Futility Closet - 291-Half-Safe

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 11,000 quirky curiosities from a valiant duck to a Lovecraft sodded. This is episode 291. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. In 1946, Australian engineer Ben Carlin decided to circle the world in an amphibious jeep. He would spend 10 years in the attempt, which he called an exercise in technology, masochism, and chance.

Starting point is 00:00:38 In today's show, we'll describe Carlin's unlikely odyssey and the determination that drove him. We'll also salute the Kentucky Navy and the determination that drove him. We'll also salute the Kentucky Navy and puzzle over some surprising winners. One of the more curious products of World War II was the GPA, an amphibious vehicle that Ford built for the Army. Known colloquially as the Seep for sea-going jeep, it was essentially a basic Army jeep that sat in a boat-shaped shell with cutouts for the wheels. It was 15 feet long and 5 wide, a little smaller than a Toyota Corolla, and it could carry five soldiers and their duffel bags. On land, it drove like a jeep, and if the driver needed to cross a

Starting point is 00:01:23 river or a stream, he could flip a lever to direct power to a propeller in the back. The GPA never worked very well. It was clumsy on land, it wallowed in the water, and it tended to sink in high waves. It had participated in the July 1943 invasion of Sicily, but quickly fell out of use, and production had been cancelled after 18 months. Still, there were 13,000 GPAs remaining at the war's end, and in March 1946, one of them caught the eye of Ben Carlin, an Australian officer in the Royal Indian Engineers, as he was crossing the Kalakunda airfield east of Calcutta. He turned to a friend and said, you know, with a little titivation, you could go around the world in one of these things. His friend said, impossible. But

Starting point is 00:02:05 when Carlin was released from duty that August, he made his way to the United States to find an amphibious jeep. He had resolved to drive one around the world. He wrote, the more I thought about the idea, the more I liked it. Quite reasonably possible, it would be difficult enough to be interesting. A nice exercise in technology, masochism, and chance. A form of sport, and it might even earn me a few, Bob. The trip would take only 12 months, I thought, a last flutter before the inevitable relapse into domesticity. He figured he would set out from New York, cross the Atlantic to North Africa, drive up to the Strait of Gibraltar, and pass through Europe and the Middle East to Southeast

Starting point is 00:02:41 Asia. From Japan, he would cross the Pacific to Alaska and then drive back to New York. He bid $901 for a five-year-old GPA at the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland and set about fixing it up. He spent nearly a year retooling it, increasing its fuel capacity, fitting a rudder, rebuilding the front to give it a seaworthy bow, and installing bunks, aircraft instruments, and a radio transceiver. With a proper cabin, the Jeep looked like a miniature houseboat on wheels. The interior was only 5 feet by 10. He bought a textbook, Marine Navigation, by Philip Van Horn Weems and Clarence V. Lee, and late at night he would study how to steer by the sun and stars,

Starting point is 00:03:24 and how to pinpoint his location using a sextant, wristwatch, and nautical almanac. After a week, he reckoned he was ready. He wrote, after about 10 hours on this book, there was just nothing more to learn. The last edition was a person, 30-year-old Eleanor Aroni, an American Red Cross worker whom he'd met in India in 1945. They'd had a stormy relationship for six months, and then she'd taken a job in China. But they'd written to each other while they were apart. She was at loose ends and asked to go, and he agreed. A publicist suggested that they make the relationship respectable by getting married, and they did so on June 8, 1948. Just eight days later, they started the circumnavigation, setting out from the lower end of Manhattan and heading for the Azores, 2,250 miles away.

