139: Unequal cufflinks

Which sportsman has a son called Thunder and a daughter called Olympia Lightning?

The answer to that at the end of the show.

My name's Tom Scott and this is Lateral.

Hello and welcome again to another 40 minutes or so of lateral thinking questions based on fascinating facts and amazing stories.

Please remember to have your bucket of water, box of candles and parmesan cheese on standby.

To our regular listeners, don't worry, I know that you don't actually need those things, but I really hope that just a moment some new listener was confused.

However, none of our guests today are going to be confused because they are all returning players.

First of all, we have professional puzzle editor and writer for the Quiz Show Only Connect, Dan Peak.

Welcome back.

Hello, thank you for having me again.

Did you bring the Parmesan cheese?

I brought cheddar.

Is that going to be okay?

In a sentence that will annoy every cook out there, it's going to be close enough.

You can just great chat on everything.

It'll be fine.

I like that we're now going into pedantic cookery here.

My job is sort of be sort of to be surrounded by pedants in terms of quiz questions and just I get feedback sometimes and go, I think you'll find you were slightly incorrect.

And I love the feedback that I get.

I once asked a question, Hell's Kitchen is a suburb of which

city?

Yep.

The answer being

New York City, as far as I know.

Good.

But no, because it's not really a suburb, is it?

I meant suburb as a sort of, you know, a part of the town.

And I got an email in saying,

I take issue with the word suburb.

And do you know what?

I actually think they're right.

I think they're right.

A suburb is more on the outskirts of a town, slightly less dense.

Hell's Kitchen is very much in the centre of New York City.

It is not a suburb.

Now, you write for OnlyConnect, where the biggest prize is a trophy and a lot of kudos.

That's obviously a lot more important if there's money on the line for those questions.

Oh, absolutely.

It's why I try and deal with nothing to do with money.

I try to stay far away from those quizzes.

Likewise, we do not guarantee the accuracy of any of these questions.

Very best of luck to the pedants out there.

Also joining us today, we have from her own YouTube channel and the queer movie podcast, Roman Ellis.

Hello, thanks for having me back again.

Welcome back to the show.

How much pedantry do you get in the feedback for your shows and your video essays?

Not as much as I would have thought, to be honest.

I feel like like a lot of the stuff I talk about is kind of film and TV and movies and interpretation of it.

And the author is dead, baby.

So I feel like it's a lot less opportunity for pedantry than a quiz question writer would have.

Well, very best of luck avoiding the pedants on the show today.

We also have on the show someone who honestly must deal with more pedants than any of us, the host of technology connections on YouTube, Alec Watson.

How are you doing?

Hi, it's great to be here.

And you are absolutely correct.

How many follow-ups have you had to do?

How many little

connection corrections have you had to make?

Well, these days I'm better at just letting that sort of stuff go, but

it's great fodder for content.

Oh, yes, it absolutely is.

I've managed to get an entire video out of just things I messed up over the years.

It's good stuff, but just

a little irritating.

Yeah, yeah, it really is.

Thank you very much to all of you for being here.

Good luck today.

And if you are a new listener, now's the time to light the candle for question one.

Jordan is paid to make the numbers one, two, three, and four four times each.

The number five twice and the number zero a total of eighteen times.

What is his job?

I'll say that again.

Jordan is paid to make the numbers one, two, three, and four four times each.

The number five twice and the number zero a total of eighteen times.

What is his job?

Is he a terrible Sudoku?

Although these days, they're very varied, so actually, maybe it's a perfectly valid Sudoku.

You never know.

I was about to pedant you, ironically, on your Sudoku knowledge there.

They're not all one to nine these days, no.

Oh, dang, okay.

People do get paid for making Sudokus.

Someone has to compile those in the first place.

That's true.

Including, I believe, producer David of this show.

He's done quite a bit of Sudoku work in his time.

He knows his numbers from one all the way to nine.

It's amazing.

