Futility Closet - 233-Flight to Freedom

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to the Futility Closet podcast, forgotten stories from the pages of history. Visit us online to sample more than 10,000 quirky curiosities from Phil Rizzuto's poetry to Jane Austen's writing table. This is episode 233. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. In 1978, two families hatched a daring plan to escape East Germany. They would build a hot air balloon and sail it by night across the border. In today's show, we'll follow their struggles to evade the

Starting point is 00:00:38 authorities and realize their dream of a new life in the West. We'll also shuffle some vehicles and puzzle over a perplexing worker. In 1978, East Germany was approaching its 30th anniversary as a sovereign state. 17 million people lived behind a long, fortified border with the West. They faced strong penalties for trying to escape, but each year thousands tried, usually through unspectacular means such as traveling through a third country. In the town of Persnake, 18 miles from the border, lived a man named Peter Streltsik, who was increasingly unhappy with his lot. At age 37, he'd built a good life for himself, first as an aircraft mechanic and then as a self-employed electrician. His family had a comfortable life in the upper middle class with a car, a television set, a refrigerator,

Starting point is 00:01:29 and a washing machine. But during his lifetime, conditions in East Germany had got progressively worse. Prices had spiraled, even basic consumer goods were now hard to find, and freedom of thought and speech were tolerated less and less. He said later, it was always a torture for me because each discussion made me more and more aware that I had somehow ended up on the wrong side of the German border. I began to yearn for life in the West, for freedom of thought, freedom to go where I wanted, and for the possibility to grow and develop as an individual. I wanted to be somewhere, anywhere, where I wasn't under constant pressure to be like everyone else. He said the idea of escaping had started out as just a game I played

Starting point is 00:02:03 with myself, but the desire to do something about it grew. On the other hand, the more I thought about it, the more convinced I was that I couldn't do it alone. I would need help. He confided in his friend Gunta Wetzel, a 24-year-old bricklayer and truck driver who sometimes helped him in his electrician business. While they worked, they would discuss politics. Peter told Gunta that in 1975 he had planned to take his family on holiday to Yugoslavia and then escape into Austria. That plan had fallen through when they couldn't get tourist visas, but after that he and his wife Doris had made a game of thinking up safe ways to escape East Germany without getting caught or killed. Gunther and his wife Petra shared the Strzelczyk's feelings

Starting point is 00:02:40 about East Germany. Petra later said she felt as if she were living in a giant prison. But each couple had two children, and it wasn't clear how eight people could find a way out. Escaping by land seemed practically impossible. The border was fortified with landmines, barbed wire, and self-firing weapons, and there were no bodies of water that they could cross. That left the air, but they had no way to get an airplane or a helicopter. The method they chose had to be pretty sure of succeeding. East Germans who tried to leave the country faced three years' imprisonment, and urging another person to escape brought up to 15 years. The answer occurred to them on March 7, 1978, though neither of them could remember who mentioned it first. They had just finished a job and were sitting down to lunch when one said,

Starting point is 00:03:18 listen, I have an idea. Why don't we build ourselves a balloon? This was so far-fetched that it fascinated both of them, and they were strangely sure it would work. Certainly, the East German Security Service would never be expecting it. From that moment, the purpose of their lives changed. Peter said, all of a sudden, we had a goal, an entirely different outlook on the future. Vague talk of escape had become more than just talk. Now there was hope. We had come up with a possible way to escape East Germany. Unfortunately, neither of them knew anything about hot air balloons, but they visited the library and gradually worked out a plan. The balloon would have to carry eight people, plus the weight of its gondola, a heating system, and the fabric of the balloon itself. All told, they figured the total weight would be around

Starting point is 00:03:56 1,700 pounds. That meant the balloon would need to hold as much air as a large house, and they'd have to heat the air to at least 212 degrees Fahrenheit and maintain that for about 18 miles until they'd crossed the border. They figured the journey would take at least 30 minutes, even with ideal wind conditions. So the immediate problem was how to get the materials for all this. Gunther quit his job as a truck driver. He told his employers that he was taking courses to become a mechanic. From now on, he would be working full-time on the project. They had to hunt through several cities to find the fabric they needed. Finally, in Gira, the capital of Thuringia, they found a fabric store that could sell them 880 yards of tear-resistant brown cotton fabric a yard wide. They told the saleswoman that they needed it to line tents for their camping club.

