Futility Closet - 301-Tschiffely's Ride

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 Joseph Conrad's English to an accommodating carousel. This is episode 301. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. In 1925, Swiss school teacher Aimé Schiaffele set out to prove the resilience of Argentina's Criollo horses by riding two of them from Buenos Aires to New York City. In today's show, we'll follow Schiaffele's unprecedented journey, which has been called the most exciting and influential

Starting point is 00:00:45 equestrian travel tale of all time. We'll also read an inscrutable cookbook and puzzle over a misbehaving co-worker. In 1535, the founder of Buenos Aires, Pedro de Mendoza, imported 100 purebred horses from Cadiz to the New World. They were of the finest Spanish stock, at that time the best in Europe. In time, many of them escaped into the wild, where their numbers increased through Patagonia and the Pampas, and a wildlife on the plains made them strong. These so-called criollo or creole horses became famous for their hardiness. They were stocky, agile, and well-muscled, and their low basal metabolism gave them remarkable endurance over long distances.

Starting point is 00:01:34 They helped to shape the political geography of South America by carrying the liberators over the Andes and into Bolivia and Peru. But as competing breeds arrived on the continent, they were gradually overshadowed, and in time, their riding exploits came to be seen as half-legend. In 1925, a quiet schoolteacher named Aimé Schiaffeli decided to test them. Schiaffeli had been born in Switzerland and taught in England before coming to Argentina, where he had spent nine years in the largest English-American school in the country. He found the work agreeable, but dull. He wrote, For a long time I had felt that a

Starting point is 00:02:05 schoolmaster's life, pleasant though it is in many ways, is apt to lead one into a groove. I wanted variety. He proposed to ride two Creole horses from Buenos Aires to New York City, a journey of 10,000 miles. Shefali was a schoolteacher, not a writer or an adventurer, and the journey he was contemplating would lead him through mountains, jungles, deserts, hunger, thirst, heat, cold, storms, insects, and fevers. His friends told him the whole project was impossible, but he was determined to try. The first challenge was to get horses. A newspaper directed him to the Creole breeder Emilio Solanet, who gave him two horses, ages 16 and 15. Their names were Manchado, which means stained, and Gatteado, which means cat-colored. He called them Mancha and Gatto. They had been the wildest of the wild,

Starting point is 00:02:51 Solonet told him, and not easy to break. They were still somewhat wild when Shefali took possession of them. When he tried to saddle Mancha without tying him, the horse took off bucking and threw everything off his back. At one point, Shefali himself was thrown over a fence. But an understanding arose between them. He regarded them as companions rather than beasts of burden. He wrote that if horses could talk, Gato would be the one you'd tell your troubles to, and Mancha, the stronger personality, was the one you'd take for a night on the town. He planned the route as best he could, but no one had ever done this before. He would have to find water and fodder for the horses in deserts, mountains, swamps, and jungles.

Starting point is 00:03:28 He wasn't sure what extremes of heat and altitude they could stand, having been raised on the plains, or how the three of them would cross big rivers. He would have to solve these problems as he went, but he was determined to manage them responsibly. When one newspaper accused him of cruelty to animals, he wrote, the writer apparently did not have sufficient gray matter to realize that a man who was going to entrust his life absolutely to two horses would make their comfort and welfare his first consideration. They set out on April 23, 1925. He rode each horse in its turn and led the other by a halter, but, he wrote, later, when we came to be friends, halter ropes were discarded and we all stuck together.

Starting point is 00:04:04 The early going was easy, following arrow-straight roads through seas of corn, wheat, and oats. After 200 miles, they passed into the great saltbeds of Santiago del Estero, dotted with coarse shrubs and tall cacti. Fodder here was scarce, but Cefali had sent bundles of hay ahead by rail to feed the horses. Experienced horsemen had told him that they would never get through this region, so he was pleased that after 10 days they emerged into the beautiful country around the city of Tucumán, known as the Eden of Argentina for its sparkling streams and green fields of sugar cane. Shefali wrote, by this time the horses and myself were the best of friends, or amandronado as the gauchos call it. In order to appreciate fully the friendship of a horse, a man has to live out in the open with him for some time. As soon as the animal comes to a region that is

