yes. People trying to get into college? No. Okay. People younger than college age? No. People older than college age? Yes.

Yes. So people trying to get into graduate school? People about that age, but no People about that age, but no. About that age, but no. Okay. Or a little older than that. Should I try to work on in what situation they'd be taking this test, like what the purpose of the test is or when they'd be taking it?

Yeah, the purpose would be good. The purpose would be good. Would you say that the group of people taking this test would be most likely be people that have at least some college education? Yes. Okay. Would they still be in college when they take the test? Not an undergrad. I'm trying to think if I can just tell you.

I guess I'm trying to figure out. But in graduate school? Yeah, I don't i don't think it'll hurt to tell you that this is the american bar exam okay i was one of my next where i was going next was are they trying to become a profession you were headed there anyway okay but it would take me a while because there's a number of those professional tests okay so the highest score you can get on the american bar exam is a 400, but nobody ever has. That's right.

Is it graded on some kind of a curve? No. I should say, too, while we're going along here, that neither Robert nor I is an attorney and haven't taken the test, and from what I understand, each American state administers its own exam. Okay. So it's hard to generalize about this, but I like the idea behind the puzzle. Why you can't get a 400.

Why you can't get a perfect score. Yeah. Can you get a 399? In principle, yes. But nobody ever has? Or you don't know? I don't know, but let's say no. Let's say nobody has either.

Does it have to do with being multiples of certain numbers? Like if every question is worth a certain number of points, you could never get to 400 somehow, you know? No, that's not it. Okay. That would have to be a weird number of points that the questions were worth, but it's possible. So that's not it.

Why does nobody get a score of 400? Would you say that it is possible that somebody in history has answered every question correctly? Yes, and not gotten a 400. And not gotten a 400. Do you need to get bonus points to get a 400? No.

That last question was really important. Yes, it's possible that someone actually aced the test and still didn't get a 400. Do you get different numbers of points for questions as opposed to, okay, like if a question is right, you get a certain number of points and it's binary right or wrong, or it's like essay questions and you can get a maximum of 20 points per question? Yes. I mean, the way, and we don't have to get too complicated here there's a multiple choice section and there's an essay section so the essay section is it the essay section that's causing the problem with not being able to get to the 400 because the multiple choice they can

it's just grade those quickly it's just right or wrong um so they've never given the maximum number of points possible for the essay answers specifically. Yeah. And I have to try to figure out why. Would you say this has something to do with the fact that it is the bar exam? They want you to argue for the extra points. Present your case. Yes, it has something to do with that. And I'll say it's sort of a practical reason rather than...

Than having to do with the profession of law. Yeah. It's just practical having to do with the grading of the exams. With the grading of the exams. And it doesn't have to do with the... Is it that nobody has ever gotten the maximum allowed points

for each essay question? No. Presumably someone somewhere has actually completely clobbered the test and just got everything right. But it just doesn't add up to 400 when you add all the points together. It would. It would add up to 400, but they wouldn't give the person a 400. That's along the right path.

Oh, my. So even if they got 400 points, they wouldn't give it a 400. And you said probably not even a 399 either. Yeah, the grader will stop before getting that far. Oh, because you just have to pass the exam. And once they get enough points that you've passed, it's too labor intensive to keep grading it. Right, and there's no point. That's interesting.

The American Bar Exam, and again, I don't know this is true. We'd be happy to hear from people who know more than I do about this. The American Bar Exam is typically divided into two sections, a multiple choice section worth 200 points and an essay section worth 200 points. A passing score is 270 out of 400. During the exam, it's not uncommon for students to generate 10,000 words among all the essay questions during the six-hour essay portion of the test. In order to ease the burden of grading so many essays, the graders will skim the essays quickly, awarding what points they can based on the grading criteria. This essay score is placed in a computer,

which adds it to the multiple choice score, which is scored by machine. If the total is more than 270, the student has passed and nothing more is done. If the total is under 270, the graders go back and review the essays in depth, which allows them to award more points and hopefully give a passing grade.

This is why bar scores are rarely above the low 300s. No one cares about bar scores, only whether you passed, so there is no pressure to award high scores. Yeah, but if you've just sat through a six-hour exam and you're like, they're not even going to read my answers. Yeah, but I guess all you care about is whether you passed. I guess you're just happy you passed, but still. Anyway, as I say, I don't really—

No, that was interesting. We're not sure whether any of this is true or perhaps it was true in the past and isn't now. So if there's anyone out there who happens to know anything more about this, we'd be glad to hear it. And thanks to Robert for sending that in. Thank you. And if anybody else has a puzzle for us to try, please send it to us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. That's our show for today. This podcast would not still be here if it weren't for the generous support of our listeners. If you would like to join them in supporting our show, check out our Patreon page at patreon.com slash futilitycloset, or see the support us section of the website at futilitycloset.com.

While you're at the site, you can also graze through Greg's collection of over 9,000 exceptional esoterica. Browse the Futility Closet store, learn about the Futility Closet books, or see the show notes for the podcast with links and references for the topics we've covered. If you have any questions or comments, you can email either us or Sasha at podcast at futilitycloset.com. Our music was written and performed by the phenomenal Doug Ross. Thanks for listening, and we'll talk to you next week.