Futility Closet - 313-The Santa Claus Association

Episode Date: September 28, 2020

In 1913, New York publicist John Duval Gluck founded an association to answer Santa's mail. For 15 years its volunteers fulfilled children's Christmas wishes, until Gluck's motivation began to shift. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll describe the rise and fall of "Santa's Secretary" in New York City. We'll also survey some splitting trains and puzzle over a difference between twins. Intro: Edward Lear once had to prove his own existence. Paul Dirac proposed that a math problem could be solved with -2 fish. Sources for our feature on John Duval Gluck and the Santa Claus Association: Alex Palmer, The Santa Claus Man: The Rise and Fall of a Jazz Age Con Man and the Invention of Christmas in New York, 2015. Harry Pelle Hartkemeier, John Duvall Gluck, and Emma Croft Germond, "Social Science and Belief," Social Science 9:2 (April 1934), 202-208. Eve M. Kahn, "'Mama Says That Santa Claus Does Not Come to Poor People,'" New York Times, Nov. 26, 2015. Alex Palmer, "Meet the Con Artist Who Popularized Writing to Santa Claus," New York Post, Sept. 20, 2015. Kathleen Read, "What Becomes of Santa Claus Letters?", [Washington, D.C.] Evening Star, Dec. 21, 1930, 3. "'Santa Claus' Gluck Ignores His Critics," New York Times, Dec. 11, 1928. "Submits Accounting on Santa Claus Fund," New York Times, Jan. 11, 1928. "Santa Claus Group Again Balks Inquiry," New York Times, Dec. 31, 1927. "Santa Claus, Inc., Now Offers Books," New York Times, Dec. 25, 1927. "Santa Claus Group in Postal Inquiry," New York Times, Dec. 24, 1927. "Santa Claus Group Under Coler's Fire," New York Times, Dec. 23, 1927. "Now the Santa Claus Letters Are Falling Into the Mail," New York Times, Dec. 4, 1927. "Santa Claus Association Will Send Gifts To 12,000 Poor Children Who Wrote Letters," New York Times, Dec. 20, 1925. "Thousands Write Santa," Richmond [Va.] Times-Dispatch, Dec. 21, 1919, 4. "Probe Upholds Contentions of the Boy Scout Leaders," Harrisburg [Pa.] Telegraph, Aug. 24, 1917. John Duval Gluck, "Boy Scouts: Suggestion That the Rival Bodies End Their Quarrel and Get to Work," New York Times, Aug. 19, 1917. Max Abelman and John Duval Gluck, "Methods Proposed to Control Charity; Plans for a Charity Service League," New York Times, Aug. 5, 1917. "Making Santa Real to Poor Children," New York Times, Nov. 22, 1914. "Santa Claus Association Incorporated," New York Times, March 26, 1914. "Played Santa Claus and Solved an Economic Problem," New York Times, Jan. 18, 1914. "Letters to Santa Really Answered," New York Times, Dec. 25, 1913. "Plays Santa Claus to Poor," New York Times, Dec. 12, 1913. "Santa Claus Will Answer His Mail," New York Times, Dec. 7, 1913. "Form Santa Claus Body," New York Times, Dec. 6, 1913. USPS Operation Santa. Listener mail: Wikipedia, "S1 (Munich)" (accessed Aug. 22, 2020). S1 (Munich) schedule. Wikipedia, "Dividing Train" (accessed Sept. 17, 2020). "France in Detail: Getting Around," Lonely Planet, accessed Aug. 22, 2020. "'Where the Train Will Divide...' - Portion Working," Southern Electric Group (accessed Aug. 22, 2020). Wikitravel, "Wakayama" (accessed Aug. 22, 2020). Amtrak Empire Builder schedule, March 16, 2020. This week's lateral thinking puzzle was devised by Sharon. Here are two corroborating links (warning -- these spoil the puzzle). You can listen using the player above, download this episode directly, or subscribe on Google Podcasts, on Apple Podcasts, or via the RSS feed at https://futilitycloset.libsyn.com/rss. Please consider becoming a patron of Futility Closet -- you can choose the amount you want to pledge, and we've set up some rewards to help thank you for your support. You can also make a one-time donation on the Support Us page of the Futility Closet website. Many thanks to Doug Ross for the music in this episode. If you have any questions or comments you can reach us at [e-mail]. Thanks for listening!