So, okay, I listen, we've all been on this show before.

We know how your sick games work, Thompson.

And what I'm really...

And yet I'm getting the blame for that, not David the producer.

David's innocent and has never done anything wrong with his stuff.

So I feel like it's

the way that that question reads, just and because of the way that human minds work we do things in order from beginning to end so it's it would be as if someone's writing one two three four one two three four one two three four and then going and then like 18 zeros at the end

but i think that that we need to be thinking more complicated than that in terms of what possible order could someone be writing these in is this a is this telephone numbers is this like there's so many things where those numbers could be in different in different orders is this prices of stuff is this like there's lots of of options and i wanted to break myself out of assuming anything based on this question

the uh

the first thing that came to mind was um

like someone writing numbers on a scoreboard

and

I don't know.

I'm pulling on that because now you said 18 zeros, right?

Yeah.

You almost seemed guilty the way you said that.

I don't know why.

There was some kind of, oh, I feel a little bit guilty for answering with a sports thing here.

Well, I mean, yeah, that's just generally my character.

But 18 zeros, there's nine innings in baseball, two teams.

I know a little bit of math.

What was the list of numbers again?

Was it one to four, four times?

Yep.

A couple of fives.

Yep.

And then all zeros.

And then 18 zeros, yes.

Well,

okay.

So one to four, four times, that's 16 numbers.

And a couple of fives, that's 18 numbers.

It is.

So are we going to be dealing with 0, 1, 0, 2, 0, 3, 0, 4, or are we going to be dealing with 10, 20, 30, 40 four times, and then 50?

It's going to be two digit numbers.

Probably the tens, because otherwise, why would you bother with the leading zeros?

Yep.

I don't know where we're going with that, but that's the facts.

Hmm.

Yeah.

Excellent deduction.

Could you read the question one more time, Tom?

Jordan is paid to make the numbers 1, 2, 3, and four four times each, the number five twice, and the number zero a total of eighteen times.

What is his job?

Did you say paint or make?

Make.

Hmm.

Make the numbers.

So not write them, make them.

Yes.

Okay.

So he's making it out of a material.

Or he's making up those numbers out of something else or he's

make...

What comes comes in 10 20 30 40 50 i'm currently thinking road limit sort of signs or things like that but it doesn't quite work

why that specific set as well it's not like oh this was his this was his

his set of roads today there's not there's going to be a specific reason why it's this set of 18 numbers yeah and i the the fact that there's nothing

six seven eight and nine are not mentioned is

rowan is actually right with paint

it is a type of paint but we're describing this as make it's not like he's just kind of writing these down

okay

they're probably going to be big or yes

yep absolutely and Alec was honestly quite close with scoreboard

oh yeah

Yeah,

I thought it was going to be Dan that got this.

Knowing what you three know and what you've talked about in the past, I thought this was going to be Dan.

Bring it home.

Well, I'm going to guide Alex, Alec, because you're so close.

It is sporting.

I think the sport, or Rowan might have gone it, American football?

It is American football, yes.

Rowan, what do you think it is?

I don't know enough to know exactly, but is it the yard lines?

Like the...

the numbers to show where they are.

I should have pulled on there because, yeah, they don't.

50 is the middle and then they just go right down.

Yep, Jordan Aceh is the groundskeeper at the LA Chargers Stadium, and part of his job involves re-spraying the field to mark the yardage numbers.

And those numbers are 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 in the center, and then 40, 30, 20, 10.

Those are repeated on each side, so that is 18 numbers.

And in total, 1, 2, 3, and 4, 4 times, 5 twice, and the number 0.

18 times.

I love that I've tried baseball.

How can we describe someone's job in the most most awkward way possible?

Each of our guests has brought a question along with them.

Dan, we're going to start with you.

Take it away.

Okay, so this question has been written by a Dan Peake.

Oh,

okay.

We have a guest-written question.