Starting point is 00:04:37 It cost them 2,400 marks from Peter's savings account. In Gunta's attic bedroom, they spent two weeks cutting the material into triangles and strips, working from blueprints they made themselves. Then Gunta sat down at a foot-operated sewing machine and began to sew them together. He worked for 12 hours a day without a break until his hands and ankles were swollen and he had tears in his eyes. But after about two weeks, they had a pear-shaped balloon measuring 50 by 66 feet. At the same time, in a workshop two stories below, Peter was working on the gondola and burner system, drowning out the noise by playing news and music on an old radio. The gondola had a steel frame four feet six inches square with eight wooden boards forming a floor with a clothesline

Starting point is 00:05:14 for a guardrail. The burner system used two bottles of liquid propane connected by hoses to four stovepipes. Within two weeks of hatching the idea, they had a balloon ready for testing. Over a period of weeks, in spring 1978, they made stealthy trips to secluded places in the woods around Persnake. What they learned was discouraging. The balloon didn't have enough lifting power. Even when they increased the length of the flame and built a fan from a motorcycle engine, the hot air they poured into the balloon simply escaped through its skin. The cotton fabric they'd bought was too porous. That meant they'd have to start all over. They folded up the balloon, took it home, cut it into pieces, and burned it in Peter's furnace. The setback was discouraging, but they set to work again immediately. They had to

Starting point is 00:05:53 make progress. Gunta was illegally unemployed, and that might eventually bring inquiries from the state security service, which was suspicious of anyone who disappeared or stayed away from work for too long. They went to a fabric store in Persnake, bought samples of four different textiles, and tested them for density, hot air permeability, and heat resistance. They settled on heavy taffeta. Then they drove to Leipzig and placed an order at a department store, pretending that the Gira Sailing Club had sent them. They half expected to be picked up by the police, but the next day, 880 yards of multicolored taffeta was waiting for them. That cost another 4,800 marks. They paid for part of it in cash and had to write a check for the rest. Peter said, I had a terrible feeling

Starting point is 00:06:30 when I wrote out the check. Not only did this give them a record of the transaction, but I had to show identification with my address on it, and I didn't live in Gira. While they were in Leipzig, they bought a motor for the sewing machine, and with it, Gunther sewed an entirely new balloon in a little over a week. They also fixed up the gondola, and Peter bought a trailer to carry it. Now, if they were stopped by the police, they could say they were going camping. It was now the end of May, 1978. They took the new balloon to the woods and tried it out. The envelope inflated beautifully, but Peter found he could pull it down with one hand. It still didn't have enough lifting power. Another failure. They packed it up and headed home to decide what to do next. Throughout June, they continued to work on the problem.

Starting point is 00:07:09 Frank, the Strzelczyk's 14-year-old son, was getting suspicious, so they let him in on the secret. But at the same time, Gunta's wife Petra was losing her nerve. She was afraid they'd crash even if they could get the balloon off the ground, and Gunta was beginning to share her fears. Gunta spoke to Peter, and they agreed that Gunta would back out, and for safety's sake, they'd sever their relationship until Peter had either reached the west or given up himself. That was a blow, but it made Peter's task easier. Without Gunta's family, the balloon would have to carry only half the weight. The Strutziks kept working on the project, crisscrossing the Thuringian forest to test the balloon with various burners. Nothing quite seemed to work. They did find an ideal point of departure, though, a clearing in a pine grove.

