Situation puzzles, mystery questions, "Classics," ...
Zorn of Zorna
Jed's List of Situation Puzzles
(btw, my name is Jed Hartman, but I used to use "Lord Tattersall" as a
net.name; I currently use "Zorn of Zorna." Same management, different
name.)
History:
original compilation 11/28/87
major revision 08/09/89
further additions 08/23/89 - 10/21/90
variants added to answer list 07/04/90
editing and renumbering 07/25/90 - 11/11/90
items removed; title changed 09/20/90 - 11/11/90
"A man lies dead in a room with fifty-three bicycles in front of him.
What happened?"
This is a list of what I refer to (for lack of a better name) as
situation puzzles. The game of situation puzzles is usually played as
follows: a situation like the one above is presented to a group of
players, who must then try to find out more about the situation by
asking further questions. The person who initially presented the
situation can only answer "yes" or "no" to questions (or occasionally
"irrelevant" or "doesn't matter").
My list has been divided into two sections. Section 1 consists of
situation puzzles which occur in a realistic world; they could all take
place in reality. Section 2 consists of puzzles which involve double
meanings for one or more words and those which could not possibly take
place in reality as we know it.
See the end of the list for more notes and comments.
Section 1: "Normal" mystery questions.
1.1. In the middle of the ocean is a yacht. Several corpses are
floating in the water nearby. (SJ)
1.2. A man is lying dead in a room. There is a large pile of gold and
jewels on the floor, a chandelier attached to the ceiling, and a large
open window. (DVS; partial JM wording)
1.3. A woman came home with a bag of groceries, got the mail, and
walked into the house. On the way to the kitchen, she went through the
living room and looked at her husband, who had blown his brains out.
She then continued to the kitchen, put away the groceries, and made
dinner. (partial JM wording)
1.4. A body is discovered in a park in Chicago in the middle of summer.
It has a fractured skull and many other broken bones, but the cause of
death was hypothermia. (MI, from _Hill Street Blues_)
1.5. A man lives on the twelfth floor of an apartment building. Every
morning he takes the elevator down to the lobby and leaves the building.
In the evening, he gets into the elevator, and, if there is someone else
in the elevator -- or if it was raining that day -- he goes back to his
floor directly. However, if there is nobody else in the elevator and it
hasn't rained, he goes to the 10th floor and walks up two flights of
stairs to his room. (MH)
1.6. A woman has incontrovertible proof in court that her husband was
murdered by her sister. The judge declares, "This is the strangest case
I've ever seen. Though it's a cut-and-dried case, this woman cannot be
punished." (This is different from #1.43.) (MH)
1.7. A man walks into a bar and asks for a drink. The bartender pulls
out a gun and points it at him. The man says, "Thank you," and walks
out. (DVS)
1.8. A man is in a returning from Switzerland by train. If he had been
in a non-smoking car he would have died. (DVS; MC wording)
1.9. A man goes into a restaurant, orders abalone, eats one bite, and
kills himself. (TM and JM wording)
1.10. A man is found hanging in a locked room with a puddle of water
under his feet. (This is different from #1.11.)
1.11. A man is dead in a puddle of blood and water on the floor of a
locked room. (This is different from #1.10.)
1.12. A man is lying, dead, face down in the desert wearing a backpack.
(This is different from #1.13, #2.11, and #2.12.)
1.13. A man is lying face down, dead, in the desert, with a match near
his outstretched hand. (This is different from #1.12, #2.11, and
#2.12.) (JH; partial JM wording)
1.14. A man is driving his car. He turns on the radio, listens for
five minutes, turns around, goes home, and shoots his wife.
1.15. A man driving his car turns on the radio. He then pulls over to
the side of the road and shoots himself.
1.16. Music stops and a woman dies. (DVS)
1.17. A man is dead in a room with a small pile of pieces of wood and
sawdust in one corner. (from "Coroner's Inquest," by Marc Connelly)
1.18. A flash of light, a man dies. (ST original)
1.19. A rope breaks. A bell rings. A man dies. (KH)
1.20. A man sitting on a park bench reads a newspaper article headlined
"Death at Sea" and says, "A murder has been committed!"
1.21. A man is riding a subway. He meets a one-armed man, who pulls
out a gun and shoots him. (SJ)
1.22. Two women are talking. One goes into the bathroom, comes out
five minutes later, and kills the other.
1.23. A man is sitting in bed. He makes a phone call, saying nothing,
and then goes to sleep. (SJ)
1.24. A man kills his wife, then goes inside his house and kills
himself. (DH original, from "Nightmare in Yellow," by Fredric Brown)
1.25. Abel walks out of the ocean. Cain asks him who he is, and Abel
answers. Cain kills Abel. (MWD original)
1.26. Two men enter a bar. They both order identical drinks. One
lives; the other dies. (CR; partial JM wording)
1.27. Joe leaves his house, wearing a mask and carrying an empty sack.
An hour later he returns. The sack is now full. He goes into a room
and turns out the lights. (AL)
1.28. A man takes a two-week cruise to Mexico from the U.S. Shortly
after he gets back, he takes a three-day cruise which doesn't stop at
any other ports. He stays in his cabin all the time on both cruises.