I have prepared it on a lateral cue card and everything.

From the live show.

You took one of the cards from the live show.

I did.

Wonderful.

Going the whole hog.

Yeah, appreciate it.

All right, so good luck.

So you're literally against me now.

Meteorologists measure cloud cover in octas, ranging from zero clear sky to eight, fully overcast.

So four octas means that half the sky is covered with cloud.

However, sometimes a reading of nine octas is recorded.

Why?

Meteorologists measure cloud cover in octas ranging from zero clear sky to eight fully overcast.

So four octas means that half the sky is covered with cloud however sometimes a reading of nine octas is recorded why

if i remember right dan you studied meteorology i did yep okay

so this has come from that

the most personal question we've ever had that is about nothing in someone's personal life it's great that's true because i'm no longer a meteorologist i abandoned it i studied it for eight years at university finally got a job in it and then went i don't like it

Just had to change.

So, okay, so how would a meteorologist measure this?

Is there like an instrument that's used?

Is it just they look up at the sky and go, it's pretty overcast.

That seems pretty overcast to me.

So, I don't know if it's like at nine, it's so foggy that you can't even see past the fog into the sky to know what the clouds are doing.

Well, I was wondering if nine is just fog.

Nine is just so much.

I was thinking that nine was like no data.

We can't work this out, but that feels like more of a computer science science.

There's better ways of doing it.

You'd mark it as like a dash or

something like that.

So you lot are getting very close to the answer very quickly, which is annoying me greatly.

Why?

Would it...

Because sometimes clouds layer themselves, so you could have completely obscured vision of clouds above fog.

Isn't the tool that is used to measure this, like, I feel like I've seen this, it's like there's a, you look at a slice of the sky.

There are modern instruments now that could probably do it for you, but classically, it is a meteorologist going up there and having a look.

Wonderful.

Is it like places where you are above the cloud cover, like mountains or something, if you were to take

so it's like there's something

about like the type of place where a nine would happen

i feel like that would still be measured like in what was it octas octas yeah but you'd just have to put the height there like the cloud base would be defined by a different number

is this just like a spinal tap meteorologist

there's there's just really beautiful clouds up there you know what that's that's a nine yeah we're not judging them on their looks no that's not what we're doing with clouds here so we were close with fog right extremely extremely the meteorologist did not bother to go outside because it was really cold oh oh there have been times when that's happened i'm sure oh just just yeah it looks cloudy

put an eight you know i'm sure that must have happened i know i i never filmed this but a couple of people suggested that i should go and visit the worst weather in the world

which is I think the Mount Washington Observatory somewhere in the northern US has the highest wind speeds, the most frequent blizzards, just the worst everything.

And the trouble is that if I talk about that, I have to be there in one of those blizzards.

And by definition, it's inaccessible.

There is just a couple of meteorologists stuck at the top of a mountain.

So let's go back to

you were saying

you were really close earlier.

I want you to hammer it home.

Really, really close earlier.

There's one word that you said that's really important.

Is it just like dense fog?

Fog is the important word.

So why might we record ninoctas?

Is it just like they can't see the clouds?

So they don't know how overcast it technically is at the cloud level.

If you're in a fog,

how do you

see

the sky?

Could not see clouds because clouds.

Could not see sky.

Could not see sky.

Could not see

it's not only fog, there are other things that can obscure the sky.

Can you think of any?

Oh, like a dust cloud or dust storm.

Dust, smoke from any wildfires, that sort of thing.

Absolute pitch black night.

No.

No.

You can measure zero to eight at night.

That is not a problem.

Because actually clouds are quite visible at night.

depending on the moon and things like that.

So actually nighttime, not a problem.

But it's when you can't see the sky.

That's when you get the nine.

Thank you to Zach for this next question.

Romeo and Juliet meet an artist at a craft fair who sells upcycled cufflinks.