Starting point is 00:07:47 One night, they got home to learn that three people had just escaped from Persnake to West Germany in a low-flying fertilizer plane. That was encouraging, but it meant that the authorities would be monitoring the air over East Germany more closely than ever before. Peter eventually solved the lifting issue, in part by installing the propane bottles upside down to get a bigger flame. A year and four months after the idea had first been conceived, they were ready. On July 3rd, 1979, the wind blew steadily from the north and they resolved to go that evening. They dressed warmly

Starting point is 00:08:13 since they expected to go up to 5,000 or 6,000 feet. And Doris insisted on cleaning the house and washing the dishes before they left. She said, I don't want them to think that we were a messy family when they searched the house later. They waited until all the neighbors had put out their lights about 1030, then drove to the takeoff point, set up the balloon, and set the burner going. In 10 minutes, it had filled the envelope and the balloon was lifting strongly. They climbed in, Frank and Peter cut the retaining cables, and the balloon climbed into the air at 13 feet per second. They crouched together on a blanket they'd spread on the floor of the gondola. Doris said later, now we were in the air closely to make sure it didn't touch the cloth of the envelope. They couldn't tell how high they had risen.

Starting point is 00:09:05 They quickly passed 3,000 feet, but the altimeter stuck at 4,200. Ten minutes passed, 15, then 20. Frank said, I couldn't see anything on the ground anymore. It was very dark and very scary. At 25 minutes after takeoff, they passed into the clouds, and everything was suddenly wet. A pocket of turbulence grabbed the balloon and spun it, and its fabric soaked up the moisture, increasing its weight by several hundred pounds. Peter reduced the flame to bring them below the clouds, and lights emerged again beneath them. That was better, but they didn't notice that the balloon continued to sink. Frank felt his ears pop and saw that the lights were much closer than they

Starting point is 00:09:37 had been before. He called to his father, but Peter was blinded by the flame. There was no time to reheat the air and raise the balloon. Frank said. Suddenly the trees were at eye level. Then I heard the sound of the fabric ripping as the balloon caught on the trees. The enormous envelope sagged among the branches, and the gondola touched down gently on the ground. No one was injured, but they were in an unfamiliar forest and had no way to know whether they had reached the west. Frank's watch told them they'd been in the air exactly 34 minutes, so there was a good chance they'd made it. They managed to find an empty beer bottle, but the label had been worn away and they couldn't see the brand name. Then Frank picked up a cellophane wrapper and held it up to the brightening sky.

Starting point is 00:10:12 It read, Toast Bread, People's Own Bakery, Wernigerode. Peter switched off the flashlight. He said later, I thought my heart would stop. I knew we had failed. They had got within 200 yards of freedom, but had come down on the wrong side of the border, with a strip of landmines between them and West Germany. They managed to walk all the way back to the car without being detected. They gathered everything they could from the launch site, drove to a garbage dump, and threw it away. Then they drove home again. The boys went to bed and Peter went to his room and buried his face in his hands. He said later, over and over I kept thinking only 200 yards, a few more seconds in the air and we would have been in the west. Two miles would have been easier to accept, but we had been so

Starting point is 00:10:49 close to freedom. The disappointment was crushing, but the flight itself had been a victory. They'd mastered the complex art of launching the balloon, it had been strong enough to lift its load, and they'd had enough propane to reach their goal. Their only missteps had been allowing the balloon to climb into the clouds where the moisture had increased its weight and failing to recognize how quickly they were descending. And now they were practically forced to try again. The authorities would soon find the balloon where it had come down by the border and start a search for them. Peter said, with the possible exception of murder, there's no worse crime in East Germany than fleeing the Republic. I knew that the FOPOS and Stasi would organize a major search for anyone who was daring enough to try to escape in a balloon.