Starting point is 00:04:48 strange to him, he will never go away from his master, but will look for his company and, in case of danger, seek his protection. By this time, both my horses were so fond of me that I never had to tie them again, and even if I slept in some lonely hut, I simply turned them loose at night, well knowing that they would never go more than a few yards away, and that they would be waiting for me at the door in the early morning when they always greeted me with a friendly knicker. They entered now on what he expected would be the toughest part of the whole journey, over the Andes to the Pacific. But this seems to have been harder on Shefali than on the horses. As they climbed into the hills toward the Bolivian border, he was exploring some prehistoric ruins when he cut himself on a thorn and contracted blood poisoning. His hand, face, and leg began to swell. At a border town, he

Starting point is 00:05:30 consulted a doctor but didn't improve, and with the increasing altitude, he began to suffer also from mountain sickness and nosebleeds. The horses, by contrast, seemed fine even when they crossed ridges as high as 11,000 feet. He noticed only that they breathed heavily after they'd made a great effort. He made it a practice when they reached a steep slope to dismount and go up on foot to be sure that he himself would feel the effects of the altitude and stop when he was out of breath. If he stayed on a horse's back, he might not feel how hard the animal was laboring to breathe and could even kill him. But altogether, the three of them had covered 1,300 miles now, and the horses seemed in better shape than when they'd set off.

Starting point is 00:06:06 Shefali's right leg was now so swollen that he'd had to discard his boot and wear only a bandage, a woolen sock, and a sandal. But to his amazement, in a Quechua village, he met a doctor who reduced the swelling merely by applying dried herbs. For this miracle, he charged the equivalent of 30 American cents. Shefali gave him five times that and a handful of coca leaves. From the doctor's village, they couldn't follow the railroad to La Paz because it passed through desert where there was no fodder for the horses. So they went up the valley and over the mountains to Potosi, the famous mining town, 13,000 feet above sea level. Even at this altitude, the horses behaved well, never showing nervousness even at the edges of deep precipices. From Potosi,

Starting point is 00:06:45 they crossed the high sandy plains of upper Bolivia, where the days were hot and the nights well below freezing. On the Altiplano, the flat high desert of the Bolivian highlands, mirages of water tempted him ahead, and the mountains around him appeared to be floating islands. When they reached La Paz, the Argentinian ambassador greeted him warmly. They had never expected him to get that far. Shefali wrote, within a few minutes, the horses were unsaddled, groomed, and fed, and munched away happily in the stables of the embassy. They looked as if they had only been out for a morning's trot, and nobody would ever have believed that these were the hardy ponies which had come from Patagonia. Two ranges of the Andes still lay between them and the Pacific. As they passed

Starting point is 00:07:22 Lake Titicaca, Shevely wrote, I urged the horses on faster, but Mancha, instead of obeying my heels, turned his head round, looked at me with one eye, and seemed to be telling me, now then, old boy, what's all that about? Give us a chance. And he continued in his regular and rhythmical jog-trot, his head slightly moving up and down with every stride, as if he were saying to himself, yes, we'll do it. And the loose bridles were swinging from side to side like the pendulum of a clock. And alongside us, faithful old Gato loped along with the pack. He too was game to follow wherever I happened to go. From Titicaca, they followed the railroad line to Cuzco, the ancient capital of the Inca Empire. They threaded the mountains on narrow, treacherous trails, sometimes rewarded by startling panoramas of summits towering above

Starting point is 00:08:03 tropical valleys full of mist. Schiaffelli wrote, invasion, and where swarms of gnats and mosquitoes harassed me and my horses. Going down one such dizzy trail, my pack horse slipped over the edge. Luckily, he struck the only tree in the vicinity as he slipped, and it broke his slide at the very brink of a deep precipice. With the help of friendly Indians, he was rescued after several arduous hours. At length, they crossed the second great range of the Andes, and the last would be easiest. The horses were still in excellent condition. His main concern was finding fodder for them. As they descended toward the ocean, the temperature rose steadily, and when they reached Lima, only 12 degrees from the equator,