Starting point is 00:04:06 At 4.5 miles an hour, they hoped to make the crossing in 24 days. But there was trouble with the fuel tank and fumes in the cabin, and they turned around on the first afternoon. On the way back to New York, Ben decided to call the Jeep half-safe after a radio slogan for arid deodorant. Don't be half-safe, use arid to be sure. The name would prove to be prophetic. They were defeated on two more attempts by a crack in the exhaust system and by a disintegrated thrust bearing and had to give up for the year. In 1949, they set out from Halifax

Starting point is 00:04:37 to reduce the length of the first leg and Ben arranged to tow the fuel in tanks that could be cast off when empty. But after 35 miles, both tanks ripped free and they had to turn around again. They resolved to try once more the following summer, and on July 19, 1950, after two years of failed attempts, they set out into the North Atlantic carrying six weeks' food, 30 gallons of fresh water, 2,300 hand-rolled cigarettes, $240 in cash, 8 gallons of oil, and 880 gallons of petrol. The Jeep was loaded so far beyond capacity that the deck rode just 6 inches above the surface of the water. But Ben was a master mechanic and had come to know the Jeep so intimately that he felt

Starting point is 00:05:16 he could address any mishap. They took turns driving, two hours on and two off. They saw ships every few days but never tried to signal them. On a good day they made 3.5 knots, about four miles an hour. If this was a honeymoon, it was hardly romantic. In the continuous damp, the labels sloughed off their food cans so that on some days they ate fruit salad three times in a row. Three times Ben had to take the engine apart on a rocking sea to clean out the cylinder heads, and after 29 days, a valve burned out badly and their speed was reduced to a crawl. But miraculously, the Azores appeared just when and where Ben expected them, and they limped into the harbor at Flores Island three days later,

Starting point is 00:05:55 having driven the last 24 hours in second gear. They had crossed 2,000 miles of ocean in 32 days, completing what Life magazine called certainly the most foolhardy and possibly the most difficult transatlantic voyage ever made. The feat made front page news around the world, but it was only the start of their journey. They made their way among the Azores and headed for Africa, delayed by a terrible storm that pushed them 140 miles out of their way. When they arrived at Cap Juby, Morocco 219 days after leaving Halifax, they had a single dollar between them but could say they'd crossed the North Atlantic in an amphibious jeep. On top of that, some newspapers said that Half-Safe had set a record as the smallest motorized vessel ever to cross the Atlantic. Because they'd already proven the Half-Safe was seaworthy, their arrival in Africa brought less press attention than they'd received in the Azores.

Starting point is 00:06:43 After 10 days of repairs, they drove into the desert on March 5th, heading north toward the Strait of Gibraltar. They crossed into French Morocco on March 10th and arrived at Agadir on the Atlantic coast the next day. The driving was easier on French-built roads, and on March 14th, they were in Casablanca. In Rabat, they exhibited the jeep as the jeep that sailed the Atlantic and earned 11,000 francs. They crossed the strait and arrived in Europe, their third continent of the voyage, where they exhibited the Jeep for three weeks in a Brussels department store and lent it to promote a Danish newspaper. The Hamburg daily Hamburger Abendblatt called them the most daring people to cross the Atlantic since Columbus.

Starting point is 00:07:22 But when they arrived in England, they were a year out of Halifax and a fifth of the way around the world and had $100 between them. They had to decide whether to press on with their journey or to settle for the achievement of crossing the Atlantic. They would remain in England for five years, but in the end, Ben signed a deal to write a book about their adventures, and in April 1955, they set out for India, along with a support vehicle carrying equipment and fuel, which was driven by a 39-year-old Londoner they'd hired named Frank Ringland. The plan was still to drive across South Asia and cross the Pacific from Japan, but now they'd add a detour from India to Australia, which their publisher believed was a key market for the book.