Starting point is 00:11:28 That meant they'd have to build a third balloon. Peter knew he couldn't handle the task alone. He'd have to ask Gunther to help them. On July 27th, they sat down to make a new plan. They calculated that the new balloon would have to be twice the size of the first. It would be 28 yards high, as tall as an eight-story building, and they'd need 1,400 square yards of material. And now they had to assume that every textile store in East Germany would be on the lookout for people seeking fabric suitable for a balloon. Over the next few weeks, they drove more than 2,500 miles visiting 27 cities throughout the republic, buying nylon fabric, taffeta, and mattress ticking. They drew on their savings accounts and even used money they'd set aside for their children. In all, they spent more

Starting point is 00:12:02 than 10,000 marks on fabric alone. Their fears increased when they saw a notice in the newspaper. The police had discovered the old launch site and were calling for the public's help in identifying them. Peter said, well, now they really are hunting us. But Gunta pointed out that the appeal meant that they hadn't found anything substantial yet. He said, it's just a question of who's faster, them or us. But he started working 20 hours a day. Gunther used enough thread to stretch nearly two miles, while Peter worked on building a gondola sturdy enough to carry eight people. By September 14th, they were ready, and the following night, the conditions were perfect. The eight of them drove to a new takeoff point not far from the old one. It was just a few degrees

Starting point is 00:12:38 above freezing. They started setting up the huge balloon at 1.30 a.m., and by 2 o'clock, they were ready to go. There was one hard-stopping moment as they were cutting the retaining lines. The gondola tilted, the flame touched the envelope, and the balloon caught fire. Fortunately, they had brought a fire extinguisher and managed to put it out quickly. With the last line cut, they rose into the night sky. Peter managed the burner, and Gunther watched the altimeter. As they approached the border, searchlights pierced the sky around them, but Peter climbed higher to avoid them. Now they just had to hope that the wind wouldn't slacken. Gunther's son Andreas, just two years old, was cold and restless, and his mother sang a song to him.

Starting point is 00:13:13 As they were beginning to hope they'd make it, the flame suddenly began to flicker and diminish. They were running out of propane. Above them, the balloon had split under pressure, and keeping it inflated had used up their fuel more quickly than they'd planned. They were still above 6,500 feet, but as the balloon cooled, they began to descend. Gunther managed to restart the burner briefly, but then it died for good. They'd been in the air only 23 minutes. There was nothing more they could do. They sank faster and faster. Hills, houses, trees, and farmsteads passed beneath them. Where before they had tried to stay invisible, now Gunther shone his halogen lamp downward, hoping that someone would see them. If they were going to crash, one of them might be injured, and they'd need help as soon as possible, even if they were on the wrong side of the border.

Starting point is 00:13:52 They came down among trees 550 feet from a high-voltage electrical line. They'd been in the air for 28 minutes. As before, they had no way of knowing whether that had been enough to carry them into the west, so the women and children hid while Peter and Gunther went off to get their bearings. They found a barn, went in, and by the beam of Peter's flashlight read the owner's name painted on the side of a tractor. It seemed to be privately owned, and private farmers were rare in the east. They had noticed that the fields they had passed over looked small, not like the collectives at home, and the machinery in them looked modern. Outside the barn, a car pulled up. Gunther thought at first that it was a Russian model, a Moskvich, but it had square headlights. On the side, in luminous letters, was the word police. The two officers in the car were having a peculiar evening. Earlier, they had

Starting point is 00:14:34 received reports of a glowing light in the sky. Now two strangers in a barn asked them, are we in West Germany? And when they nodded, the strangers hugged them and started yelling. One of the strangers lit a signal flare, and two women and four children came running out of the woods. One of the women hugged the policemen so hard that they overbalanced and slid down a hill. Petra dragged the police captain back to the gondola, and by the light of the flashlight, she located a package wrapped in brown paper. She'd heard somewhere that a bottle of champagne should be brought on every balloon flight for good luck.