As a result, he makes $250,000. (MI, from "The Wager")
1.29. Hans and Fritz are German spies during World War II. They try to
enter America, posing as returning tourists. Hans is immediately
arrested. (JM)
1.30. Tim and Greg were talking. Tim said "The terror of flight".
Greg said "The gloom of the grave". Greg was arrested. (KH, from "No
Refuge Could Save," by Isaac Asimov)
1.31. A man is found dead in his parked car. Tire tracks lead up to
the car and away. (SD)
1.32. A man dies in his own home. (ME original)
1.33. A woman in Paris in 1895 is waiting for her husband to come home.
When he arrives, the house has burned to the ground and she's dead.
(JM)
1.34. A man gets onto an elevator. When the elevator stops, he knows
his wife is dead. (LA; partial KH wording)
1.35. Three men die. On the pavement are pieces of ice and broken
glass. (JJ)
1.36. She lost her job when she invited them to dinner. (DS original)
1.37. A holy man is dead in a room. (PD original)
1.38. A car without a driver moves; a man dies. (EMS)
1.39. As I drive to work on my motorcycle, there is one corner which I
go around at a certain speed whether it's rainy or sunny. If it's
cloudy but not raining, however, I usually go faster. (SW original)
1.40. A woman throws something out a window and dies. (JM)
1.41. An avid birdwatcher sees an unexpected bird. Soon he's dead.
(RSB original)
1.42. There are a carrot, a pile of pebbles, and a pipe lying together
in the middle of a field. (PRO; partial JM wording)
1.43. Two brothers are involved in a murder. Though it's clear that
one of them actually committed the crime, neither can be punished.
(This is different from #1.6.) (from "Unreasonable Doubt," by Stanley
Ellin)
1.44. An ordinary American citizen, with no passport, visits over
thirty foreign countries in one day. He is welcomed in each country,
and leaves each one of his own accord. (PRO)
1.45. If he'd turned on the light, he'd have lived. (JM)
1.46. A man is found dead on the floor in the living room. (ME
original)
1.47. A man is found dead outside a large building with a hole in him.
(JM, modified from PRO)
1.48. A man is found dead in an alley lying in a pool of red with two
sticks crossed near his head. (PRO)
1.49. A man lies dead next to a feather. (PRO)
1.50. There is blood on the ceiling of my bedroom. (MI original)
Section 2: Double meanings, fictional settings, and miscellaneous
others.
2.1. A man shoots himself, and dies. (HL) (This is different from
#2.2.)
2.2. A man walks into a room, shoots, and kills himself. (HL) (This
is different from #2.1.)
2.3. Adults are holding children, waiting their turn. The children are
handed (one at a time, usually) to a man, who holds them while a woman
shoots them. If the child is crying, the man tries to stop the crying
before the child is shot. (ML)
2.4. Hiking in the mountains, you walk past a large field and camp a
few miles farther on, at a stream. It snows in the night, and the next
day you find a cabin in the field with two dead bodies inside. (KL; KD
and partial JM wording)
2.5. A man marries twenty women in his village but isn't charged with
polygamy.
2.6. A man is alone on an island with no food and no water, yet he
does not fear for his life. (MN)
2.7. Joe wants to go home, but he can't go home, because the man
in the mask is waiting for him. (AL wording)
2.8. A man is doing his job when his suit tears. Fifteen minutes
later, he's dead. (RM)
2.9. A dead man lies near a pile of bricks and a beetle on top of a
book. (MN)
2.10. At the bottom of the sea there lies a ship worth millons of
dollars that will never be recovered. (TF original)
2.11. A man is found dead in the arctic with a pack on his back. (This
is different from #1.12, #1.13, and #2.12.) (PRO)
2.12. There is a dead man lying in the desert next to a rock. (This is
different from #1.12, #1.13, and #2.11.) (GH)
2.13. As a man jumps out of a window, he hears the telephone ring and
regrets having jumped. (from "Some Days are Like That," by Bruce J.
Balfour; partial JM wording)
2.14. Two people are playing cards. One looks around and realizes he's
going to die. (JM original)
2.15. A man lies dead in a room with fifty-three bicycles in front of
him.