Starting point is 00:08:01 Ben and Eleanor were fighting increasingly. He was headstrong and argumentative, she found, and he wouldn't consult her in important decisions. But they made steady progress together, passing through the Alps and into Italy via the Simplon Pass at more than 6,000 feet, the highest elevation the jeep would reach on the entire trip. They had a flat tire outside Zagreb and celebrated a dismal milestone on the other side of the city, one quarter of the way around the world from their starting point. Then they entered Asia, their fourth continent, and passed through Turkey, Syria, and Jordan. Between Damascus and Baghdad, the temperature in the cabin rose past 65 degrees Celsius, 150 degrees Fahrenheit, and in the back of the jeep,

Starting point is 00:08:40 Ben's toolboxes melted and entombed their tools. They continued through Iran and into Pakistan, where Frank finally left the expedition. When they rolled into Calcutta on July 15, 1955, 86 days and 8,000 miles out of London, it was monsoon season, and their two months there were spent under torrential rains. On September 19, they took the MS Carpentaria to Fremantle, with half-safe lash to the deck. They stayed in Perth for two weeks with Ben's sister, and then made their way eastward through the country, promoting Ben's book, which arrived in bookstores on October 10th. Unfortunately, the book tour was a disaster. By now, the Atlantic Crossing was old news,

Starting point is 00:09:18 reviewers were calling the trip a pointless stunt, and Ben tended to be combative and belligerent with promoters. The Atlantic Crossing had been the height of their fame, but the most difficult part of the journey still lay ahead of them. Facing this, Eleanor finally decided she'd had enough and departed in December. But Ben was still determined. He published a query in Perth newspapers asking for a companion to travel with him through the Far East and Alaska to New York. Among the qualifications, he listed unlimited patients. He hired Barry Hanley, a 23-year-old draftsman from Perth, who agreed to join up in Southeast Asia. On January 22, Ben was back in Calcutta, planning to drive the jeep alone through

Starting point is 00:09:56 the Bay of Bengal to Akyab on the west coast of Burma. He took methadrine to stay awake for as much as 36 hours at a time, sleeping for just two or three, and at Akyab, Barry Hanley joined him. They hoped next to get to Bangkok. The question was how to do it. Burma appeared impassable by land. It looked like they'd have to sail down the coast to Victoria Point, cross the Malay Peninsula to the Gulf of Thailand, and then sail north again to Bangkok, a long, indirect route of 800 miles. But Ben heard of an overland route, a road that had been built decades earlier by the British but hadn't been maintained since 1941. This sounded absolutely dire.

Starting point is 00:10:34 Before he could even attempt it, he had to sign a waiver absolving the Burmese government of responsibility for the consequences. Not only was the road impassable, the immigration office told him, but the surrounding jungle was full of insurgents from the Karen National Liberation Army who were demanding an independent state. In Wilmain, the district commissioner told them, You are about to enter a military area in which your welfare will be no concern of mine. Many men have been shot along the road that you propose to take.

Starting point is 00:11:00 Your famous vehicle has not the slightest chance of covering the road successfully. Gentlemen, please turn back. But the road would shorten their route by hundreds of miles, and Ben was determined to take it. They set out on the afternoon of March 17th. For the rest of his life, Ben would describe it as the most hellish part of the whole journey. The road was barely a through the jungle. Fifteen years of torrential rains had eroded the soil down to bedrock, so that they averaged less than four miles an hour. Barry would crouch in the heat, studying the positions of the jeep's tires and calling out to Ben, 18 inches forward on full right lock, straighten, back six inches, half left, forward nine inches, straighten, backward two feet. Ben said later, it was by far

Starting point is 00:11:43 the worst road I have ever been over, a giant's rosary of granite boulders. The trip was almost comparable with the driving of an ordinary jeep up a dry creek's bed to the top of Mount Everest. Impossible. The road improved somewhat as they passed out of the mountains, and they collapsed in a Burmese army dormitory after what Ben would call the most exhausting day of his life. A journalist wrote later, the jeepsters believe they are the only persons ever to take a vehicle through this roadless area that is sometimes virgin jungle, sometimes mere footpaths or elephant trails. Still, Ben gave no thought to quitting. He'd now been at this for eight years and refused to predict when he might finish. They rolled into Bangkok on March 27th, 36 days after leaving Calcutta. In that time, they'd covered 630 nautical

