Futility Closet - 253-The Dame of Sark

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 Raymond Chambler's rules to Leonardo's robot. This is episode 253. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. In June 1940, German forces took the Channel Islands, a small British dependency off the coast of France. They expected the occupation to go easily, but they hadn't reckoned on the island of Sark, ruled by an iron-willed noblewoman with a disdain for Nazis. In today's show,

Starting point is 00:00:44 we'll tell the story of Sybil Hathaway and her indomitable stand against the Germans. We'll also overtake an earthquake and puzzle over an inscrutable water pipe. When German forces reached the coast of France in June 1940, they found that a piece of British territory was already nearly within their grasp. The Channel Islands, a small archipelago in the English Channel, were just off the French coast. Thanks to an unusual history, they were largely self-governing, but they were part of the British Isles, and the nearest of them was only 10 miles away. That made them attractive targets for propaganda purposes. If Hitler could establish a foothold on British soil, he could show his people that Germany was on its way to conquering the United Kingdom itself.

Starting point is 00:01:30 So he ordered his troops to occupy them. As it became clear what the Germans were planning to do, a panic passed through the island's residents. Churchill's war cabin decided that the islands were both indefensible and strategically unimportant, and decided that the best course was to demilitarize them. They evacuated 23,000 islanders who wanted to go, and left the remainder, 60,000 people, to face an occupation by the Nazis. The island governments were told to maintain law and order and to do what they could for the civilians, but no one knew what to expect. On Sunday and Monday,

Starting point is 00:02:01 June 30th and July 1st, the Germans arrived on the large islands of Jersey and Guernsey. They had been ordered to be polite to the islanders to prove that they weren't the barbarians they'd been reported to be. They were well-disciplined and, at least for the moment, treated the residents considerably. But the islanders faced the long, difficult task of adapting to a new life among thousands of enemy occupiers. The Germans might have expected the rest of the takeover to go just as smoothly, but they had not reckoned on Sark. It was the smallest of the four main channel islands, just three miles long, but it carried a unique distinction. It was the last feudal state in the world. As the Nazis were to find, that gave the islanders a unique self-confidence

Starting point is 00:02:40 and it made their leader, Sybil Hathaway, almost indomitable. Her position had started in the 16th century, when Queen Elizabeth I had conferred special powers on a lord of the manor to people the island and establish a system of government. For 400 years, a seigneur or dame had held the island in perpetual fief and rented out parcels of land to tenants. Hathaway had become dame of Sark in 1927, when her father had died. Her domain was tiny, but this unique history made her one of the most distinguished leaders in Europe. In exercising her power, she was answerable only to the Crown and the Privy Council in London, and she ruled her island like a protective lioness. The authors Alan and Nancy Wood say that Hathaway combined wit, intelligence, courage, charm,

Starting point is 00:03:22 and a knack of making people do what she wanted. At 56 years old, she knew each of the island's 400 inhabitants by name. She once said, If I am a dictator, I am certainly a benevolent one. I prefer to regard myself as head of one big happy family, with the queen, whom we still regard as the Duke of Normandy, as my overlord. The island had firm traditions, and she upheld them. Motor cars were banned there, so she could be described as the only feudal ruler in history to ride a bicycle. In reply to criticism that she had kept the island backward, she would say, what was good enough for William the Conqueror is good enough for us.

Starting point is 00:03:55 When Hathaway saw that Normandy would fall, she had taken the ferry to Guernsey, the second largest channel island. There, she found people buying suitcases, withdrawing money from banks, and queuing at the dock to flee. They buried their valuables in gardens and put their pets to sleep. As she returned to Sark, she made up her mind how she could best protect her own people. She wrote in her autobiography that she was, quote, determined that this island, at least, should show a front of firmness and dignity and give the impression that we were taking everything in our stride in the firm conviction that we would make the best of a bad time, which we were convinced would not endure long. She believed that if the Sarkis went quietly about their business, there would be no atrocities, and she believed that you did not leave your land. On Sunday night, after church, she gathered the