When they inquire about the price, the artist says that Romeo's cufflinks will cost $5, whereas Juliet's will cost $25, even though they're made the same way and use the same materials.

Why?

It's the pink tax.

And one more time, Romeo and Juliet meet an artist at a craft fair who sells upcycled cufflinks.

When they inquire about the price, the artist says that Romeo's cufflinks will cost $5, whereas Juliet's will cost $25,

even though they're made the same way and use the same materials.

Why?

Same way, same materials, but there's got to be something functionally different.

I mean, the difference is one's for Romeo and one's for Juliet, but it's whether or not it's them,

what part of those two figures makes a difference.

So is it their name?

Is it their gender?

Is it their method of murder-suicide?

Is it their

You know, does it matter anything about them in the Shakespeare context or is it entirely just like too ratty?

Like it could have been like Ben and John or something like that.

I think it's interesting that there's it's upcycled cufflinks.

I don't know if there's anything significant because it feels like a random thing to just add in as like a fun, like, why not?

You know, support local artists.

But I wonder what the upcycling is from.

Like, what are they making cufflinks from?

or is it like there are cufflinks that already exist and they're upcycling them by putting something like like stamping something into them or or doing something with them that might make a change

is is the are both romeo and juliet getting the same number of cufflinks

they're both getting a pair yes does juliet have extremely large wrists and does have reinforced cuff links because that's the only way can get them to keep the shirt cuffs cuffs closed.

I was trying, I was like thinking about if it was, yeah, if you if you stamped it and wanted to emboss like

letters or something into it, but it feels like that both of their names are pretty much the same, including surnames, if we're going with the Shakespeare.

So it kind of feels like that's it's not really to do with that.

Like, you know, sometimes it's like pay by number

of number of letters or number of like things done, so not that.

You've correctly identified that these are personalized.

It's something to do with the name, yes.

Oh,

interesting.

We're thinking Romeo and Juliet is a pair.

What if it is just two entirely different people?

It is just a Romeo and a Juliet.

So entirely different, not connected to people.

Because then you could have a, what was it, $5 and $25.

It's just five times as many.

Is there some like obscure tax scheme somewhere that some letters are more expensive than other letters?

It's like Scrabble.

Oh, you want to say that'll be 10.

Keep thinking that way, Dan.

Because you'd think that Zara's cufflinks would be expensive, but that's not the case.

Have I accidentally hit it?

I think I might have done.

Well, you've hit something.

Yes, the cufflinks are made from genuine Scrabble tiles.

Yeah.

You've absolutely hit that.

Yeah.

But why is Romeo cheap and Juliet expensive?

And I'll say this, Rowan.

Ben and John, same thing.

Ben would be five.

John would be 25.

Oh.

It's not the total of their value in Scrabble.

It's not.

It's not that.

But I will say I want me some of these cufflinks.

Yep.

And they are monograms, so it is just that first initial.

Oh.

Ooh, J and R.

So is it just proportional to the number of tiles in a set of Scrabble?

Because, yeah, it's like rarity, isn't it?

If you want a common letter, then

I'll sell that to you really cheaply.

But an uncommon letter, you will pay for that, my friend.

That is half of it.

But Zara's cufflinks would not be expensive.

There is one other connection here that you need to make.

You're right, it is about Scrabble tiles as cufflinks.

It is about the rarity of the tiles in part, but there's one other thing.

Okay, so would they want the letter to be unobscured by whatever hardware has to be attached to the tile?

No, it really is about the names and the letters.

Okay.

This is just discrimination.

Discrimination by first letter of name, it turns out.

Not a protected class.

You can,

if you were cheeky, you could make a Z from an N, could you?

Is that rotated N degrees or is that flip the wrong?

No, the number would be in the wrong place for that.

Good point.

And also, I think it is flipped the wrong way around.

It's not just to do with the rarity of the Scrabble letters.

Depending on the country you're in, if you've got a J in a country that has a lot of like Juan's or something like that,

it would have already been there.