Starting point is 00:12:26 miles by water and 709 miles by land. They had crossed Burma on 30 pounds, and Ben was now almost broke. They stopped in Bangkok for two weeks, then crossed into Cambodia, where they made a detour to see Angkor Wat and reached Phnom Penh the next day. From here, they moved along well toward the Mekong Delta on roads built by the French. They passed into Vietnam and approached Saigon, the halfway point of Ben's journey around the world, and here he made a dramatic turn to the left. Since leaving London, his road had taken him generally southeast, but from Saigon, the shortest route to Vancouver followed a great circle that would take him up the eastern edge of Asia, through the South China Sea, past Hong Kong, through the seas of Japan and Okhotsk, over the Aleutian Islands, and just south

Starting point is 00:13:09 of Anchorage. Once he reached Vancouver, he could drive across North America to Montreal. The whole trip might be over in eight more months. Following this more efficient route, they reached Da Nang Bay on April 24th and Hong Kong on May 6th. There, Ben told a reporter from the South China Morning Post, I think I'll be glad when it's all over. They passed through Taiwan and reached Japan, where the roads were so bad that it took them a month to drive to Tokyo, by which time it was too late in the year to cross the Pacific. Barry took a job as an architectural draftsman, but at the end of January, he told Ben he wouldn't be continuing. He'd spent nine months on the journey. Of the adventure, Ben told a reporter from Stars and Stripes,

Starting point is 00:13:48 It's not really as dangerous as most people imagine. It is sheer misery and hard work, for the most part, with some very bright highlights in between. When the reporter asked, Would you advise anyone else to attempt an adventure such as this? He said, No, I don't bear that degree of enmity to anyone. He couldn't cross the Pacific by himself, so he placed an ad in newspapers around the world, again asking for a man with unlimited patience. He found Boye Dementi, an American editor at the English-language Japan Times in Tokyo. They set out into the Sea of Okhotsk on June 12, 1957, with 572 gallons of petrol, 24 gallons of water, and 16 gallons of oil. They hoped to reach

Starting point is 00:14:27 the Aleutian Islands in three weeks, but first there was 1,300 miles of ocean to get through. Boyer later told the author Gordon Bass that riding in the jeep was like being in a coffin, and on the featureless sea there was almost no sign of progress. Ben was withdrawn and irritable and would explode at his mistakes. At one point, Boyer actually feared that Ben would kill him until he realized that Ben couldn't survive alone at sea without him. But finally, on July 7, 1957, Ben saw North America for the first time in seven years when the Aleutian Islands came into view. They stopped at Shemya, the site of an American airbase,

Starting point is 00:15:02 and a headline in the Anchorage Daily News read, Japan-Alaska trip completed by jeep. They headed eastward along the Aleutians, trailed by porpoises, and at the end of August spotted an aircraft beacon at Homer, Alaska. It's worth asking here what had kept Ben going through all these trials, even as the world's interest in his bid was waning. Reporters were constantly asking him why he was doing this, and he always found the question hard to answer. Early in the journey, he'd said glibly, any idiot can sail across the Atlantic. It takes a good man to cross in a Jeep. Elsewhere, he might answer, why not, or just to see if it can be done. In Japan, he told Time magazine, it's pure sport. Every Saturday,

Starting point is 00:15:41 you have thousands of guys kicking themselves up a football field. In the end, they're covered with mud or in a hospital. Nobody asks them why they do it. But years after the trip, he found words. He said, With each departure by sea, my sense of relief and freedom was overwhelming. Freedom from the post office and the telephone. Freedom from jackasses and their jerkass mates. Freedom from the need to scratch a living.

