Futility Closet - 221-The Mystery Man of Essex County

Episode Date: October 22, 2018

In 1882, a mysterious man using a false name married and murdered a well-to-do widow in Essex County, New York. While awaiting the gallows he composed poems, an autobiography, and six enigmatic cryptograms that have never been solved. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll examine the strange case of Henry Debosnys, whose true identity remains a mystery. We'll also consider children's food choices and puzzle over a surprising footrace. Intro: In 1972 two Canadian scientists set out to figure the number of monsters in Loch Ness. Winston Churchill's country home must always maintain a marmalade cat named Jock. Sources for our feature on Henry Debosnys: Cheri L. Farnsworth, Adirondack Enigma, 2010. Craig P. Bauer, Unsolved!, 2017. George Levi Brown, Pleasant Valley: A History of Elizabethtown, Essex County, New York, 1905. Caroline Halstead Barton Royce, Bessboro: A History of Westport, Essex Co., N.Y., 1902. "Debosnys Ciphers," The Cipher Foundation (accessed Oct. 7, 2018). Craig P. Bauer, "When Killers Leave Ciphers," history.com, Nov. 14, 2017. Nick Pelling, "Henry Debosnys and the Cimbria ... ?" Cipher Mysteries, Nov. 16, 2015. Nick Pelling, "Thoughts on the Debosnys Ciphers ..." Cipher Mysteries, Nov. 7, 2015. Nick Pelling, "The Person Not on the S.S.Cimbria ..." Cipher Mysteries, Nov. 17, 2015. "Guilty of Wife Murder," [Washington D.C.] National Republican, March 8, 1883. "Hangman's Day," [Wilmington, Del.] Daily Republican, April 28, 1883. "A Murderer's Story," Burlington [Vt.] Weekly Free Press, Nov. 24, 1882. "A Wife's Fearful Death," New York Times, Aug. 6, 1882. "A Remarkable Man Hanged," New York Times, April 28, 1883. The Troy Times of Nov. 23, 1882, had noted, "The prisoner spends his time writing verses, or what he thinks is poetry, and he has over a ream of foolscap paper closely written. Much of this doggerel is written in Latin, French, and an unknown cipher, which Debosnys says is used in Europe quite extensively." These six cryptograms came to light in 1957 -- none has been solved: Listener mail: August Skalweit, Die Deutsche Kriegsernährungswirtschaft, 1927. Emma Beckett, "Food Fraud Affects Many Supermarket Staples, So How Do You Choose the Good Stuff?" ABC, Sept. 3, 2018. Stephen Strauss, "Clara M. Davis and the Wisdom of Letting Children Choose Their Own Diets," Canadian Medical Association Journal 175:10 (Nov. 7, 2006), 1199–1201. Benjamin Scheindlin, "'Take One More Bite for Me': Clara Davis and the Feeding of Young Children," Gastronomica 5:1 (Winter 2005), 65-69. Clara M. Davis, "Results of the Self-Selection of Diets by Young Children," Canadian Medical Association Journal 41:3 (September 1939), 257. This week's lateral thinking puzzle was inspired by an item on the podcast No Such Thing as a Fish. Here are two corroborating links (warning -- these spoil the puzzle). You can listen using the player above, download this episode directly, or subscribe on Google Podcasts, on Apple Podcasts, or via the RSS feed at https://futilitycloset.libsyn.com/rss. Please consider becoming a patron of Futility Closet -- you can choose the amount you want to pledge, 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 10,000 quirky curiosities from monster density to a perpetual pussycat. This is episode 221. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. In 1882, a mysterious man using a false name married and murdered a well-to-do widow in Essex County, New York. While awaiting the gallows, he composed poems, an autobiography, and six enigmatic cryptograms

that have never been solved. In today's show, we'll examine the strange case of Henry de Bosny, whose true identity remains a mystery. We'll also consider a children's food choices and puzzle over a surprising footrace. In December 1870, a mining engineer named John Wells died in an accident in Essex County, New York. He left behind a wife of six years, Betsy, who was pregnant with her fourth daughter. But the mine gave her a financial settlement, and with time, her property grew into 15 acres of prime real estate. When a man named Henry de Bosney arrived in Essex 12 years later, he immediately began pursuing the wealthy widow. He told her he was from Paris. He was now down on his luck, but he was cultivated and charming, and after a whirlwind