Oh, yeah.

John's, Juliet's, James's.

So is this person charging for like every time they have to buy a new Scrabble set?

Basically, yes.

J is the most difficult letter to do that for because it begins a lot of common forenames, but there is only one J in a Scrabble set.

Ah,

it's the frequency of the names as well as the tiles.

Yes.

There are six Rs in a Scrabble set.

So Romeo, easy, cheap.

Q, X, and Z, yes, there's only one in a Scrabble set, but there aren't that many people whose names start with that letter.

J is particularly difficult because there are a lot of names that start with it and only one in a set.

This is actually a personal anecdote from Zach who sent this question in.

He said, I bought some scrambled tile cufflinks from an Etsy seller once.

It was $5 for any tile, but $25 for a J.

That's so funny.

Rowan, it is over to you for the next question.

This question has been sent in by Duda.

One November in Brazil, a young woman walks into a room with 30 strangers.

Instantly she knows all their names.

Why?

Read it again.

One November in Brazil, a young woman walks into a room with 30 strangers.

Instantly she knows all their names.

Why?

They're wearing name tags.

Correct, I'll move on.

Yeah, here we go.

Next one.

No, they're not.

The details.

This is all about the details.

November, Brazil, Rome.

All about the details.

I love these short questions where it's just like, yeah, good luck.

There's not much to hang on here.

My first thought was, 30 days has November.

And this is November and there are 30 people.

So maybe this is some kind of weird local tradition for calendar days.

They're all lined up or something like that.

No, but I'm obsessed with that.

I wish that would have been so smart.

No, sadly not.

Some equivalent of the Advent calendar that we have, where there's like just for every day in November, where there's an actual person.

So you said strangers, right?

Yes.

Like this can't be like November is about how long it takes in the school year for a teacher to memorize all their students' names because they're not strangers.

Right.

Exactly.

Okay.

That got a lot easier for me in university when Facebook came along.

Facebook came along like a couple of years into my university life and suddenly I was memorizing names so much faster than I used to because every time I went on there, little photo, little picture.

Should have just made note cards or something, but you know,

actually, that's literally what the Facebook was originally meant to be, wasn't it?

That's literally why US universities used to make Facebooks.

Sorry, I've just realized that maybe 15 years too late.

Carry on while I just deal with that.

Did you say Brazil or was it a city in Brazil?

Never been.

Want to go.

I want to go right now to escape this question.

So interestingly, Alec,

you weirdly stumbled not on like what you were saying was the correct answer, but kind of the setting of it.

Because I can tell you that all of these strangers are in their final year of high school.

Oh.

They are all students.

Hmm.

I don't know when the school year runs in Brazil.

I'm going to stab that November is towards the end of it and maybe that they're taking exams and she knows their names because maybe they've got to sit in a particular arrangement or something based on their names so they could take an exam

yes keep going that is

you're halfway through the answer to the question dad and they're all called cliff is that the other half they all have the same name cliff roger romeo juliet they're all juliet it is just like a standardized test where they're being given a packet based on where they sit and so or something like that or people are invited to the test based on their name alphabetically.

And this is just a really common name.

And we're at that day where there are 30 cliffs.

I don't know why we're stuck on cliff, but I like it.

This is just a room full of cliffs because there's just 200 cliffs to get through.

And today we're invigilating cliffs.

Somehow together, all of you have gotten to the right answer

in your own little bits.

So yeah, these are these are students taking a test who have all been sorted by four name.

In Brazil, in particular, in November, they take a standardized test when they're applying to college.

And test applicants are assigned to classrooms based on their names.

So, if your name is common, then you might end up in a classroom filled with people with the exact same name as you.

And this was the person who submitted this actually, like, this is another personal anecdote,

said, in my case, I was in a school where two classrooms were filled with girls named Maria Eduarda.

For many other common names, Ana Maria Pedro, for example, this happens as well.