Starting point is 00:15:02 The cork hit the ceiling of the West German police station at 4 a.m. Petra said later, a few minutes after we landed, it already seemed as though the flight had been a dream. And later, at the police station, the whole situation seemed so unreal. The whole time we were there, we laughed and hugged each other. They were in Naila, a little town only 30 miles from Persnig, but inhabiting another world. The day after their landing, Petra walked into a West German supermarket for the first time. She said, I was dizzy and covered my eyes. I didn't know where to look first, so I left the store. They were immediately celebrities. Masses of curious people followed them around the town, and they received letters addressed to the refugees of the year, the balloon heroes, and the balloonists in Bavaria. As they grew accustomed to their new lives, Petra said,

Starting point is 00:15:41 it's so great to be able to say what you really think, to read a newspaper criticizing the government, to watch television and see people discussing politics. And the people themselves seem more relaxed, more casual and open than back in East Germany. Peter said, what I appreciate here the most is that you can say what you think and you can go where you want. West Germany's champion balloonist Arno Ziga said, what they did with what they had was fantastic. It was like crossing the Atlantic in a raft. But Peter said, there's nothing heroic about wanting to be free. In any case, our desire for freedom far outweighed our fear. Together, they started the new life they dreamed of. Peter opened an electronics shop, and Franck and Andreas attended the Nylas School almost within sight of the spot where their balloon had landed. The balloon, which the families

Starting point is 00:16:21 had worked so hard for, was recovered from the forest where it had touched down. They received offers of as much as 30,000 marks for it from museums and private citizens, but in the end they donated it to the town of Naila. They presented it with a typed certificate that read, In memory of our successful landing in Naila on September 16, 1979 in a homemade hot air balloon, and in gratitude for the hearty welcome extended by the citizens of Naila, we present the town with our vehicle of escape. This present is an expression of our heartfelt thanks to those who have so generously supported us. This balloon is a symbol of man's undying desire for freedom.

Starting point is 00:17:13 The puzzle in episode 228, spoiler alert, was about a woman who had two cars to make her commute easier by leaving a car at either end of a train route. The Tim told us, There are people here in the Seattle area that do the same thing, but between cars they take the ferry. You can take your car on the ferry, but it's faster and cheaper to walk on. I hadn't heard of this before, but I guess having two cars for commuting really is a thing in some places. Yeah, it seems like I hadn't thought of it. In some circumstances, I guess that would be a real help. Ellie Uresin from Leuven, Belgium wrote, Hi, Futility Closet podcasters. I had to laugh with the puzzle of the woman who bought a second car for commuting. I have actually done that with bicycles. I had to laugh with the puzzle of the woman who bought a second car for commuting.

Starting point is 00:17:45 I have actually done that with bicycles and many other people in the Netherlands and Belgium too, I am sure. But cars? Distances are shorter here, so that might be a difference. Thanks for the podcast. And bicycles would be a lot more environmentally friendly and better for your health, I'm sure. But I can imagine that in the U.S. it probably is more often cars. I think we're quite behind a lot of other countries in the use of bicycles here. And if having two cars for commuting sounded amusing to some of our listeners, then I can just imagine what some of them will think of what Deborah Helene Morris wrote. Dear Futility Closet, I love your show and must send a specific shout out to Sasha for all of her hard work.

Starting point is 00:18:24 I love your show and must send a specific shout out to Sasha for all of her hard work. I have another solution to the puzzle in episode 228 provided by an eccentric colleague. Like the woman in the puzzle, my colleague leaves alone, owns two cars, and uses one to drive to the train she takes to work. But she keeps the second car at home to reserve the parking spot in front of her house. When she first told me this, I was confused and asked where she keeps the second car while the commuting car is parked in front of her house. The answer, her driveway. She likes to be able to drive up and park in front of her house, and she doesn't want to look out on someone else's car.

Starting point is 00:18:58 So every morning she moves her commuting car, then she pulls out the second from the driveway, parks it in front of her house, and then gets back into the commuting car and drives off. At the end of the day, she drives home, pulls the commuting car behind the parked car, gets out, gets into the parked car and drives it into her driveway, gets out, and pulls the commuting car in front of her house. So that sounds like a lot of work to me, but I guess it would ensure that no one else parks in front of your house. I was actually kind of thinking of something along the lines of trying to reserve a parking

Starting point is 00:19:28 space while I was trying to solve the puzzle, but I couldn't quite figure out how that would work. So I guess this is an example of how it would. I wonder how many miles that puts on the driveway car every year. And during the puzzle, I half remembered something about people needing two cars because they lived in a city where they could only drive cars with certain license plates on certain days of the week. I had an idea that we had maybe done a puzzle about something like that, but I couldn't quite remember it.

