Futility Closet - 326-The Recluse of Herald Square

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 Lyndon Johnson's initials to Sherlock Holmes' forebears. This is episode 326. I'm Greg Ross.. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. In 1931, a 93-year-old widow was discovered to be hoarding great wealth in New York's Herald Square Hotel. Her death touched off an inquiry that revealed a glittering past and a great secret.

Starting point is 00:00:40 In today's show, we'll tell the story of Ida Wood, which has been called one of the most sensational inheritance cases in American history. We'll also revisit the candy bomber and puzzle over some excessive travel. At four in the afternoon on March 5th, 1931, an elderly woman's voice called down the corridor on the fifth floor of the Herald Square Hotel in New York City. It said, Maid, come here, my sister is sick. The door was open only two inches, but the maid, Margaret Kilkenny, was surprised to see it open at all. For 24 years, the women in suite 552 had kept to themselves, paying their bills in cash and exchanging sheets and towels with the floor maids only through a narrowly opened door.

Starting point is 00:01:31 The only member of the hotel staff who'd ever been inside the suite was the night elevator operator, Henry Grant, who every few days would fetch food for the women from the local deli. Always the same list. Bacon, eggs, coffee, crackers, butter, evaporated milk, and fish. Apart from this momentary interaction, they kept entirely to themselves. When the doctor arrived, the woman said she thought her sister was dying, but warned that she'd pay him no more than three dollars. She allowed him into the dark room, and when he flipped the light switch, he found he was standing in the only cleared space. The rest was piled high with dusty rubbish. Piles of old newspapers, cardboard boxes of every size, trunks, barrels, valises and hat boxes, balls of used string, rolls of carpeting, and stacks of

Starting point is 00:02:17 old wrapping paper, all of it thrown together without any sense or order. The second room was nearly as cluttered as the first. It contained a cot on which the woman's sister lay, comatose and scarcely breathing. There was a great swelling in her abdomen, and the doctor guessed she weighed no more than 75 pounds. He determined that she had terminal cancer. He asked their names. The woman who had summoned him was Ida Wood, and her dying sister was Mary Mayfield. Ida was 93 years old, Mary 91. They had moved into the two-room suite in 1907 with Ida's daughter, Emma, who had died in 1928 at age 71. Ida acknowledged Mary's condition but refused to have her moved. She herself never left

Starting point is 00:03:00 the suite, she said, and Mary had stopped some time ago. At an impasse, the doctor picked up his hat and bag and checked once more on the patient. He discovered that she had passed away moments before. When he told Ida, she said, oh dear, now she'll have to be buried, and that will cost money. Money should have been the last of Ida's concerns. She had once been the wife of Benjamin Wood, wealthy proprietor of the New York Daily News, a 19th century paper unrelated to the modern tabloid of that name. In her prime, she'd met Abraham Lincoln, entertained President Cleveland, danced with the Prince of Wales, and socialized with the Empress of France. Inquiries showed that the sisters had owned substantial stock in Union Pacific and that the sale of Ben Wood's newspaper had yielded hundreds of thousands of dollars. When Ida had closed her bank account at the Morton Trust in 1907,

Starting point is 00:03:48 she'd taken away nearly a million dollars in a netted bag. At the same time, she'd sold her furniture, oil paintings, sculpture, tapestries, stocks, and bonds, and withdrawn her money from other banks and trust companies. All this wealth was presumably now hidden among the mountains of junk in her rooms, but it was very hard to get a straight accounting from her. She had no relatives or friends, she said, and wouldn't agree to put her money in a bank. She refused to come out of her room and would allow no one in to clean it. All maids were thieves, she said, and the lawyers who offered to help her were crooks.

Starting point is 00:04:20 As newspapers began to publicize the case, hopeful relatives began to organize themselves into factions, each claiming a share in the fortune. When two psychiatrists were sent to examine Ida, she told them that by retreating to the hotel, she'd saved her money from the financial panic of 1907, and from people who she said were trying to get it. Even now, she said, people occasionally climbed into her rooms through the transom and stole things. Now, she said, people occasionally climbed into her rooms through the transom and stole things. She was found to be of unsound mind with what one doctor called a paranoid state of mind in the condition of senile deterioration. But she was still so mistrustful and uncooperative that it would take a thorough search of the cluttered suite to discover the extent of her wealth. One of the searchers said this was like jumping back into another century.