Welcome to the Futility Closet podcast, forgotten stories from the pages of history. Visit us online to sample more than 11,000 quirky curiosities from Edward Lear's absence to negative fish. This is episode 313. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. In 1913, New York publicist John Duvall Gluck founded an association to answer Santa's mail. For 15 years, its volunteers fulfilled children's Christmas wishes until Gluck's motivation began to shift.

In today's show, we'll describe the rise and fall of Santa's secretary in New York City. In today's show, we'll describe the rise and fall of Santa's secretary in New York City. We'll also survey some splitting trains and puzzle over a difference between twins. The earliest Santa Claus letters were written by Santa, not to him. Parents would arrange for Santa to send letters to their children, giving them advice and commenting on their behavior in the past year. But by the late 19th century, the children began writing back. At first, they put their letters on the fireplace, so that smoke could carry their messages upward, but by the 1870s, they were dropping them in the mail. And like all letters that bore illegitimate addresses, these found their way to the dead letter office, where they were destroyed each January. That was an unhappy state of affairs,

and when it became public, the postmaster of New York City made an offer. For the month of December, the post office would be willing to forward all of Santa's mail to any approved organization that volunteered to answer it. For several years, no one stepped forward, but in 1913, just as the post office was about to drop the offer, someone took it up. His name was John Duval Gluck, and he seemed an unlikely man for the job. He was divorced, had no children of his own, and was not particularly religious. He'd started out in his father's customs brokerage business, but left it at age 35 to find something more meaningful. He'd gone into publicity, helping to promote, among other things, the city's first bullfight. But now he was looking

for another idea, and he proposed to set up a not-for-profit organization to answer Santa's mail. He wrote to the Postmaster on December 2, 1913, and learned within three days that his request would be granted. He called his new organization the Santa Claus Association, and he set it up, inauspiciously, in the back office of a restaurant in the Garment District. Within a few days, a postman arrived with the first batch of 500 letters. One read, My dear Santa, I am seven year, have two sitter and brother. Mother said you will not call to our house as she has no money, but try and come. Margie is sending a letter too. She can't write. Goodbye. Try and give me skates and a cowboy suit and Margie a doll. That was from Edward Lennon in

Washington Heights. Another came from Loretta Giblin of 328 Avenue A at 14th Street. Dear Santa Claus, I am a little girl 11 years old. I have one little brother and three little sister beside myself. My papa is sick with rheumatism and cannot work. So, dear Santa, I am writing this letter to you. I hope, dear Santa, you will not forget us on Christmas. Hundreds of these appeals came into the back office, where Gluck went through them with about a dozen secretaries. They managed the letters according to an elaborate system that Gluck had devised. This is all described in an admirably researched book called The Santa Claus Man by Gluck's great-great-nephew, Alex Palmer. First, they had to be sure that each

letter was intended for Santa Claus. According to the 1910 census, there were at least three people named S. Claus in Brooklyn alone, and several families named Kringle, and it would be illegal to open their mail. The address might be anything, and it often was. In 1913, Santa hadn't yet centered his operations at the North Pole, so they received letters addressed to Iceland Avenue, Cloudville, Toy World, Paradise, Heaven, the Land of the Good Fairies, and Behind the Moon. Once they were identified, Santa's letters were opened and scanned to be sure each had a legible request and return address. They also checked for duplicate names to consolidate multiple appeals from enterprising and anxious kids, or, for example, from a sister and brother who each asked Santa to remember the other.

After that, the readers made note of how many children were involved in each request, and they put letters in a special stack if they mentioned starvation, homelessness, or abuse. Those would be sent to the Public Charities Commission. they mentioned starvation, homelessness, or abuse. Those would be sent to the Public Charities Commission. Letters that asked for too many gifts or suggested somehow that the writer didn't really need Santa's help were put into a stack needing investigation so that the parents could be contacted. The letters that passed all these tests, about 70% of them, were ready for a response. Gluck and the association didn't touch the actual gifts that the children received.