Starting point is 00:19:56 Emerson Lehman let us know, Hey guys, the license plate thing is a rotation system on cars in the city of Sao Paulo, Brazil. Love the podcast. Hope that helps. So hearing that this was a real thing, we searched our previous puzzles and discovered that we had done a puzzle on this four years ago, back in episode 42. In that puzzle, it had to do with a license plate system in Mexico City. And at first, it seemed kind of funny to me that neither of us really remembered the puzzle or the answer. But then I realized that that was four years and a lot of puzzles ago. Given that we can't use all the puzzles that we attempt because some of them get solved too quickly or just don't work out,

Starting point is 00:20:35 and that our special puzzle episodes contain several puzzles each, we've certainly done more than 300 puzzles since the one in episode 42. I can't believe that. I can't believe you've been doing this for four years. Well, it's five years total. But the puzzles just, you know, we just work so hard on your show that you don't think about how they're piling up. Piling up, yeah. I had only read about Mexico City using a license plate system for the puzzle in episode 42, but it turns out that a number of cities have used or are currently using some type of vehicle

Starting point is 00:21:06 restriction or road space rationing program, including several cities in Latin America, Europe, and Asia, usually with the goal of reducing pollution or traffic congestion or oil consumption. Sao Paulo is the largest metropolitan area in the world to implement a permanent vehicle restriction program, which became mandatory there in 1996. There are some different schemes used in different places, but the most common one does seem to be a system based on license plate numbers, so that vehicles with different last digits on their plates can't drive at peak hours on certain days. And often there are exemptions for certain types of vehicles, like emergency services or buses, and if reducing pollution is the main concern, there are also usually exemptions for less polluting vehicles, such as electric cars.

Starting point is 00:21:51 As I mentioned in episode 42, there is a bit of a loophole in these schemes in that wealthier citizens can buy a second car with a different license plate to get around not being able to drive on certain days. Yeah, or it seems like you could pay someone to borrow their car if you needed. Oh, there you go. There's an idea. Just like a whole secondary market. I was thinking also, or you could do Ellie's idea of just bicycles, right?

Starting point is 00:22:12 Yeah. And according to Wikipedia, the earliest known implementation of road space rationing was in 45 BCE in Rome, where horse-drawn vehicles were creating congestion problems in several cities. Julius Caesar decreed that the center of Rome would be off-limits between 6 a.m. and 4 p.m. to all vehicles except for those carrying priests, officials, visitors, and high-ranking citizens. That's funny they had the same problems all those thousands of years ago. problems. All those thousands of years ago. We've discussed the outputs of neural networks a few times now, most recently in episode 228,

Starting point is 00:22:55 where the discussion included a science fiction movie that was written by a neural net. We got a follow-up email on that topic that read, Dear Greg, Sharon, and Sasha the Amazing Podcat, Greetings from Scott, Keisha, and their two furry children, Penny and Rigby. We recently enjoyed listening to episode 228, The Children's Champion, and we're thrilled to hear mention of the AI-generated movie, Sunspring. We thought you might enjoy a recent thread on Reddit wherein someone fed titles from legal advice threads into an AI and let it generate its own set of titles. Sasha in particular might enjoy the fact that there were so many titles involving bad dogs. Here is a link to the thread

Starting point is 00:23:31 and a few of our personal favorites. Keep up the good work. We love listening to the podcast. I wasn't familiar with the actual legal advice subreddit, so I checked that out first and discovered that the real thread titles on this subreddit were kind of interesting to read on their own, including ones such as Suing for medical expenses after disaster wedding My brother-in-law stole my kittens and sold them Police aren't helpful and the new owner is not budging Do I have any recourse?