That's great.

I'm not sure how I'd feel about suddenly being assigned to a room full of toms.

And also, if you needed to attract the attention of one in particular, what were their names again?

Cliff.

Yeah, Anna, Maria, Pedro, Cliff.

All of them.

Anna, and then everybody looks up.

No, no, no, Anna.

And then everyone else but one just puts their head down.

Well, I just went on a little creative retreat and for the first time, really ever, I was in a space with someone else called Rowan.

And that is a real, I re I realized, Tom, and probably Dan as well, what your life is like.

And I hate it because I was constantly looking up and they were not simply not talking to me.

It's really weird.

I've like literally never had that happen before.

I get to experience both because my name is so close to Alex, I have to just answer to it.

But that's not my name.

So I'm in a weird middle ground there.

I get around this by just ignoring the people around me.

Good life, Hack.

Thank you to Aris for this question.

On the island of Crete, a museum has a display that's labeled Hermes, Aphrodite, Gaia, and Ares.

Name one of the other labels you'd see on the exhibit and explain why.

I'll say that again.

On the island of Crete, a museum has a display that is labeled Hermes, Aphrodite, Gaia, and Ares.

Name one of the other labels you'd see on that exhibit and explain why.

Well, I assume it can't be the obvious.

What's the obvious, Rowan?

It's they're Greek gods, right?

The

like Aphrodite of love or Roman, I can't remember which one.

And Hermes is the messenger god, I want to say, and the Gaia's the goddess of the earth.

And I can't remember the other one you said.

Aries.

Aries of war.

They're Roman, though.

I've just realised.

Yes, and Dan is nodding, so I suspect he has indeed worked this one out correctly.

Yeah, I think I've got this one, so I'll hang back.

Rowan, you are right.

These are Greek gods, and you have identified all those four correctly.

So I'm wondering if there's some connection between what they are the gods of.

Like there's a saying or something, or there's like song lyrics, or there's something going on with like what they are

other gods of that connect them in some way, potentially.

Yes, I'm going to keep my mouth shut because you're doing very well here.

I don't really want to throw this out there because it's either...

Well,

would Neptune be correct?

Neptune would not be correct because Neptune is a Roman god.

Ah, okay.

Poseidon.

Are they emojis or something?

Is it like

a heart for Aphrodite?

Or like apps that have, that use the symbols in like their logos or like companies companies with logos or something the good news is rowan you take the first part of the question here poseidon is one of the possible other answers but i think that alec has now also worked out why

because of the planets because of the planets yes what is going on here

is this just what different language because like not every spoken language necessarily uses the same names for the planets Is that all that it is?

This is like a planetarium?

It is a planetarium.

This is planet Crete in Crete, Greece.

Dan, I think you've made the last connection here.

So I think these are the Greek gods associated with those planets.

Gaia is certainly Earth.

Yes.

And that doesn't really have a Roman equivalent, I don't think.

Right?

Earth is not named after a god.

So that was the in for me.

So, Rowan, runners through the gods.

Hermes is.

The messenger god, I want to say.

Which translates to?

Mercury.

Yep, Aphrodite.

Is love, which would be Venus, yeah.

And then Mars is the.

Is Aries the god of war?

Yes.

And you correctly got Poseidon, which would be Neptune.

Does anyone want to take a guess at Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus?

Jupiter is...

Zeus.

Zeus is right, yes.

Ah, okay.

And Poseidon is Neptune.

The other two are much more obscure.

Saturn would be Cronus and Uranus would be Uranus.

Makes sense.

These are the Greek gods for the planets because this is a planetarium in Greece.

Of course.

I hadn't made that final connection that it was in Crete.

Yes.

When you say that, I should have said

there's a south suburb of Chicago called Crete.

I was like, is it there?

That's why it's a bit because I was like, Crete, okay, that's Greece.