Starting point is 00:04:38 islanders and told them she meant to stay. Those who wanted to evacuate could do so, but those who had a stake in the land should remain. She said, I'm not promising you it will be easy. We may be hungry, but at least there will always be fish and rabbits. The Seneschal, the chief official of Sark, asked for the names of those who wanted to leave, and nearly everyone chose to stay. On July 3rd, a contingent of Germans was spotted making the eight-mile crossing from Guernsey in a lifeboat. Hathaway saw them coming from the turreted tower of the Signerie, her stone mansion. She called the seneschal, William Coray, and asked him to meet them at the landing stage and act as guide. Coray had been digging in the garden when she called, and like everyone on Sark, he didn't believe in hurrying. So he called at the pub

Starting point is 00:05:17 for a couple of drinks on the way down. The boat arrived about noon, carrying three German officers. Coray informed them that he was to conduct them to the dame, and that no motor cars were allowed in Sark, so they would have to walk up the hill. The hill is 300 feet high, or 91 meters. Normally horses carried visitors to the top, but he didn't tell them that. In the meantime, waiting at home for them, Hathaway told her husband, let's take a leaf out of Mussolini's book. We'll put two chairs behind the desk at the far end of the drawing room. It is a long room, and they'll have to walk the whole

Starting point is 00:05:48 length of it, which will give us a certain advantage. And she told her maid, when the German officers arrive, announce them as if it was an ordinary occurrence to have German officers calling on us. She had to wait half an hour for the Germans to arrive, hot and tired after their walk from the landing. When she heard them stop to wipe their feet on the doormat, she told her husband, I know Germans. That is most reassuring. It is a gesture of respect to the house. The officers were shown in, crossed the room awkwardly, and saluted her. They presented a poster with a list of regulations for the island, a curfew, bans on guns and alcohol, and rules regarding the use of the harbor. She said in German, please sit down. I will see that

Starting point is 00:06:23 these orders are obeyed. One officer said, so you can talk German? She said, in German, please sit down. I will see that these orders are obeyed. One officer said, so you can talk German? She said, badly, but well enough to understand it and to make myself understood. She had spent some time in Germany after the First World War and had learned the language and the culture. The officer said, you do not appear to be in the least afraid. She said, is there any reason why I should be afraid of German officers? She wrote later, that question had an immediate effect. They assured was that the Nazi officers were aristocrats. Germany had sent its most privileged soldiers for this duty, and the island's peculiar feudal history would have appealed to their sense of nobility. Her name was in the Almanach de Gota, a directory of European

Starting point is 00:07:05 nobles, and the Germans in command recognized her on that level. It gave her an immediate advantage. They had a pleasant lunch together, and the officers went back the same afternoon. The occupation of Sark began formally with the arrival of a German sergeant and ten men the following day, July 4th, America's Independence Day. Hathaway's husband, Bob, who was American, said, this is one hell of a date on which to be captured. Hathaway had told the German commander that her people would not resist, but she pointed out that she had urged them to stay on the island rather than evacuate to England with the assurance that she would look after them. And she exploited the courtly chivalry of the Germans to the hilt. She wrote later, it is one of the pleasures and

Starting point is 00:07:41 penalties of the Dame of Sark that she never calls on strangers in her own island, but invites them to her home. During the occupation, this feudal etiquette served me well. For instance, in the course of polite conversation, I was often able to acquire useful information which would not otherwise have been available, and in an affable manner, without argument or rudeness, indicate that we were not much impressed by Hitler's regime or German boasts. R. O'Falla, the chief agricultural officer on Guernsey, said he used to go back to his island thinking it's an education to see the dame dealing with the Germans. She wrote, I often caught a look of amusement in his eyes as he watched me remaining seated while the officers walked up the drawing room, bowed, kissed my hand, and then bowed