Starting point is 00:05:02 One trunk contained a lace dress marked Paris 1870. A letter from Charles Dickens dated 1867 promised to deliver a story to Ben Wood for a thousand pounds. In a cardboard box under some frying pans and cake tins, they found $95,000 worth of bonds. In a shoebox was $247,000 in cash, most in $1,000 and $5,000 bills. And the second of three discarded cracker boxes contained a diamond and emerald necklace worth $37,000. All of this was carefully accounted for and secured for Ida's protection, but she fought the investigators at every turn, misleading them constantly as to the extent and location of her wealth, and telling reporters, they're trying to put me away. misleading them constantly as to the extent and location of her wealth, and telling reporters,

Starting point is 00:05:51 To complete the search, they had to carry her forcibly downstairs to a suite on the fourth floor. She called out, You're only doing this so you can go through my things and steal my money, but you'll never find anything. I've hidden it too carefully. She was almost right. When she was asleep, a nurse discovered a canvas and oilskin bag under her skirt, suspended from her waist by a string. Inside was $500,000. With the valuables that had already been recovered, her fortune now totaled nearly a million dollars. The newspapers reported all of this eagerly. The New York Times was now publishing an up-to-date report on Ida's affairs nearly every

Starting point is 00:06:21 day, and these reports encouraged more and more people to contend for a share in her estate. That prospect was looking dramatic. The searchers eventually found a cracked yellow will dated July 9, 1889. It said that Ida's whole estate was to be divided equally between Mary and Emma, but both of these women had now pre-deceased her, leaving the fate of her fortune uncertain. When Ida passed away on March 12, 1932, she was 94 years old and weighed 70 pounds. She had remained tight-lipped to the last about her fortune and defiant of those who inquired about it. Her property now must go to her next of kin, but quite who that was was far from clear. When she'd arrived in New York in 1857, a dark beauty 19 years old, she had let it be known

Starting point is 00:07:06 that she was the daughter of Judge Henry Mayfield, a wealthy sugar planter from New Orleans. On her mother's side, she had come from distinguished Scottish ancestry, a descendant of the earls of Crawford. She attracted many suitors, but she soon set her eye on Benjamin Wood, a successful young businessman who, in three years, would be buying the Daily News. In May, she sent him a very direct note. Mr. Wood, sir, having heard of you often, I venture to address you from hearing a young lady, one of your former loves, speak of you. She says you are fond of new faces. I fancy that, as I am new in the city and in affairs de corps,

Starting point is 00:07:41 I might contract an agreeable intimacy with you, of as long duration as you saw fit to have it. I believe that I am not extremely bad-looking nor disagreeable, perhaps not quite as handsome as the lady with you at present, but I know a little more, and there is an old saying, knowledge is power. If you would wish an interview, address a letter to number blank, Broadway PO, New York, stating what time we may meet. They met soon enough, and from that moment were inseparable. They were seen together throughout the city, and in 1864, Ben moved in with her to a house he'd bought on 54th Street. During the Civil War, he and his newspaper supported the South so ardently that he was nearly indicted for treason. But by the time

Starting point is 00:08:22 he and Ida were married in 1867, she had the status and security she seems to have wanted, the wife of a wealthy and powerful publisher who went on to serve in the U.S. Congress and the New York State Senate. Ida had superior business judgment and took a hand in resuscitating the daily news after the war. For a time, it had the largest circulation of any daily U.S. newspaper, reaching 100,000 in 1870. That judgment would become important. Ben was a bon vivant and loved gambling at cards. He once wagered the entire newspaper and won.