Starting point is 00:16:02 Freedom from the thousand petty requirements of social existence around which so many people build their lives. Boyer said later, hell or high water. He was fantastically proud of his ability to do things, and once he made a commitment, he was going to keep it. All of those things led him to do his one great adventure. He just didn't suspect that it was going to take up so many years of his life. Ben told the Washington Star, reaching Alaska, no more oceans to cross, should have been my biggest thrill. I had been looking forward to it for years. Actually, I never felt so flat and depressed in my life. Boyer departed shortly after they reached Anchorage, and Ben prepared to cross North America alone. He drove south and crossed into Canada. In Taylor, the bridge over the Peace River was out, so he sailed across, the last time the half-safe would touch water on its long journey. He crossed into the United States and visited Los Angeles in hopes of striking up a TV or movie deal. When there were no takers, he headed east to Montreal and quietly registered his accomplishment as the only person ever to circumnavigate the world in an amphibious vehicle. He had covered 11,050 miles by sea and 38,987 miles on land. The achievement had cost him 10 years and 17,850 pounds.

Starting point is 00:17:24 The achievement had cost him 10 years and 17,850 pounds. When the journey was done, he said, Once I started, I couldn't turn back. The opportunities you failed to take gnaw at you. Now nothing will gnaw at me. Ben Carlin died in Perth in March 1981. The Jeep resides in Fremantle in a protective shelter at Ben's old school, Guildford Grammar School. It bears a plaque. Ben's old school, Guildford Grammar School. It bears a plaque. The Half-Safe, a 1942 Ford amphibious military jeep converted by Ben Carlin for his epic journey around the world, 1950 to 1957.

Starting point is 00:18:16 The puzzle in episode 283, spoiler alert, was about a boat's odd behavior of sailing out for a mile before reversing its engines to return to the dock. And it turned out to be a riverboat casino that was trying to avoid going into the part of the Ohio River belonging to Kentucky where gambling isn't legal. Ross Hasman wrote, I just listened to your latest podcast, Lateral Thinking Puzzle, and I thought it was going a different route. For a long time, riverboat casinos had to prove their seaworthiness every year. They couldn't just be permanent structures in the water. One day every year, they would turn the engines on and leave the dock for a bit. Here's an article about it. Now, Illinois doesn't require the test, so the riverboats never have to leave the dock. In fact, new casinos like the Rivers Casino in Des Plaines

Starting point is 00:18:51 aren't even on a river. To get around the law, there is actually six inches of water under the floor, so technically the gambling isn't on land. Love your podcast. Keep up the good work. And Ross sent an article from the Wall Street Journal from 2014 about how in Illinois, even riverboat casinos that were permanently moored to a dock had to have an annual Coast Guard inspection

Starting point is 00:19:14 to prove the seaworthiness of both the boats and their crews, meaning that once a year the riverboats had to sail out for a while to nowhere in particular before returning to the dock. Coast Guard officers observed the boats being sailed and put the crews through drills, such as rescuing a dummy who had fallen overboard or running through an abandoned ship drill. As the captain of one such riverboat casino said, if a tornado busts us loose, we're the ones who will steer the ship. In the 1990s, legislatures in several states that generally prohibited gambling authorized casinos on operational riverboats,

Starting point is 00:19:47 where customers would gamble during a river cruise on the boat. Over time, the popularity of these gambling cruises waned, as customers would be forced to wait on the docks for the boats to pick them up, or they would find that they ran out of money during the cruise but had to wait for it to be over in order to leave. States were reluctant to lose the money generated by the gambling and started compromising with the riverboat casino owners so that, for example, the cruise part might no longer be required and the boat could basically be floating but stationary. And in some places, as Ross noted, that evolved into boats floating on constructed pools of water just a few inches deep, what some call boats in moats. These sorts of changes ended up leading to various odd cases in different states, as the state courts then had

Starting point is 00:20:31 to decide issues such as how much contact with water the boats had to have, or whether the water the boats were on had to be part of, or at least adjacent to, an actually navigable waterway. Depending on how local laws were written, interpreted, and sometimes amended, some places have ended up with, for example, boats built on stilts, but still over navigable water, or boats that are completely on dry land, but within a certain number of feet of a waterway. Those would make good lateral thinking puzzles themselves. Like, that'd be very hard to understand if you didn't know what the reason was. Also on the same topic, Diana Gabbard wrote, Dear Greg and Sharon, as a current resident of Louisville, Kentucky, I had a lead on the