Starting point is 00:08:53 the sticky heat was almost unbearable. He stopped in the city for three weeks, both to rest and to accustom the horses to this new climate. From here, they'd be following the coast up to Ecuador, through a region of sandy deserts, terrific heat, and almost no water. Schiaffelli let the horses' manes and tails grow long to protect their necks from the hot sun and help them fight off flies and other pests. He decided to carry no water in this coastal desert, reasoning that the horses would suffer more in carrying it than gain by drinking it. Afterward, he wrote,

Starting point is 00:09:21 I believe my theory was sound. With a light load, we gained in speed and thus came the sooner to where there was water. Only on rare occasions did the horses seem to suffer from excess thirst. The worst stretch was the alarmingly named Matacabayo, or horse killer, desert, which stretched for 96 miles between rivers. Because there was no water to be found there, they had to make the journey in one dogged effort, which the horses achieved in an amazing 20 hours, walking under a full moon and close to the sea where the sand was firmer. He wrote, great were my feelings of relief when we left the Matacabayo desert behind us. In spite of my already high opinion of the horses' resistance, I admired the splendid behavior they

Starting point is 00:09:59 had shown during so long and trying a journey, a journey that would have killed most horses unaccustomed to such conditions. Altogether, he compared the coastal desert to Dante's Inferno. Despite their success, he wrote, I would not try it again for all the money in the world. In Ecuador, all three of them nearly lost their lives. There was no trail beside the Guayaquil-Onito Railroad, which zigzagged up a mountainside. Shefali was leading the horses along the track itself when, without warning, a locomotive appeared. They squeezed into a narrow space beside the track seconds before it roared past. But they arrived safely in Quito, where they rested for three weeks, the horses eating alfalfa in a field three miles from town. Then they made their way north into Colombia. This brought one of

Starting point is 00:10:39 two gaps in the journey. Shefali had been told that the swamps in the north of the country were impassable, so they took a barge from Puerto Berrio on the Magdalena River to Cartagena on the Caribbean coast. Schiaffelli wrote, I am certain they suffered more while traveling in this way than ever they had done on the march. The broiling sun beat down on the low tin roof of the barge while they stood in a little space between coffee sacks and got practically no air. Every now and again I would throw a bucket of water over them to cool them off. From Cartagena, they took a ship to Colón in Panama. Shefali was often asked how the trio crossed the Panama Canal, but he said that that was the easiest part of the whole trip. They just waited until one of the locks closed and then walked across the gate.

Starting point is 00:11:18 Beyond Santiago was forest and jungle, with many twisted roots that could have broken one of the horse's legs, so the going was slow. They saw wild pigs, monkeys, butterflies, and hummingbirds, but not many snakes. Indeed, Cefali didn't see many snakes throughout the whole trip. Possibly they were scared away by the horse's footsteps. The horses had proven their strength now, and the three had become fast friends. He wrote, The company of a horse or a dog is a wonderful thing, and with Mancha and Gato I never felt the want of any better. As they traveled, he would talk to them, and they seemed to understand He wrote, When they heard vamos, they would speed up, and when he said bueno, they would stop. They had been born in the wild and could scent wild animals and danger. When people were nearby, Mancha would lift his head and sniff the air,

Starting point is 00:12:11 and in Panama, when Shefali tried to stake the horses in the jungle far from the hut in which he slept, they called to him pitifully until he released them. He had learned to trust their senses. Once in Peru, Gato had refused to step into a puddle four inches deep, and Shefali discovered it was quicksand. With these experiences behind him, Shefali crossed into Costa Rica with increasing confidence. Passing one night on Cerro de la Muerte, two miles high, he wrote, I sat down and wrapped a heavy poncho and a blanket about me and blew puffs of smoke into the icy night air.