Starting point is 00:08:18 again when I invited them to sit down. The stiff German formality worked in my favor because it showed the Germans that I expected to be treated in my home with the rigid etiquette to which they were accustomed in their own country. Throughout the islands, the residents were in a difficult position. Occupied by a foreign enemy but maintaining relatively good terms with them, they tried to walk a line of passive patriotism. They stood to attention when God Save the King was played, but discouraged active resistance. But individual residents did commit acts of sabotage, painting V signs, cutting telephone lines, and sharing news they received from the BBC on homemade radio sets. During the course of the occupation, the Nazis punished 4,000 people throughout the Channel

Starting point is 00:08:55 Islands for various infractions. But on Sark, Hathaway felt there was no point in active sabotage. She said, we were like prisoners in a jail with a garden to it. Instead, she would use passive aggression to annoy the Nazis while maintaining her privileged position. She would ask, haven't you invaded England yet? I suppose Russia has by now been conquered. She collected books that had been banned as anti-fascist and arranged them carefully at eye level in her sitting room, where the Nazis were sure to see them. They never asked her to remove them, which was a disappointment to her. She had planned to say, take them away by all means. Everybody on the island has already read

Starting point is 00:09:28 them in any case. After the Battle of Britain later that year, it became clear that Germany wouldn't manage to invade England, but it was also clear that it intended to hold on to the Channel Islands. In fact, as Germany turned its attention to the east, Hitler ordered that the islands be fortified, where before the European coast had been regarded as a stepping stone to Britain, now Germany planned to reinforce it to hold off the Allies while it attacked Russia. Over the next two years, the Channel Islands would become one of the most heavily fortified sections of the western coast. On Sark, Hathaway was always courteous to the Germans, whose leading figures would arrive occasionally on inspection visits. In her visitor's book, they left messages like, Many thanks for lovely afternoon, and always delighted with nice reception.

Starting point is 00:10:07 But as they drank and chatted together, her knowledge of German gave her insights into the plans they were making, and she could send warnings to the other islands. And she continued to use her nobility to get her way. She would refuse to sign orders that the Germans dictated, and she rebuked them fearlessly with phrases such as, But you can't do that. I won't allow it. And, Oh dear, no, that's not the way the British do things. As the Germans fortified the islands, they brought in thousands of foreign workers, many of them forced, and the food shortages began to grow.

Starting point is 00:10:33 When they took too many of her dwindling resources, Hathaway would demand to speak with superiors. She said, if the lower classes made any attempt to bully me or my people, I knew full well that neither they nor I would show any sign of cringing. But the shortages grew worse, and the Germans tried to ease the pressure by deporting certain groups from the islands. Here again, the Sarkis' resourcefulness spared them the worst of it. In April 1942, when foreign-born Jews were deported, it was found that the order applied to only one person on Sark, a Czech Jew named Annie Ranowski, and they arranged for her to escape the deportation by becoming a German teacher on the island. That September, Hitler ordered the deportation of islanders with English parents, apparently suspecting they might cause trouble. Hathaway

Starting point is 00:11:13 decided to interpret that to mean people not born on Sark and sent only nine people. By 1943, the turning point seemed to have come. The Germans were suffering an air offensive by the RAF, they had seen reverses on the Eastern Front, and they were defeated in North Africa. It seemed clear that sooner or later Hitler was finished. On the islands where everyone was now weary and famished, even the Nazis seemed to welcome anything that hastened the end of the war. They might have hoped for help after the Normandy landings in June 1944, but the Allies decided not to try to liberate the Channel Islands due to their heavy fortifications, and now the German supply lines had been severed. So both the islanders and the Germans were soon on the point of starvation. At length, the Germans coordinated with Britain to

Starting point is 00:11:53 arrange a supply of parcels to civilians, and at the end of the year, a Red Cross ship, the Vega, arrived, bringing such joy that one islander named his daughter Vega. The ship would return every month. When word of the war's end finally came, Sybil Hathaway hoisted the British and American flags and gathered the islanders to listen to Churchill's speech on May 8th. The Germans locked themselves into their barracks and the Sarkis lit a victory bonfire on the cliffs. When liberating British troops landed, they found almost no cases of malnutrition on Sark. It was common on the other Channel Islands. Hathaway led the liberation officer, Kay Allen,

Starting point is 00:12:27 to the Nazi headquarters and translated his interrogation there. Allen told her, I can't leave any troops here because so far only a token force has been landed in Guernsey. Would you mind being left for a few days, or would you prefer to go to Guernsey with me? She said, As I have been left for nearly five years, I can stand a few more days.