five-week courtship, they were married in June 1882. He immediately began pressing her for the deed to the property. She refused to give it to him or to tell him where she kept the settlement money from the mining accident, which was hidden in a compartment that John had built under the windowsill. Betsy and Dabosny began to fight. She wanted to save her wealth for her daughters, and his intentions were now plain enough. Unsuccessful, DeBosne asked her on July 31st to go with him on an outing to Port Henry, 20 miles to the south. He said he wanted her to leave her current farm in her daughter's hands and to join him in a new one. 16-year-old Eliza later remembered that DeBosne was impatient to depart that morning. Betsy had told her she

had reservations about going, but said she would go and see what he'd got. We don't know what passed between them on the trip. Possibly Betsy refused the idea of leaving her daughters in Essex, but when they arrived in Port Henry, several witnesses saw Betsy wearing a bonnet rather than her customary hat, which some later suspected meant that de Bosney had wanted to conceal her identity. And the next day, a man said he'd heard them arguing as they approached his farm. They bought some food for a picnic lunch and headed north on Lake Road. A farmer named Alan Talbot was returning to his house to get a rake early that afternoon when his horse snorted an alarm at something at the side of the road. Talbot turned and saw Henry DeBosne lurking in the underbrush. He had something white in his hand and was trying to creep out of view. Further on, Talbot saw the couple's horse and wagon at

the side of the road. There was no sign of Betsy. Talbot got his rake and returned by the same road. The horse and wagon were gone now, but later he saw them proceeding slowly up the road near Bill Blinn's farm where he was working. DeBosne had changed from a white shirt to a patterned one. Talbot found Blinn and told him what he'd seen at the side of the road. The two hurried back to the spot and found signs of a struggle, a depression in the soil where someone had begun to dig a hole, and the body of Betsy Wells. They hurried to a telegraph station and warned local officials that DeBosne had murdered her. Dabosny went straight back to Betsy's homestead and began ransacking it,

looking for the deed and the money. When he couldn't find either, he went in search of Betsy's daughter, Rebecca. When he ran into Betsy's sister and some neighbors, he told them that Betsy was cleaning a house in Port Henry and that his father would soon be coming to town to take possession of it. When Dabosny arrived at the post office to ask that Betsy's mail be forwarded to Port Henry, the assistant postmaster was just receiving a message from Talbot and Blinn warning that de Bosny had killed his wife. He quietly summoned the constable, who walked in just as de Bosny was leaving and put him in handcuffs. They found no evidence on de Bosny, no blood, no stained clothing, no weapons, but in his wagon were three pistols, including one with two empty

chambers, as well as some cash, a bloodied knife, two bloodied rings that had belonged to Betsy, and a purse. He insisted that his wife was alive and well in Port Henry, but when the postmaster suggested that he'd sent a telegram to confirm that, he changed his story and said that perhaps she was at her brother's house in Mineville. They led him away to the jail in Elizabethtown amid threats of violence along the way as the news spread. A doctor was dispatched to examine the body. Betsy was lying in a wooded hollow. She'd been shot twice and her throat had been slashed. At an inquest on August 4th, the cause of death was officially ruled a homicide and DeBosne was remanded to the Elizabethtown jail to await a grand jury. His story was that he'd befriended a mysterious Scotsman in recent weeks who had joined them in the woods and apparently murdered

Betsy when DeBosne had fallen asleep. That's like the third or fourth story though, right? Yeah, and nobody buys the Scotsman story. I won't go into it, but it's just completely full of holes. If Henry Dabosny had seemed a strange man before, he seemed even stranger now that he was under close scrutiny. From the first, he admitted that Henry Dabosny was not his real name. He said he wanted to spare his family the ignominy of his alleged crime. He'd used the same name as a member of the French Society in Philadelphia. There are stories about mysterious activity around the jailhouse while he was awaiting his hearing. A story in the Malone Palladium says that the sheriff heard noises one night and went out with a revolver. He saw nothing but heard footsteps

retreating in the darkness. On another occasion, Dabosny seemed exultant, so they searched him and found a rope in his coat sleeve. In his mattress, they also found a case knife that had been given to him with his breakfast. The story read, He is so troublesome that a close watch is kept on him continually, and a watchman is kept outside the prison every night. At a hearing on December 11th, he pleaded not guilty, and a trial was scheduled for a special term in March. The strange doings continued.

