[sceptic]

5 Tricky Questions



1. A murderer is condemned to death. He has to choose between three rooms.

The first is full of raging fires, the second is full of assassins with loaded guns,

and the third is full of lions that haven't eaten in 3 years. Which room is safest for him?

2. A woman shoots her husband. Then she holds him under water for over 5 minutes.

Finally, she hangs him. But 5 minutes later they both go out together and

enjoy a wonderful dinner together. How can this be?

3. What is black when you buy it, red when you use it, and gray when you throw it away?

4. Can you name three consecutive days without using the words Wednesday, Friday, or Sunday?

5. This is an unusual paragraph. I'm curious as to just how quickly you can find out

what is so unusual about it. It looks so ordinary and plain that

you would think nothing was wrong with it. In fact, nothing is wrong with it!

It is highly unusual though. Study it and think about it, but you still may not find anything odd.

But if you work at it a bit, you might find out. Try to do so without any coaching!

[kenrexford]

Number one is silly. You miss it for a moment, and feel dumb.
Number 2 is easy.
The fourth has an easy solution, but I'm not sure if my thought was the intended solution. maYbe This is iT?
The fifth paragraph was not a difficult quandry for unscrambling.

Three I'm missing.

[EricK]

1 is pretty obvious I think.
2 I've heard before
3 I've not got yet
4 I've thought of a couple of answers.
5 I've seen before

[kenberg]

As with the others, I don't see number 3. My coffee does not turn red. I saw 5 before and was given the solution before I thought about it. I got 1, 4, 2 in that order.

[matmat]

kenberg, on Mar 2 2008, 04:07 PM, said:

As with the others, I don't see number 3. My coffee does not turn red. I saw 5 before and was given the solution before I thought about it. I got 1, 4, 2 in that order.

how about your tea?

[bid_em_up]

Spoiler

1. The room with the lions. Lions that havent eaten in 3 years would be dead.
2. She's a photographer. She shot his picture, held it under water/developer, then hung it up to dry. This is misleading, because she isnt actually performing these actions on "him", as the question implies.
3. Charcoal.
4. Yesterday, today and tomorrow.
5. The letter E is not used in the sentence.

[kenberg]

Congratulations, bid_em

I like these questions in that the answers, when they are found, are seen as very sensible, by no means a stretch or in any way unfair.

[barmar]

I got #4 pretty quickly. My first thought about #5 was a bit too abstract -- it was that every sentence in the paragraph was self-referential about the paragraph itself. The third sentence, in its use of "look at it", suggested that there was something in the physical structure of the paragraph that was unusual, and when I looked closely I got it.

I've seen many puzzles like #3 -- you either can think of the object or you can't. It's not really so much of a conundrum as the others, which require some kind of thinking outside the box.

#2 turns on figuring out the alternate sense of "shot", "hold under water", and "hang". I started thinking in terms of a hypodermic needle, but I couldn't get where it was going with the rest of the puzzle.

And #1 is one of those "duhh!" puzzles, you slap yourself when you realize you got fooled. Like the one children learn: You're driving a bus. At stop #1 2 people get on. At stop #2 1 person gets off, 3 get on. At stop #3 1 person gets on. At stop #4 5 people get off. What's the name of the bus driver?

[han]

One of my answers was "January the 1st, January the 2nd, January the 3rd."

[Fluffy]

#1 All of them should be safe, but 'Safest' is number 3, because lions have starved to death, but actually a murdered between aassins could do ok, in fact he could get a gun and battle to freedom better than on room 3. the raging fires in a room are also surelly gone already, but with the lions you might at least get yourself some 'clothes' .

EDIT: Wait, room 1 is not safe, even if the fire is gone, there is no oxygen inside and you can't breath.

#2 My best guess is they are actors, probably there is a better answer.

#3 Lipstick? I am not good with cosmetics

#4 I read Han's answer to this, I think he is right.

#5 The unusual thing is the 'Intro' characters in the middle of the paragaph, with some lines not going to the end as they should.

[Gerben42]

I'm unsure if I don't like the question in #2 or the answer. A photographer in this context makes NO sense for me.

[EricK]

Question 4 has too many solutions!

The ones I thought of were "Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Boxing day" (and you can do something similar with days around Easter), or "Long weekend!"

[mycroft]

I thought of the traditional "spoken" answer for #3: a Newspaper. I agree the real answer is much better.

I would have thought that the safest room for #1 is the one he's currently in...

[helene_t]

Gerben42, on Mar 4 2008, 03:18 PM, said:

I'm unsure if I don't like the question in #2 or the answer. A photographer in this context makes NO sense for me.

Agree, why would she hold her USB stick under water for five minutes?

[jonottawa]

mycroft, on Mar 4 2008, 09:55 PM, said:

I thought of the traditional "spoken" answer for #3: a Newspaper. I agree the real answer is much better.

Nah, you were thinking of 'What is black and white and re(a)d all over?'

[barmar]

Holy thread resurrection, Batman!

[OleBerg]

#2: They're stage-magicians.