Starting point is 00:12:42 I observed that the animals felt the cold, for every now and again they gave some of those peculiar little snorts horses give when the cold air freezes their nostrils. Sitting out there on the mountain all alone, my thoughts began to wander as they often had done before when I was on some lonely Andean peak. The soft, cold, silvery light of the moon gave the mists below a ghostly appearance. I felt lonely but happy and did not envy king, potentate, or ruler. Here I was between two continents and two mighty oceans with my faithful friends of thousands of miles, both making the best of a bad meal beside me. But I knew they were satisfied, for experience

Starting point is 00:13:16 had taught the three of us to be contented. I had said there were two gaps in their journey. The second came at Nicaragua, which they bypassed entirely as it was in revolution. Shefali had been told he risked losing the horses and even his life if he passed through it. Instead, they crossed by sea from Putarenas in Costa Rica to La Union in El Salvador, the horses traveling in purpose-built crates. They took a disused wagon trail to San Salvador and then went on quickly to the highlands to rest up in a better climate for the remaining journey. In Guatemala, they saw fir trees for the first time in years. Passing down out of the highlands, they traveled over rocks at first, then passed pretty coffee plantations, and finally through tropical vegetation. At the River Suchiate, they passed into Mexico, and at Tapachula, after all their adventures, disaster finally struck. Gato was kicked by a mule and developed a serious abscess.

Starting point is 00:14:06 Shefali waited for a whole month, hoping that he'd improve, but he only got worse. Finally, Shefali decided to send him ahead to Mexico City by train, hoping that the veterinarians there might save his life. Sympathetic friends helped him carry Gato to the train station, where they bedded him down in a wagon. This was the first time on the whole journey that the two horses had been separated, and they called out to each other. Shefali wrote,

Starting point is 00:14:28 I had a big lump in my throat when the train disappeared around a curve, for I really believed I would never see my dear Gato again. The loss of Gato meant that Mancha would have to carry Shefali all the way from Tapachula to the capital, a difficult journey through swampy country interrupted by railroad bridges that could not accommodate horses. Repeatedly, they had to go down to the water, unsaddle, swim across, and resaddle on the farther side, sometimes menaced by crocodiles. They had to detour around another revolution as

Starting point is 00:14:54 well, escorted this time by military authorities. But they were famous enough now to find themselves greeted 15 miles out of Mexico City by a delegation of gentlemen riders, motorcycle police, and government and army officials. They surrounded him, clapping of gentlemen riders, motorcycle police, and government and army officials. They surrounded him, clapping, cheering, and raising dust, and then the circle opened and he saw his old friend Gato. He wrote, I forgot everything around me and went to pat his neck, to tickle his nose, and to rub his forehead, as I had often done before when we were all alone out in the open. When he saw Mancha, he gave a low knicker, opening wide his nostrils and slightly quivering his upper lip. The two horses then sniffed each other while I examined Gato, whom

Starting point is 00:15:30 I found to be in wonderful shape, not a sign of his accident being visible. They stayed in town for three weeks and then passed into the northern plains and finally into the United States, the last country on their long journey. In many ways, this was the hardest stage of the whole trip. The concrete roads were very tiring for the horses, and stables were harder to find. Together, the three traveled from Laredo, Texas to St. Louis, but Shefaly found it impossible to travel with two horses on the traffic-filled roads, so he left Gato in the hands of a horse lover there and went on with Mancha through the Midwest to Washington, D.C. Even so, the car culture was overwhelming. Motorists threw things at them,

Starting point is 00:16:06 shouting, ride them, cowboy. On one back road in the Blue Ridge Mountains, a man deliberately sideswiped them, injuring Mancha's leg, then honked and waved in triumph. After two more such incidents, Shefali decided not even to go on to New York as he'd planned, but to end the journey in Washington. He wrote, I did not feel it sane to expose my horses to further danger, and possibly even to lose them. They had already more than proved their worth. By ending the trip in Washington, he could still say he had ridden from capital to capital. Altogether, the trio had covered 9,600 miles and passed through 11 nations on a journey of nearly 900 days. Schiaffelli and Mancha did go on to New York by train, arriving on September 20, 1928. The New York Times wrote, togged out as an Argentine gaucho, he rode up Fifth Avenue with a mounted

Starting point is 00:16:51 police escort to be greeted by Mayor James J. Walker, who gave him a medal. Shefaly went back to St. Louis to fetch Gatto, and both horses spent 10 days at Madison Square Garden on exhibition during the International Horse Show. Shefaly went back to Washington to meet President Coolidge and speak at the National Geographic Society. Then he collected the horses and the three of them traveled back by steamer to Buenos Aires, where they arrived on December 20th. In his 1933 book about the journey, Shefali praises Mancha and Gato as the only horses that ever traversed the Western Hemisphere from Patagonia to the Potomac.

