{"id":5614,"date":"1999-07-19T02:06:06","date_gmt":"1999-07-19T02:06:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/situation-puzzles\/answers-to-jeds-list-of-situation-puzzles\/"},"modified":"2018-01-20T10:36:22","modified_gmt":"2018-01-20T18:36:22","slug":"answers-to-jeds-list-of-situation-puzzles","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/situation-puzzles\/answers-to-jeds-list-of-situation-puzzles\/","title":{"rendered":"Answers to Jed’s List of Situation Puzzles"},"content":{"rendered":"

(last updated: 18 July 1999.)<\/p>\n

This is the list of answers to the puzzles in my situation puzzles list.
\nThis document also contains variant setups and variant answers for many of
\nthe puzzles.<\/p>\n

Introduction<\/h2>\n

In the game of situation puzzles, a mysterious situation is presented
\nto a group of players, who must then try to find out what’s going on by
\nasking further questions. The person who initially presented the situation
\ncan only answer “yes” or “no” to questions (or occasionally
\n“irrelevant”).<\/p>\n

My list of situation puzzles consists of two sections. Section 1
\nconsists of puzzles which are set in a realistic world; the situations could
\nall actually occur. Section 2 consists of puzzles which involve double
\nmeanings for one or more words and those which could not possibly take place
\nin reality as we know it, plus a few miscellaneous others. Note that a
\npuzzle’s number in this edition may not be the same as its number in earlier
\neditions.<\/p>\n

See the end of the list for more notes and comments.<\/p>\n

Section 1: “Realistic” situation puzzles<\/h2>\n

1.1<\/strong>. A man goes into a restaurant, orders abalone, eats
\none bite, and kills himself. (TeM and JM wording)<\/p>\n

1.1 answer: The man was in a ship that was wrecked on a desert island.
\nWhen there was no food left, another passenger brought what he said was
\nabalone but was really part of the man’s wife (who had died in the wreck).
\nThe man suspects something fishy, so when they finally return to
\ncivilization, he orders abalone, realizes that what he ate before was his
\nwife, and kills himself. (In a slight variant, from Stories With
\nHoles<\/cite>, he simply faints rather than killing himself.)<\/p>\n

1.1a. Variant: same problem statement but with albatross instead of
\nabalone.<\/p>\n

1.1a answer: In this version, the man was in a lifeboat, with his wife,
\nwho died. He hallucinated an albatross landing in the boat which he caught
\nand killed and ate; he thought that his wife had been washed overboard.
\nWhen he actually eats albatross, he discovers that he had actually eaten his
\nwife.<\/p>\n

1.1b. Variant: A man kills himself rather than order albatross.<\/p>\n

1.1b answer: The man already knew that he had eaten human flesh under
\nthe name “albatross.” He asks the waiter in the restaurant what kind of
\nsoup is available, and the waiter responds, “Albatross soup.” Thinking that
\n“albatross soup” means “human soup,” and sickened by the thought of such a
\nsociety (place in a foreign country if necessary), he kills himself. (from
\nMike Neergaard) I’m afraid this version doesn’t make a whole lot of
\nsense.<\/p>\n

1.2<\/strong>. A man lives on the twelfth floor of an apartment
\nbuilding. Every morning he takes the elevator down to the lobby and leaves
\nthe building. In the evening, he gets into the elevator, and, if there is
\nsomeone else in the elevator — or if it was raining that day — he goes
\nback to his floor directly. However, if there is nobody else in the
\nelevator and it hasn’t rained, he goes to the tenth floor and walks up two
\nflights of stairs to his room. (MH, from How Come?<\/cite>)<\/p>\n

1.2 answer: The man is a midget. He can’t reach the upper elevator
\nbuttons, but he can ask people to push them for him. He can also push them
\nwith his umbrella. I’ve usually heard this stated with more details: “Every
\nmorning he wakes up, gets dressed, eats, goes to the elevator…” In the
\nother direction, for a shorter problem statement, leave out the “someone
\nelse in the elevator” and “if it was raining” parts, and just say on his
\nreturn to the building he always goes to the tenth floor. Ron Carter
\nsuggests a nice red herring: the man lives on the 13th floor of the
\nbuilding.<\/p>\n

1.2a. Variant: Emily regularly visits the twelfth floor of an apartment
\nbuilding by going to the tenth floor and walking up two flights of stairs.
\nLast year she only took the elevator to the ninth floor. (Math for
\nGirls<\/cite>)<\/p>\n

1.2a answer: Emily is a child; she can only reach the tenth-floor
\nbutton, and last year she could only reach the ninth-floor button.<\/p>\n

1.3<\/strong>. A man sitting on a park bench reads a newspaper
\narticle headlined “Death at Sea” and knows a murder has been committed.
\n(from How Come?<\/cite>)<\/p>\n

1.3 answer: The man is a travel agent. He had sold someone two tickets
\nfor an ocean voyage, one round-trip and one one-way. The last name of the
\nman who bought the tickets is the same as the last name of the woman who
\n“fell” overboard and drowned on the same voyage, which is the subject of the
\narticle he’s reading. This may have derived from a story done by Alfred
\nHitchcock, if the following Hitchcock quotation is accurate: “If you take
\nyour wife on a sea voyage, buy her a round-trip ticket no matter what your
\nplans may be.” According to How Come?<\/cite>, it’s loosely based on
\nthe real-life case of a killer named Henry Landru.<\/p>\n

1.4<\/strong>. A man lets go of a bowling ball. A short while
\nlater, he is rushed to the hospital. (JC original?)<\/p>\n

1.4 answer: A physics professor is demonstrating conservation of energy
\nby suspending a bowling ball from a piece of rope. He pulls the ball back
\nuntil it’s right in front of his nose, then lets go. It is supposed to
\nswing away from him, then back at him, stopping just in front of his nose.
\nUnfortunately, he gave the ball a slight push, resulting in the ball
\ncrashing into his nose upon its return.<\/p>\n

1.5<\/strong>. Two men enter a bar. They both order identical
\ndrinks. One lives; the other dies. (CR; partial JM wording)<\/p>\n

1.5 answer: The drinks contain poisoned ice cubes; one man drinks
\nslowly, giving them time to melt, while the other drinks quickly and thus
\ndoesn’t get much of the poison. The fact that they drink at different
\nspeeds could be added to the statement, possibly along with red herrings
\nsuch as saying that one of the men is big and burly and the other short and
\nthin.<\/p>\n

1.6<\/strong>. A man walks into a bar and asks for a drink. The
\nbartender pulls out a gun and points it at him. The man says, “Thank you,”
\nand walks out. (DVS; from How Come?<\/cite>)<\/p>\n

1.6 answer: The man has hiccups; the bartender scares them away by
\npulling a gun.<\/p>\n

1.7<\/strong>. Two women are talking. One goes into the
\nbathroom, comes out five minutes later, and kills the other.<\/p>\n

1.7 answer: Both women are white; the one whose house this takes place
\nin is single. A black friend of the other woman, the one who goes into the
\nbathroom, was recently killed, reportedly by the KKK. The woman who goes
\ninto the bathroom discovers a bloodstained KKK robe in the other’s laundry
\nhamper, picks up a nail file from the medicine cabinet (or some other
\nimpromptu weapon), and goes out and kills the other.<\/p>\n

1.7a. Variant: A man goes to hang his coat and realizes he will die that
\nday.<\/p>\n

1.7a answer: The man (who is black) has car trouble and is in need of a
\ntelephone. He asks at the nearest house and on being invited in goes to
\nhang his coat, whereupon he notices the white robes of the Ku Klux Klan in
\nthe closet. (from Bernd Wechner)<\/p>\n

1.8<\/strong>. Beulah died in the Appalachians, while Craig died
\nat sea. Everyone was much happier with Craig’s death. (JM, originally from
\nHow Come — Again?<\/cite>)<\/p>\n

1.8 answer: Beulah and Craig were hurricanes.<\/p>\n

1.9<\/strong>. An avid birdwatcher sees an unexpected bird. Soon
\nhe’s dead. (RSB original)<\/p>\n

1.9 answer: He is a passenger in an airplane and sees the bird get
\nsucked into an engine at 20,000 feet.<\/p>\n

1.10<\/strong>. He was killed by breakfast. (JM original)<\/p>\n

1.10 answer: A man is camping in the mountains. He makes breakfast,
\nthen puts pepper on his food (eggs, perhaps). The pepper makes him sneeze
\nloudly, which starts an avalanche, which kills him.<\/p>\n

1.10a. A man lay dead in a field. Next to him was a gun. One shot had
\nbeen fired and because of that shot the man had died. Yet the man was not
\nshot; in fact, there was no wound or mark on the body. (BGT)<\/p>\n

1.10a answer: He fired the gun and caused an avalanche.<\/p>\n

1.11<\/strong>. Two brothers are involved in a murder. Though
\nit’s clear that one of them actually committed the crime, neither can be
\npunished. (This is different from #1.78.) (from “Unreasonable Doubt,” by
\nStanley Ellin)<\/p>\n

1.11 answer: One of the brothers (A) confesses to the murder. At his
\ntrial, his brother (B) is called as the only defense witness; B immediately
\nconfesses, in graphic detail, to having committed the crime. The defense
\nlawyer refuses to have the trial stopped, and A is acquitted under the
\n“reasonable doubt” clause. Immediately afterward, B goes on trial for the
\nmurder; A is called as the only defense witness and he<\/em> confesses.
\nB is declared innocent; and though everyone knows that one<\/em> of them
\ndid it, how can they tell who? Further, neither can be convicted of perjury
\nuntil it’s decided which of them did it… I don’t know if that would
\nactually work under the US legal system, but someone else who heard the
\nstory said that his father was on the jury for a very<\/em> similar case
\nin New York some years ago. Mark Brader points out that the brothers might
\nbe convicted of conspiracy to commit perjury or to obstruct justice, or
\nsomething of that kind.<\/p>\n

1.11 variant answer: Scott Purdy says an L.A. Law<\/cite> episode
\nhad a similar plot: A petty criminal and a mob boss were accused of
\nmurdering someone. The lawyers offered to drop the charges on the criminal
\nif he’d testify against the boss. He said he would, got his charges
\ndropped, and confessed on the stand. Both got away without being punished:
\nthe charges couldn’t be reinstated for the one, and there was reasonable
\ndoubt for the other.<\/p>\n

1.12<\/strong>. A woman in France in 1959 is waiting in her room,
\nwith all the doors locked from the inside, for her husband to come home.
\nWhen he arrives, the house has burned to the ground and she’s dead. (JM,
\noriginally from How Come — Again?<\/cite>)<\/p>\n

1.12 answer: This is apparently a true story. The hot sun reflected
\nfrom the woman’s large mirror (which I speculate may have been imperfectly
\nflat and therefore focused the sunlight, but I don’t know for sure) and
\nheated the lingerie she was wearing to the burning point. She was absorbed
\nin a book at the time and didn’t notice the heat until her clothing was
\nafire. Nobody could get to her to help because her doors were locked from
\nthe inside. Please disregard the version of this answer from previous
\neditions of this list; it’s not true.<\/p>\n

1.13<\/strong>. A man lies dead next to a cactus. Stuck to the
\ncactus is a slip of paper. (TO)<\/p>\n

1.13 answer: The man was lost in the desert for days. He couldn’t find
\nany landmarks, so he started sticking slips of paper to cactuses he passed.
\nAfter another day of walking, with almost no water left, he came across this
\ncactus, which had a slip of paper on it already; he knew that he was walking
\nin circles, so rather than wait to die of thirst he shot himself. (See also
\n#1.24, #2.2, and #2.12.)<\/p>\n

1.14<\/strong>. Passing by a window, you see two dead men in a
\nroom, with a gun and a deck of cards. (KK2)<\/p>\n