Each letter that was approved was sent out to a volunteer donor, who would find the requested item, wrap it, and either mail it or deliver it in person if they wanted to see the child's reaction. This was an elaborate system, but each step was necessary. Associations in other cities had tried to get away with less and had their privileges revoked by the post office. Through this program, Gluck hoped to share with poor children the joy of Christmas that he had known when growing up. He said,

Christmas should be a thrilling day in the year for children. That's all we're trying to do. There's no charity about it. We are purveyors of Christmas spirit. The effort would also help to demonstrate his belief that charities in general carried too much overhead and that the public saw this and withheld their contributions. He said, there are people in New York who will gladly give a $50 note to a poor family who would grudge a 50-cent piece to an organized charity. With his background in business, he felt sure he could organize an operation that was efficient and cost-effective. He knew how to raise funds, investigate claims, and run an office.

And the enterprise might help to get some press attention for him, which might bring new clients for his publicity business. As the operation got underway, a reporter asked what the children tended to ask for. Gluck said, well, the boys seem to have a run on Boy Scout suits. Another one of their particular joys is a sled. The girls ask mostly for dolls. Just to prove they do not change much, when they grow up, you will find almost every little girl asking for candy. Lots of them want roller skates. There were some less common requests, too. One boy wrote, please, Mr. Santa, will you send me a glass eye? Mine is broke. Another wanted a new suit to wear to meet his father, who was getting out of prison. Because many of the children were poor, they also asked for food, soap, and even coal. One girl wrote,

Toys are mighty nice, Santa, but it's awful to be cold. After three days, some early problems had come to light. The average letter contained the requests of two children, but some combined as many as six or seven, which called for very generous donors. And dubious and problematic letters were consuming a lot of staff time. Also, the workforce were all volunteers, and that presented problems, too. The young ones couldn't spare much time, and the older ones tended to tire quickly. Publicity helped to bring in more volunteers, but it also brought in more gift requests.

But on the fourth day, they got a call from General Edwin Augustus McAlpin. He was chief scout of the United States Boy Scout, a competitor to the Boy Scouts of America, and he was calling to offer the services of 500 scouts. They showed up the next day and became a regular presence, helping with clerical tasks and visiting parents to be sure kids were truly in need. That gave the organization the capacity it needed, which was good because the volume of letters was surprising everyone. As word spread, the association was soon receiving 500 letters every

day, and that number would rise to a thousand as Christmas Day approached. Gluck said there are thousands of folk willing and anxious to help make the Yuletide happy for children. His association had tapped an unsuspected wellspring of holiday generosity in the city. He began making plans for the following year and foresaw the day when every city in every country might have a Santa headquarters. By Christmas Eve, the association had coordinated the delivery of gifts to 13,160 children. That included many last-minute packages. Gluck had reached out to automobile manufacturers, who loaned him more than 100 cars to help deliver them. The deliveries had continued late into the night, some made by volunteers dressed up as Santa

Claus. In an interview two weeks after Christmas Day, Gluck told the New York Times that in four weeks from start to finish, the association had delivered $100,000 worth of gifts. They'd paid no salaries and had spent only $1,200 in postage and other expenses, less than 2% of the value of the donations. Wealthy donors had been eager to give because they could see the children's letters themselves and even deliver the gifts if they chose. Gluck crowed over this achievement. He felt he'd transformed the practice of benevolent giving. He told the New York Times, this thing can't be stopped. It is going to revolutionize, reform, improve the whole system of our charities. The reporter agreed, writing,

it seems impossible not to regard this thing as an extraordinary manifestation of efficiency linked to goodwill. In light of this success, Gluck began to make long-term plans. He started by incorporating the Santa Claus Association. Its mission statement was to foster the Christmas spirit among those able to grant requests made to Santa Claus. The Hotel Astor offered space for the group's 1914 season, and 200 volunteers assembled that December, helped out again by the U.S. Boy Scout. That year, they answered letters from 36,000 children, and to thank the hotel, Czech sculptor Josef M. Kratina sculpted a four-foot bust of Santa Claus from the pulp of 5,000 letters that the association

had answered. The inscription read, A fortune was sent to poor kitties for fuel, food, and toys, and 5,000 of them no longer say there is no Santa Claus. For its third season, in 1915, the association moved to the Woolworth Building, the tallest building in the world, and Gluck took out a billboard at the corner of 7th Avenue and 53rd Street. It bore an illustration of Santa and the words, Make some little kitty's heart happy for Christmas. We collect thousands of letters from the post office each year. Come get one and play Santa Claus. Filling request, direct.