Starting point is 00:17:24 He said he felt they'd proven their hardiness. He wrote, I am willing to state my opinion boldly that no other breed in the world has the capacity of the Creole for continuous hard work. At the end of his book, he writes, as soon as the official and other receptions were over, I took the horses out to the Pampas again, where they will enjoy the kind of life that is natural to them. As I write these last lines, I can see them galloping over the rolling plains until they disappear out of sight in the vastness of the pampas. In my heart there is room for many animals I have loved, but Mancha and Gato will always have a special corner of their own.

Starting point is 00:17:56 The red gods have given me some great days and many a grand horse, but among them my two companions of the long trail will always rank as the greatest. Farewell, faithful and stout-hearted old friends. The main story in episode 197 was about how in 1977, Robin Davidson set out to lead a group of camels 1,700 miles across Western Australia. Jason Cutler sent us a recent article from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation about another woman who is attempting to do something similar. 31-year-old Sophie Matterson recently began a 5,000-kilometer, or over 3,000-mile, solo trek from Australia's westernmost to its easternmost point, with a team of five camels to carry her supplies, and plans to complete the journey in about nine months.

Starting point is 00:18:56 She spent over a year preparing for this undertaking, starting with capturing and training the wild camels and then transporting them 2,300 kilometers to Western Australia, working out her planned route with station and landowners, and arranging for food and supplies along the way, including burying stashes of food along the route. In 2016, Matterson decided to take a six-month break from her regular career and quit her film and TV job in Brisbane. Wanting to try something completely different, she ended up milking camels at a camel dairy in Queensland. What she hadn't anticipated is how she would end up feeling about camels. The ABC quotes her as saying, I fell in love with them.

Starting point is 00:19:34 I thought they were awesome, interesting animals and so affectionate and intelligent. Her intended brief break turned into five years of working with camels across Australia as well as parts of the U.S. and India. As part of her work, she was taking tourists on camel treks and at some point began to think, wouldn't it be nice to do this with my own camels for myself? On her coast-to-coast camel trek blog, Matterson has posts documenting her adventure, starting with making her own camel saddles and mustering herds of wild camels from which would come the five that she chose for her journey. Matterson has reported some incredible highs of her adventure so far,

Starting point is 00:20:10 such as the varied country, the moments of elation, feeling an immense sense of freedom and independence, and feeling like you're just a speck in the middle of this vast landscape, and has noted that it's quite lovely and relaxing camping with camels. But there have been some rather low moments too, such as adapting to the loneliness and isolation and dealing with the various difficulties of such an undertaking. In a May 3rd post on her blog, she wrote that the first month of the journey had had its difficulties and said, there has been days where the temperature

Starting point is 00:20:40 was hitting over 40, that's 104 degrees Fahrenheit. The flies have been horrendous, dry scrubby country with little food for the camels and large stretches without water. I was watching the camels get skinnier before my eyes when I pulled up at yet another terrible camp for camel feed. I couldn't help myself. I ended up tears streaming down my face, sobbing to my camels that I was sorry I had taken them on this terrible adventure. In her June 7th post, though, she reported that the second month had overall gone better. There had been more feed along the route for the camels, and she was adapting more to this new way of life. She and the camels were increasingly bonding with each other, and she learned some new things about them, such as that because camels tend to live in some rather

Starting point is 00:21:21 inhospitable places, they just aren't used to a variety of animals. And her little herd had been terrified of cows and donkeys, and she reports, one very small, cute little miniature pony. I really recommend checking out Matterson's blog, the link to which will be in the show notes, which has some great photos of the camels and some incredible landscapes. And really, how often do you get to see gorgeous photos of camels walking in the Indian Ocean? That's really ambitious. Robin Davidson started in the middle of the continent and just went west to the sea, which is enough. Yeah, she's trying to do the whole continent. Yeah, that's really a big undertaking. And in another Australian follow-up, Andrew Upfold also sent a link to an ABC article and said, thought you might find this interesting given the intermittent coverage of all things Hermit.