Starting point is 00:08:54 But his skill weakened as he grew older, and by 1897, his creditors were threatening to petition him into bankruptcy. Ida had managed to save a fortune of her own by that time and gave him the money he needed in return for his controlling shares in the newspaper. By the time of his death in 1900, nearly everything he owned was in her name. She edited the newspaper herself for a year, and when she sold it in 1901 for $340,000, she insisted on payment in $1,000 bills, which were counted out before her. Despite all this success, as she grew older, she was gripped by a fear of dying in poverty. Walking on Fifth Avenue one day, she met a friend, a banker, who told her he was concerned about the country's deteriorating financial situation. When she asked him for advice,

Starting point is 00:09:39 he suggested she take her money out of banks. She did and disappeared with Mary and Emma into the Herald Square Hotel. When she and her fortune came to light again, it was 1931, in the midst of the Depression, and the news about Ida's uncertain estate aroused clamorous interest. Eventually, 1,103 people from every part of the United States and several foreign countries put themselves forward as her nearest relatives, pressing mountains of evidence through scores of attorneys into a court record that ran to thousands of pages. The outcome now depended on finding Ida's true next of kin, and that task fell to Joseph Cox, counsel for the public administrator of New York County. His painstaking

Starting point is 00:10:21 search spanned three years and two continents and took in church records, tombstones, and a cryptic memorandum that Ida had maintained throughout her life with obscured names, birthplaces, and burial dates. With time, he pieced together the truth. Ida E. Mayfield Wood, daughter of a wealthy Louisiana sugar planter, was really Ellen Walsh, daughter of a poor Irish textile worker. Her family had moved first to England and then, when Ellen was six, to Massachusetts, where she had grown up. The family had struggled there. Her father eventually moved to San Francisco to start a new life on his own, leaving her mother to support the family as a milliner. At length, they had moved to New York, where Ida had invented new identities for them as New Orleans aristocrats. She attracted Benjamin Wood and signed their marriage register as Ida Mayfield. Her sister Mary became Mary

Starting point is 00:11:10 Mayfield, her brother Michael became Henry Mayfield, and her mother became the widow of the planter Thomas Henry Mayfield. It appears that Emma, who spent her life believing she was Ida's daughter, may really have been her sister, though she herself never found out about this, living out her 71 years in an unwitting role that Ida needed her to play. Why did they need Emma to think she... It's not entirely clear. It's funny, it's amazing to read Cox on this, because he just devoted his life to this for more than three years,

Starting point is 00:11:39 and he says in the end there's just a lot of things we don't know, both because it's complicated and because it appears that Ida was deliberately trying to obscure all of it. But it looks—Ben only mentioned this in a letter in 1887, just one time. Publicly, he presented Emma as his own daughter because Ida wanted him to and so that Emma would accept him as such. Also, it just smoothed the way for her to inherit his wealth. He had some enemies who would have tried to fight her inheritance if she appeared to be a stepdaughter, for example. That's just one theory that Cox has. But he also thinks that Emma may have been Ida's illegitimate daughter from a relationship that she had before she met

Starting point is 00:12:16 Ben. It's just not clear. I see. After hearing the evidence, surrogate judge James Foley wrote, she was plainly actuated by her desire to suppress her humble origin and to assume an alleged social standing in the period before and after her marriage to Benjamin Wood. It is the jest of fortune that having attained wealth and prominence, she abandoned her pretense at the age of 60 and retired to strict seclusion. By way of direct contrast, during her last years in her talks and in her writings, she cherishes only the memory of her real parents and her Walsh and Crawford lineage. Even once Ida Wood's real identity had been established, it took another two years to find her true heirs. In the end, the court would award her estate not to the descendants of the Wood family, nor to the

Starting point is 00:12:59 hundreds of Mayfields who claimed to be her relatives, but to ten first cousins of Ellen Walsh, none of whom had ever met her. Each received about $84,000, a fortune in the late 1930s. This resolved the legal battle, but it left some larger questions that it seems will never be answered. Why had Ellen Walsh undertaken this deception, and how did she manage to remake her family's identity so completely? How did they maintain this fiction for decades, even as Ida Wood took a prominent role in New York society? After Ben's death, what had inspired the fear and mistrust that drove her into the Herald Square Hotel? And how had the three sisters passed 20 years alone together in two rooms? Presumably, Ellen Walsh had died hoping that the truth would never come to light. But Joseph Cox, the attorney who spent years puzzling out the solution, came to feel that she deserves