Starting point is 00:24:01 Communication company almost killed my dogs My husband's divorce attorney attempted to befriend me without disclosing who she was. I've been told by my boss I can't speak Russian to a fellow Russian co-worker in the workplace or else. And my neighbor shot my cat. Oh my gosh. Some of the neural net generated titles that Scott, Keisha, Penny, and Rigby sent were Neighbor's dog blocked me out of his will. Is this legal? Neighbor's dog keeps sending photos of me cheating on rent

Starting point is 00:24:34 Neighbor's dog keeps claiming they do not live with me We are not on the lease. What are my options? Update. Property manager took my girlfriend three months ago. No idea what to do. I was fired from my life. What can I do? Looking at the generated list myself, I also liked, just found out I am scared for a decade.

Starting point is 00:25:00 I work as a child abuse and my husband decided to be destroyed. What can I do? Can I sue my home for a hospital bill? Assaulted by my house and it wasn't even legal. And purchased a new house. WTF do I do? Apparently home ownership can be pretty scary. It is funny how that does preserve the tone of the ones you read before. Yeah. Aidan Tompkins wrote, Greetings fellow devotees of a feline goddess. I love the segments on neural networks having strange outputs, especially

Starting point is 00:25:35 the one I just heard, Sunspring. And I've been holding onto this since a board game convention where I found it. Key Forge is a card game that encourages you to collect specific decks instead of cards. Key Forge is a card game that encourages you to collect specific decks instead of cards. Its gimmick is that each one is unique, built by a neural network playing against itself to balance them. Theoretically, of course, but they do plan to recall decks if they win too many tournaments. Amusingly, the AI also generated its own names for the leaders in each

Starting point is 00:26:01 deck. Normally, this works out with names like DeCassell, the Ridiculously Strategizing, or Samson Medusa Logresivo. Some decks, however, have been posted online with phrases that lined up in the wrong way. Keep up the good work as long as possible. Keyforge, Call of the Archons, was released in November 2018 and is considered to be the first unique deck game. The 37 cards in a given deck have a unique back with the name of an Archon, so cards can't be traded or sold separately from their original decks,

Starting point is 00:26:33 and decks can't be modified with new cards. The Archon names were generated by an algorithm that used a list of tens of thousands of words, with the result that every Archon name, and therefore every deck name, is unique. However, as Fantasy Flight Games, the publisher of Key Forge, said, regrettably some of the words that were included in the pool created the potential for defective Archon decks with an unfortunate pairing of words. Apparently the company didn't foresee this potential at all until after some of these defective decks were released

Starting point is 00:27:05 to the public. Their solution has been to flag certain decks for removal, which means that these decks won't be allowed in any official Keyforge tournaments to try to encourage customers to return them for a replacement deck, and presumably they'll better monitor the deck names going forward. Aiden helpfully sent a link to a website that is trying to showcase some of these recall decks. Only a very small number of them seem to have issues with containing specific words that might not be family-friendly. Most of them seem to be using politically charged words or just have unfortunate word combinations, such as the villain that digs up porridge. Tasha window washer stilts Zenith. Titan flyer, the farmer of racism.

Starting point is 00:27:50 The boy who basically headbutts heaven. She that punches elephants. He that curiously hugs potency. The emperor that pays for boys. Tomb Dirk, the teacher of socialism. It that wickedly supports taxation. Emperor that pays for boys. Tomb Dirk, the teacher of socialism. It that wickedly supports taxation. And he who always anticipates booze.

Starting point is 00:28:17 It did seem to me that they probably should have been more selective with their word lists, as I can't imagine any uses of words like porridge or taxation that would result in names that would really work out well for their game. I wonder how many of those people are going to return these decks. Oh, I wouldn't. I'd keep them. Imagine they're valuable now. Aiden also found some non-defective names

Starting point is 00:28:34 that relate to our podcast with Sasha Bad Dog Adamant Piece and one for Greg's brother, Doug, who provides all the music for our show, Dougal but Quietly Symphonic. Oh, that's nice. I don't know how much Sasha is going to be like being called a bad dog. But and in episodes 205 and 214, I read some examples of neural net output sent in by Dave

Starting point is 00:28:59 Lawrence, who just recently wrote to us, dear pod folk, Humans and Feline, to let us know that he has been busily creating more lists of outputs from neural nets, including titles of mathematical articles and film reviews, names of toys, and so on. There will be a link in the show notes for anyone who wants to check all those out, but one that particularly caught my fancy was a list generated using the product categories from Argos, a UK catalog shop. These neural net generated product categories included dolls and shredders, dog boxes and dresses, dough and power baskets, bike powered freezers, cricket toasters, and reality adapters.