That year, the association delivered gifts to 50,000 children in 16,000 families. Curiously, though, despite its vaunted efficiencies, the association seemed to keep needing money. Gluck had boasted that he'd reduced postage charges by a third, but in his fundraising he claimed that the need had doubled and said the group was now $3,000 in debt. The newspapers did not seem curious about this. They urged their readers to donate without reporting how much had been contributed or quite where it was going. The debt didn't stop Gluck from thinking big. In 1915, he stunned everyone by announcing plans for a Santa Claus building in Manhattan. Its front entrance would be a massive

arched portal of white marble nearly 20 feet deep, and its facade would present renderings of Santa Claus created by artists around the world. Gluck called it a national monument to celebrate Christmas spirit. The building would cost an estimated $300,000, but Gluck felt sure the money could be raised through donations. He said, the idea is one which should lend itself to the hearty cooperation of the public. We will probably begin a campaign to ask the Mothers of America to contribute to its construction. The operation continued apace. The post office made the release of Santa letters permanent, and the answering of letters became an annual tradition, sustained each year by children's affection for St. Nicholas. In 1919, one wrote,

Dear Santa Claus, when you crawl into our flat by the fire escape, I've got a nice hot bowl of soup for you on the stove. It's hot. That's all I can do, but I'll bet you're cold. Give me a dolly, and Brother Jim wants a gun. I hope you like your soup. I'll make it myself. Here are a lot of kisses. I want a shut-eye dolly. Dorothy Miller. One girl at a fashionable address wrote, My dear Mr. Santa Claus, my papa is a millionaire, spelled M-I-L-Y-U-N-A-R, so I don't need your toys, but if you need money to get things for poor children, come to my papa. He's rich. I'll tell him to give you a check. Goodbye. Another read, to Santa Claus on top of the North Pole. I'm sick, but I want a jumpy jack. And wake me up when you come in. We live in a cellar. I'll hug and kiss you ever so much. By the end of its first 15 years, the association had employed more than 4,000 volunteers and engaged 200,000 donors, and it had answered,

on average, 30,000 Santa Claus letters a year. This might have continued indefinitely, but as it unfolded, the man at the heart of it, John Duvall Gluck, was revealing himself to be increasingly untrustworthy. In his publicity work, he had promoted the U.S. Boy Scout, but failed to reveal that he made a 40% commission on fundraising and had drawn a separate salary as an officer. He was also invoking the names of prominent people as honorary officers without their consent. These questionable practices, and perhaps his own expensive lifestyle, seemed to tempt him away from his early idealism, and he turned more and more to deception. The U.S. Boy Scout eventually foundered,

but during World War I, Gluck hatched any number of additional schemes, profiting by the public's outpouring of wartime generosity and its distaste for reforming charities. It wasn't clear how many of these practices Gluck was using at the Santa Claus Association, which was rather opaque. He liked to say that it wasn't an ordinary charity, but it took in a lot of money and it kept its accounting to itself. To reduce scrutiny, Gluck stepped down from leadership and installed his wife as president, but this was such a transparent dodge that several of its leaders were irritated and some quit. One wrote to the U.S. Secret Service detailing her suspicions about his methods. By now, Gluck's schemes had attracted the attention of the New York District Attorney, the Office of Navy Intelligence, the American