So then I was like, wait, is the then I thought, because when I started to gaslight myself that these were the Roman names, because suddenly I was like, oh, is this the thing that's significant?

That they're Roman, but in Crete?

And it was like, no, no, it's actually the exact opposite way around, Rowan.

Charlie Sheen is an icon of decadence.

I lit the fuse and my life turns into everything it wasn't supposed to be.

He's going the distance.

He was the highest paid TV star of all time.

When it started to change, it was quick.

He kept saying, no, no, no, I'm in the hospital now, but next week I'll be ready for the show.

Now, Charlie's sober.

He's going to tell you the truth.

How do I present this with any class?

I think we're past that, Charlie.

We're past that, yeah.

Somebody call action.

AKA Charlie Sheen, only on Netflix, September 10th.

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Alec, it is your question.

Take it away.

This question has been sent in by Andrews DK.

One night, thieves broke into the office of Belgo Control in Brussels.

They stole a heavy, secure safe full of legally protected documents.

When employees noticed the vault had been pinched, they were happy.

Why did they have this reaction?

And why weren't they found negligent?

One more time.

One night, thieves broke into the office of Belgo Control in Brussels.

They stole a heavy, secure safe full of legally protected documents.

When employees noticed the vault had been pinched, they were happy.

Why did they have this reaction?

And why weren't they found negligent?

Is this company like a security company?

And this was an experiment using like their competitors' security system or something.

And the idea was like, yeah, we're going to just put this safe here and we're going to like set it up and see if people are willing to try and steal from someone who uses our competitors and whether those systems are good enough.

And so when it got stolen, they were like, that's exactly what we wanted.

We wanted someone to steal it.

I am pretty sure that Belgo Control or Belgio Control is the Belgian air traffic control systems.

I think.

And I don't know that.

I just feel like that's the correct vibes for that name.

For me, the names feels like a transport company.

It definitely feels in the world of transport.

Don't know why.

I'm not sure the specific thing this company or organization does is that important to the question.

All right.

But the safe contained legally protected documents.

So that's got to be important as well.

What was in the safe?

I guess it's like if it's in a safe, we're assuming that this is stuff that was

the logic of the question is right, like it's in a safe and the things we know about things that are in safes is that they are precious and we want to keep them safe, hence the name.

Hence the name.

And someone's stolen them that these people are both happy about it and they aren't found negligent, which is the weird stuff because normally if it might be like they were devastated and it was a bad thing, but then it was fine because they weren't found negligent because of some other bit.

I feel like every aspect of this question is tearing me in different directions.

I thought it might be like a listed building where they can't change it, they can't do anything to it, but it's a massive responsibility for them.

And suddenly, someone has stolen it.

Oh, it's not our problem anymore.

We no longer have to deal with this thing, and it's not our fault.

We can't get

done for it.

Can't get done for it.

Sorry, am I a schoolchild from the 90s?

That's along the right lines, as far as why,

as far as the reaction.

But you're not quite there as to

why specifically they were relieved.

Oh, is it like the documents are to do with like

employee discipline or something like that?

Like the records, they were like written records of stuff that the employees were like, and I don't want anyone to find out about this.

Get rid of them.

The people who are going to be fired next week are...

Oh, no one.

No one now.

It's all gone.

Why did you say that in the manner of a reality TV elimination?

In no particular order.

Making their way through and staying employed with the company next week are.

Should do that on every Friday evening, shouldn't they?

Just as you go home for the weekend.

Three employees are up for elimination tonight.

So

there really wasn't an intrinsic value to these paper documents.

Huh.

Old historical records, then.

Oh no, you'd be sad if you lost those, though, because that's like that's history.

I'm going to ask you to think: why wouldn't they have moved these documents somewhere else?

Maybe they're difficult to move.

Maybe there's maybe there's a lot of them or something.

The gasping wasn't helpful.

I'd always seemed to gasp and stuff.

Is it that they

no, this is so stupid.

But that sometimes is how you get the correct answer.