Starting point is 00:12:43 He left her in command of 275 German troops. She ordered them to remove the 13,000 mines they had placed in the harbor and to return the radios they'd confiscated, and she made each soldier repeat her commands and say, at your command, madam. One British officer said she was more forceful than any army officer and more than equal to any German commandant. Many residents of Sark had resented Sybil Hathaway for her decision to remain on the island during the occupation, but thanked her afterward for her leadership. The British Home Secretary, Herbert Morrison, said that she'd remained, quote,

Starting point is 00:13:16 almost wholly mistress of the situation throughout the occupation. Every islander who'd been deported during the war survived, and once the mines and barbed wire had been cleared away, those who returned found it much the same as when they'd left. Sybil Hathaway was made an ordinary officer of the Civil Division of the Order of the British Empire in June 1949, but she was still exactly who she'd been before the war. When Princess Elizabeth visited a few days later, Hathaway refused to allow her to bring a car. The princess and the Duke of Edinburgh had to ride to the dame's residence in an open cart drawn by a white horse and driven by a farmer. Our show really relies on the support of our listeners because we just wouldn't be able to

Starting point is 00:14:03 commit to the amount of time that the show takes to make if it weren't for the donations and pledges we get. If you'd like to contribute to 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 if you'd like to support us

Starting point is 00:14:20 in a more ongoing way, you can join our Patreon campaign where you'll also get access to outtakes, extra information and discussion on some of the stories, more lateral thinking puzzles, and peeks behind the scenes of the show, including updates on Sasha, our always inspiring feline mascot. You can check out our Patreon page at patreon.com slash futilitycloset, or see the link at our website. And thanks again to everyone who helps support Futility Closet. We wouldn't still be here without you.

Starting point is 00:14:56 We have talked a couple of times about the old TV show This Is Your Life, which would surprise a celebrity and then do a retrospective of their life, usually filmed in front of an audience and involving many guests who had known the person at various points. Greg and I have sympathized with how unpleasant it might be to be surprised in this way, and in episode 237, I discussed how apparently at least Laurel and Hardy had rather objected to the whole thing, though they did go along with it in the end. In episode 245, I covered a parody of the show, in which the guest of honor strongly objected to being showcased. After that episode, Moxie let us know that a fair few people were not keen on the trademark This Is Your Life ambush. The one that leapt to my mind was Angie Dickinson, who shouted

Starting point is 00:15:42 not on your life. Moxie included a link to a Chicago Tribune article from November 1993 that said that the actress Angie Dickinson had been lured to the NBC studios for what she'd been told was a special on director Brian De Palma. Pat Sajak sprang the This Is Your Life greeting on her. Dickinson said, oh, I'm not going to do it. Not on your life. And ran out the back door, leaving behind all the assembled guests, which included Bob Hope, Burt Reynolds, and Jackie Collins. Speaking of the event, two days later, Dickinson said, I think it boils down to vanity. I really do.

Starting point is 00:16:22 If they brought out all these people, I would be just sobbing and trying not to cry. And I don't look good crying. I'm sure that's true. So they didn't do it with her then? No, they had to cancel the whole thing. And they, you know, spent a certain amount of time and money putting it together and assembling the guests and everything. So that's an argument right there not to try to ambush people, because that's going to happen a certain amount of the time. And you're just out all that effort. This is the first one that I've heard of, though, where the person actually flat out refused to do it. I do wonder if there are others.