Protective League, and other watchdogs, but he managed to stay ahead of them. J.W. Kemp of the Bureau of Investigation wrote, it seems to be the ahead of them. J.W. Kemp of the Bureau of Investigation wrote, it seems to be the consensus of opinion that Gluck is a schemer and a faker who engages in everything in which there is an opportunity to make money by fair or foul methods. Throughout the 1920s, Gluck kept launching organizations with noble names, such as the Crusade Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotics and Ser serum control of cancer. For each, he wrote up a dubious list of endorsers and claims, appealed to his army of donors, and collected their contributions. Each scheme was too complex for regulators to investigate fully and was folded

before they could act. With time, it became clear that the Santa Claus Association must be rotten as well. Gluck was claiming simultaneously that it was made up entirely of volunteers and that its overhead had exploded, and though he was collecting thousands of dollars into fundraising, somehow it was never enough even to pay for postage. By the end of 1925, there was an exodus of officers who had seen enough and were fed up, and in 1927, the association started soliciting funds before it had received even the first letter to Santa. In fact, that year it didn't ask people to answer Santa letters at all. It just asked for money and promised to buy the gifts itself. That brought Gluck afoul of Public Welfare Commissioner Bird Sim Kohler. Gluck had said that his organization didn't seek money, only connected children with donors,

but here he was asking for money outright and not even forwarding a letter or asking anyone to buy a toy. Kohler's investigation found that the association had devolved into a one-man money-making scheme. Gluck was simply embezzling most of the money he took in. And that was a lot, $106,000 in 1927, or about $1.5 million today, including donations toward the Santa Claus building, which was never built. The group didn't detail its spending, and Gluck was really accountable to no one. Kohler took his findings to the post office, which put its postmasters on guard. First Assistant Postmaster General John H. Bartlett wrote, Every precaution should be taken to the end that the Postal Service does not lend its prestige nor become party to any scheme wherein the appeals of the needy or the charitable impulses

of philanthropic persons are exploited for private gain. With that, it all dried up. The city postmasters withdrew their support for the Santa Claus Association, stopped delivering Santa letters, and in fact reclaimed the letters they'd delivered. The Board of Child Welfare also severed ties with the association, as did some of the famous names on the group's masthead. When it became clear he couldn't continue, Gluck moved to Miami and became a real estate broker. He never ran another charity, either because he'd learned his lesson or because reforms that were imposed after the Great Depression made it harder to exploit people's emotions and generosity. He died in 1951 at 73. If any good came of this debacle, it's that the public no longer felt comfortable sending Santa's mail to the dead letter office. The post office has offered various plans through the years by which people can sign up to answer letters to Santa.

The latest is a program called Operation Santa, in which volunteers can browse through children's letters, adopt the ones they like, and ship gifts anonymously to those children. I'll put a link in the show notes. The puzzle in episode 290, and no spoiler here, was about a tourist who realized that he had boarded a train incorrectly. In episode 307, I mentioned that a listener wrote that the puzzle could have referred to a train that splits mid-transit to become two trains that head off to different destinations, and the man in the puzzle had been in the wrong part of the train. Greg and I had never heard of such a thing and expressed our concern that with such trains, some passengers might actually end up going to the wrong destination. And it turns out that we must have led rather sheltered

lives, as apparently splitting trains are common enough that a number of our listeners wrote in about them. In the six and a half years we've been doing the podcast, this is the most follow-up we've ever received on a topic, which we found to be rather amusing. There seem to be splitting trains in many different countries, and although some listeners wrote to assure us that measures are taken to ensure that passengers don't end up in the wrong part of the train, others indicated that this actually can be a real problem. And Neil deCarterette let us know that contrary to how it had sounded to us, the trains don't actually split while in motion, but they do it at a station, usually with announcements and such, and he said, I guess if you had headphones on and were stuck in a good book, you could screw it up, but they really give you every chance to get it right.

So here are some of the other follow-ups that we got on this. Matt Lohr wrote, when I first heard the puzzle in episode 290, my guess was also that the train split, with travelers to different destinations needing to board specific cars. I experienced this firsthand when I traveled to Munich for Oktoberfest in 2010. The S1 train, which runs to the airport, splits at Neufahrn, with travelers for the airport needing to be in the rear of the train. Electronic screens at Munich Hauptbahnhof direct travelers which car to board, as well as announcements on board.