Starting point is 00:22:08 So this was an article about a man who spent 40 years living by himself in a cave near the town of Warnembelle on the southwest coast of Victoria in the 19th century. It seems that the May 9th article was inspired by the social isolation many people were experiencing during the coronavirus pandemic. Daniel Kimball, known locally as Crayfish Dan, was born in New York and served in the U.S. military before ending up in his cave in Australia. And apparently not much else is known about the man who lived in a hole in a limestone rock from the 1850s until his death in the town hospital in 1904. The article says that a school inspector who was in the area in 1857 wrote about meeting old Dan the fisherman and said, he is a decent, honest fellow who, after

Starting point is 00:22:52 disposing of his finny burden in the town, retires to his limestone snuggery. Apparently, Kimball spent his time fishing, and when the sea was too rough, he turned to reading to occupy himself. A local businessman in 1885 described Kimball as happy and contented, with a fire burning inside his cave. Kimball lived about seven or eight kilometers from the town, or about four to five miles, and people who came to his area for picnics and other gatherings would visit him, which he is thought to have tolerated because they would bring him food and supplies. The president of the Warrnambool Historical Society said that although Kimball's

Starting point is 00:23:25 decades of isolation were unusual, people had often lived in makeshift dwellings in the city's early days, and that a few other people who were described as hermits had been recorded as living long-term in tents and tree hollows. In what are recorded as being some of Kimball's last words, he wondered at other people's curiosity about his unusual life, saying, A cave's a good home, and it suits me. Why other people should regard it as a sideshow, I don't know. They take no notice of a tent or a bark humpy. It's funny, all right. I guess that I was about to say that's a long time to live in a cave, but I guess that's right once he's sort of established a life there and can just do it. It's home. It's as good as any

Starting point is 00:24:02 place else. And I have a non-Australian follow-up about English as She Is Spoke, an extremely inept Portuguese to English phrasebook from 1855. Laura Murs wrote, Hi Sharon and Greg. I just wanted to let you know I had a fun moment with English as She Is Spoke, which you covered in episode 58. During quarantine, I've been watching old episodes of Poirot from the BBC. Hercule Poirot, a Belgian detective in England in the 1930s, is known on the TV show for messing up English expressions, such as, I am not making the hills out of mole mounds. In an episode in season three, Poirot goes on the radio with a police inspector and afterwards is told the station

Starting point is 00:24:42 was flooded with complaints about the accented English on the program. Poirot turns to the English policeman and exclaims to the flabbergasted officer, this is what happens when you don't study the mother tongue, before he goes on to say, do not worry, I will lend you my copy of English as she has spoke. While this is a funny line in the show anyway, it is so much better once you know precisely which book Mr. Poirot is referring to. Thanks for giving me a new level of appreciation for the BBC TV writers and for your always entertaining podcast. So apparently someone at the BBC was familiar with English as she has spoke, and it makes a good joke even if you haven't heard of it, given what the title of the book is, though I guess it's an even better joke if you are familiar with it. Yeah, I was gonna say that

Starting point is 00:25:22 that would probably to most viewers just sound like a joke, like it was made up. Yeah, that's true. Right. And for anyone who wants to see that episode of Poirot, Laura helpfully let us know that it was episode 10 of season 3, The Affair at the Victory Ball. And speaking of fractured English, Charles Hargrove sent a link to a Twitter post and said, Not sure if this is probably just a translation problem rather than a neural network thing, but you can't be sure. The post was about a cookbook that someone had bought on Amazon that, according to the poster, seemed like it was written by a neural network. And the rather tortured phrasings and some downright nonsense in this book were reminiscent of the recipes produced by Janelle Shane's neural network that we covered in episode 195. The post included a number of photos of pages