Starting point is 00:21:12 solution to the puzzle in episode 283. That said, the puzzle was related to a story I first presumed was a tall tale I heard before I moved to the Bluegrass State. In 2002, Kentucky Representative Tom Birch introduced Resolution H.R. 256, which stated, the House of Representatives does hereby encourage the formation of the Kentucky Navy and subsequently immediately encourages the purchase and armament of one particularly effective submarine, namely the USS Louisville 688 VLS-class submarine, to patrol the portion of the Ohio River under the jurisdiction of the Commonwealth to engage and destroy any casino riverboats that the submarine may encounter. Such a purchase would be accompanied by the notification of the casino riverboat consulate

Starting point is 00:21:57 of this resolution and impendent whooping so that they may remove their casino vessels to friendlier waters. It's all in all hilariously written. Please do read it. It's attached. And if I hadn't looked it up in the Kentucky legislature records myself, I'd still presume it was a myth. In fact, there's now an entry index for encourage the purchase of a submarine to destroy casino riverboats under gambling,

Starting point is 00:22:20 which is a topic of some contention still at the state level here. The Snopes article and Fox News on the subject do state clearly that since the resolution was never voted on, the waters of the Ohio River still run free of submarines, at least for now. So as Diana said, there really is in the Kentucky legislative records for the 2002 session, a resolution to encourage establishing a Navy in landlocked Kentucky and purchasing a submarine to search for and destroy all riverboat casinos in Kentucky waters. And actually, the resolution calls for the vigorous use of a submarine for this purpose. Birch laid out his tongue-in-cheek reasoning in the resolution, such as,

Starting point is 00:23:00 The siren song of Paola issuing from the discordant calliopes of these gambling vessels has led thousands of Kentucky citizens to vast disappointment and woe. In a 2002 article on Fox News, Birch said, That was done in jest, but it was done for a purpose. The legislator said that he wanted to get support from other lawmakers who decry the evil influences of gambling, but whose constituents were spending $500 million a year in Indiana's riverboat casinos. Birch himself didn't oppose gambling and thought that

Starting point is 00:23:30 Kentucky should legalize the activity so that Kentuckians could be spending that money in local casinos, and Kentucky could then benefit from the revenue rather than Indiana. As Diana said, the resolution was not actually taken up for a vote by the state legislature, so it's pretty unlikely that Kentucky will actually be purchasing a submarine. But if they had gotten Birch's submarine, that might change the puzzle answer a bit, as the riverboat casino in the puzzle would have had that much more reason to avoid going into the Kentucky part of the Ohio River.

Starting point is 00:23:58 Fleeing the submarine. Fleeing the submarine, yes. And we report occasionally on some funny coincidences that our listeners have with regard to our show. In episode 10, I read an email from a listener named Mike Cowley, who referred to himself as a Gen X Australian. And we recently heard from another Mike Cowley from Perth, Western Australia. Hi, guys. New listener touching base to say thanks. Love it. Keep it up. And you dropped an unlikely coincidence on me this week. I've been listening for a month or so and I'm going through the back catalog between new episodes. I was very surprised to hear my name read out in episode 10. Sharing a name is unusual, but not uncommon. Although I think I let out a little, huh? And gave it a couple re-listens when I discovered he's also an Australian Gen Xer. In the chance he still listens, could you give a shout out from one Australian Mike Cowley to another? Thanks again, guys. So Mike Cowley from episode 10, who wrote to weigh in on the

Starting point is 00:24:55 controversy of our early episodes where Greg was introducing himself as Greg Ross and introducing me as his wife and co-host Sharon. If you are still listening, another Mike Cowley says hi. Maybe it's the same guy, Annie, as Amnesia or something. And he just doesn't remember that you wrote him. Yeah, that was a long time ago. Thanks so much to everyone who writes to us. We are always glad to get your comments, updates, and coincidences. So if you have any to share with us,