Starting point is 00:13:47 some sort of credit. He wrote, If Ellen is not so much a puzzle when the pieces of her life are put together, she remains by far the most fascinating figure in the case. To conceive and carry out a deception on so splendid a scale marks her as a woman of steadfast purpose, iron determination, and native intelligence. As the search for Ida Wood remains unique in the annals of litigation over estates, so does Ellen Walsh stand almost alone among her contemporaries who struggled to establish

Starting point is 00:14:14 themselves in the world of the 19th century. Few women faced greater odds. Even fewer succeeded as well. One of the stories in episode eight was about Gail Hal Halverson, nicknamed the Candy Bomber, a U.S. Air Force pilot who in 1948 started dropping candy bars on parachutes to besiege German children during the Soviet blockade of Berlin. Ken Somolino sent us a lovely update to this story back in October, but I've gotten a bit behind in the listener mail, so we're getting to this a little late. Ken said, Hey, Futilitarians, saw this headline and wouldn't have clicked on it if I hadn't recognized Halverson from the episode you did on him back in the day. That was one of my favorite episodes as it showed the power that human kindness can have.

Starting point is 00:15:04 Was happy to see he is still getting love for what he did. Also, thank you for using my lateral thinking puzzle in a recent episode. I was walking the dog and dropped the leash in surprise when I heard it come on. So I'm just glad Ken wasn't driving when he heard his puzzle and hopefully the dog didn't get too far. This was a great update that we would have missed if Ken hadn't sent it to us. Halverson, who is living in Utah, celebrated his 100th birthday back in October, and it was wonderful to see that he is still so warmly remembered. As Greg had reported in episode 8, those candy bars with their homemade parachutes meant a lot to the German children, and not just

Starting point is 00:15:42 as rather desperately needed food, but they also gave them hope and the knowledge that there were people who cared about what they were going through, and that even the supposedly hateful Americans could demonstrate kindness and humanity. Some of those children, now in their 80s and 90s, sent cards and Zoom messages for Halverson's birthday. Denise Williams, one of Halverson's five children who now helps care for her father, told the Washington Post that she had invited a number of the candy recipients to celebrate in person with Halverson, but they had to revise their plans due to the coronavirus. She told the Post, there are hundreds of people who will never forget my dad dropping those candy bars during the Berlin

Starting point is 00:16:19 airlift. He's beloved around the world for his positive attitude and giving heart. And his son, Bob Halverson, said, my dad helped to create an attitude shift in Berlin about America. I'm amazed at the number of people who continue to write to him about that airlift. They tell him that it's the one time they finally had hope. Dagmar Snodgrass, now 86 and living in Missouri, said of her experience with the candy drops, I was 14 and had seen too much evil to believe in anything good when the candy bomber made a place for himself in the heart of every West Berlin child. When a gust of wind carried that little parachute to me, you cannot imagine what it meant. Because of him, we started to believe that good could come out of bad. And Halverson said that that's just the lesson that he had

Starting point is 00:17:04 hoped people would take from his missions and said, my advice to people is the same today. Don't hate and don't be mad at your next door neighbor. If you want to get the best out of life, you have to forgive. And he added that sharing a little chocolate with others sometimes can't hurt either. That's great that that's still remembered so warmly now, so well, because it's a long time ago. Yeah, that was really nice to see. And it's also reported that Halverson last flew an airplane in December 2019 when he was 99. He was in the cockpit as the co-pilot of a C-54, the same kind of plane that he flew over Berlin that landed at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina as part of a candy bomber reenactment. And Greg had mentioned in his story in 2014

Starting point is 00:17:46 that Halverson had taken part in some commemorations in recent years. So it was cool to see that he's done it so recently. And also the governor of Utah declared October 10th, Halverson's 100th birthday, Gail S. Halverson Recognition Day. Wow, good for him. I know, I thought that was really cool.