1.14 answer: You’re a diver, going past a window of a sunken submarine
\n(or ship). The two men were in a sinking vessel; they had a gun but only
\none bullet. Neither wanted to drown, so they played cards to see who would
\nget the bullet. The loser shot the winner (or else the winner shot
\nhimself), and then the loser drowned when the room filled up with water.
\n(See also #1.13, #2.4, #2.9.)<\/p>\n

1.15<\/strong>. There are a carrot, a pile of pebbles, and a pipe
\nlying together in the middle of a field. (PRO; partial JM wording)<\/p>\n

1.15 answer: They’re the remains of a melted snowman.<\/p>\n

1.16<\/strong>. Two dead people sit in their cars on a street.
\n(AG)<\/p>\n

1.16 answer: Because there was a heavy fog, two people driving in
\nopposite directions on the same road both stuck their heads out of their
\nwindows to better see the road’s center line. Their heads hit each other at
\nhigh speed, killing them both. Andreas says this is based on an actual
\naccident.<\/p>\n

1.17<\/strong>. A man is found shot to death in the front seat of
\nhis car; a gun lies out of his reach in the back seat. All the windows are
\nclosed and the doors are locked; there are no bullet holes anywhere in the
\ncar. (SP, from The Next Book of OMNI Games<\/cite>; partial AC
\nwording)<\/p>\n

1.17 answer: The car is a convertible; the top was down. (Or the
\nsunroof, or something else that’s neither window nor door.) The murderer
\nshot him and then dropped the gun into the back seat of the car.<\/p>\n

1.18<\/strong>. A man is sitting in a room. Another person
\nenters, carrying a closed cardboard box, and sits down nearby. Though the
\nfirst man can’t see, hear, or smell the box’s contents, he knows what’s in
\nthe box. (ES original)<\/p>\n

1.18 answer: The man is allergic to cats, and feels the allergy symptoms
\ncoming on, so he knows the box contains a cat. (It could be argued that he
\nmust be able to smell the cat, but I’d say that “smell” implies consciously
\nnoticing a smell, and is not the same as reacting to unnoticed dander.)<\/p>\n

1.19<\/strong>. There is blood on the ceiling of my bedroom. (MI
\noriginal)<\/p>\n

1.19 answer: A mosquito bit me, and I swatted it when it later landed on
\nmy ceiling (so the blood is my own as well as the mosquito’s).<\/p>\n

1.20<\/strong>. A man in uniform stands on the beach of a
\ntropical island. He takes out a cigarette, lights it, and begins smoking.
\nHe takes out a letter and begins reading it. The cigarette burns down
\nbetween his fingers, but he doesn’t throw it away. He cries. (RW)<\/p>\n

1.20 answer: He is a guard\/attendant in a leper colony. The letter (to
\nhim) tells him that he has contracted the disease. The key is the cigarette
\nburning down between his fingers — leprosy is fairly unique in killing off
\nsensory nerves without destroying motor ability.<\/p>\n

1.21<\/strong>. A woman is heating her coffee in a small
\nmicrowave oven. She puts it in for exactly two minutes. She then opens the
\ndoor, closes it, then heats her coffee for two more seconds. (JC
\noriginal?)<\/p>\n

1.21 answer: She opens the door and sees that the handle of her cup is
\nfacing the back of the microwave. She then sets the oven for two more
\nseconds so that the turntable will turn 180 degrees so that she can reach
\nthe cup-handle, to avoid burning her hand.<\/p>\n

1.22<\/strong>. A man tries the new cologne his wife gave him for
\nhis birthday. He goes out to get some food, and is killed. (RW
\noriginal)<\/p>\n

1.22 answer: The man is a beekeeper, and the bees attack en masse
\nbecause they don’t recognize his fragrance. Randy adds that this is based
\non something that actually happened to his grandfather, a beekeeper who was
\nseverely attacked by his bees when he used a new aftershave for the first
\ntime in 10 or 20 years.<\/p>\n

1.23<\/strong>. A man takes a two-week cruise to Mexico from the
\nU.S. Shortly after he gets back, he takes a three-day cruise which doesn’t
\nstop at any other ports. He stays in his cabin all the time on both
\ncruises. As a result, he makes $250,000. (MI, from “The Wager”)<\/p>\n

1.23 answer: He’s a smuggler. On the first cruise, someone brings the
\ncontraband to his cabin, and he hides it in an air conditioning duct.
\nReturning to the U.S., he leaves without the contraband, and so passes
\nthrough customs with no trouble. On the second trip, he has the same cabin
\non the same ship. Because it doesn’t stop anywhere, he doesn’t have to go
\nthrough customs when he returns, so he gets the contraband off safely.<\/p>\n

1.24<\/strong>. A man is lying face down, dead, in the desert,
\nwith a match near his outstretched hand. (This is different from #1.25,
\n#2.2, and #2.12.) (JH; partial JM wording)<\/p>\n

1.24 answer: He was with several others in a hot air balloon crossing
\nthe desert. The balloon was punctured and they began to lose altitude.
\nThey tossed all their non-essentials overboard, then their clothing and
\nfood, but were still going to crash in the middle of the desert. Finally,
\nthey drew matches to see who would jump over the side and save the others;
\nthis man lost. Minor variant wording: add that the man is nude.<\/p>\n

1.25<\/strong>. A man is lying, dead, face down in the desert
\nwearing a backpack. (This is different from #1.24, #2.2, and #2.12.)<\/p>\n

1.25 answer: He jumped out of an airplane, but his parachute failed to
\nopen. Minor variant wording (from Joe Kincaid): he’s on a mountain trail
\ninstead of in a desert. Minor variant wording (from Mike Reymond): he’s got
\na ring in his hand (it came off of the ripcord).<\/p>\n

1.25 variant answer: The man was let loose in the desert with a pack
\nfull of poisoned food. He knows it’s poisoned, and doesn’t eat it — he
\ndies of hunger. (from Mike Neergaard)<\/p>\n

1.25a. Silly variant: same problem statement, with the addition that one
\nof the man’s shoelaces is untied.<\/p>\n

1.25a answer: He pulled his shoelace instead of the ripcord.<\/p>\n

1.25b. Variant wording: A man with a pack on his back enters a field and
\ndies. (from David Norman)<\/p>\n

1.25b answer: Same as #1.25.<\/p>\n

1.25c. Variant wording: A dead man lies in front of the post office;
\nnext to him is a parcel. (CB)<\/p>\n

1.25c answer: Same as #1.25. Can a parachute be called a “parcel”?
\nPerhaps “package” would be better. (It’s “Paket” in the original
\nGerman.)<\/p>\n

1.26<\/strong>. She lost her job when she invited them to dinner.
\n(DS original)<\/p>\n

1.26 answer: Let’s say “she” is named Suzy, and “they” are named Harry
\nand Jane. Harry is an elderly archaeologist who has found a very old
\nskeleton, which he’s dubbed “Jane” (a la “Lucy”). Suzy is a buyer for a
\nmuseum; she’s supposed to make some sort of purchase from Harry, so she
\ninvites him to have a business dinner with her (at a restaurant). When she
\ncalls to invite him, he keeps talking about “Jane,” so Suzy assumes that
\nJane is his wife and says to bring her along. Harry, offended, calls Suzy’s
\nboss and complains; since Suzy should’ve known who Jane was, she gets
\nfired.<\/p>\n

1.27<\/strong>. A man tells his boss, “Don’t take your planned
\nflight today! I had a dream last night that if you do, your plane will
\ncrash and you’ll die.” The boss fires the man. (From How
\nCome?<\/cite>)<\/p>\n

1.27 answer: The man was the night watchman; he should’ve been on duty
\nthe previous night, not dreaming. (He tells the boss about the dream out of
\nconcern for his safety.)<\/p>\n

1.28<\/strong>. A man finishes getting dressed, lies down and
\ndies. (CH original?)<\/p>\n

1.28 answer: There is a poisonous spider in the toe of his shoe. The
\nlast things he puts on are his shoes. He gets bitten, feels ill, lies down
\non his bed, and then dies of the poison. (It’s a particularly poisonous
\nspider, like the Australian Funnel-Web, whose bite can kill an adult human
\nin 5 minutes, or the brown recluse, which I gather is also pretty
\ndeadly.)<\/p>\n

1.29<\/strong>. Every day a man drinks his breakfast and drinks
\nhis lunch. When his boss finds out, he is immediately fired. The man moves
\nto another job and begins doing the same thing; this time, when his boss
\nfinds out, the boss jokingly tells him that he’ll be fired if he stops.
\n(RSW)<\/p>\n

1.29 answer: The man is drinking diet shakes for his breakfast and lunch
\nin order to lose weight. Unfortunately, his first job is at a weight-loss
\nclinic, so he is fired for patronizing the competition. His second job is
\nat a health-food store, and his boss wants him to lose weight so he looks
\n“healthier.”<\/p>\n

1.30<\/strong>. A car without a driver moves; a man dies.
\n(EMS)<\/p>\n

1.30 answer: The murderer sets the car on a slope above the hot dog
\nstand where the victim works. He then wedges an ice block in the car to
\nkeep the brake pedal down, and puts the car in neutral, after which he flies
\nto another city to avoid suspicion. It’s a warm day; when the ice melts,
\nthe car rolls down the hill and strikes the hot dog man at his roadside
\nstand, killing him.<\/p>\n

1.31<\/strong>. A man gets onto an elevator. When the elevator
\nstops, he knows his wife is dead. (LA; partial KH wording)<\/p>\n

1.31 answer: He’s leaving a hospital after visiting his wife, who’s on
\nheavy life-support. When the power goes out, he knows she can’t live
\nwithout the life-support systems (he assumes that if the emergency backup
\ngenerator were working, the elevator wouldn’t lose power; this aspect isn’t
\nentirely satisfactory, so in a variant, the scene is at home rather than in
\na hospital).<\/p>\n

1.31a. Variant: The music stops and a woman dies.<\/p>\n

1.31a answer: The woman is confined in an iron lung, and the music is
\nplaying on her radio or stereo. The power goes out. (RW) (See also #1.59,
\n#1.70a, and #1.75c.)<\/p>\n

1.31b. A man lives in a high-rise apartment building in the city. One
\nday, as usual, he gets up, has breakfast, showers, dresses, kisses his wife
\ngood-bye, and leaves for work. He walks down the corridor to the elevator.
\nAfter standing there for a minute or so, he realizes his wife is dead.
\n(RW)<\/p>\n

1.31b answer: Same as #1.31.<\/p>\n

1.32<\/strong>. A man is killed on a train. He is found to have
\nwritten “elf” on the floor in his own blood. (MB, from “The Problem of the
\nLocked Caboose,” by Edward D. Hoch)<\/p>\n

1.32 answer: Attached to the train was a caboose with a safe carrying a
\nshipment of jewels. The victim, Schmidt, was the conductor guarding the
\nshipment; he had robbed the safe himself, and had an accomplice traveling on
\nthe train under a false name to remove the loot. The accomplice killed
\nSchmidt to keep his share. Schmidt didn’t know the accomplice’s false name,
\nso he wrote the killer’s berth number, 11. For greater clarity he spelled
\nout the number as a word — in his native German. (In the original story he
\ndidn’t want “11” to be misread as two parallel lines, but Germans don’t
\nwrite “1” as a straight line.) This arguably belongs in section 2 for double
\nmeaning, but the double-meaninged word here is explicitly called out, so I’m
\ngoing to leave it in section 1 for now.<\/p>\n

1.33<\/strong>. A man lies dead next to a feather. (PRO)<\/p>\n

1.33 answer: The man was a sword swallower in a carnival side-show.
\nWhile he was practicing, someone tickled his throat with the feather,
\ncausing him to gag.<\/p>\n

1.34<\/strong>. A man ran into a fire, and lived. A man stayed
\nwhere there was no fire, and died. (EW original)<\/p>\n