Starting point is 00:16:51 So if people know of other ones, please let us know. Yeah, because maybe you don't hear about them. I think that's kind of interesting. Jessica Aves wrote to us about Mark Twain's story about how having only 10-day-old news that he found inside of a shark gave Cecil Rhodes a huge business advantage that we discussed in episode 245 and episode 246's train station cat that kept getting ceremonial promotions. I was listening to episode 245 tonight while making curry. At the end, you discussed how Rhodes was arguing with someone about who had the most recent

Starting point is 00:17:25 news, 50 days versus 10 days, and you both were musing what a statement that is compared to modern times. I thought I'd let you know that there's several articles online about how tweets move faster than the seismic waves of earthquakes. It started with a comic by XKCD, but news websites picked up on it after personal accounts surfaced of some small quakes, it seems. The concept of this would blow Rhodes's mind, I'm sure. P.S. I've never given my parakeets a promotion, but lately I've started calling one of my birds the prom queen because of her regal look and upright posture with her chest a bit puffed out. Maybe I should get someone to 3D print a crown. So if you get one of your parakeets to

Starting point is 00:18:06 wear a crown, Jessica, please do send us a photo. Jessica sent several very helpful links on the topic of tweets outrunning seismic waves, which really is amazing when you think that 150 years ago, it was plausible that having news that was only 10 days old could make someone a fortune. having news that was only 10 days old could make someone a fortune. In April 2010, the web comic XKCD stated that after an earthquake, damaging seismic waves travel at about 3 to 5 kilometers per second, whereas fiber signals can travel about 200,000 kilometers per second, so that once the seismic waves have traveled about 100 kilometers, or about 62 miles, they will start to be overtaken by tweets and texts, etc., about the earthquake. Apparently, this assertion intrigued a number of people, some of whom then put it to the test after an earthquake near Mineral, Virginia

Starting point is 00:18:56 in August 2011. Everyone focused on Twitter, I'm assuming because tweets are public and can be easily accessed, unlike many other forms of electronic communication. Tweets about the quake did overtake the seismic waves, although it did take a little longer than the 100 kilometers posited by the XKCD comic. The author of a Wired article attempted to determine the speed of tweets and found that in his tests, while the speeds varied somewhat, they were always significantly lower than the 200,000 kilometers per second that the comic had suggested. Plus, he thought that you also need to factor in a little more time than the comic did for someone to actually write and send a tweet, and then for another person to receive and read it. So, between that and his calculations that the speed of seismic waves is probably a little faster than the comic had stated, at probably more like 7 kilometers per second,

Starting point is 00:19:47 the author noted that by his calculations, people could potentially receive a tweet about an earthquake before feeling the effects for themselves if they were more than about 186 kilometers, or about 115 miles, away from the epicenter. I thought this was all pretty neat, and there were reports that people in New York City, which is roughly 300 miles or 480 kilometers from the epicenter of the Virginia earthquake, started receiving tweets of the quake about 30 seconds before they felt the effects for

Starting point is 00:20:16 themselves. And after this was noted, Twitter even put out a video ad touting how it was faster than an earthquake, showing someone in New York looking at his phone and then lifting his coffee cup at the right time to prevent the coffee from spilling as the room around him shook. Besides providing a little advance warning to some people, researchers found that tweets mentioning the earthquake and where it was felt at what times provided some useful early information about the quake. Twitter said that more than 40,000 tweets related to the earthquake were sent in the first minute of its occurrence, which actually significantly slowed down the service within the first few minutes after the quake, making it even more difficult for the tweets to outpace the after effects, although it was still much faster than a sailing

Starting point is 00:20:59 ship or even a shark. In looking into this topic, I discovered an article from April 2016 in India Today with the title, Delhi earthquake proves Twitter is faster than seismic waves again. And according to the article, Twitter had given people in Delhi about four to six minutes advance warning of the aftershocks from a major earthquake in Myanmar, a little more than 1,200 miles or 1,900 kilometers away. The article also used the timing of the first tweets from Delhi and Kolkata to check the Wired article's calculations of the speed of seismic waves, and found that the 7 kilometers per second did seem pretty accurate. The article didn't try to calculate the speed of the tweets themselves, and I was wondering if in the intervening five years, perhaps the speed