Starting point is 00:25:22 please send them to podcast at futilitycloset.com. And thanks again to everyone who's been sending me helpful 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 try to figure out what's going on asking yes or no questions. This is from listener Frank Kroger. In 1995, two teams participating in an international tournament won medals for the Soviet Union and East Germany, even though both countries had ceased to exist years earlier. How is this possible? Okay, did they win the medals in 1995 but they'd actually performed in an earlier year i'm gonna say no are they are they it was a competition that that spans several years so they started it back when the countries existed yes so there's an international competition that takes several years to complete?

Starting point is 00:26:26 Yes. Okay. Is it in the realm of sports? I wouldn't, I don't think most people would call it that. Not sports. Something similar to sports, though? It's a competition. It's a competition, but I mean, you can have like scientific competitions or technology competitions. Yeah, no, not like that. But so closer to sports than to something like, I'm just trying to understand what kind of competition we're talking about here. And you're saying it's an international competition. Yes. Were there other countries competing also?

Starting point is 00:27:01 Yes. Does it matter how many countries were competing? Not really, no. Okay. So I have to figure out what competition would have started years earlier and then persisted until 1995. Basically, yeah.

Starting point is 00:27:19 When awards were given out. Yeah. Were they trying to grow something? No. Because that could take years. Who can grow the tallest tree? That's true. And you're saying it's not exactly sports. I'm trying to think what other kinds of competitions you can have.

Starting point is 00:27:39 Are animals involved in any way? No. Only people, only humans, you would say? Yes. And would you say they are, you said they're teams, they're working on teams? Did you say? Yeah, two teams, yes. But is the team comprised of more than one person?

Starting point is 00:27:59 For simplicity, let's say no. No, so these could be individuals, one individual from the soviet union and one individual from east germany yes for example yes i'm simplifying but yes that works okay is travel involved in any way no some kind of endurance no uh okay and you wouldn't say it's some sort of... You wouldn't say it has anything to do with arts? No. Like writing or anything like that? And I've kind of ruled out science and technology and that sort of stuff. Right.

Starting point is 00:28:35 Inventions or building anything? No. It's not a sport, but a game. A game that takes several years to play? Yes. There's a game that takes several... Does it typically take several years to play versus it just happened to in this case? This variety of...

Starting point is 00:28:57 This game? The game, yeah. Correspondence chess. Yes, that's it. Seriously? I was trying to think of something you'd play very slowly. They were playing in the 10th Correspondence Chess Olympiad, which had started in 1987. Oh my gosh, so it took that many years.

Starting point is 00:29:13 Yeah, it started in 87, East Germany fell in 1990, and the USSR in 1991. Players were allowed three days to think about each move, and International Postal Service slowed things further, so sometimes only one move was made per month. In the end, in 1995, the East German team won the bronze medal and the Russians won the gold, the final sporting triumph of the Soviet Union. Wow. Thanks, Frank.

Starting point is 00:29:34 Thank you, Frank. And if anyone else has a puzzle to send in for us to try, please send it to podcast at futilitycloset.com. Futility Closet really relies on the support of our listeners. If you would like to become one of our amazing patrons who help support the show and get bonus material, such as outtakes, extra discussions on some of the stories, more lateral thinking puzzles, and peeks behind the scenes of the show, then check out our Patreon page at patreon.com slash futilitycloset, or see the support us section at our website at futilitycloset.com.

Starting point is 00:30:09 At our website, you'll also find over 11,000 quirky curiosities, the Futility Closet store, information about the Futility Closet books, and 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, you can always email us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. All of our music was written and performed by my incredible brother-in-law, Doug Ross. Thanks for listening, and we'll talk to you next week.

Futility Closet - 291-Half-Safe

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