1.34 answer: The two men were working in a small room protected by a
\ncarbon dioxide gas fire extinguisher system, when a fire broke out in an
\nadjoining room. One of the men ran through the fire and escaped with only
\nminor burns. The other one stayed in the room until the fire extinguishers
\nkicked in, and died of oxygen starvation. (This originally involved a halon
\ngas extinguisher, but those don’t work that way; fortunately for our
\npurposes, Gisle Hannemyr pointed out that CO2 extinguishers do work that
\nway. Gisle says a CO2 extinguisher on a Norwegian ship a few years ago did
\ngo off accidentally when there was no fire, killing everyone in the engine
\nroom.)<\/p>\n

1.35<\/strong>. Four people are on a grass-covered island. A
\nfire burns from one end of the island to the other, but no one gets severely
\nburnt. (BJ)<\/p>\n

1.35 answer: The fire is slow moving and the four are able to “back
\nburn” by starting a new fire on the other side of them. When an area is
\nburnt off, they can safely stand on the burnt patch, as it now contains no
\nfuel for the grass fire. This is an actual technique used in Australian
\nbushfires (and, I think, elsewhere).<\/p>\n

1.36<\/strong>. A flash of light, a man dies. (ST original)<\/p>\n

1.36 answer: The man is a lion-tamer, posing for a photo with his lions.
\nThe lions react badly to the flash of the camera, and the man can’t see
\nproperly, so he gets mauled.<\/p>\n

1.36a. Variant: He couldn’t find a chair, so he died. (RM, with KH
\nwording; from How Come?<\/cite>)<\/p>\n

1.36a answer: He was a lion-tamer. This one is kind of silly, but I
\nlike it, and it sounds possible to me (though I’m told a whip is more
\nimportant than a chair to a lion-tamer).<\/p>\n

1.37<\/strong>. A man is running along a corridor with a piece of
\npaper in his hand. The lights flicker and the man drops to his knees and
\ncries out, “Oh no!” (MP)<\/p>\n

1.37 answer: The man is delivering a pardon, and the flicker of the
\nlights indicates that the person to be pardoned has just been electrocuted.
\n(See also #1.31.)<\/p>\n

1.38<\/strong>. Mr. Browning is glad the car ran out of gas.
\n(JM, originally from How Come — Again?<\/cite>)<\/p>\n

1.38 answer: Mr. and Mrs. Browning had just gotten married. Mrs.
\nBrowning was subject to fits of depression. They had their first fight soon
\nafter they were married; Mr. Browning stormed out of the house, and Mrs.
\nBrowning went into the garage and started up the car, intending to kill
\nherself by filling the garage with car exhaust. But the car ran out of gas
\nquickly, and Mr. Browning, returning home to apologize, found Mrs. Browning
\nin time to summon help and restore her to health.<\/p>\n

1.39<\/strong>. A dying man gives another man a gift, and then
\nthe dying man dies. Shortly after that the second man dies. (HJS)<\/p>\n

1.39 answer: The second man had shot the first man. Before he dies, the
\nfirst man gives the second man a grenade pin, which he’s of course just
\npulled from a grenade. The first man dies, then the grenade explodes and
\nthe second man dies.<\/p>\n

1.40<\/strong>. A man is lying dead in a room. There is a large
\npile of gold and jewels on the floor, a chandelier attached to the ceiling,
\nand a large open window. (DVS; partial JM wording)<\/p>\n

1.40 answer: The room is the ballroom of an ocean liner which sank some
\ntime ago. The man ran out of air while diving in the wreck.<\/p>\n

1.40a. Variant which puts this in section 2: same statement, ending with
\n“a large window through which rays are coming.”<\/p>\n

1.40a answer: the rays are manta rays (this version tends to make people
\nassume vampires are involved, unless they notice the awkwardness of the
\nphrase involving rays).<\/p>\n

1.41<\/strong>. A man enters the elevator of a high rise
\napartment building, takes off one glove, and pushes the button for the tenth
\nfloor. The next day, the same man enters the elevator, puts on<\/em> one
\nglove, and pushes the button for the tenth floor. (RA original)<\/p>\n

1.41 answer: The man is blind. His first time in the elevator, he’s
\nwearing gloves; the elevator uses buttons that work by electrical conduction
\nthrough the skin; they light up at the slightest touch, but not through a
\nglove. The man thus has to remove a glove to get the button to work. But
\nhe discovers that first day that as he runs his ungloved hand over the
\nbuttons to find the tenth floor, all the buttons are activated, and the
\nelevator stops at all the floors. So from then on, he carries a glove with
\nhim; he puts it on when he enters the elevator, finds the right button with
\nhis gloved hand, then uses his ungloved hand to press the tenth-floor
\nbutton. (Note that even if the buttons are labeled in Braille, it’s hard to
\navoid brushing against a button and sending the elevator to the wrong
\nfloor.)<\/p>\n

1.42<\/strong>. A woman came home with a bag of groceries, got
\nthe mail, and walked into the house. On the way to the kitchen, she went
\nthrough the living room and looked at her husband, who had blown his brains
\nout. She then continued to the kitchen, put away the groceries, and made
\ndinner. (partial JM wording; from How Come?<\/cite>)<\/p>\n

1.42 answer: The husband killed himself a while ago; it’s his ashes in
\nan urn on the mantelpiece that the wife looks at. It’s debatable whether
\nthis belongs in section 2 for double meanings.<\/p>\n

1.43<\/strong>. The king dies and two men both claim to be his
\nlong-lost son. One of the king’s advisors proposes a test to determine the
\nidentity of the true heir. One claimant agrees to the test; the other
\nrefuses. The one who agreed is sent packing; the one who refused is
\nidentified as the rightful heir. (SP, from The Next Book of OMNI
\nGames<\/cite>; earlier from How Come?<\/cite>)<\/p>\n

1.43 answer: The proposed test was a blood test. Knowing that blood
\ntyping isn’t very accurate, the impostor felt it was worth trying to get
\naway with it. But the true heir was a hemophiliac and couldn’t give blood
\nfor the test.<\/p>\n

1.44<\/strong>. An old man gets the hiccups. Soon, he is rushed
\nto the hospital. (JC original?)<\/p>\n

1.44 answer: The man is a glassblower. His old age has brought about a
\ndecline in his vision, so he must use shorter pipes to blow glass. He gets
\nthe hiccups, accidentally inhales some hot vapors \/ molten glass and burns
\nhis mouth and throat area. (I’m not sure whether this could actually
\nhappen, but it sounds feasible to me.)<\/p>\n

1.45<\/strong>. A man is found dead outside a large building with
\na hole in him. (JM, modified from PRO)<\/p>\n

1.45 answer: The man was struck by an object thrown from the roof of the
\nEmpire State Building. Originally I had the object being a penny, but
\nseveral people suggested that a penny probably wouldn’t be enough to
\npenetrate someone’s skull. Something aerodynamic and heavier, like a dart,
\nwas suggested, but I don’t know how much mass would be required.<\/p>\n

1.45a. Variant: A man is found dead outside a large marble building with
\nthree holes in him.<\/p>\n

1.45a answer: The man was a paleontologist working with the
\nArchaeological Research Institute. He was reviving a triceratops frozen in
\nthe ice age when it came to life and killed him. This couldn’t possibly
\nhappen because (among other reasons) there were no triceratops during the
\nice age. (from Peter R. Olpe)<\/p>\n

1.46<\/strong>. A man dies in his own home. (ME original)<\/p>\n

1.46 answer: His home is a houseboat and he has run out of water while
\non an extended cruise.<\/p>\n

1.46a. Variant wording: A man dies of thirst in his own home. This
\nversion goes more quickly because it gives more information; but it may be
\nless likely to annoy people who think the original statement is too
\nvague.<\/p>\n

1.46a answer: Same.<\/p>\n

1.47<\/strong>. A body is discovered in a park in Chicago in the
\nmiddle of summer. It has a fractured skull and many other broken bones, but
\nthe cause of death was hypothermia. (MI, from Hill Street
\nBlues<\/cite>)<\/p>\n

1.47 answer: A poor peasant from somewhere in Europe wants desperately
\nto get to the U.S. Not having money for airfare, he stows away in the
\nlanding gear compartment of a jet. He dies of hypothermia in mid-flight,
\nand falls out when the landing gear compartment opens as the plane makes its
\nfinal approach. This apparently happened in real life as well; Mark Brader
\nprovided an AP item from Paris, printed in the Toronto Star<\/cite> on
\n7\/10\/93, about just such an occurrence.<\/p>\n

1.47a. Variant: A man is lying drowned in a dead forest.<\/p>\n

1.47a answer: He’s scuba diving when a firefighting plane lands nearby
\nand fills its tanks with water, sucking him in with the water. He runs out
\nof air while the plane is in flight; the plane then dumps its load of water,
\nwith him in it, onto a burning forest. (from Jim Moskowitz)<\/p>\n

1.48<\/strong>. Three men die. On the pavement are pieces of ice
\nand broken glass. (JJ)<\/p>\n

1.48 answer: A large man comes home to the penthouse apartment he shares
\nwith his beautiful young wife, taking the elevator up from the ground floor.
\nHe sees signs of lovemaking in the bedroom, and assumes that his wife is
\nhaving an affair; her beau has presumably escaped down the stairs. The
\nhusband looks out the French windows and sees a good-looking man just
\nleaving the main entrance of the building. The husband pushes the
\nrefrigerator out through the window onto the young man below. The husband
\ndies of a heart attack from overexertion; the innocent young man below dies
\nfrom having a refrigerator fall on him; and the wife’s boyfriend, who was
\nhiding inside the refrigerator, also dies from the fall.<\/p>\n

1.49<\/strong>. If he had wanted chocolate ice cream, his brother
\nwould be alive today. (TiM original)<\/p>\n

1.49 answer: A young boy is going out to play one afternoon and on his
\nway out he stops off in the garage to check for an ice cream bar in the
\nlarge chest freezer the family keeps there. The freezer is new and almost
\nempty as yet, so the boy has to prop himself up on the edge to reach into
\nthe bottom to find the ice cream. He loses his balance and falls into the
\nfreezer, with the lid latching shut over him. Right about then, his older
\nbrother arrives home from high school and asks his mom if they have any
\npopsicles in the freezer. She says no, but she bought some chocolate ice
\ncream that day and he can have some of that if he wishes. He decides he is
\nnot in the mood for chocolate ice cream and goes up to his room to listen to
\nsome music. His brother suffocates.<\/p>\n

1.50<\/strong>. A man kills his wife, then goes inside his house
\nand kills himself. (DH original, from “Nightmare in Yellow,” by Fredric
\nBrown)<\/p>\n

1.50 answer: It’s the man’s fiftieth birthday, and in celebration of
\nthis he plans to kill his wife, then take the money he’s embezzled and move
\non to a new life in another state. His wife takes him out to dinner;
\nafterward, on their front step, he kills her. He opens the door, dragging
\nher body in with him, and all the lights suddenly turn on and a group of his
\nfriends shout “Surprise!” He kills himself. (Note that the whole first
\npart, including the motive, isn’t really necessary; it was just part of the
\noriginal story.)<\/p>\n

1.51<\/strong>. If he’d turned on the light, he’d have lived.
\n(JM)<\/p>\n

1.51 answer: A man was shot during a robbery in his store one night. He
\nstaggered into the back room, where the telephone was, and called home,
\ndialing by feel since he hadn’t turned on the light. Once the call went
\nthrough he gasped, “I’m at the store. I’ve been shot. Help!” or words to
\nthat effect. He set the phone down to await help, but none came; he’d
\ntreated the telephone pushbuttons like cash register numbers, when the
\narrangements of the numbers are upside down reflections of each other. The
\nstranger he’d dialed had no way to know where “the store” was.<\/p>\n