Starting point is 00:18:04 I have two puzzle follow-ups next, and both will be spoilers. Cody Groon wrote, Greg and Sharon, I just listened to podcast number 166, where the lateral thinking puzzle was about a towing fatality, where a farmer pulls a pickup and the receiver hitch slash ball breaks, striking the head of the farmer, killing him. I was actually able to instantly guess this, mostly as a result of my work. I work with sugar beets, and there are many stories

Starting point is 00:18:30 shared of fully loaded semi-trucks being pulled by tractors out of a sugar beet field in muddy conditions. Unfortunately, there are also stories where the ropes or chains used at the time snap, springing forward through windows and gruesomely injuring or killing the tractor operator. A ubiquitous solution has been manufactured to avoid this and help our sugar beet farmers not become victims of more futility closet fatal lateral thinking puzzles. The products are referred to as safety pulls and are essentially larger hydraulically movable arms that mount in the three-point hitch on the rear of the tractor, with a cradle mounted out in front of each semi-truck that is bolted to the frame of the semi-truck. Because there is ridged metal making the connections, there is no longer the spring of the rope or chain flexing, which can then launch to the points of connection upon braking. Simple. And for those who wish a

Starting point is 00:19:20 different route, an old rubber tire mounted to the front of a 500-horsepower tractor will also work to just push those 80,000-pound semi-trucks out of the field. Feel free to Google or search YouTube and you'll discover some interesting aspects of sugar beet harvest when it's muddy in the fall. Thanks for all your work. And Cody sent links to a website about the safety pole and a video demonstrating it being used for just what the puzzle setup was, a tractor pulling a truck through heavy mud. According to the company's website, the safety pole was developed by a farmer after a fatal accident in North Dakota back in the 1990s. Apparently, the mud in the Red River Valley is rather notorious, and the site says that it has

Starting point is 00:20:00 provided an excellent testing ground through the last two decades. So now hopefully there won't be any more fatal towing accidents. I remember when that puzzle came in thinking, wow, that's an awful story, but I guess it's probably pretty rare, but apparently not. I mean, I was kind of... Yeah, it's unfortunate to hear that apparently this sort of thing was actually happening. Dismayed to find out how common that is. The puzzle in episode 317 was about a bar

Starting point is 00:20:25 using refrigerators to keep drinks warmer so that they wouldn't freeze, as the bar is in a hotel in Quebec made of ice and snow, and the ambient temperature would be below freezing. Sarah Hardesty wrote, hey Greg and Sharon, hope you are doing well in these quarantine times. I took my first trip to Wisconsin last year and arrived when it was a balmy 25 degrees. Mind you, it had been negative 25 degrees the month prior, so the locals thought the weather was quite pleasant and I saw folks wearing shorts. I still haven't gotten over learning that the purpose of coolers was to keep the beer from freezing when you went ice fishing, not to cool them as we're used to in the South. When Greg started answering the puzzle about the fridge in

Starting point is 00:21:04 Canada, I knew instantly where Sharon was going with it. One thing that was odd to me, however, was that on my trip, I was told that drinks in a fridge in a garage would freeze. The fridge cools off but doesn't keep the drinks from getting any colder. Perhaps these Canadian fridges are better insulated. After we did the puzzle, Greg was also a little unsure whether fridges would work properly in such cold conditions. A bit of a Google search showed me that a lot of people do say that refrigerators aren't meant to be used in unheated spaces, and that they won't work properly or they'll have shortened lives if you use them in unusually cold conditions, or that, as Sarah said, they won't keep things from freezing if the ambient temperature is that cold.