Starting point is 00:29:45 Thanks so much to everyone who writes in to us. If you have anything to send to any of us pod folk, please send it to podcast at futilitycloset.com. And thanks again to everyone who sends me tips on how to say their name. It's my turn to try to solve a lateral thinking puzzle. Greg is going to give me an interesting-sounding situation, and I have to work out what's going on by asking yes or no questions. This is from listener Peter Wilds.

Starting point is 00:30:16 A man is fired from his place of work, but the next day he turns up at the office. In fact, he returns to the office every day, Monday to Friday, for months on end. Eventually, he's given a job, but the following day, to no one's surprise, he doesn't come back. What's going on? Okay. When you say he's fired from his place of work, do you mean he is told he's no longer got a job as opposed to being, like, fired out of a cannon? Fired from his place of work. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:30:49 Yes. No, unfortunately, he's not fired out of a cannon. Okay. So when you first say he's fired from his place of work, you mean somebody who's superior to him in authority tells him, we don't want you to work here anymore. That's right. Okay.

Starting point is 00:31:05 And then after that, you say, but he shows up at his job. Turns up at the office and returns every day, Monday to Friday for months on end. Is that because he has a different job at the same office? No. He turns up at the same office that he's been fired from? Yes. And nobody's surprised when he shows up no okay all right does the man have any interesting characteristics about him that i should know about

Starting point is 00:31:35 no he doesn't okay um and he this doesn't have anything to do with it was a joke or a work of fiction, like he was an actor or it's a movie? No, none of those. Does it matter what his occupation was? Um, no. And you said he only has like one job or one occupation. It's not that he's showing up at the office in a different capacity. That's correct. Or is he showing up?

Starting point is 00:32:04 He could be showing up. Is he showing up to do his job, the job he'd been fired from? No. So he's showing up. He is showing up in some kind of different capacity. I guess you could say that. Okay. Was he doing his job before he was fired?

Starting point is 00:32:17 Yes. Whatever his job was. Yes. He was doing it. Yeah. When he shows up at the office, is he doing something other than the job he was doing before he was fired? Yes.

Starting point is 00:32:27 Okay. Is he there for personal reasons? I think you'd say that, yes. Does he like live there? No. Is he showing up to see somebody socially or to ask for his job back? No. To beg for money?

Starting point is 00:32:45 Oh, is it like it's a restaurant and he's job back? No. To beg for money? Oh, is it like it's a restaurant and he's eating there? No. Something like that. Like he's partake, is he being like a customer or a client? I think you would say that.

Starting point is 00:32:55 He's working at an unemployment office. He jumped right in. And so he's showing up to get served as an unemployed person. Yes, the man worked for an unemployment office. After he was fired, he turned up looking for work.

Starting point is 00:33:05 Once he'd found a job, he didn't need to go back. Ah, I get it now. Thanks, Peter, for telling me. Thank you. And if anybody else has a puzzle they'd like to send in for us to try, please send it to us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. And if you want your puzzle to be given to one of us in particular, you can put that in the subject line.

Starting point is 00:33:27 Futility Closet is a full-time commitment for us and 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 extra discussions on some of the stories, Thank you. see our website for the link. At our website, you'll also find over 10,000 bite-sized distractions, the Futility Closet store, information about the Futility Closet books, and the show notes for the podcast. If you have any questions or comments for us, you can email us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. Our music was written and performed by Greg's awesome brother, Doug Ross, the Quietly Symphonic.

Starting point is 00:34:27 Thanks for listening, and we'll talk to you next week.

Futility Closet - 233-Flight to Freedom

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