He arranged somehow to have three trunks delivered to him from an unknown source. Two of them contained guns, knives, and powder horns. Those were kept from him, but the third was a small, flat-topped trunk filled with personal documents, and he began to add to these, writing poetry in various languages. He was fluent in French, English, Latin, Portuguese, Greek, and Spanish. He had a steady stream of visitors, mostly sympathetic and curious people, including many women, who were apparently deceived by his charm and attracted by his intellect. He'd spend hours in his cell sketching cemeteries and writing poems about death and heaven. He was sure that in the afterlife he would be reunited with his three wives, all of whom had rather mysteriously died young. They would forgive him, and the people who had condemned him

would regret their actions. When the trial finally came, it was over quickly. The jury reached its decision in nine minutes. They convicted Dabosny of murder in the first degree, and the judge scheduled his hanging for April 27, 1883, 51 days away. Dabasny's demeanor changed abruptly after the sentence. Now news accounts called him a picture of physical and mental vigor and animal courage. He had rarely slept or eaten before the trial, but now one reporter found he'd slept and eaten soundly and heartily and seemed unconcerned at his approaching doom. Women still brought him baked goods and treats, and he kept busy with his poems and pictures. Some of his sympathizers hoped that he might get a reprieve from the governor, but he seemed to know that wasn't coming. He arranged for the sale of his

body, bones, and blood after the execution and used the money to buy a suit. 2,000 people attended the hanging, which was the second and last ever held in Essex County. He protested his innocence to the end. On the gallows, he maintained that he killed a chipmunk on the day of the murder and that that accounted for the blood on his knife. After his death, the physicians found that his body was covered with tattoos, some of which were apparently too explicit to be described by the local press. One reporter wrote, The tattooing of the limbs of de Bosny was revolting enough to make even the remembrance of one so vile

disgusting to the minds of decent people. Tattoos were popular in Europe at the time, and de Bosny's might have held some clues to his background, showing perhaps that he'd served in the French military or had been a convict there or a member of a secret society. But since he'd sold his remains, the tattoos were lost, and no one ever described them in any detail, so today no one knows exactly what they showed. So where does that leave us? To this day, no one knows who Henry de Bosny really was. We know he was extraordinarily well-read and fluent in six languages, but his name was an alias, and one Plattsville newspaper wrote that he was an utter stranger in New York, unknown to anybody. In jail, he wrote a detailed autobiography,

which he read to a newspaper reporter in April 1883. It describes a very accomplished life. He said he'd been born in Portugal in 1836 and educated in France. He joined an expedition to the North Pole in 1848, volunteered for the Crimean War in 1854, was admitted to the seminary in 1856, volunteered for the Italian War in 1859, then traveled to China, Mexico, and America, where he'd been wounded at the Battle of Gettysburg. Then on to France, the Arctic again, Rome, Paris, New York, and the Indian Territory. He'd fought in the Franco-Prussian War, lived with his father in Paris during the Commune, and finally returned to the United States. As complex as that is, I've condensed it greatly. In his original account, he gives the dates of his various journeys, the names of superior officers,

and precise casualties in various battles. Cherie Farnsworth, who's written the fullest biography of Dabasne, writes, if the detailed timeline of his life, as he meticulously recorded, is to be believed, then either his memory was nothing short of extraordinary for dates, places, and events, or like a seasoned military officer of the time, he kept a careful daily journal of his activities and had access to that journal in jail. Many people point out that the whole autobiography might be fiction, but Farnsworth writes, much to my astonishment, when I began researching the information to see if any details matched up with actual battles, for instance, or with foreign schools known then by a different name than they are today, I discovered that he was right on the mark and historically correct