Starting point is 00:21:44 or that, as Sarah said, they won't keep things from freezing if the ambient temperature is that cold. But I also found some people on the Garage Journal forum who said that they do use fridges in spaces that get below freezing, with no problems for the fridges or the drinks inside them. One person, for example, said that their fridge will keep drinks from freezing unless the ambient temperature falls below negative 19 degrees Fahrenheit, or negative 28 Celsius. A webpage for the Hotel de Glace, with explicit instructions for how you'll need to dress while at the hotel, does say that in Quebec, outdoor winter temperatures range from negative 13 to 41 degrees Fahrenheit, or negative 25 to 5 degrees Celsius. So maybe it actually does work, given what some people were reporting about their fridges. I did also see a couple of references to expensive industrial refrigerators that are designed for use in rather cold environments, but I wasn't able to track down anything more specific.

Starting point is 00:22:33 Yeah, I guess I don't know much about this, but if people are actually in practice doing this, then that's kind of true. So at least some fridges apparently are able to make this work for them, but it might not be something that you could just do with any random fridge. During the solving for that puzzle, I had been a bit unsure about how to answer questions Greg posed that use the phrase room temperature, as I knew that the room temperature in the bar wasn't what people usually call room temperature. Graham Marshall wrote, I was on to the answer for one of the puzzles in episode 317 fairly quickly, I thought, but the answer was a bit different to what I thought. I remember some decades ago an Australian program that crossed live to the station in Australian Antarctic territory. The Aussies at the station were enjoying the relatively warm summer, putting some beers in their refrigerator to thaw out. Coincidentally, just last week I saw a picture from a town in Siberia where in winter it is 60 below in Celsius. I do not understand Fahrenheit. People were walking through the market

Starting point is 00:23:31 where somewhat incongruously meat was on open display. It then occurred to me that freezers are basically 18 below and refrigerators are set at four degrees, so the meat would need to be taken home and put in the refrigerator to thaw out, or the freezer to be a little less frozen, maybe. I have read in cooking advice that it is best to let some ingredients come up to room temperature before using them, such as milk, cheese, butter. Yep, depends on what you mean by room temperature. Cheers and love the show, of course. Makes sense.

Starting point is 00:23:59 And Joe Wren wrote to us, Hello, pod crew. I'm a long-haul truck driver, and I'm currently at paint equal visit sitting in my truck 2,000 kilometers from home. My son put me onto Futility Closet about six weeks ago, and I've started listening from episode one. Being a long-haul driver means I'm in my truck for about 14 hours a day, so I get to listen to you guys a lot. I'm currently up to episode 250. It helps the kilometers go by quick. Probably a while ago now, but quite recently to me, you were talking about names and forms.

Starting point is 00:24:29 It reminded me of my uncle from the UK who used to be in the Royal Navy. Once, on assignment in the US, he was being asked questions for his security clearance. He was asked his first name. Richard, he replied. Then middle name, to which he responded, no middle name, which was followed by a moment of silence, and then, last name? Ren, he replied. Then middle name, to which he responded, no middle name, which was followed by a moment of silence. And then last name, Wren, he said. When he got his ID tag back, it read Richard NMN Wren. So maybe the U.S. Navy don't allow blanks on their forms. Anyway, thanks for all you guys do. You have one of the best and most interesting podcasts out there. And I'll go into withdrawal once I catch up and can only hear you once a week.

Starting point is 00:25:03 there, and I'll go into withdrawal once I catch up and can only hear you once a week. So plugging paint.equal.visit into what3words.com, I was able to find out that Joe was a bit north of Adelaide in South Australia. We've discussed issues with programs or forms not being able to accommodate some people's names a few times, such as in episode 223, where I covered that the magician Teller has a driver's license that reads NFN Teller, for no first name, Teller. So now we know that you can officially have NFN or NMN in the U.S. if you don't have the approved number of names to go into the different blank spaces. I had no idea they did that. Thanks so much to everyone who writes to us. We really appreciate people taking the time

Starting point is 00:25:44 to send us their comments and follow-ups. So if you have any that you'd like to share, please send them to podcast at futilitycloset.com. It's my turn to try to solve a lateral thinking puzzle. Greg is going to give me an odd-sounding situation, and we're going to see if I can figure out what's going on asking yes or no questions. In 1985, after a holiday abroad, California college student Michael Lewis reached Los Angeles International Airport and then boarded a flight to New Zealand 6,000 miles out of his way. Why did he do this? Oh, my gosh. There's so many possible reasons. Okay.