Starting point is 00:21:48 of electronic communications had increased since the Wired article's calculations. Yeah, I was wondering that myself, if there's some limit or if these things are still accelerating. Yeah, and it might also, I was thinking, vary a little bit by locality, depending on what the specifics of their infrastructure are, and maybe how many people are using it at the same time. And there could be different variables. That must be such a strange experience to get a tweet and realize you're about to feel and then have it happen, you know? Wouldn't that be helpful, though, to have the notice

Starting point is 00:22:16 rather than feel it and not have any idea what's going on? Yeah, it just makes me like... I actually remember feeling the after effects of the Virginia quake and at first having no idea what was happening. We have discussed chief mousers, mostly in the UK, several times on the show. And Scarlett Casey, one of our younger correspondents, recently wrote to say, Dear Closet Penguins, during a recent trip to Europe, my mother stayed in Arche-les-Lays in Edelboden, Switzerland. Turns out they have a

Starting point is 00:22:45 resident mouse catcher slash chief mouser. Her name's Skippy Storrow and she is sweet. She's a tortoiseshell cat and very cute. There are kitty doors everywhere, a scratching post, and little posters in her area. Tummy tickles, scritches, and pats to the fuzzy one who does indeed need a promotion. So thanks Scarlett for the follow-up about European chief mousers outside of the UK, and thanks for all your pronunciation tips. A couple of other listeners also mentioned to us that Sasha needed a promotion, so I will note that she was promoted to managing executive officer recently, and she seems satisfied for now, I think.

Starting point is 00:23:20 For the moment. On the subject of chief mousers, our production schedule makes it impossible for me to be highly topical, but I bumped this up to the top of the list to be as close to topical as I can manage. A few of our listeners let us know about some recent news about Larry, the Chief Mouser of Number 10 Downing Street. And I want to note that I do appreciate when people let us know about these things, even if others write in about it, too. If everyone assumes that someone else will write in about something, then we'd end up not hearing about it at all. So please do keep the updates coming, even if you think someone else might have let us know.

Starting point is 00:23:55 This story involved President Trump's recent trip to the UK and was well covered by Vox in an article from June 4th titled, and was well covered by Vox in an article from June 4th titled, Larry the Cat, UK's Chief Mouser, Caused a Brief Headache for Trump's Security Team, and said, President Donald Trump has just encountered the first real complication of his important London visit, a sleepy cat. Apparently, Larry decided to lie down under Trump's limo while the president was visiting the prime minister at 10 Downing Street and then would not be budged from his spot, temporarily delaying the limo's departure.

Starting point is 00:24:29 The Vox article says, Larry's main role, I kid you not, is to catch mice in the area and to look cute before, during, and after official remarks on the steps of the residents. And according to the British government's website, he's clearly one of the most respected officials working on behalf of the people. The article goes on to note that thousands of protesters went to London to try to stop Trump's motorcade from progressing through the city, and they all failed to impede the president's travel, unlike Larry, who was the only one who managed to do that. Another topic that several listeners wrote in about was the recent reports that the Voynich manuscript, the apparently undecipherable 15th century document that we first talked about in episode 129, was again claimed to have been decoded. I had a similar update in episode 170 when there were media reports that Voynich's code had finally been cracked, only to have the claims fall apart.

Starting point is 00:25:23 Unfortunately, that seems to have been the case again. Last month, the University of Bristol had issued a press release stating that one of their researchers had successfully decoded the Voynich manuscript, only to then retract their statement a couple of days later after significant concerns were raised from various academics in the fields of linguistics and medieval studies. In the retraction, the university also stated that the researcher was actually an honorary research associate at the university, and his work on the manuscript was not in any way associated with the university. So it appears that the Voynich mystery continues at this time.

Starting point is 00:25:59 We do appreciate hearing the news about it, though, so thank you to everyone who wrote in and sent useful links and information. And particular thanks to Jack McLaughlin for letting us also know about the retraction, which saved me some time, as I would have had to have searched around to see if there had been one. Makes you wonder, if it's resisted solution all these years, maybe there's not— Maybe it is just nonsense. I mean, it would have to be such a stunningly successful code, you know, for someone finally to figure it out in the 21st century. I don't know. Maybe they still will.