in every detail. She says that even before and after writing the autobiography, he was able to give immediate and concise answers when asked about his past. And she points out that anyone who invented such a complex history should have tripped over the details, and Dabosny never did. His answers were always the same. He told one reporter that the secret of his life would be printed after his death. It's not clear what he meant by that. Possibly he thought his tattoos would reveal his identity. At one point he mentioned a trunk that could corroborate his account, but it's not clear what trunk he meant. He left a trunk at Betsy Wells' cottage, but the family destroyed that after the murder. And it should be said that the glorious early life de Bosny wrote about doesn't match the life

he led in America. This description was discovered in an old Philadelphia newspaper after his arrest. De Bosny is spoken of as a ne'er-do-well who loafed about the vicinity until forced by hunger to perform manual labor, which he could have had at any time in the oil mill. The French Society keeps a record of all monies given to the needy French. In December of 1878, appears an entry to Henri de Boisny and his wife, two dollars, and from that date on to March 9, 1882, when his wife Celestine died. De Boisny's name constantly appears on the books as a recipient of charity. Of all the writings he left behind, the most provocative are six cryptograms, or ciphered messages. The story goes that shortly before his execution, he gave 26 pages of sketches, prose, and poetry to an older woman who visited him in jail. These passed down through the family

until her granddaughter read an article about the case in 1957. She wrote to the newspaper in the county courthouse asking whether a museum might be interested in buying them. Among the poetry were some drawings and cryptograms. Historically, especially in the military, cryptology has been used to send secret messages. De Bosney's cryptograms contain Masonic symbols such as the square and compass, the gavel and the sun. Craig Bauer, a professor of mathematics at York College of Pennsylvania and editor-in-chief of the journal Cryptologia, sent the de Bosney cipher to Brent Morris, a cryptanalyst at the National Security Agency who's also a 33rd degree Mason. Morris told him the Dabosny cipher looks like a typical Masonic cipher in that it's composed of discrete, mysterious-looking symbols.

Dabosny claimed that the cipher he used was common in Europe, and he even included a Greek translation of one cipher on the back of its page. But the task is still difficult because the enciphered side might be in any of the six languages that Dabosny spoke. To date, none of the ciphers has been solved. There are a few things to say about this, I suppose. One is that I think it's worth at least entertaining the idea that the cryptograms are a hoax. I don't know that, and I haven't actually seen anyone else suggest it, but the timeline here is that there's one contemporaneous news account saying that he was working on ciphers in jail so that's on the record but then the story is that he gave those to a woman who was just apparently sympathetic to him but he had no other connection with and they stayed in her family for something like 30 years and then just arose in the 50s after someone read a news account it just

looks like someone's this account appeared in the paper in the 50s and someone said oh i just remembered that i have these cryptograms would anyone be willing to give us some money for them instead of going to the press earlier you mean like if if they were real if he really had given them to somebody that they would have gone to the press right away with them yeah it just seemed or i mentioned them to someone or something it seems like they just appeared sort of out of nowhere but as i say no one else seems to be worried about that, so maybe I'm overlooking something. The other thing that bothers me about this is that even if the cryptograms are real,

I don't understand the rationale behind it. If you're in jail and you want to get a message to the press or to anyone, it seems to me you just say it plainly. If you want to keep quiet, you just keep quiet. I don't see the point of couching it as a puzzle.

Unless you don't want, maybe he didn't want it solved until after he was dead. Yeah, and Craig Bauer, the mathematician, says maybe he was trying want it solved until after he was dead. Yeah, and Craig Bauer, the mathematician, says maybe he was trying to communicate with a specific set of people

for his, maybe someone in, like if he really did serve in the European military, maybe someone there would be able to understand a message that he didn't want

everyone else to see. I mean, who knows? There's so much speculation here. Some people have compared Dabosny to the Zodiac Killer who operated in Northern California for 10 months in the late 1960s.