Thankfully, I understood enough German to get where I needed to be. Which, I guess, means it would be a concern if you don't know a lot of German. That's true. That's a good point. Aspal from Germany confirmed that splitting trains are somewhat common there and said, The biggest advantage of using only one joint train between A and B compared to two separate trains, A to B and A to B to D, is that the joint train takes up less space or train paths. A lot of railway lines in Europe are quite busy and this way you can get more people over that one line. It also

saves on staff costs as you need one less train driver for the joint portion. For example, when you want to go from Munich to the airport, you have to take care to get into the right part of the S1 train or you end up in Freising with no planes nearby. And at least in Germany, the concept is also used in reverse. One train goes into the station first and stops at the front section of the platform. Then the second train goes in afterwards, couples with the first part, and the train driver gets out. This obviously requires both trains to be mostly on time. Mindy Hermes from Edmond, Oklahoma, wrote to share a family story about splitting trains in Germany that happened while she was present but in utero, so not an active participant in the story. In 1970, her father was on his first tour of duty as a new officer in the U.S. Army with her mother and her then two-year-old brother.

They boarded a train in Frankfurt to travel to their new home, not realizing that the train would split mid-route with some of the cars continuing on and the rest returning to Frankfurt. This was explained to them during the journey by a native fellow passenger, and her mother knew enough German to understand the gist of it. The family needed to be in a different car than they were, so when the train stopped at a station, they settled their son in the new car and then went back for their luggage, only they had accidentally put the boy in the wrong car, one that was headed back to Frankfurt, and then brought their luggage to a correct car that didn't contain their son. After searching for him in a panic, they got off at the next station, thinking they would have to

go all the way back to Frankfurt to try to find him, but a fellow passenger had seen the situation unfold and took the boy off the train into a railroad employee. Mindy's parents found their son happily eating cookies in a Red Cross office. Mindy said, this story was told throughout my childhood as the time my parents lost my brother on a German train. That could have been a real disaster. Yeah, he was very young and they really thought he might be several hours away from them, like it would take them all that time to get all the way back to Frankfurt to try to even find him. Yeah, how would you find him? Apparently, correctly figuring out which car you're in and which car you need to be in can be a real issue with splitting trains. Brian Ford wrote, I can confirm the train splitting phenomenon in the UK.

The main difficulty could be that you knew a train would split, but you didn't always know which carriage you were in. So you might know that the front eight coaches were going to Dover and the rear four were going to Folkestone, made-up example, but the only way to tell which part you were in was by getting off and counting at a station. It was even worse in the cold, dark winter evenings at poorly lit country stations when it could be difficult to tell which station you were at, never mind which coach you were in. Adam Vartanian wrote from London, Trains that split partway through their journey are common enough here in the UK.

They're usually seen in commuter trains leaving London, when the trains are crowded near London but gradually empty out, making it wasteful to run a full train set all the way to the end of the line. As an added bonus, you can enjoy how many station names sound like they were invented by an English town naming AI, such as Merstam, Polborough, Chichester, Emsworth, or Fratton. And Joe Glombeck wrote, in the UK, I've grown up with trains dividing and heading on to two different stations as the main trains from London often divide at my local station of Eastleigh and head to Weymouth or Poole in two

halves. The trains coming from the other direction then join together before heading up to London, providing a jarring bump to any passengers on board and often resulting in a delay, as one is twice as likely to occur with two trains. When joining a train that will divide, passengers are informed prior to boarding with overhead signs and announcements as well as on the trains, again with the overhead displays and announcements, so passengers can sit in the correct numbered carriage. Despite the warning, there are often passengers making last-minute dashes from one half of the train to the other. The ticket inspector sometimes also walks through the train checking passengers are in the correct section of the train. I do, however, worry that

this process may be completely missed for non-English speaking visitors. It can be confusing enough for native speakers. It's certainly not something I'd be looking for when traveling by train internationally. Apparently, though, the process is not only limited to the UK, with Australia, Belgium, Germany, Japan, and the United States also partaking. According to Wikipedia, you can partake in this madness yourself when traveling between Chicago and Portland or Seattle, dividing at Spokane, Washington, or from Chicago to New York or Boston, dividing at Albany, New York. And Joe sent a link to a Wikipedia page on this topic that I had actually hoped to find