1.52<\/strong>. A man is found dead on the floor in the living
\nroom. (ME original)<\/p>\n

1.52 answer: The dead man was playing Santa Claus, for whatever reason;
\nhe slipped while coming down the chimney and broke his neck.<\/p>\n

1.52 variant answer: The dead man was<\/em> Santa Claus. This moves
\nthe puzzle to section 2.<\/p>\n

1.53<\/strong>. A man went into a restaurant, had a large meal,
\nand paid nothing for it. (JM original)<\/p>\n

1.53 answer: The man was a famous artist. A woman who collected
\nautographs saw him dining; after he left the restaurant, she purchased the
\ncheck that he used to pay for the meal from the restaurant manager. The
\ncheck was therefore never cashed, so the artist never paid for the meal.<\/p>\n

1.54<\/strong>. A U.S. Navy sailor on the deck of a cruiser
\nnoticed an explosive mine in the water directly in the path of the ship.
\nWith no time to communicate the situation to the captain of the ship, the
\nsailor saved the lives of the crew and the ship. (BB)<\/p>\n

1.54 answer: The sailor grabbed the fire hose from the deck and used the
\nforce of the water from the hose to push the mine away from the hull of the
\nship. The water pressure doesn’t explode the mine; WWII-style mines contain
\nmagnetic sensors which make them explode on contact with a ship’s hull.<\/p>\n

1.55<\/strong>. A man leaves a motel room, goes to his car, and
\nhonks the horn. (AS original)<\/p>\n

1.55 answer: It’s the middle of the night. The man goes outside to get
\nsomething from his car, but as the parking lot is set apart from the
\nbuilding, he forgets which room he was in. His wife is deaf, so he honks
\nthe car horn loudly, waking up everyone else in the motel. The other
\nresidents all get up and turn on their room lights; the man then returns to
\nthe one dark room.<\/p>\n

1.56<\/strong>. As I drive to work on my motorcycle, there is one
\ncorner which I go around at a certain speed whether it’s rainy or sunny. If
\nit’s cloudy but not raining, however, I usually go faster. (SW
\noriginal)<\/p>\n

1.56 answer: There’s a car wash on that corner. On rainy days, the rain
\nreduces traction. On sunny days, water from the car wash has the same
\neffect. If rain is threatening, though, the car wash gets little business
\nand thus doesn’t make the road wet, so I can take the corner faster.<\/p>\n

1.57<\/strong>. A man opens his mouth and dies shortly
\nafterwards.<\/p>\n

1.57 answer: He annoyed the mafia several hours ago; he’s now underwater
\nand wearing cement Reeboks. (“Style is everything, and cement Reeboks sure
\nare stylish.”) (RA)<\/p>\n

1.57 variant answer: The man is a vampire, about to bite a girl. Her
\nboyfriend arrives, realizes what is happening, and kills the vampire by
\ndriving a wooden stick through his heart. (This was the original answer, by
\nKari Hautamaki. But this answer would move the question to section 2, and I
\nlike Russell’s answer better anyway.)<\/p>\n

1.57 variant answer: The man opens his mouth; some killer bees (which
\ntend to prefer attacking darker areas) fly inside and sting him; the
\nswelling of his throat asphyxiates him. (MI)<\/p>\n

1.58<\/strong>. A married couple goes to a movie. During the
\nmovie the husband strangles the wife. He is able to get her body home
\nwithout attracting attention. (from Beyond the Easy Answer<\/cite>;
\nearlier from How Come?<\/cite>)<\/p>\n

1.58 answer: The movie is at a drive-in theatre.<\/p>\n

1.59<\/strong>. Music stops and a woman dies. (DVS)<\/p>\n

1.59 answer: The woman is a tightrope walker in a circus. Her act
\nconsists of walking the rope blindfolded, accompanied by music, without a
\nnet. The musician (organist, or calliopist, or pianist, or whatever) is
\nsupposed to stop playing when she reaches the end of the rope, telling her
\nthat it’s safe to step off onto the platform. For unknown reasons (but with
\nmurderous intent), he stops the music early, and she steps off the rope to
\nher death.<\/p>\n

1.59 variant answer: The woman is a character in an opera, who “dies” at
\nthe end of her song.<\/p>\n

1.59 variant answer: The “woman” is the dancing figure atop a music box,
\nwho “dies” when the box runs down. (Both of the above variants would
\nprobably require placing this puzzle in section 2 of the list.) (See also
\n#1.31a, #1.70a, and #1.75c.)<\/p>\n

1.59a. A woman is murdered in front of hundreds of people, but they all
\nthink it’s an accident. (From How Come?<\/cite>)<\/p>\n

1.59a variant answer: The woman is a trapeze artist who times her act
\n(from starting time to time to jump for another trapeze) by the music. The
\norganist changes tempo or stops the music too soon, and the trapeze artist
\nfalls to her death.<\/p>\n

1.59b. Variant: Charlie died when the music stopped.<\/p>\n

1.59b answer: Charlie was an insect sitting on a chair; the music
\nplaying was for the game Musical Chairs. (from Bob Philhower)<\/p>\n

1.60<\/strong>. Abel walks out of the ocean. Cain asks him who
\nhe is, and Abel answers. Cain kills Abel. (MWD original)<\/p>\n

1.60 answer: Abel is a prince of the island nation that he landed on. A
\ncruel and warlike prince, he waged many land and naval battles along with
\nhis father the king. In one naval encounter, their ship sank, the king
\ndied, and the prince swam to a deserted island where he spent several months
\nbuilding a raft or small boat. In the meantime, a regent was appointed to
\nthe island nation, and he brought peace and prosperity. When Prince Abel
\nreturned to his kingdom, Cain (a native fisherman) realized that the peace
\nof the land would only be maintained if Abel did not reascend to his throne,
\nand killed the prince (with a piece of driftwood or some other impromptu
\nweapon).<\/p>\n

1.61<\/strong>. A man is riding a subway. He meets a one-armed
\nman, who pulls out a gun and shoots him. (SJ; from How
\nCome?<\/cite>)<\/p>\n

1.61 answer: Several men were shipwrecked together. They agreed to
\nsurvive by eating each other a piece at a time. Each of them in turn gave
\nup an arm, but before they got to the last man, they were rescued. They all
\ndemanded that the last man live up to his end of the deal. Instead, he
\nkilled a bum and sent the bum’s arm to the others in a box to “prove” that
\nhe had fulfilled the bargain. Later, one of them sees him on the subway,
\nholding onto an overhead ring with the arm he supposedly cut off; the other
\nrealizes that the last man cheated, and kills him.<\/p>\n

1.61a. Variant wording: A man sends a package to someone in Europe and
\ngets a note back saying “Thank you. I received it.”<\/p>\n

1.61a answer: This is just a simpler version; the shipwreck situation is
\nthe same, and the man actually did send his own arm.<\/p>\n

1.61b. Variant wording: Two men throw a box off of a cliff.<\/p>\n

1.61b answer: Exactly the same situation as in #1.61a (one slight
\nvariation has a hand in the box instead of a whole arm), with the two men
\nbeing two of the fellow passengers who had already lost their arms.<\/p>\n

1.61c. Variant wording: A man in a Sherlock Holmes-style cape walks into
\na room, places a box on the table and leaves.<\/p>\n

1.61c answer: In this one he’s wearing the cape either to disguise the
\nfact that he hasn’t really cut off his arm\/hand as required, or else simply
\nin order to hide his now-missing limb. (from Joe Kincaid)<\/p>\n

1.62<\/strong>. An ordinary American citizen, with no passport,
\nvisits over thirty foreign countries in one day. He is welcomed in each
\ncountry, and leaves each one of his own accord. (PRO)<\/p>\n

1.62 answer: He is a mail courier who delivers packages to the different
\nforeign embassies in the United States. The land of an embassy belongs to
\nthe country of the embassy, not to the United States.<\/p>\n

1.63<\/strong>. A man is sitting in bed. He makes a phone call,
\nsaying nothing, and then goes to sleep. (SJ; from How
\nCome?<\/cite>)<\/p>\n

1.63 answer: He is in a hotel, and is unable to sleep because the man in
\nthe adjacent room is snoring. He calls the room next door (from his own
\nroom number he can easily figure out his neighbor’s, and from the room
\nnumber, the telephone number). The snorer wakes up, answers the phone. The
\nfirst man hangs up without saying anything and goes to sleep before the
\nsnorer gets back to sleep and starts snoring again.<\/p>\n

1.63 variant answer: (slight) It’s a next-door neighbor in an apartment
\nbuilding who’s snoring, rather than in a hotel. The caller thus knows his
\nneighbor and the phone number.<\/p>\n

1.63a. A man is sleeping in bed at 3 a.m. when the telephone rings. As
\nthe man lifts the receiver, the caller hangs up. (DW)<\/p>\n

1.63a answer: Same situation, from the snoring man’s point of view.<\/p>\n

1.64<\/strong>. A man tries to buy poison to kill his wife. The
\npharmacist figures out what he’s up to and finds a way to ensure that he
\ncan’t kill his wife. (CB, from Flitterwochen in der
\nHoelle<\/cite>)<\/p>\n

1.64 answer: The pharmacist gives the man a cup of coffee to drink while
\nhe’s waiting. After the man has drunk the coffee, the pharmacist says,
\n“There was poison in that coffee. I’ll give you the antidote if you write a
\nsigned statement that you were planning to kill your wife. I’ll keep the
\nconfession; if anything happens to your wife, I’ll give it to the
\npolice.”<\/p>\n

1.65<\/strong>. A man was walking down a road when a stone lodged
\nitself between his foot and his sandal. He leaned against a pole and, with
\nhis head down to watch, he shook his foot to dislodge the stone. Another
\nman came up and broke the first man’s arm in three places. (RB)<\/p>\n

1.65 answer: The chap shaking his foot to dislodge the stone was leanig
\nagainst a metal light pole. The other fellow came along and thought that
\nthe pole had become ‘live’ somehow; he thought the first fellow was being
\nelectrocuted (and that the muscles in his hand had contracted and he
\ncouldn’t let go). So the second fellow rushed over and whacked the first
\none on the arm, hard. He apologised for it afterwards. (A true story, from
\nan Australian newspaper.)<\/p>\n

1.66<\/strong>. A man is sitting suspended over two pressurized
\ncontainers. Suddenly, he dies. (NK original)<\/p>\n

1.66 answer: He’s riding a bicycle or motorcycle, and he crashes and
\ndies.<\/p>\n

1.67<\/strong>. A man is dead in a puddle of blood and water on
\nthe floor of a locked room. (This is different from #1.68.)<\/p>\n

1.67 answer: He stabbed himself with an icicle.<\/p>\n

1.68<\/strong>. A man is found hanging in a locked room with a
\npuddle of water under his feet. (This is different from #1.67.)<\/p>\n

1.68 answer: He stood on a block of ice (or a mound of snow) to hang
\nhimself. The fact that there’s no furniture in the room can be added to the
\nstatement, but if it’s mentioned in conjunction with the puddle of water the
\nanswer tends to be guessed more easily.<\/p>\n

1.68a. Same without the puddle of water.<\/p>\n

1.68a answer: It was dry ice instead of water ice. (From Stories
\nWith Holes<\/cite>.)<\/p>\n

1.69<\/strong>. Mr. H meets Mr. X in a hotel bar; after a heated
\ndiscussion, they leave the bar and head upstairs. Partway up the stairs,
\nMr. X clutches his chest, then punches Mr. H in the face.<\/p>\n