And while that was going on, the press received a series of taunting letters that contained cryptograms or ciphers, and three of those have yet to be solved. So there's some correspondence there. Someone has done this sort of thing before. But even then, you don't know. That could be a hoax. I mean, we don't know, for instance, that the Zodiac ciphers actually came from the real killer. It could just be someone messing with the press. Or they could be deliberately unsolvable,

even if they were written by the killer. And Dabosny could be the same thing. Maybe he was just so, I guess, bitter. The descriptions don't make him sound that way, but he could just be, you know, just left behind in this unsolvable puzzle just to entertain himself. There's really no telling.

In any case, there's not much more to say. The thing is a perfect puzzle. The Bosnian skeleton was eventually mishandled and fell apart, but his skull is in the collection of the Adirondack History Museum in Elizabethtown, New York. If you'd like to have a look at the cryptograms,

I'll put them in the show notes. I have some updates on episode 214, starting with Greg's story on the Poison Squad that ate various food additives to see what their effects might be. Alex Baumans wrote, Your episode 214 on the poison squad highlighted how shockingly unregulated the food industry was before World War I. From what I know from Germany, the situation in Europe doesn't seem to have been much better. When the effects of the British blockade started to bite, many foodstuffs, or in fact food in general, became scarce in Germany. As no plans had been made for such a situation, everything was initially left to private enterprise, which came up with various surrogates. Unscrupulous firms were pretty

imaginative when it came to ingredients. There were butter surrogates made from beets, egg powder made from colored corn flour, flour made from hay, pudding powder made from glue, or even surrogate pepper, which was 85% ash. Moreover, in many cases, manufacturers used mineral fillers, sand, clay, chalk, to make up the volume. This led to the introduction of a number of regulations we now think of as completely normal, such as the requirement that the ingredients should be listed on the package. Eventually, a licensing system was installed so that when new surrogate foodstuffs were introduced, they were at least not dangerous, if not necessarily particularly edible. The most surprising thing to me was that it took a major crisis to enact such legislation.

And Alex gives the reference for the information he sent, but as it's in German, I have no hope of pronouncing it. One of the words is 26 letters long, and I just don't have that much courage. But I'll put it in the show notes for those who can read German better than I can. As Greg had mentioned in episode 214, many of these same kinds of things were being done in the U.S., and there wasn't even the excuse of a blockade. I think it was often just sheer greed and trying to use cheaper ingredients. Yeah, I was shocked when I was researching that, is how hard the food industry has fought back, saying it's nobody's business what we put in the food,

and these are just standard practices. Sawdust in bread is things I remember. And sand, are you kidding me? Yeah, it's crazy. And on that subject, Jason Cutler wrote, This just in, food quackery is still going strong. This article just appeared on our local ABC government run. Jason sent a story from the Australian ABC

from September 3rd on food fraud or representing an inferior food as a more valuable one through substitution or dilution of ingredients or misrepresenting food as something it's not. Modern examples in the article include adding cellulose to shredded cheese, labeling fish as a different species, diluting honey with sugar syrups,

or olive oil with cheaper oils, or calling something organic when it isn't. The article notes that by its nature, food fraud is designed to not be detected, so it's hard to know the true magnitude of the problem. But given the complexities of the modern food supply chain, it's likely becoming more common. Yeah, that's a scary point. Patrick McNeil wrote, Hello, Futility Closet hosts. This week's main story on adults eating questionable food made me think of another food study, Clara Marie Davis's The Self-Selection of Diets by Young Children. In the study, newly weaned infants were allowed to choose how much or how little to eat

of 33 available foodstuffs in an attempt to show that kids will inherently eat what they need. To avoid influence, adults were not allowed to hint what a good choice might be, and nurses ordered to sit quietly by, spoon in hand, and make no motion when a child was around the food. Luckily, the food wasn't poisoned, though I'm not sure my kids would have enjoyed the bone jelly and raw eggs. I was introduced to the study while learning about ethical study design and how young children cannot give consent.