Starting point is 00:26:30 We'll have to hope. Thanks so much to everyone who writes in to us. Please do keep sending your updates, feedback, and comments to podcast at futilitycloset.com. And bonus points to those who emulate Scarlett and send me pronunciation tips. It's my turn to try to solve a lateral thinking puzzle. Greg is going to give me a strange-sounding situation, and I have to see if I can work out what is going on,

Starting point is 00:27:04 asking only yes or no questions. This is a puzzle by M. Lobach from the old Soviet popular science magazine Kvant. Once I got lost in a forest. I was going to make a fire and spend the night, but fortunately I found a water pipe. Obviously I should go along the pipe, but in what direction? In the direction of the water flow, since the water goes to people. But how could I determine It was going downhill. No. Darn. That would be a very brief puzzle. Okay, so presumably he can't see the source of the water.

Starting point is 00:27:39 Right. He just finds a piece of a pipe or a section that he sees. Yeah, just a pipe. He can see a section of a pipe. Going through the forest. And he can't see either end. Right. It happened very often that there were water pipes going through forests, but let's, okay.

Starting point is 00:27:53 In the Soviet Union, apparently, yes. So he needs to determine what direction the water is flowing in. And presumably this is an opaque pipe. Right. Metal. Yes. Does it matter? Presumably, yeah.

Starting point is 00:28:01 This is an opaque pipe. Right. Metal. Yes. Does it matter? Presumably, yeah. So how would he know the direction that the water was flowing inside of a pipe that you can't see into? Can he hear it?

Starting point is 00:28:13 No. Okay. All right. Would you say that he uses one of his five senses predominantly to solve this puzzle? Yes. I think how to narrow in on this. Would you say that he predominantly uses vision to solve this? No.

Starting point is 00:28:30 Feel, like he feels the pipe somehow. Yes. And by feeling the pipe, by feeling the pipe, he can decide which way the water is flowing. Does that have something to do with temperature differences? Yes. It has something to do with temperature differences? Yes. It has something to do with temperature differences.

Starting point is 00:28:51 Hmm. I could see how that would work if the pipe hadn't been on and was just suddenly turned on and the water's just starting to go through it. But I'm presuming the water's been going through it. Hmm. So it's, hmm. I'm so glad I figured out his temperature differences because I don't know where to go with that. Okay. Okay.

Starting point is 00:29:11 Would you say that it's got to do with temperature differences on the top versus the bottom of the pipe? No. On like the left side versus the right side, if he were to put two hands on the pipe, one is further right and one is further left. speaking yeah roughly speaking or east versus west or something horizontal right so is this going to involve that he puts two hands on the pipe at the same time and feels the difference in temperature between the two of them uh no he's going to feel the pipe and then walk a certain amount in one direction and then feel the pipe again and try to gauge the difference in temperature.

Starting point is 00:29:47 Yes. You're on the right track. I have no idea why. But is he going to walk a particular distance or a particular length of time? Or is he just going to walk some distance? He'll walk some distance, but there's an intermediate step before he does that. There's an intermediate step. Does this have anything to do with that it's very, very cold out and things are frozen?

Starting point is 00:30:09 No. Okay. Oh, so he's going to do something. He'll light a fire under part of the pipe. Yes. He'll light a fire under part of the pipe, and then he'll let it warm up the water that's going through that section of the pipe and he'll walk a distance and see is the pipe warmer quote-unquote downstream and if it's not then he goes the other way and checks to see if it's warmer that way that's

Starting point is 00:30:35 exactly it i don't even have to read the answer we are always on the lookout for more lateral thinking puzzles so if you have one that you'd like to send in for us to try, you can send it to podcast at futilitycloset.com. This podcast would not still be here today if it weren't for the generous support of our listeners. If you would like to join them in supporting our show, please check out our Patreon page at patreon.com slash futilitycloset Thank you. learn about the two 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 for us,

Starting point is 00:31:29 you can email us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. As always, all of our fabulous music was written and performed by the incomparable Doug Ross. Thanks for listening, and we'll talk to you next week.

Futility Closet - 253-The Dame of Sark

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