Starting point is 00:26:26 Does it matter where he was coming from? No. Okay. So he had been abroad, and it doesn't matter where he was? It was Germany, but no, it doesn't matter. Okay. And then he returned to Los Angeles? Yes.

Starting point is 00:26:40 And then got on a flight to New Zealand? Yes. Okay. Is it important that he's a college student? No. Or that he's roughly that age? No. Okay. Is it important that he's a college student? No. Or that he's roughly that age? No. Okay.

Starting point is 00:26:51 Why would you get onto a flight to New Zealand? Was he going to somehow benefit financially from doing this? No. So he wasn't going to benefit financially. Did he want to be in New Zealand? No. It's just like, hey, let's go to New Zealand. Not a very good puzzle. Why did a guy decide to go to New Zealand? Okay, he didn't actually want to go to New Zealand.

Starting point is 00:27:16 So he's going to go to New Zealand, and then presumably he's going to go somewhere next. No. Is he going to stay in New Zealand for some period of time? Oh, he returned to the United States. So he went to New Zealand and then came right back to the United States. Yes. Was it to get out of the U.S.? Like he needed to be out of the U.S.? No. Okay, because I could think of all kinds of law enforcement situations or... Okay.

Starting point is 00:27:36 Sure. So he comes into Los Angeles. Does some amount of time pass before he gets on a plane to New Zealand, or is that important? It's not important. A small amount of time, but it's not important. Gets on a plane to New Zealand and then comes right back to the US. Yes. Okay. Was this a mistake? Yes. Did he like fall asleep in the airplane? No. Was he a stowaway or something? No. It was a mistake. It was a mistake. Did he get on the wrong plane? Yes.

Starting point is 00:28:08 So the question is, why did he get on a plane to New Zealand? Did he speak English? Yes. Were the announcements or whatever he was listening to was in English and not another language? Yes. And I'll say, on three different occasions, airline staff members confirmed his destination and he agreed. different occasions, airline staff members confirmed his destination and he agreed. Did he go to some place in New Zealand that has the same name as a city in the U.S.?

Starting point is 00:28:32 No. Did he go to some place in New Zealand that has the same name as a place in the U.S.? Asking that without the city part in it. Oh, no, but I'm trying to look at you significantly because you're on the right path. You're close. He went to New Zealand thinking he was going to someplace in the US. Yes. Is it because of like airport codes or the name of an airport or something? No.

Starting point is 00:28:56 Okay. Why would he think someplace in New... It has to do with language, sort of. Was it to do with accents and that he was mishearing what people were asking him? Yes. That New Zealand sounded like something else to him. That's basically it. Lewis had intended to take a connecting flight to Oakland, California.

Starting point is 00:29:14 Instead, he followed directions for passengers to Auckland, New Zealand. Oh! Lewis said they announced over the speakers that all passengers to Oakland should wait in the waiting lounge. Back aboard the plane, two staff members asked him if he was going to Auckland, and he said yes. He told the Los Angeles Times, they didn't say Auckland, they said Oakland. They talk different. The airline gave him a free flight back to LA. Wow, I wonder how many hours he ended up on a plane for.

Starting point is 00:29:41 Yeah, 6,000 miles. Because he missed, well, you know, Auckland does sound a lot like Oakland, and if you don't know that there's an Auckland, New Zealand, like you've never heard of that. And he's probably not the first person

Starting point is 00:29:50 this has happened to. We are always on the lookout for more lateral thinking puzzles. So if you have a puzzle you'd like to send in for us to try, please send that to podcast at

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Starting point is 00:30:35 At our website, you can graze through Greg's collection of over 11,000 delightful distractions, browse the Futility Closet store, learn about the 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 questions or comments for us, you can email us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. Our music was all written and performed by my incredible brother-in-law, Doug Ross. Thanks for listening, and we'll talk to you next week.

Futility Closet - 326-The Recluse of Herald Square

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