It's likely that this study would never be approved today. Keep up the great work. And Patrick very helpfully sent some links to articles about this early 20th century study. A 2006 article in the Canadian Medical Association Journal described Davis's study as Davis, a pediatrician, began her experiment in 1926 with three infants, 7 to 9 months old, who were hospitalized from 6 to 12 months at Cleveland's Mount Sinai Hospital. From there, she moved to Chicago, where she convinced young,

unmarried mothers and impoverished widows to place their infants in what was basically an eating experiment nursery that she set up at Children's Memorial Hospital. Between 1928 and 1931, she studied another 12 children for periods of six months to four and a half years. Davis's study was sparked by the trend of early 20th century pediatricians prescribing with great precision just what and when and how much a child should be eating. But these doctor-prescribed diets were resulting in children often refusing to eat altogether, and at least some doctors responded to that by insisting that children eat the doctor-prescribed diet or nothing. For example, Alan Brown, the head of pediatrics at a Toronto hospital for children, advised mothers in the 1926 edition of his best-selling book, The Normal Child, Its Care

and Feeding, to put children on what was basically a starvation diet until they would eat their prescribed meals. Davis designed her study to show whether children might instinctively know best about what they should eat by devising a list of 33 foods, which included animal proteins, fruits, vegetables, and grains, from which a subset would be presented to each child for every meal. The list included a much wider range of foods than was generally thought to be appropriate for young children at this time, and the foods were all plain and unprocessed, other than being cut up or mashed and sometimes cooked. I was surprised by some of the foods that were offered uncooked as an option, like eggs, beef, oatmeal, and peas.

Raw eggs? Raw eggs. Children chose what to eat entirely for themselves, either by feeding themselves or by pointing. Davis found that none of the children had the same diet as the others, and that any given child's diet showed significant variability from meal to meal. But although all 15 children showed different dietary preferences, none of them followed a diet like the predominantly cereal and

milk one that was commonly thought to be best for this age group. Yet despite all their differences and their variabilities, all of the children ended up healthy and well-nourished, as evidenced by frequent weighings, measurements, blood tests, and bone x-rays. Although some of the children had actually been undernourished or suffering from nutritional deficiencies such as rickets when they entered the study, none were afterward. So the lesson there would be that kids know best what they need nutritionally? Apparently, at least in Davis's study, they seem to show that. A big question that Davis's study didn't address, though, was whether the children's

eating patterns might be different if they were also offered more processed foods. Davis' food list had only included completely natural foods, so all the grains were whole grains, there weren't any seasoned or sweetened foods, and she hadn't allowed canned foods or dairy products other than milk. She had intended to design a processed food versus natural food study, but was prevented by a lack of funding due to the Great Depression, which I think is a shame because that might have been a really interesting experiment. There was a similar study performed by nutrition scientist Leanne Birch and her colleagues in the late 1980s and early 1990s, where they offered set menus to preschoolers and measured the total calories and different nutrients eaten.

These foods were more highly processed than those in Davis' study and included waffles, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, macaroni and cheese, ham, carrot sticks, grapes, chips, and cookies. As in Davis's study, the 15 children in Birch's experiment were given a subset of foods at each meal and snack and chose which ones and how much they wanted to eat. Similar to Davis's findings, these children also ate widely varying amounts from one meal to the next, yet still tended to consume roughly the same number of calories each day, with the same relative proportions of fat, carbohydrate, and protein. She also found that children consumed the same number of daily calories even when they were given foods made with a fat substitute, and thus were lower calorie than they normally would have been.

That just sort of intuitively makes sense to me, that evolutionarily you'd sort of seek out what you needed and understand what's best rather than have to be given this really rigorously prepared artificial diet. I was kind of surprised that the processed foods didn't throw the kids off, though. I would think if you let kids eat as many cookies as they want or as many chips as they want, I probably would have done that myself. I. Probably just eat that instead of anything else, but maybe I'm just skeptical. There are some concerns nowadays about the ethics of Davis's experiment, including that the children in the study were kept from their families. There isn't much known about the children or what their family situations had been,

but after they entered the study, they lived entirely at the nursery with no home visits allowed. However, given what we do know, it seems that at least some of the children came from difficult circumstances, and Davis herself adopted two of the children at the end of the study. An article written about the study in 2005 also notes that orphanages, where children might or might not be actual orphans, were common at the time and wouldn't have been seen as an ethical concern. As Patrick mentioned, there is also the issue of running experiments on young children who can't give consent and the ethical concerns that that might raise. That makes sense. Jim Finn wrote about the

