In this week’s episode of the Futility Closet podcast we’ll share seven oddities from Greg’s research, from Arthur Conan Doyle’s encounter with a perceptive Boston cabbie to a computer’s failed attempts to rewrite Aesop’s fables.

We’ll also hear boxer Gene Tunney’s thoughts on Shakespeare and puzzle over how a man on a park bench can recognize a murder at sea.

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Sources for the items in this week’s episode:

Joseph Hatton, “Revelations of an Album,” in The Idler, April 1897.

Charles Dickens mentioned “MOOR EEFFOC” in an abandoned autobiography. Michael Quinion has a bit more at World Wide Words.

Albert Pierce Taylor, Under Hawaiian Skies, 1922.

“John Cazale,” IMDb (accessed 12/23/2015).

Ed Zern reviewed Lady Chatterley’s Lover for Field & Stream in November 1959.

John Strype, Ecclesiastical Memorials, Relating Chiefly to Religion, and the Reformation of It, 1822.

Noel Williams and Patrik Holt, Computers and Writing: Models and Tools, 1989.

Listener mail:

“Yale Students Hear Tunney,” Ottawa Citizen, April 24, 1928.

“Lauds Gene Tunney,” Lewiston [Maine] Daily Sun, July 11, 1929.

This week’s lateral thinking puzzle is from Jed’s List of Situation Puzzles.

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Many thanks to Doug Ross for the music in this episode.

If you have any questions or comments you can reach us at podcast@futilitycloset.com. Thanks for listening!