1.69 answer: Mr. H and his new wife are in the hotel for their
\nhoneymoon. Mrs. H is upstairs in their suite; Mr. H has stopped for a
\ndrink. In the bar he strikes up a conversation with a complete stranger,
\nMr. X, who turns out to be a hypnotist. Mr. H claims he can’t be
\nhypnotized; a heated discussion ensues, after which Mr. X hypnotizes Mr. H,
\ntelling Mr. H to kill his wife. (Mr. X intends to stop Mr. H before he
\nactually commits the crime.) They head for the honeymoon suite, but partway
\nup the stairs Mr. X has a heart attack; he punches Mr. H in an attempt to
\nend the trance before Mr. X dies. (JKM original?)<\/p>\n

1.69a. Two friends have just had lunch in a restaurant. At the end of
\nthe meal, one draws a pistol and shoots the other. (DW)<\/p>\n

1.69a answer: The solution is essentially the same, except (a) the topic
\nof the lunch discussion was specifically whether someone can be hyponotised
\nto do something they normally would not do, (b) there’s no mention in the
\nteaser of the heart attack, and (c) the men are long-time friends. Also,
\nthe hypnotist is a doctor, so he’s sure the heart attack will be fatal. The
\nshooting is non-fatal and is intended to “wake up” the hypnotized friend to
\nkeep him from killing his wife.<\/p>\n

1.70<\/strong>. A man driving his car turns on the radio. He
\nthen pulls over to the side of the road and shoots himself. (This is
\ndifferent from #1.71.)<\/p>\n

1.70 answer: He worked as a DJ at a radio station. He decided to kill
\nhis wife, and so he put on a long record and quickly drove home and killed
\nher, figuring he had a perfect alibi: he’d been at work. On the way back he
\nturns on his show, only to discover that the record is skipping.<\/p>\n

1.70a. Variant: The music stops and the man dies.<\/p>\n

1.70a answer: The same, except it’s a tape breaking instead of a record
\nskipping. (from Michael Killianey) (See also #1.31a, #1.59, and
\n#1.75c.)<\/p>\n

1.71<\/strong>. A man is driving his car. He turns on the radio,
\nlistens for five minutes, turns around, goes home, and shoots his wife.
\n(This is different from #1.70.) (From How Come?<\/cite>)<\/p>\n

1.71 answer: The radio program is one of the
\ncall-up-somebody-and-ask-them-a-question contest shows; the announcer gives
\nthe phone number of the man’s bedroom phone as the number he’s calling, and
\na male voice answers. It’s been suggested that such shows don’t usually
\ngive the phone number being called; so instead the wife’s name could be
\ngiven as who’s being called, and there could be appropriate background
\nsounds when the other man answers the phone.<\/p>\n

1.72<\/strong>. She grabbed his ring, pulled on it, and dropped
\nit. (JM, from Math for Girls<\/cite>)<\/p>\n

1.72 answer: They were skydiving. He broke his arm as he jumped from
\nthe plane by hitting it on the plane door; he couldn’t reach his ripcord
\nwith his other arm. She pulled the ripcord for him.<\/p>\n

1.72 variant answer: (sketch) The ring was attached to the pin of a
\ngrenade that he was holding. Develop a situation from there.<\/p>\n

1.72 variant answer: The ring is the engagement ring that he gave her.
\nShe’s calling off the engagement. (JD)<\/p>\n

1.73<\/strong>. A riverboat filled with passengers suddenly
\ncapsized, drowning most of those aboard. (originally from How Come —
\nAgain?<\/cite>)<\/p>\n

1.73 answer: The boat was moving along a river in India when a large
\nsnake dropped onto the deck. The passengers all rushed to the other side of
\nthe boat, thereby overturning it. This is apparently based on a true
\nincident reported in the World Almanac<\/cite>.<\/p>\n

1.74<\/strong>. A woman walks into a small room and screams.
\n(NP)<\/p>\n

1.74 answer: The woman is a nun, the room is a bathroom in what is
\nsupposed to be a women-only area, and the toilet seat has been left up.<\/p>\n

1.75<\/strong>. A rope breaks. A bell rings. A man dies.
\n(KH)<\/p>\n

1.75 answer: A blind man enjoys walking near a cliff, and uses the sound
\nof a buoy to gauge his distance from the edge. One day the buoy’s anchor
\nrope breaks, allowing the buoy to drift away from the shore, and the man
\nwalks over the edge of the cliff.<\/p>\n

1.75a. Variant: A bell rings. A man dies. A bell rings.<\/p>\n

1.75a answer: A blind swimmer sets an alarm clock to tell him when and
\nwhat direction to go to shore. The first bell is a buoy, which he
\nmistakenly swims to, getting tired and drowning. Then the alarm clock goes
\noff. In other variations, the first bell is a ship’s bell, and\/or the
\nsecond bell is a hand-bell rung by a friend on shore at a pre-arranged
\ntime.<\/p>\n

1.75a variant answer: The man falls off a belltower, pulling the
\nbell-cord (perhaps he was climbing a steeple while hanging onto the rope),
\nand dies. The second bell is one rung at his funeral. Could also be a
\nvariant on #1.75 (as suggested by Mike Neergaard): the bell-cord breaks when
\nhe falls (and there’s no second bell involved).<\/p>\n

1.75a variant answer: The man is a boxer. The first bell signals the
\nstart of a round; the second is either the end of the round or a funeral
\nbell after he dies during the match. Could also be a variant on #1.75 (as
\nsuggested by Mike Neergaard): a boxing match in which the top rope breaks,
\ntumbling a boxer to the floor (and he dies of a concussion).<\/p>\n

1.75b. Variant: The wind stopped blowing and the man died.<\/p>\n

1.75b answer: The sole survivor of a shipwreck reached a desert isle.
\nUnfortunately, he was blind. Luckily, there was a freshwater spring on the
\nisland, and he rigged the ship’s bell (which had drifted to the island also)
\nat the spring’s location. The bell rang in the wind, directing him to
\nwater. When he was becalmed for a week, he could not find water again, and
\nso he died of thirst. (from Peter R. Olpe)<\/p>\n

1.75c. Variant: The music stopped and the man died.<\/p>\n

1.75c answer: Same as #1.75a, but the blind swimmer kept a portable
\ntransistor radio on the beach instead of a bell. When the batteries gave
\nout, he got lost and drowned. (from Joe Kincaid) (See also #1.31a, #1.59,
\nand #1.70a.)<\/p>\n

1.75d. Variant: A rope breaks. A bell rings. A boy dies. (WW)<\/p>\n

1.75d answer: This allows red herrings involving the homonyms “boy” and
\n“buoy” (in some pronunciations). Only use this wording if you want to
\nintentionally confuse your audience.<\/p>\n

1.76<\/strong>. Joe leaves his house, wearing a mask and carrying
\nan empty sack. An hour later he returns. The sack is now full. He goes
\ninto a room and turns out the lights. (AL)<\/p>\n

1.76 answer: Joe is a kid who goes trick-or-treating for Halloween.<\/p>\n

1.77<\/strong>. A woman buys a new pair of shoes, goes to work,
\nand dies. (DM)<\/p>\n

1.77 answer: The woman is the assistant to a (circus or sideshow)
\nknife-thrower. The new shoes have higher heels than she normally wears, so
\nthat the thrower misjudges his aim and one of his knives kills her during
\nthe show.<\/p>\n

1.77a. Variant: A woman sees her husband entering a certain place of
\nbusiness and insists on dissolving their partnership. (originally from
\nHow Come — Again?<\/cite>)<\/p>\n

1.77a answer: The husband is a knife-thrower; the woman is his assistant
\nas well as his wife. She sees him going into an optometrist’s office and
\ndecides that if he’s having trouble with his eyes she doesn’t want him
\nthrowing knives at her.<\/p>\n

1.78<\/strong>. A woman has incontrovertible proof in court that
\nher husband was murdered by her sister. The judge declares, “This is the
\nstrangest case I’ve ever seen. Though it’s a cut-and-dried case, this woman
\ncannot be punished.” (This is different from #1.11.) (MH; from How
\nCome?<\/cite>)<\/p>\n

1.78 answer: The sisters are Siamese twins.<\/p>\n

1.78a. Variant: A man and his brother are in a bar drinking. They begin
\nto argue (as always) and the brother won’t get out of the man’s face,
\nshouting and cursing. The man, finally fed up, pulls out a pistol and blows
\nhis brother’s brains out. He sits down to die.<\/p>\n

1.78a answer: They are Siamese twins. In the original story, the
\nargument started when one complained about the other’s bad hygiene and bad
\nbreath. The shooter bled to death (from his brother’s wounds) by the time
\nthe police arrived. (RW, based on a 1987 Weekly World News<\/cite>
\nstory)<\/p>\n

1.79<\/strong>. Hans and Fritz are German spies during World War
\nII. They try to enter America, posing as returning tourists. Hans is
\nimmediately arrested. (JM, originally from How Come —
\nAgain?<\/cite>)<\/p>\n

1.79 answer: Hans and Fritz do everything right up until they’re filling
\nout a personal-information form and have to write down their birthdays.
\nFritz’ birthday is, say, July 7, so he writes down 7\/7\/15. Hans, however,
\nwas born on, say, June 20, so he writes down 20\/6\/18 instead of what an
\nAmerican would write, 6\/20\/18. Note that this is only a problem because
\nthey claim<\/em> to be returning Americans; there are lots of other
\nnations which use the same date ordering.<\/p>\n

1.80<\/strong>. A man is found dead on a path 200 feet from a
\ngate. Other than his clothes, all he had with him was a stick. (KO
\noriginal)<\/p>\n

1.80 answer: The gate is the starting gate of a horse race. The man is
\na jockey who fell off his horse shortly after it left the gate and got run
\nover by the rest of the horses. The stick is his riding crop.<\/p>\n

1.81<\/strong>. A man is found dead in an alley lying in a red
\npool with two sticks crossed near his head. (PRO)<\/p>\n

1.81 answer: The man died from eating a poisoned popsicle.<\/p>\n

1.82<\/strong>. A married couple was speeding into town when
\ntheir sedan ran out of gas. The man went for help after making sure his
\nwife closed the windows and locked the doors of the car. Upon his return,
\nhe found his wife dead and a stranger in the car. The windows were still
\nclosed, the doors were still locked, and no damage was done to the car.
\n(SP, from The Next Book of OMNI Games<\/cite>; earlier from How
\nCome?<\/cite>)<\/p>\n

1.82 answer: The woman gave birth, and bled to death. Since the father
\nhas never seen the baby before, the kid can technically be called a
\nstranger.<\/p>\n

1.82a. Two people are dead in a car, which is locked from the inside.
\nThere’s a lot of blood. (“Martin”)<\/p>\n

1.82a answer: One of the dead people is a woman; the other is the baby
\nshe’s just given birth to. She died in childbirth.<\/p>\n

1.83<\/strong>. A woman lies dead in the street near a car.
\n(AG)<\/p>\n

1.83 answer: She was on a motorcycle, and her long hair got caught on
\nthe car’s antenna. It ripped out part of her scalp and she bled to death.
\nAndreas says this is also based on an actual accident.<\/p>\n

1.84<\/strong>. Tim and Greg were talking. Tim said “The terror
\nof flight.” Greg said “The gloom of the grave.” Greg was arrested. (MPW
\noriginal, from “No Refuge Could Save,” by Isaac Asimov)<\/p>\n

1.84 answer: The setting is America during WWII. Greg is a German spy.
\nHis “friend” Tim is suspicious, so he plays a word-association game with
\nhim. When Tim says “The land of the free,” Greg responds with “The home of
\nthe brave.” Then Tim says “The terror of flight,” and Greg says “The gloom
\nof the grave.” Any U.S. citizen knows the first verse of the national
\nanthem, but only a spy would have memorized the third verse. (Why Tim knew
\nthe third verse is left as an exercise to the reader.)<\/p>\n