before episode 307 and couldn't. I had searched in vain for information on splitting trains, but Wikipedia calls it dividing trains. So a couple of things caught my eye from the helpful article on dividing trains, with examples from the different countries that Joe mentioned. One was that there is a dividing train, part of which is operated by a German railway company and part by the Luxembourg National Railway Company, with the train dividing in Trier, Germany, near the Luxembourg border. Not only was the international aspect interesting to me, but even more unusual is that the German part of the train is a single deck, while the Luxembourg part is a double deck. So that must look a bit odd when they're joined, but I guess it would

make getting into the right section easier. The Wikipedia page also has a chart of dividing trains in the UK, and one of them apparently divides into three sections. It leaves London and splits in both Edinburgh and Waverley so that the different sections end up in Inverness, Aberdeen, and Fort William. So even more ways for you to end up on the wrong part of a train. Steve Kata from the UK also sent a link to the elusive Wikipedia page and added in this extra tidbit. A curious variation on the theme is trains that don't split so much as drop off some of their carriages to complete the rest of the journey lighter than pick them up again on their return journey. So yet another way to be in the wrong train car. I wonder now, historically, how all this came about. Like, who was the first

time to try this? And how did the passengers take it? It sounds like it's been going on to be in the wrong train car. I wonder now, historically, how all this came about. Like, who was the first? I don't know. What was the first time to try this, and how did the passengers take it? It sounds like it's been going on for decades. I mean, this isn't a new phenomenon from some of the articles I was seeing. Although the Wikipedia article didn't mention dividing trains in Canada, Fran wrote, Via rail trains in Canada often split, at least on the main corridor line. For example, one train will leave Toronto,

but then split a few hours into the trip with part of the train going to Montreal and the other half going to Ottawa. Employees are stationed all along the platform in Toronto to ensure that you get into the correct train car to reach your intended destination. France also wasn't mentioned, but we heard about such French trains from two listeners. One was my brother Bruce, who lived in France for a time, and said, long-distance trains in France also sometimes split, with the front cars and rear cars going to separate destinations. I had trouble finding any English language citations other than this one site. And he sent a link to a page on the Lonely Planet site that discusses transportation options in France and warns about splitting trains, saying, check the destination panel on your car as you board or you could wind up very far from where

you intended to go. Similarly, at Andy Wash tweeted, last month I traveled by train across northern and mid-France. My train from Paris split after two-thirds of my trip. My French being poor and there being no ticket check until after the split, I only realized this as halfway along the train, the carriage signs changed. Oh, that's interesting. It does seem like language might be an issue in figuring out these splitting trains, at least in some places. Bill Nace wrote, Japan has a similar system in a couple of places. I've been on the train going to the Osaka airport, plenty of signs in lots of languages, and the train topic of Japanese splitting trains, Xavier Seif wrote, Fortunately, the announcement was also in English. Thought this was a fun

intersection of two stories. They're all strangling together. And as for the dividing trains in the U.S. that Greg and I had managed to never hear about, Dave Morales, an Amtrak employee in Washington state, wrote to tell us about just such a train. It is known as the Empire Builder and travels back and forth between Seattle and Chicago. In Spokane, in the middle of the night, the train either splits into two trains when heading west or combines into one train when heading east. Heading east, one train starts in Portland and the other starts in Seattle. They meet in Spokane, join together, and continue on. Coming west, it's just the opposite. They break apart in Spokane and head

to their respective directions. Considering this happens at some point between midnight and 2 a.m., you definitely want to make sure you're in the right car when you go to sleep that night. And John Levine wrote, every evening the Amtrak Lakeshore Limited leaves Chicago and heads east toward New York. The following afternoon at Rensselaer, New York, near Albany, it splits and part of the train goes east to Boston while the rest returns south to New York. It would be unlikely for anyone to be on the wrong part of the train since it sits in Rensselaer for the better part of an hour, and when you get on, the conductor checks your ticket to be sure you're in the right car, but you get the idea. Their New York to Florida train, Silver Meteor and Silver Star, sometimes run as one train from New York to northern Florida, and then split with