It often is.

Is it that they

this safe is they can't open the safe for some reason?

And the thieves are able, like they have the tools or the capabilities in their stealing of it or in their going into it to open that like safe.

So there is either something else in there that they can now get access to, or because the actual documents aren't useful to anyone but the company, they can get them back in some way.

Like this.

Hear me out.

How many fast and furious movies have you seen?

Because there is at least one where there is a bank heist caused by just getting a very powerful car and pulling a safe out of a bank just pull the entire thing out did did they just move the whole thing and that suddenly gain them access to something

you're really really close i think you're going to be infuriated by this

we already are um rowan you said they couldn't get to the things in the safe

so pull on that a little more they're they're responsible for these documents, but they can't get to them.

And everybody knows they can't get to them.

That does make the documents extremely safe.

It does.

Yeah, in a way, they were kept safe from everyone.

But someone will probably want them.

As in someone legitimately wants them, but now can't access them.

Maybe they don't.

Maybe the thieves just saw, oh, massive safe that must have the valuables inside.

I think you're basically there, but

the thieves think there's valuables inside the safe.

There is not.

There's just a lot of paperwork that

wait, you said no one had access to it.

Correct.

But they were legally responsible for protecting it.

So did they not know that what they were protecting was nonsense?

And they were, and it was like the actual valuables were somewhere else, so that there was a sense of like they weren't seen as negligent because it didn't matter that this

like that this had happened because actually the valuables were in the toilet system this entire time

have they lost the combination to the safe is that what's gone on here they've got a safe they've been protecting documents but now they've lost the combination for whatever reason so that's that's the problem and then someone nicks the stuff and then and so they don't care anymore they don't have to deal with opening the safe because the safe has vanished Correct.

The thing about this question is that what's in the safe isn't actually important, but it was filled with, well, it both is and isn't important.

The safe was filled with archived documents that were potentially so important that legally they could not be thrown away.

However, nobody could remember how to open this vault.

So the documents weren't able to be moved somewhere else.

And as such, the safe sat in the office as a large, useless metal box.

And so when thieves stole it, thinking it has valuables in there, the employees reported it stolen and were no longer responsible for them.

Amazing.

Which means there is just the question I asked at the start of the show: which sportsman has a son called Thunder and a daughter called Olympia Lightning?

Before I give the answer to the audience, anyone want to call it?

If there's Thunder and Lightning, is it going to be Bolts?

Is it Hussein Bolt?

It is indeed Hussein Bolt.

He makes his games Thunder and Olympia Lightning.

Thunder also has a twin called Saint Leo, but that's just after Hussein's middle name.

Iconic.

Congratulations to all three of you for running the gauntlet one more time.

Let's find out what's going on in your lives.

Where can people find you?

We will start with Alec.

Well, what's going on right now is I'm fussing with a pinball machine because it's not working correctly.

But as far as, you know, internet stuff, making videos on YouTube, channels called Technology Connections, and I'm I'm also hanging out on Blue Sky these days.

You can check me out there.

Rowan!

I mean, what I'm literally doing is working on a video essay about the

insanity that is the 2000s makeover shows like Mary, Snog Mary Avoid, and uh, The Biggest Loser, and one from Canada called Bulging Brides, which is truly dystopian.

Um, and that will probably be out by the time this episode goes up, so you can check that out.

Um, other than that, yeah, just doing more research into various uh bits of history and life and culture and things like that

for YouTube.

And Dan.

You can find me online, search for at quizzydan.

You'll find me everywhere.

And if you want to know more about this show, you can do that at lateralcast.com where you can also send in your own ideas for questions.

We are at lateralcast basically everywhere, and there are regular video highlights at youtube.com/slash lateralcast.

Thank you very much to Dan Peake.

Thank you very much.

Rowan Alice.

Thanks.

Alec Watson.

Bye.

I've been Tom Scott, and that's been Latter.