2.16. A horse jumps over a tower and lands on a man, who disappears.
(ES original)
2.17. It's the year 860 A.D., at Camelot. Two priests are sitting in
the castle's chapel. The queen attacks the king. The two priests rise,
shake hands, and leave the room. (EMS)
2.18. A man pushes a car up to a hotel and tells the owner he's
bankrupt. (DVS; partial AL and JM wording)
2.19. A train pulls into a station, but none of the waiting passengers
move. (MN)
2.20. A black man dressed all in black, wearing a black mask, stands at
a crossroads in a totally black-painted town. All of the streetlights
in town are broken. There is no moon. A black-painted car without
headlights drives straight toward him, but turns in time and doesn't hit
him. (AL and RM wording)
2.21. Three heavy people try to crowd under one umbrella, but nobody
gets wet. (CC)
2.22. Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice all live in the same house. Bob
and Carol go out to a movie, and when they return, Alice is lying dead
on the floor in a puddle of water and glass. It is obvious that Ted
killed her but Ted is not prosecuted or severely punished.
2.23. Bruce wins the race, but he gets no trophy. (EMS)
2.24. A woman opens an envelope and dyes. (AL)
2.25. A man was brought before a tribal chief and asked a question. If
he had known the answer, he probably would have died. He didn't, and
lived. (MWD original)
Attributions key:
When I know who first told me the current version of a question, I've
put initials in parentheses after the question statement; this is the
key to those acknowledgments. The word "original" following an
attribution means that, to the best of my knowledge, the cited person
invented that question. If a given question isn't marked "original" but
is attributed, that just means that's the first person I heard it from.
I would appreciate it if attributions for originals were not removed;
but this list is hereby entered into the public domain, so do with it
what you wish.
LA == Laura Almasy RSB == Ranjit S. Bhatnagar
CC == Chris Cole MC == Matt Crawford
MWD == Matthew William Daly PD == Perry Deess
KD == Ken Duisenberg SD == Sylvia Dutcher
ME == Marguerite Eisenstein TF == Thomas Freeman
JH == Joaquin Hartman MH == Marcy Hartman
KH == Karl Heuer GH == Geoff Hopcraft
DH == David Huddleston MI == Mark Isaak
SJ == Steve Jacquot JJ == J|rgen Jensen
KL == Ken Largman AL == Andy Latto
HL == Howard Lazoff ML == Merlyn LeRoy
RM == "Reaper Man" (real name unknown)
TM == Ted McCabe JM == Jim Moskowitz
MN == Jan Mark Noworolski PRO == Peter R. Olpe (from his list)
CR == Charles Renert EMS == Ellen M. Sentovich (from her list)
ES == Eric Stephan DS == Diana Stiefbold
ST == Simon Travaglia DVS == David Van Stone
SW == Steve Wilson (not sure of name)
Special thanks to Jim Moskowitz, Karl Heuer, and Mark Brader, for a lot
of discussion of small but important details and wording; and to Marcy
Hartman, who told me my first mystery question when I was about 8.
Notes and comments:
The last time I posted this I said it would probably be THE last
time I posted this, but what with one thing and another, I'm still here.
With any luck, next time around I'll only be posting a location from
which to get them rather than the entire list. I'm only posting the
whole thing this time because I promised I'd have it out today (really
yesterday), and I haven't had a chance to talk with Chris Cole recently
about netlib. Sorry for the waste of bandwidth. The expiration date on
this is set to two months; so it should last through the next onslaught
of requests.
As usual, I've made some changes since last time, and some additions;
the changes mostly take the form of removing several items from the
list. After much waffling over criteria for inclusion, I finally
decided that I would simply remove all those puzzles I didn't like. I
still have the outtakes on file (I trimmed about 30, of which some
became alternates of items still on the list); I just won't be
maintaining the rejects list as carefully, or making it widely available
unless I get a lot of requests for it. If you object to this
(admittedly arbitrary) removal, let me know. Try to give me some sort
of reasons for your objections -- I may be convinced to change my mind.
My other change is in what I call these things. I still haven't
heard a name I like a lot, but I like the term "situation puzzle" better
than the term "mystery question," so I'm changing my usage. Drop me a
line if you've got a better name for them.
There are many possible wordings for most of these. Most of them
have what I consider the best wording of the variants I've heard; if you
think there's a better way of putting one or more of them, or if you
don't like my categorization of any of them, or if you have any other
comments or suggestions, please drop me a note. If you know others not
on this list, please send them to me. Answers will follow in a separate
posting. Also in the answer list are variant problem statements and
variant answers. Please note that I've received several new puzzles in
recent weeks which have not yet been added to the list; they'll be in
the next edition. I also received a list of many such puzzles in
German; they'll be added as soon as I can find someone to translate
them, and then guess the answers.
Of course, in telling a group of players one of these situations, you
can add or remove details, either to make getting the answer harder or
easier, or simply to throw in red herrings. I've made a few specific
suggestions along these lines in the answer list. Enjoy!
--jed
--
hartman@{campus.swarthmore.edu, swarthmr.bitnet}
"I would like to see the sky machine on every corner of the street
instead of the coke machine. We need more skies than coke." --Yoko Ono
Chris Cole
solutions. They are available via email. To get an index and
instructions, send an email letter containing the single line:
send index