one part going to Miami and the other part going west to Tampa. So several splitting trains in the U.S. that we managed to not know about. We should travel more. Apparently we should. And for another alternative answer to the puzzle, Mim F. wrote, Here in New South Wales, Australia, some of the more rural train stations are smaller than the big city ones. The platforms are only long enough to fit four train carriages along them. A standard intercity train, e.g. from Sydney to Newcastle, has eight carriages. When the train arrives at a smaller station, it stops at a point where the four back carriages line up with the station, and the front four carriages are sticking out. People getting off there need to travel in the rear carriages. If you got on too far forward and you ignored the various announcements, you could end up not being able to exit the train at your station and thus be said to have boarded the

train incorrectly. P.S. The local fire station uses a flagpole to dry their hoses, so I guess the tower puzzle right away. Here they attach the hose end where the flag would go up and then hoist it up. That works. And Paolo Conini sent a similar variation to MIMS, only for the UK. Even if your train isn't split, there are several stations where some carriages can't open the doors because the platform is shorter than the train. It's typically small local stations that longer distance services occasionally stop at, for example, at the weekend.

I came across it more than once on the Cotswold line, but I've since learned that the lake station in Warwickshire is so tiny that its platform can only accommodate one carriage. So if you want to alight there, you need to sit right at the front of the train. So thanks to everyone who wrote in on this topic and sent helpful links to examples of different dividing trains. We'll have some of them in the show notes for anyone who's interested. And if you ever have anything you'd like to write in about,

please send that to podcast at futilitycloset.com. It's Greg's turn to try to solve a lateral thinking puzzle. I'm going to give him an interesting sounding situation and he has to work out what's going on asking yes or no questions. Identical twins tend to have similar but not identical fingerprints. What other physical feature reliably differs between identical twins? Oh, what an interesting question. physical feature reliably differs between identical twins? Oh, what an interesting question. Differs reliably between identical twins. Yes. Wow. That's not something you could even, I guess, reason out. Okay. Is it a physical feature

as opposed to, say, some behavior or... Physical feature. Like fingerprints would be a physical feature, right? Okay. Is it commonly used among the population in general to identify people uniquely? No. Just like people don't normally use other fingerprints, right? Yeah, but I'm just trying to... Yeah, sure.

I'm trying to think how to narrow it down. That's very interesting. Yeah. I thought it was when. That's very interesting. Yeah. I thought it was when I came across this fact. Okay. So identical twins are so-called because in most traits, they're similar. Okay. And whatever it is, does this trait differ widely, would you say, between two twins?

It can. It could. It could. Like you say, between two twins? It can. It could. It could. Like you wouldn't think eye color or something would. Right. Right. Not between identical twins. And it's not.

And this reliably is different between the twins. I know some identical twins, and I'm trying to think what they. So this is something I could just, if I just met someone informally, would I see this? Not in most circumstances. Okay. That's a clue. You could potentially, but not usually. Is that because it's hidden, say, by clothing? Typically. Is it? Okay. Wow.

Okay. So it appears on the body somewhere. Yes. But it's hidden by clothing. Is it above the waist, would you say? Yes. Really? Maybe. Maybe not?

That's a difficult question to answer. Actually, now that I think about it. buttons it is belly buttons because belly buttons or navels are essentially a scar and not determined by genetics what a good puzzle and by the way the fingerprint differences of identical twins are due to the fact that fingerprints are determined by both genetics and environmental factors that impact a developing fetus, such as pressure on the fingers. That's really interesting. Yeah, belly buttons are scars. They're not genetically determined.

So thanks so much to everyone who sends in puzzles to us. We are always on the lookout for more. So if you have one you'd like to have us try, please send it to podcast at futilitycloset.com. If you'd like to become one of the awesome supporters of our podcast, please check out our Patreon page at patreon.com slash futilitycloset or see the support us section of the website at futilitycloset.com. While you're at the site, you can also graze through Greg's collection

of over 11,000 compendious amusements. Check out the Futility Closet store, learn about the two Futility Closet books, and see the show notes for the podcast, with links and references for the topics we've covered. If you have any comments or questions for us, you can email us at podcast at futilitycloset.com

The music in our show was all written and performed by my very talented brother-in-law, Doug Ross. Thanks for listening, and we'll talk to you next week.