Starting point is 00:26:10 from the vegan air fryer cookbook, which included delightful instructions such as, put the seasoned chickpeas right into your air fryer basket and also cook for 15 minutes or until they behave and crunchy. You'll want to drink the basket every five minutes or two to ensure they all cook uniformly. Serve promptly or put onto a plate till amazing. A recipe for stuffed mushrooms directs you to make a dental filling of peppers and onions and other ingredients and then, making use of a teaspoon or any kind of small spoon things, stuff the mushroom caps kindly with the dental filling. Make use of the rear of the spoon to press the loading into the mushroom dental caries and pack it in. In other recipes, you are told to add water and leave, boil about 45 minutes

Starting point is 00:26:58 before removing, add the oatmeal in the form of rain, or in a pan, simmer the oil and add the onion. I jumped five minutes. One of the comments on the post asked, is this an escaped Janelle Shane project? To which Shane replied, ha, looks like it's a bad neural net translation of human written text. Its memory is suspiciously good for pure neural net invention. And it's true that there is more consistency in these recipes than in Shane's neural net ones. In the comments, others noted that the book appears to be a machine-created translation from another language, and someone posted photos of pages from a Spanish-language cookbook whose text quite matches up with this one. Another noted that the most likely explanation was text that

Starting point is 00:27:44 had been machine-translated from English to another language and then back to English. And in this context, some of the odd phrases can actually be made sense of, so that the until they behave and crunchy was probably intended to be until they are good and crunchy. And the add the oatmeal in like rain was intended to be drizzle the oatmeal. And in that vein, I could see that the references to dental filling and dental carries with regards to the stuffed mushrooms could be some kind of bad translation of cavities. Yes. So it all makes sense, sort of.

Starting point is 00:28:14 That sort of suggests that maybe there are more of these out there. Yes. You know, if one person did it. Thanks so much to everyone who writes to us. We always appreciate your comments and follow-ups. So if you have any to send to us, please send them to podcast at futilitycloset.com. It's Greg's turn to try to solve a lateral thinking puzzle. I'm going to give him a strange sounding situation and he has to work out what's going on asking yes or no questions.

Starting point is 00:28:44 sounding situation and he has to work out what's going on asking yes or no questions. This puzzle comes from Dave Lawrence. A colleague of mine at work once kicked a pregnant woman in the stomach and later she nearly died because of him, but he wasn't in any trouble with the law. Why not? This is true? I don't know. It could be. It could be. Okay. You said later she nearly died because of him. Yes. Is that unrelated to his kicking her? Semi. Okay. What a puzzle.

Starting point is 00:29:19 Okay. They work together. They work together. And this other person kicked a pregnant woman. Yes. In the stomach. Yes. I don't even know how to approach this. Was she, so she, you said she nearly died?

Starting point is 00:29:37 Yes. Okay. She nearly died. Would it help me, would it help me to know? You say she nearly died. Would it help me to know? You say she nearly died because of him? Yes. Because of some action he took? I don't think you'd say that.

Starting point is 00:29:54 Would it help me to try to uncover the manner of her near death? Not sure. Does she work with them? No. Is she related to either of them? Yes. Okay, is she related to Dave? No. Is she related to either of them? Yes. Okay, is she related to Dave? No.

Starting point is 00:30:07 Okay, so she's related to the man who nearly caused her death? Yes. Oh, oh, oh. Read it again. A colleague of mine at work once kicked a pregnant woman in the stomach, and later she nearly died because of him, but he wasn't in any trouble with the law. He's inside her. He was the baby, yes. Oh, thank goodness. Dave says he wasn't in any trouble with the law. He's inside her. He was the baby.

Starting point is 00:30:26 Yes, Dave says he was an unborn baby at the time. Then due to complications during his birth, his mother almost died, but she was fine. Yay, nobody died. It's a really dark puzzle to figure it out. So thanks to Dave for a nicely non-fatal puzzle. And if you have a puzzle you'd like to send in for us to try, please send it to us at

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Futility Closet - 301-Tschiffely's Ride

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