Garden Path sentences from episode 214, or sentences that sound like they are heading toward one meaning but end up meaning something different, such as the woman gave the girl the dog bit a band-aid. Hey Sharon, Greg, and Sasha, I thought I'd add a little bit more color to the garden path sentences you discussed in episode 214. In order to compose a reasonable garden path sentence, you need to rely on one or both of two aspects of a language, the prevalence of words that are pronounced and or spelled the same, and the existence of words that can be implied but not actively stated. Take the example of the woman gave the girl the dog bit a band-aid. Unstated but implied between the girl and the dog is the word whom. The English language does not require whom or similar words such as that or which in order for this sentence to be grammatically correct, with many other languages, we're not quite so free, either because of noun declension or word order. Then

there's words with multiple meanings. Take the example of time flies like an arrow. Time flies with a stopwatch. And then for good measure, we could even throw a third example in here of fruit flies like a banana, although adding that one without context could have two completely accurate meanings on their own. Here we are more likely to see analogous examples in other languages. I think of the Russian children's joke, почему ходит челевек? On the surface, this riddle asks the question, why does man walk? But the word for why can also be interpreted as, and is actually derived from the phrase meaning, upon what, thus setting up the answer of Pazimlia, which means upon the earth. There are others, but I think you'll have enough fun trying to pronounce this much,

so I shan't torture you with too much more. Jim also added, I'd be curious to know about your opinion with regard to the contrast between the lost treasures of Cocos Island, episode 212, and the Oak Island money pit, episode 30. While there appears to be more evidence of an actual treasure buried on Cocos Island, Basically, I completely agree with that. Cocos Island, I think there's more reason to believe there was maybe once something there, think there's it there's more reason to believe there was maybe once something there but it seemed to me in researching it that the likely case is that if there ever was something that has been retrieved and removed from the island now so i doubt there's anything now and oak island

from episode 30 i think there's very good reason to believe that that was all just a case of deliberate fraud and hoaxes and that there was never anything there what's interesting about both those cases if there's sort of this feedback loop where case of deliberate fraud and hoaxes and that there was never anything there. What's interesting about both those cases is that there's sort of this feedback loop where, I guess you'd call it social proof, there's such a, the legend is so strong now that people tend to hear about it and think, well, if there's that much, if there's been centuries of attention on both of these sites, there must be something to it. And if so many people have been out looking for it. And that in itself is enough, that and the romance is enough to keep the legends going.

And lastly, James Patterson wrote, just listen to episode 214 featuring the Garden Path sentences and BBC sound effects. You mentioned an audio clip of one horse eating steam train, which seemed to be a perfect Garden Path sentence. Is it a horse eating a steam train or a steam train that eats a horse. Either one conjures up a slightly alarming image. Thanks so much to everyone who writes to us. We really appreciate how much we learned from our listeners. If you have anything that you'd like to send in to us, please send it to podcast at futilitycloset.com. It's Greg's turn to try to solve a lateral thinking puzzle. I'm going to give him a strange-sounding situation,

and he has to figure out what is actually going on, asking only yes or no questions. I got the idea for this puzzle from something that I heard on the podcast No Such Thing as a Fish. In 1790, the Earl of Barrymore, a very athletic gentleman who was also quite a renowned gambler, was challenged to a race by the quite stout Mr. Bullock. Bullock proposed that the race course would be at least 100 yards long

and asked only that he get a 35-yard head start and he could choose the route. The Earl eagerly accepted the conditions and, to his intense frustration, lost the race. How did Bullock win? That's a good puzzle. All right, 1790, could this happen today? Yes. Is it a foot race? Yes. And are there other people involved in the race?

No. So it's just two men running, I guess, or traveling as fast as they can. And how long did you say the whole course was, 100 yards? It had to be at least 100 yards long. And he had a 35-yard... Yard head start, yes. Okay.