1.85<\/strong>. A woman throws something out a window and dies.
\n(JM)<\/p>\n

1.85 answer: The object she throws is a boomerang. It flies out, loops
\naround, and comes back and hits her in the head, killing her. Boomerangs do
\nnot often return so close to the point from which they were thrown, but I
\nbelieve it’s possible for this to happen.<\/p>\n

1.85 variant answer: (silly) She’s in a submarine or spacecraft and
\nthrows a heavy object at the window, which breaks.<\/p>\n

1.86<\/strong>. A man is found dead in his parked car. Tire
\ntracks lead up to the car and away. (SD; from How Come?<\/cite>)<\/p>\n

1.86 answer: The dead man was the driver in a hit-and-run accident which
\nparalyzed its victim. The victim did manage to get the license plate number
\nof the car; now in a wheelchair, he eventually tracked down the driver and
\nshot and killed him.<\/p>\n

1.86a. Variant wording: It is winter in the city, and snow lies
\neverywhere. Two sets of tire tracks lead into a garage. Only one set
\nleads out again. A man lies dead inside. (RW)<\/p>\n

1.86a answer: Same. (There are variant motives for the killing, but all
\ninvolve the dead man being responsible for the wheelchair-bound killer’s
\ncondition. For instance, the dead man could be a surgeon who made a mistake
\ndoing spinal surgery.<\/p>\n

1.87<\/strong>. A man is returning from Switzerland by train. If
\nhe had been in a non-smoking car he would have died. (DVS; MC wording)<\/p>\n

1.87 answer: The man used to be blind; he’s now returning from an eye
\noperation which restored his sight. He’s spent all his money on the
\noperation, so when the train (which has no internal lighting) goes through a
\ntunnel he at first thinks he’s gone blind again and almost decides to kill
\nhimself. Fortunately, the light of the cigarettes people are smoking
\nconvinces him that he can still see.<\/p>\n

1.87a. Variant: A man dies on a train he does not ordinarily catch.<\/p>\n

1.87a answer: The man (a successful artist) has had an accident in which
\nhe injured his eyes. His head is bandaged and he has been warned not to
\nremove the bandages under any circumstances lest the condition be
\nirreversibly aggravated. He catches the train home from the hospital and
\ncannot resist peeking. Seeing nothing at all (the same train-in-tunnel
\nsituation as above obtains, but without the glowing cigarettes this time),
\nhe assumes he is blinded and kills himself in grief. I like this version a
\nlot, except that it makes much less sense that he’d be traveling alone.
\n(from Bernd Wechner)<\/p>\n

1.88<\/strong>. Two men are digging a trench. They look at each
\nother and start to argue. They make a phone call. One man leaves for home
\nand the other angrily continues to dig. (JC original?)<\/p>\n

1.88 answer: The two men started at opposite ends of the trench, digging
\ntoward each other. Instead of meeting up, though, they pass each other,
\nmeaning that one man dug at a skewed angle, or started at the wrong place.
\nThey call their supervisor, who tells them that one man was right and the
\nother must re-dig his half in the right place.<\/p>\n

1.89<\/strong>. Two men are kidnapped and are placed in the trunk
\nof a car. The next morning, when the trunk is opened, one man is alive and
\nthe other is dead.<\/p>\n

1.89 answer: One of them suffocated; the other lived by breathing the
\nair from the spare tire in the trunk. I’m skeptical that this could work,
\nso I’m leaving it in section 2 for now; if I get confirmation on
\nfeasibility, I’ll move it to section 1. (From Stories With
\nHoles<\/cite>.)<\/p>\n

1.90<\/strong>. A man urinates and dies. (RA original)<\/p>\n

1.90 answer: He urinated on the third rail in the New York subway, was
\nknocked onto the tracks by the shock, and was hit by a train and killed.
\n(Experts apparently disagree on whether he died from the electrical shock
\nbefore the train hit him.) This is a true story; the man was named Joseph
\nPatrick O’Malley, and Cecil Adams gives the story in The Straight
\nDope<\/cite>, quoting Where Death Delights<\/cite> by Marshall
\nHouta.<\/p>\n

1.90 variant answer: The man was in a boat on the Amazon. A tiny fish
\nswam “upstream” into the man whereupon it inflated itself to balloon size,
\nkilling him. (TK) (I don’t know whether fish that can swim up a urethra
\nactually exist or are an urban legend, but all my sources indicate they do
\nexist. The self-inflation may not be true, though. Also, the man might
\nhave to be standing in the water (rather than in the boat) for the fish to
\nenter his body.)<\/p>\n

1.91<\/strong>. A man wakes up one night to get some water. He
\nturns off the light and goes back to bed. The next morning he looks out the
\nwindow, screams, and kills himself. (CR; KK wording; originally from
\nHow Come — Again?<\/cite>)<\/p>\n

1.91 answer: The man is a lighthouse keeper. He turns off the light in
\nthe lighthouse and during the night a ship crashes on the rocks. Seeing
\nthis the next morning, the man realizes what he’s done and commits
\nsuicide.<\/p>\n

1.91a. Variant, similar to #1.70: The light goes out and a man dies.<\/p>\n

1.91a answer: The lighthouse keeper uses his job as an alibi while he’s
\nelsewhere committing a crime, but the light goes out and a ship crashes,
\nthereby disproving the alibi. The lighthouse keeper kills himself when he
\nrealizes his alibi is no good. (From Eric Wang)<\/p>\n

1.91a variant answer: A man commits a heinous crime, claiming as his
\nalibi that he was onboard a certain ship. When he learns that (due to a
\nlighthouse failure) the ship was wrecked without reaching port safely, he
\nrealizes that his alibi is disproven and commits suicide to avoid being sent
\nto prison. (From Eric Wang)<\/p>\n

1.92<\/strong>. A man is dead in a room with a small pile of
\npieces of wood and sawdust in one corner. (from “Coroner’s Inquest,” by
\nMarc Connelly; earlier(?) from How Come?<\/cite>)<\/p>\n

1.92 answer: The man is a blind midget, the shortest one in the circus.
\nAnother midget, jealous because he’s not as short, has been sawing small
\npieces off of the first one’s cane every night, so that every day he thinks
\nhe’s taller. Since his only income is from being a circus midget, he
\ndecides to kill himself when he gets too tall.<\/p>\n

1.92 variant answer: (slight) Instead of sawing pieces off of the
\nmidget’s cane, someone has sawed the legs off of his bed. He wakes up,
\nstands up, and thinks he’s grown during the night.<\/p>\n

1.92 variant answer: There were termites in his cane.<\/p>\n

1.92a. Variant wording: If he had seen the sawdust, he would have lived.
\n(MJ)<\/p>\n

1.92a answer: Same.<\/p>\n

1.92b. Variant: A pile of sawdust, no net, a man dies.<\/p>\n

1.92b answer: A midget is jealous of the clown who walks on stilts. He
\nsaws partway through the stilts; the clown walks along and falls and dies
\nwhen they break. (from Peter R. Olpe)<\/p>\n

1.93<\/strong>. Two men are dead next to a pile of wood and a
\nrope. (JC original?)<\/p>\n

1.93 answer: The two men were bungee jumpers. They found a secluded
\nwooden bridge and decided to bungee off of it. One man jumped off after
\nbeing tied to the bridge, but at the nadir of his fall, the bridge gave
\nout. The man who jumped landed on the ground safely since he was fairly
\nclose to the earth, but the collapsing bridge fell on top of him. The
\nother man fell along with the bridge to his death.<\/p>\n

1.94<\/strong>. A writer with an audience of millions insisted
\nthat he was never to be interrupted while writing. After the day when he
\nactually was interrupted, he never wrote again. (JM, originally from
\nHow Come — Again?<\/cite>)<\/p>\n

1.94 answer: He was a skywriter whose plane crashed into another
\nplane.<\/p>\n

1.94a. Variant wording: A seated woman is writing a letter. She dies
\nbecause there’s a thunderstorm outside. (SP, from The Next Book of
\nOMNI Games<\/cite>)<\/p>\n

1.94a answer: Same. I really like this version; I may even replace the
\nolder puzzle statement with this one.<\/p>\n

1.94b. Variant: A woman is in a Q when there is a flash of lightning and
\nshe dies. (SP original?)<\/p>\n

1.94b answer: “Q” sounds like “queue,” suggesting she’s standing in line
\nrather than writing the letter Q.<\/p>\n

1.95<\/strong>. In the middle of the ocean is a yacht. Several
\ncorpses are floating in the water nearby. (SJ)<\/p>\n

1.95 answer: A bunch of people are on an ocean voyage in a yacht. One
\nafternoon, they all decide to go swimming, so they put on swimsuits and dive
\noff the side into the water. Unfortunately, they forget to set up a ladder
\non the side of the boat, so there’s no way for them to climb back in, and
\nthey drown.<\/p>\n

1.95 variant answer: The same situation, except that they set out a
\nladder which is just barely long enough. When they all dive into the water,
\nthe boat, without their weight, rises in the water until the ladder is just
\nbarely out of reach. (also from Steve Jacquot)<\/p>\n

Section 2: Double meanings, fictional settings, and miscellaneous
\nothers<\/h2>\n

2.1<\/strong>. A man is born in 1972 and dies in 1952 at the age
\nof 25. (DM)<\/p>\n

2.1 answer: He’s born in room number 1972 of a hospital and dies in room
\nnumber 1952. The numbers can of course vary; it was originally set up with
\nthose numbers reversed (born in 1952, died in 1972), but I like it better
\nthis way.<\/p>\n

2.2<\/strong>. A man is found dead in the arctic with a pack on
\nhis back. (This is different from #1.25, #1.24, and #2.12.) (PRO)<\/p>\n

2.2 answer: It’s a wolf pack; they’ve killed and eaten (most of) the
\nman.<\/p>\n

2.3<\/strong>. A man pushes a car up to a hotel and tells the
\nowner he’s bankrupt. (DVS; partial AL and JM wording)<\/p>\n

2.3 answer: It’s a game of Monopoly.<\/p>\n

2.3a. Variant: The car came out of the blue and the man came into some
\nmoney.<\/p>\n

2.3a answer: The same; in this case the car token passes Go and the
\nplayer collects $200. (from “Mo,” whose full name I missed)<\/p>\n

2.4<\/strong>. A man lies dead in a room with fifty-three
\nbicycles in front of him.<\/p>\n

2.4 answer: The “bicycles” are Bicycle playing cards; the man was
\ncheating at cards, and when the extra card was found, he was killed by the
\nother players.<\/p>\n

2.4a. Variant: There are 53 bees instead of 53 bicycles.<\/p>\n

2.4a answer: The same (Bee is another brand of playing cards).<\/p>\n

2.4b. Variant: There are 51 instead of 53.<\/p>\n

2.4b answer: Someone saw the guy conceal a card, and proved the deck was
\ndefective by turning it up and pointing out the missing ace. Or, the game
\nwas bridge, and the others noticed the cheating when the deal didn’t come
\nout even. The man had palmed an ace during the shuffle and meant to put it
\nin his own hand during the deal, but muffed it. (both answers from Mark
\nBrader)<\/p>\n

2.5<\/strong>. A black man dressed all in black, wearing a black
\nmask, stands at a crossroads in a totally black-painted town. All of the
\nstreetlights in town are broken. There is no moon. A black-painted car
\nwithout headlights drives straight toward him, but turns in time and doesn’t
\nhit him. (AL and RM wording; from How Come?<\/cite>)<\/p>\n

2.5 answer: It’s daytime; the sun is out.<\/p>\n

2.5a. Elsa can turn off her bedroom light at the door to her bedroom,
\nand still make it acroos the room and into bed before the room gets dark.
\n(Math for Girls<\/cite>)<\/p>\n

