The Bletchley Circle at the Big A

To those who may not be familiar with the latest PBS British import show, 'The Bletchley Circle,' it is about a reunion of four women in the 1950s in England who all worked at Bletchley Park during WWII. This is the famous site and effort at breaking the German codes and creating allied advantages as to knowing all about German troop movements, etc. in advance. Bletchley is also generally given credit as the place where the first computer was created by Alan Turing, whose 1950s suicide by eating a poisoned apple is said to be the origin of the Apple computer trademark.

The four women portrayed in the show are fictionalized versions of the actual type of person who worked at Bletchley and the eclectic skills they brought to the code breaking effort.

Jean was and is a librarian, who supervises one of the all-female units. Susan becomes a housewife, who is a dynamo at solving puzzles; a match wizard. Lucy, perhaps the youngest, has a photographic memory and later works for the Metropolitan Police (Scotland Yard) doing clerical work. Millie is a linguist, highly fluent in German, who works post-war as a German translator. She is the tallest of the four women and gives off a bit of a Kim Cattrall look from 'Sex and the City.' She smokes. In fact, these four brainiacs could be labeled 'Text and the City,' but the producers thought otherwise.

Jean, as a natural leader, is the catalyst for the reunion. She brings the girls together when there is a particular crime or injustice that she thinks they can apply their skills to solving. To see the women troop around the streets in sensible shoes following someone is almost funny. There is a Hardy Boys quality to their spirit, and they do get themselves into some truly dangerous and sensitive do-do.

The five guys who meet at either the Aqueduct or Belmont dining room a few times a year loosely resemble the women from Bletchley Park. They all at one time and at he same time, worked for the same employer, a major health insurer in New York. They brought various skills to this job, programming, investigating, retired surgeon, analyst and knowledge of machinery. Four of the five are card-carrying members of the government's Medicare program.

They are rounded up by an equivalent of Jean, and work to apply their techniques to the generally nine or ten race puzzle that is presented to them in the form of the day's entries. As in horseshoes, close can count.

This past Saturday at Aqueduct saw the gathering number four guys, with one scratched due to a rescheduled Easter dinner.

Results of their efforts at solving the enigma that is a race card vary greatly. The last gathering saw one of the members score so well with a triple bet that financial advice was needed. Anyone who has spent some time with the Esquire channel show 'Horseplayers' can get a little bit of an idea of the nature of four or five brains looking for the same solution: the winner and a good exact or triple to play on each race.

No computers are used. Pen, paper and conversation go into the process of creating selections. One member does use an array of colored Sharpies to create PowerPoint graphic presentations on scraps of paper. He leaves behind a trail of color looking like an Easter basket.

Another member assigns numbers to each horse based on the sum of ten variables that are assigned and assessed on each entrant. There is method to this madness, and it does produce winning selections. If acted on.

The phrase "coulda', woulda', shoulda'" is often used to describe horseplayers. They see everything after the race is over and of course would have, or should have done better if only could have seen what they now see.

I've come to like the current Senate Majority leader Harry Reid's description of sub par mental acuity that describes someone who shoots themselves in the foot, and then reloads as the best description of the mental vacillations that take place when a selection is made and a bet is actually called to the seller at the window. Things can change greatly. In writing, this might be called editing. In playing the horses it is called shooting oneself in the foot and then reloading, especially when the first choice, changed and unplayed, is the one that brings home the bacon that you didn't get to hold.

True to their prior race statement, one member did continue to win the ninth race, a race on the card (generally the last race) that for them they've won more times than any other race in the over 40 years of attending races.

The assembled four on Saturday picked winners, exactas and triples. But to a man, no one came out ahead using money as the measurement.

That's why the show always has more episodes.

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