Do I need to know more about the course or its shape? Is it just a straight line or could it be? Let's say it's just a straight line. All right. So is he... Okay. So one's got a 35-yard head start and reaches the finish line before the other? Yes.

Is that because the other's progress is hindered in some way? Yes. By something that, I'm sorry, I didn't get the name. So there's the Earl of Barrymore and there's Mr. Bullock. Mr. Bullock is the stout man who's going to get the 35-yard head start. So Mr. Bullock, does he put some, we said he puts some obstacle in. No, I did not say that. He hinders his progress in some way.

Yes. Without putting an obstacle in no i did not say that he hinders his progress in some way yes without putting an obstacle in his path i wouldn't say he put an obstacle in this you maybe could say that is this something that takes whatever the hindrance is does it take place during the course of the race like when it's actually not something he rigged up in advance. Right. And there aren't other people involved. Okay. Does it affect his health? No. Does he, in fact, actually reach the finish line eventually, both of them?

Presumably. He's just slowed down. No? Yeah, yeah. Okay, that's hard for me. Yeah, never mind. Does he stay the loser? Does he stay on the course the whole way?

It's not that he's prevented from following the course? Correct. Do I need to know about the surroundings or anything, like the landscape or exactly the topography, how this is all? That would help. Yes, that is actually very germane. Okay. Is it on land?

Yes. On flat ground? Presumably. Do I need to know the geography, like the country this takes place in? No. The weather? No. Any equipment they're using?

No. Okay, so where it takes place? The course itself is important. Like the substance of the track, whatever they're running on? The actual surface? No, that's not the important part. The incline or slope? No.

Is there water anywhere? No. Ice? No. Is there water anywhere? No. Ice? No. So was his stoutness an advantage, would you say? Yes, for this particular course, yes. That's a good question. Okay.

So how do you get to the finish line faster? And it has to do with, you said, did the Earl, was there like an obstruction or a hindrance in his way? And I said, yes. Does it have, okay. The man who loses, can he see his way clearly? Possibly not. But that's not, probably not for the reasons you're thinking.

Hindrance. Is it? Okay. Nothing to do with the weather. So they start running or walking. Okay. Traveling. Yes. Okay. They both start traveling and they start at the same. Okay. Traveling. Yes.

Okay. They both start traveling and they start at the same time, but Mr. Bullock is 35 yards ahead. Does he win by 35 yards, would you say, about? No, probably not. By more than that? No. By less.

So the other guy's gaining on him. Yes. But not by enough. That's not correct. The other guy's gaining on him. Yes. The other guy probably does gain on him. But doesn't reach the finish line before the stout guy does.

That's right. He can't. Is he? Okay, but you say the surface doesn't matter. He's not slipping or sliding on something. That's correct. The surface does not matter. Is the weather important?

Is there wind? No, the weather isn't important, but it is important that Mr. Bullock is very stout and that he got to choose the course. So we keep coming back to this. Is some advantage to be stout? Yes, for a very specific course, if you don't want someone to be able to overtake you, pass you up. Is he blocking the other guy's way? Yes, he is. Mr. Bullock chose a very narrow alleyway. The Earl quickly caught up to him but couldn't pass him. This is actually true. This actually happened. Like I looked it up thinking this can't be true, but it really is. That's clever. Apparently the Earl of Barrymore was really well known for his wild bets and it's said that the Prince of Wales heard about this race and

wanted to attend, but he couldn't because Bullock refused to divulge the location in advance. That's very good. We are always on the lookout for a good lateral thinking puzzle. So if you have one you'd like to send in to us, please send it to podcast at futilitycloset.com. This podcast is supported entirely by our incredible listeners. If you would like to help support our celebration of the quirky and the curious, you can find a donate button in the support us section of the website at futilitycloset.com. Or you can join our Patreon campaign, where you'll get outtakes, extra discussions on some of the stories, more lateral thinking puzzles, peeks behind the scenes, and updates on Sasha, our hard-working feline mascot. You can find our Patreon page at patreon.com slash futilitycloset

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