2.5a answer: It’s daytime; the room is lit by a window.<\/p>\n

2.6<\/strong>. Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice all live in the
\nsame house. Bob and Carol go out to a movie, and when they return, Alice is
\nlying dead on the floor in a puddle of water and glass. It is obvious that
\nTed killed her but Ted is not prosecuted or severely punished. (From
\nHow Come?<\/cite>)<\/p>\n

2.6 answer: Alice is a goldfish; Ted is a cat. (Or a dog, since the
\nfish’s body is still there rather than eaten.)<\/p>\n

2.6a. A very common variant uses the names Romeo and Juliet instead, to
\nfurther mislead audiences. For example: Romeo is looking down on Juliet’s
\ndead body, which is on the floor surrounded by water and broken glass.
\n(AC)<\/p>\n

2.6a answer: Same.<\/p>\n

2.6b. Minor variant: Tom and Jean lay dead in a puddle of water with
\nbroken pieces of glass and a baseball nearby.<\/p>\n

2.6b answer: Tom and Jean are both fish; it was a baseball, rather than
\na cat, that broke their tank. (from Mike Reymond)<\/p>\n

2.7<\/strong>. A dead man lies near a pile of bricks and a beetle
\non top of a book. (MN)<\/p>\n

2.7 answer: The man was an amateur mechanic, the book is a Volkswagen
\nservice manual, the beetle is a car, and the pile of bricks is what the car
\nfell off of.<\/p>\n

2.8<\/strong>. Hiking in the mountains, you walk past a large
\nfield and camp a few miles farther on, at a stream. It snows in the night,
\nand the next day you find a cabin in the field with two dead bodies inside.
\n(KL; KD and partial JM wording)<\/p>\n

2.8 answer: It’s the cabin of an airplane that crashed there because of
\nthe snowstorm.<\/p>\n

2.8a. A man is sitting in a chair — in a cabin — on the side of a
\nmountain — dead. (DW)<\/p>\n

2.8a answer: Same situation, but more concise wording.<\/p>\n

2.8b. Variant wording: A cabin, on the side of a mountain, locked from
\nthe inside, is opened, and 30 people are found dead inside. They had plenty
\nof food and water. (from Ron Carter)<\/p>\n

2.8b answer: Same.<\/p>\n

2.9<\/strong>. Two people are playing cards. One looks around
\nand realizes he’s going to die. (JM original)<\/p>\n

2.9 answer: The one who looks around sees his own reflection in the
\nwindow (it’s dark outside), but not his companion’s. Thus, he realizes the
\nother is a vampire, and that he’s going to be killed by him.<\/p>\n

2.10<\/strong>. A man was brought before a tribal chief, who
\nasked him a question. If he had known the answer, he probably would have
\ndied. He didn’t, and lived. (MWD original)<\/p>\n

2.10 answer: The native chief asked him, “What is the third baseman’s
\nname in the Abbot and Costello routine ‘Who’s on First’?” The man, who had
\nno idea, said “I don’t know,” the correct answer. However, he was a major
\nsmartass, so if he had known the answer he would have pointed out that What
\nwas the second<\/em> baseman’s name. The chief, being quite humorless,
\nwould have executed him on the spot. This is fairly silly, but I like it
\ntoo much to remove it from the list.<\/p>\n

2.10 variant answer: The question was, “What does the tattoo on my
\ndaughter’s tush say?” or any other question whose answer reveals that you
\nknow more than you should. Of course, for this sort of question one can lie
\nand say one doesn’t know even if one does. (FF)<\/p>\n

2.11<\/strong>. A very rich man hires a poor man to clean one
\nwing of his extravagant domicile. The poor man, wanting to impress his new
\nboss, cleans the entire house. Soon after, the man quits his job. (JC
\noriginal?)<\/p>\n

2.11 answer: The poor man is hired by Aladdin to clean his palace.
\nAladdin only wants the man to clean part of the palace because he does not
\nwish anyone to enter his bedroom, where he keeps the magic lamp. The poor
\nman meticulously scrubs the palace from head to toe, and rubs the magic lamp
\nin the process. The djinn appears; the poor man wishes for riches, and no
\nlonger needs the job.<\/p>\n

2.12<\/strong>. There is a dead man lying in the desert next to a
\nrock. (This is different from #1.25, #1.24, and #2.2.) (GH)<\/p>\n

2.12 answer: The dead man is Superman; the rock is Green Kryptonite.
\nInvent a reasonable scenario from there.<\/p>\n

2.13<\/strong>. A woman opens an envelope and dyes. (AL)<\/p>\n

2.13 answer: Should be done orally; the envelope is an envelope of dye,
\nand she’s dying some cloth, but it sounds like “opens an envelope and dies”
\nif said out loud.<\/p>\n

2.14<\/strong>. He was killed because of poor eyesight. (JM
\noriginal, from an Arthur C. Clarke story in Tales from the White
\nHart<\/cite>)<\/p>\n

2.14 answer: He was a referee who made a poor call. He was burned to
\ndeath by fans reflecting sunlight from their slick-covered game programs. I
\nsuppose this is theoretically possible, but it’s rather silly and
\nfar-fetched, like most of the stories from that collection; I may not keep
\nit on the list.<\/p>\n

2.15<\/strong>. A man rides into town on Friday. He stays one
\nnight and leaves on Friday. (KK)<\/p>\n

2.15 answer: Friday is a horse.<\/p>\n

2.15 variant answer: The town is near the north pole. Night lasts six
\nmonths. (FF)<\/p>\n

2.15a. Variant with the same basic gimmick: A woman comes home, sees
\nSpaghetti on the wall and kills her husband.<\/p>\n

2.15a answer: Spaghetti was the name of her pet dog. Her husband had it
\nstuffed and mounted after it made a mess on his rug. (Simon Travaglia
\noriginal)<\/p>\n

2.16<\/strong>. A horse jumps over a tower and lands on a man,
\nwho disappears. (ES original)<\/p>\n

2.16 answer: A chess game; knight takes pawn.<\/p>\n

2.16a. Variant: It’s the year 860 A.D., at Camelot. Two priests are
\nsitting in the castle’s chapel. The queen attacks the king. The two
\npriests rise, shake hands, and leave the room.<\/p>\n

2.16a answer: The two priests are playing chess; one of them just mated
\nby moving his queen. (from Ellen M. Sentovich)<\/p>\n

2.16b. Variant: A black leader dies in Africa.<\/p>\n

2.16b answer: The black leader is a chess king, and the game was played
\nin Africa. (from Erick Brethenoux)<\/p>\n

2.17<\/strong>. Two men are found dead outside of an igloo. (SK
\noriginal)<\/p>\n

2.17 answer: The men have gone spelunking and have taken an Igloo brand
\ncooler with them so they can have a picnic down in the caves. They cleverly
\nused dry ice to keep their beer cold, not realizing that as the dry ice
\nsublimed (went from solid state to vapor state) it would push the lighter
\noxygen out of the cave and they would suffocate.<\/p>\n

2.18<\/strong>. A man is alone on an island with no food and no
\nwater, yet he does not fear for his life. (MN)<\/p>\n

2.18 answer: The “island” is a traffic island.<\/p>\n

2.19<\/strong>. A man marries twenty women in his village but
\nisn’t charged with polygamy.<\/p>\n

2.19 answer: He’s a priest; he is marrying them to other people, not to
\nhimself.<\/p>\n

2.20<\/strong>. Joe wants to go home, but he can’t go home
\nbecause the man in the mask is waiting for him. (AL wording)<\/p>\n

2.20 answer: A baseball game is going on. The base-runner sees the
\ncatcher waiting at home plate with the ball, and so decides to stay at third
\nbase to avoid being tagged out.<\/p>\n

2.20 variant answer: Joe’s in the hospital. He can’t go home, because
\nthe man in the mask is a surgeon waiting to remove his appendix. (FF)<\/p>\n

2.20 variant answer: Joe is a bee; the man in the mask is a
\nbeekeeper.<\/p>\n

2.20a. Variant wording: Johnny is afraid to go home because of the man
\nin the mask. (DW)<\/p>\n

2.20a answer: Same. The diminutive “Johnny” makes it sound like he’s a
\nlittle kid, nicely further obfuscating the issue.<\/p>\n

2.20b. Variant: Two men are in a field. One is wearing a mask. The
\nother man is running towards him to avoid him.<\/p>\n

2.20b answer: The same, but the catcher isn’t right at home plate; the
\nrunner is trying to get home before the catcher can. (from Hal Lowery, by
\nway of Chris Riley) This phrasing would allow the puzzle to migrate to
\nsection 1, but I don’t like it as much.<\/p>\n

2.20c. Variant wording: Instead of “home,” say the man in the mask is
\nstanding on the corner.<\/p>\n

2.20c answer: Same.<\/p>\n

2.21<\/strong>. Bruce wins the race, but he gets no trophy.
\n(EMS)<\/p>\n

2.21 answer: Bruce is a horse.<\/p>\n

2.22<\/strong>. A woman meets the king, cries “Pain!”, and loses
\nconsciousness. (MI original)<\/p>\n

2.22 answer: True story: in France, shortly after the fall of the
\nBastille, food shortages became a problem again. A mob of people went to
\nVersaille to petition the king to do something about the problem. A small
\ndelegation was admitted to meet the king. One woman, overcome with emotion,
\ncould only cry “Pain” (French for “bread”) and faint. (Source: Durant,
\nThe Age of Napoleon<\/cite>, pg. 25) Note that this only works in
\nprinted form, not aloud, because the French word is pronounced more like
\nEnglish “pan” than like English “pain.”<\/p>\n

2.22 variant answer: Nine months earlier, this woman had been
\nimpregnated by the previous king, who died soon afterword. Now, she is
\ngiving birth to the new king. (TV)<\/p>\n

2.22a. A man enters a store. After a short pause, he says “pain.” The
\nstorekeeper is confused, but then becomes annoyed. (JC original)<\/p>\n

2.22a answer: The shopkeeper is a French baker. An American tourist
\nwalks into the bakery, pauses to look up\/remember the word for “bread” in
\nFrench, which is spelled “pain.” The American says the word as if it were
\nthe English word “pain.” At first the shopkeeper does not understand what
\nthe American is saying. When he does, he gets annoyed with the person’s
\nhorrible pronunciation. (He then becomes happy after realizing that he can
\ncharge whatever exorbitant amount he wishes because the American doesn’t
\nknow any better.) I may eventually make this one the main entry and #2.22
\nthe variant, since this version works better aloud.<\/p>\n

2.23<\/strong>. As a man jumps out of a window, he hears the
\ntelephone ring and regrets having jumped. (from “Some Days are Like That,”
\nby Bruce J. Balfour; partial JM wording)<\/p>\n

2.23 answer: This is a post-holocaust scenario of some kind; for
\nwhatever reason, the man believes himself to be the last human on earth. He
\ndoesn’t want to live by himself, so he jumps, just before the telephone
\nrings… (of course, it could be a computer calling, but he has no way of
\nknowing).<\/p>\n

2.23 variant answer: A real-world version (with less plausible
\nmotivation) has the man being “lonely and despondent” and hoping for phone
\ncalls but not receiving any; he finally jumps out the window in despair.
\n(From Stories With Holes<\/cite>.)<\/p>\n

2.23a. Variant wording: The phone rang, and he regretted what he had
\ndone. (TRF)<\/p>\n

2.23a answer: Same.<\/p>\n

2.24<\/strong>. A newspaper reported that Jacques Dubois finished
\nfirst in a race held in France. His average speed was given, correctly, as
\n19,475 km\/hour. (DA, from an idea by AR and Richard Fowell)<\/p>\n

2.24 answer: In European numbers, the comma is used the same way
\nAmericans use a decimal point. The man thus (Americans would say) ran
\n19.475 km\/hour, which is a pretty good speed at which to run a
\nstandard-length (42.195 km) marathon. I assume most Europeans seeing this
\nitem would ask “So where’s the puzzle?”, but it might be a good puzzle for
\nAmericans. Thanks to Dmitry for providing a more palatable version than the
\nversion that languished for years in my outtakes file.<\/p>\n

2.25<\/strong>. At the bottom of the sea there lies a ship worth
\nmillions of dollars that will never be recovered. (TF original)<\/p>\n

2.25 answer: The Eagle landed in the Sea of Tranquility and will likely
\nremain there for the foreseeable future.<\/p>\n

2.26<\/strong>. A man shoots himself, and dies. (HL) (This is
\ndifferent from #2.27.)<\/p>\n

2.26 answer: The man is a heroin addict, and has contracted AIDS by
\nusing an infected needle. In despair, he shoots himself up with an
\noverdose, thereby committing suicide.<\/p>\n

2.27<\/strong>. A man walks into a room, shoots, and kills
\nhimself. (HL) (This is different from #2.26.)<\/p>\n

2.27 answer: The man walks into a casino and goes to the craps table.
\nHe bets all the money he owns, and shoots craps. Since he is now broke, he
\nbecomes despondent and commits suicide.<\/p>\n

2.28<\/strong>. Adults are holding children, waiting their turn.
\nThe children are handed (one at a time, usually) to a man, who holds them
\nwhile a woman shoots them. If the child is crying, the man tries to stop
\nthe crying before the child is shot. (ML)<\/p>\n

2.28 answer: Kids getting their pictures taken with Santa. I see #2.26,
\n#2.27, and #2.28 as different enough from each other to merit separate
\nnumbers, although they all rely on the same basic gimmick of alternate
\nmeanings of the word “shoot.”<\/p>\n

2.29<\/strong>. Harry dropped a sugar cube in his coffee, then
\nlifed it out intact a minute later. (Math for Girls<\/cite>)<\/p>\n

2.29 answer: It was instant coffee; no water had been added yet.<\/p>\n

2.30<\/strong>. A man is doing his job when his suit tears.
\nFifteen minutes later, he’s dead. (RM; from How Come?<\/cite>)<\/p>\n

2.30 answer: The man is an astronaut out on a space walk.<\/p>\n

2.30 variant answer: It’s a radiation suit. (JD, SP)<\/p>\n

2.30 variant answer: It’s a deep-sea diving suit. (How
\nCome?<\/cite>)<\/p>\n

2.31<\/strong>. A train pulls into a station, but none of the
\nwaiting passengers move. (MN)<\/p>\n

2.31 answer: It’s a model train set.<\/p>\n

2.31a. Variant: The Orient Express is derailed and a kitten plays
\nnearby.<\/p>\n

2.31a answer: The Orient Express is a model train which has been left
\nrunning unattended. The kitten has playfully derailed it. (from Bernd
\nWechner)<\/p>\n

2.32<\/strong>. Three large people try to crowd under one small
\numbrella, but nobody gets wet. (CC)<\/p>\n

2.32 answer: The sun is shining; there’s no rain.<\/p>\n

2.33<\/strong>. An ordinary woman walks on water. (Math for
\nGirls<\/cite>)<\/p>\n

2.33 answer: It’s easy to walk on a lake’s surface when the lake is
\nfrozen.<\/p>\n

2.34<\/strong>. Amy drives her car due west for a quarter mile,
\nwithout turning. When she stops, the car is facing east. (Math for
\nGirls<\/cite>)<\/p>\n

2.34 answer: She drove the car backward.<\/p>\n

Attributions key<\/h2>\n

When I know who first told me the current version of a puzzle, I’ve
\nput initials in parentheses after the puzzle statement; this is the key to
\nthose acknowledgments. The word “original” following an attribution means
\nthat, to the best of my knowledge, the cited person invented that puzzle.
\nIf a given puzzle isn’t marked “original” but is attributed, that just means
\nthat’s the first person I heard it from. Please don’t remove attributions
\nfrom original puzzles.<\/p>\n

Items cited as from How Come?<\/cite> may or may not have been
\noriginal to Agnes Rogers and her friends, but that’s almost certainly the
\nfirst book in which these items saw print. Items cited as originally from
\nHow Come — Again?<\/cite> are all original to Agnes Rogers and Richard
\nG. Sheehan.<\/p>\n

\n

\n
LA<\/dt>\n
Laura Almasy\n<\/dd>\n
RA<\/dt>\n
Russell Ang\n<\/dd>\n
DA<\/dt>\n
Dmitry Apresian\n<\/dd>\n
RSB<\/dt>\n
Ranjit S. Bhatnagar\n<\/dd>\n
CB<\/dt>\n
Cici Beilken\n<\/dd>\n
RB<\/dt>\n
Rex Boggs\n<\/dd>\n
BB<\/dt>\n
Bob Bondi\n<\/dd>\n
MB<\/dt>\n
Mark Brader\n<\/dd>\n
AC<\/dt>\n
Adam Carlson\n<\/dd>\n
JC<\/dt>\n
Jeff Chen\n<\/dd>\n
CC<\/dt>\n
Chris Cole\n<\/dd>\n
MC<\/dt>\n
Matt Crawford\n<\/dd>\n
JD<\/dt>\n
John Dalbec\n<\/dd>\n
MWD<\/dt>\n
Matthew William Daly\n<\/dd>\n
KD<\/dt>\n
Ken Duisenberg\n<\/dd>\n
SD<\/dt>\n
Sylvia Dutcher\n<\/dd>\n
ME<\/dt>\n
Marguerite Eisenstein\n<\/dd>\n
FF<\/dt>\n
Fil Feit\n<\/dd>\n
TRF<\/dt>\n
Tammy R. Franklin\n<\/dd>\n
TF<\/dt>\n
Thomas Freeman\n<\/dd>\n
AG<\/dt>\n
Andreas Gammel\n<\/dd>\n
JH<\/dt>\n
Joaquin Hartman\n<\/dd>\n
MH<\/dt>\n
Marcy Hartman\n<\/dd>\n
KH<\/dt>\n
Karl Heuer\n<\/dd>\n
CH<\/dt>\n
Craig Holland\n<\/dd>\n
GH<\/dt>\n
Geoff Hopcraft\n<\/dd>\n
DH<\/dt>\n
David Huddleston\n<\/dd>\n
MI<\/dt>\n
Mark Isaak\n<\/dd>\n
SJ<\/dt>\n
Steve Jacquot\n<\/dd>\n
MJ<\/dt>\n
Mike Jarvis\n<\/dd>\n
JJ<\/dt>\n
J|rgen Jensen\n<\/dd>\n
BJ<\/dt>\n
Bill Jordan\n<\/dd>\n
KK<\/dt>\n
Karen Karp\n<\/dd>\n
KK2<\/dt>\n
Kathleen Kim\n<\/dd>\n
NK<\/dt>\n
Nev King\n<\/dd>\n
SK<\/dt>\n
Shelby Kilmer\n<\/dd>\n
TK<\/dt>\n
Tal Kubo\n<\/dd>\n
KL<\/dt>\n
Ken Largman\n<\/dd>\n
AL<\/dt>\n
Andy Latto\n<\/dd>\n
HL<\/dt>\n
Howard Lazoff\n<\/dd>\n
ML<\/dt>\n
Merlyn LeRoy\n<\/dd>\n
JKM<\/dt>\n
John K. Miller\n<\/dd>\n
DM<\/dt>\n
Dan Murray\n<\/dd>\n
RM<\/dt>\n
“Reaper Man” (real name unknown)\n<\/dd>\n
TeM<\/dt>\n
Ted McCabe\n<\/dd>\n
TiM<\/dt>\n
Tim MacDonald\n<\/dd>\n
JM<\/dt>\n
Jim Moskowitz\n<\/dd>\n
DM<\/dt>\n
Damian Mulvena\n<\/dd>\n
MN<\/dt>\n
Jan Mark Noworolski\n<\/dd>\n
KO<\/dt>\n
Kevin O’Connor\n<\/dd>\n
TO<\/dt>\n
Tobias Oetiker\n<\/dd>\n
PRO<\/dt>\n
Peter R. Olpe (from his list)\n<\/dd>\n
NP<\/dt>\n
Neil Pawson\n<\/dd>\n
MP<\/dt>\n
Martin Pitwood\n<\/dd>\n
SP<\/dt>\n
Scott Purdy\n<\/dd>\n
CR<\/dt>\n
Charles Renert\n<\/dd>\n
EMS<\/dt>\n
Ellen M. Sentovich (from her list)\n<\/dd>\n
AS<\/dt>\n
Annie Senghas\n<\/dd>\n
HJS<\/dt>\n
H. J. Simpson\n<\/dd>\n
ES<\/dt>\n
Eric Stephan\n<\/dd>\n
DS<\/dt>\n
Diana Stiefbold\n<\/dd>\n
BGT<\/dt>\n
“Brad” (full name unknown)\n<\/dd>\n
ST<\/dt>\n
Simon Travaglia\n<\/dd>\n
DVS<\/dt>\n
David Van Stone\n<\/dd>\n
TV<\/dt>\n
Tim Vaughan\n<\/dd>\n
RSW<\/dt>\n
R. Serena Wakefield\n<\/dd>\n
EW<\/dt>\n
Eric Wang\n<\/dd>\n
WW<\/dt>\n
Warwick\n<\/dd>\n
RW<\/dt>\n
Randy Whitaker\n<\/dd>\n
MPW<\/dt>\n
Matthew P Wiener\n<\/dd>\n
SW<\/dt>\n
Steve Wilson (not sure of name)\n<\/dd>\n
DW<\/dt>\n
Don Woods\n<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n

Special thanks to Jim Moskowitz, Karl Heuer, and Mark Brader, for a lot
\nof discussion of small but important details and wording.<\/p>\n

Notes and comments<\/h2>\n

My outtakes list (items submitted but not included on this list for
\nvarious reasons) is available in a separate file.<\/p>\n

There are many possible wordings for most of the puzzles in this list.
\nMost of them have what I consider the best wording of the variants I’ve
\nheard; if you have better phrasings, or if you have any other comments or
\nsuggestions, please drop a note to logos@kith.org. If you know other
\nsituation puzzles not on this list, please send them to me (but you may want
\nto read through all the answers first; I may already have listed your puzzle
\nin the answer list, as a variant of an item already on the list).<\/p>\n

In telling a group of players one of these situations, you can add or
\nremove details, either to make getting the answer harder or easier, or
\nsimply to throw in red herrings.<\/p>\n

Note that situation puzzles are interactive games — that’s what
\ndistinguishes them from riddles or logic puzzles. Just reading the
\nquestions on the Web or in a text file and trying to guess the answers
\ndirectly is much less interesting than trying to solve the puzzles by a
\ngradual approach of gathering information. Use the list as a resource, but
\nplay the game with other people.<\/p>\n

Situation puzzles are also known by a variety of other names: mystery
\nquestions, story riddles, lateral thinking puzzles, mini-mysteries, minute
\nmysteries, missing links, how come?, situational puzzles, law school
\npuzzles, quistels (in parts of Europe), mystery puzzles, albatross stories,
\nIntrigue puzzles, Who Dunnits, Please Explains, monkey puzzles, two-minute
\nmysteries, conundrums, computer games, and so on. I prefer the term
\n“situation puzzles,” which was once the standard term for them on the
\nrec.puzzles newsgroup.<\/p>\n

Contact Info<\/h2>\n

Please send updates, additions, and suggestions to Jed Hartman at
\nlogos@kith.org.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(last updated: 18 July 1999.) This is the list of answers to the puzzles in my situation puzzles list. This document also contains variant setups and variant answers for many of the puzzles. Introduction In the game of situation puzzles, a mysterious situation is presented to a group of players, who must then try to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"parent":13,"menu_order":25,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-5614","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5614","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5614"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5614\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5627,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5614\/revisions\/5627"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/13"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}