Monday, February 1, 2010

Literal thinking puzzles

1.  In the middle of the ocean is a yacht.  Several corpses are
floating in the water nearby.

2.  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.

3.  A woman comes home with a bag of groceries, gets the mail, and
walks into the house.  On the way to the kitchen, she goes through the
living room and looks at her husband, who had blown his brains out.  She
then continues to the kitchen, puts away the groceries, and makes
dinner.

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.

5.  A man lives on the twelfth floor of an apartment building.  Every
morning he wakes up, gets dressed, eats, goes to the elevator, takes it
down to the lobby, and leaves the building for work.  In the evening, he
goes through the lobby to 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.

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 murderess cannot
be punished."

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.

8.  A man is in a returning from Switzerland by train.  If he had been
in a non-smoking car he would have died.

9.  Music stops and a woman dies.

10.  A man goes into a restaurant, orders abalone, eats one bite, and
kills himself.

11.  A man is found hanging in a locked room with no furniture and a
puddle of water under his feet.

12.  A man is dead in a puddle of blood and water on the floor of a
locked room.

13.  A man is lying, dead, face down in the desert wearing a backpack.

14.  A man is lying face down, dead, in the desert, with a match near
his outstretched hand.  He is nude.

15.  A man is driving his car.  He turns on the radio, listens for
five minutes, turns around, goes home, and shoots his wife.
16.  A man driving his car turns on the radio.  He then pulls over to
the side of the road and shoots himself.
17.  A man is dead in a room with a small pile of pieces of wood and
sawdust in one corner.
18.  A pile of sawdust, no net, a man dies.
19.  A rope breaks.  A bell rings.  A man dies.
20.  A man sitting on a park bench reads a newspaper article headlined
"Death at Sea" and says, "A murder has been committed!"
21.  A man is riding a subway.  He meets a one-armed man, who pulls
out a gun and shoots him.
22.  Two women are talking.  One goes into the bathroom, comes out
five minutes later, and kills the other.
23.  A man is sitting in bed.  He makes a phone call, says nothing,
then goes to sleep.
24.  A man kills his wife, then goes inside his house and kills
himself.
25.  Abel walks out of the ocean.  Cain asks him who he is, and Abel
answers.  Cain kills Abel.
26.  Two men, one big and burly and the other short and thin, enter a
bar.  They both order identical drinks.  The big one gulps his down and
leaves; the other sips his slowly, then dies.
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.
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.
29.  Hans and Fritz are German spies during World War II.  They try to
enter America, posing as returning tourists.  Hans is immediately
arrested.
30.  Tim and Greg were talking.  Tim said "The terror of flight".
Greg said "The gloom of the grave".  Greg was arrested.
31.  A man is found dead in his parked car.  Tire tracks lead up to
the car and away.
32.  A man dies in his own home.
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.
34.  A man gets onto an elevator.  When the elevator stops, he knows
his wife is dead.
35.  A policeman follows a burglar into a bar.  When he enters the bar
he finds a set of identical twins, dressed the same, with the loot
between them.  After several minutes he arrests one of the twins.
36.  She lost her job when she invited them to dinner.
37.  He couldn't find a chair, so he died.
38.  A car without a driver moves; a man dies.
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.
40.  A woman throws something out a window and dies.
41.  An avid birdwatcher sees an unexpected bird.  Soon he's dead.
42.  A man shoots himself, and dies.
43.  A man walks into a room, shoots, and kills himself.
44.  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.
45.  A man marries twenty women in his village but isn't charged with
polygamy.
46.  There are two people dead in a cabin in the woods.
47.  A man pushes a car up to a hotel and realizes he's bankrupt.
48.  She said "I love you," and died.
49.  As a man jumps out of a window, he hears the telephone ring.  He
tries to stop himself, but can't.
50.  A man is found dead on the floor in the living room.
51.  A man is sitting in a train compartment.  He sees a
three-fingered hand through the compartment window, in the hallway of
the train.  He opens the compartment door and shoots the person with the
three-fingered hand, but he goes free.
52.  There is a dead man lying in the desert next to a rock.
53.  A man is found dead in the arctic with a pack on his back.
54.  A man is lying dead in a room.  There is a large pile of gold,
jewels, and so on on the floor, a chandelier attached to the ceiling,
and a large window through which rays are coming.
55.  A man goes home, turns out the light, and goes to bed.  He wakes
up the next morning, reads the newspaper, and kills himself.
56.  A raft carrying passengers took a trip down the Amazon.  The raft
capsized, and no survivors were found.
57.  A man is lying dead in a pool of blood and glass.
58.  A woman walks up to a door and knocks.  Another woman answers the
door.  The woman outside kills the woman inside.
59.  There is blood on the ceiling of my bedroom.
60.  A woman goes into a convenience store to buy a can of Coke.  She
pays for it with a $20 bill and receives $20.05 in change.  No mistake
was made.
61.  A newspaper reported the following: "Yesterday, Jacques Dubois
finished first in the walking race held in Paris.  He walked 62,137
miles." The article was not in error.
62.  Two children born in the same hospital, in the same hour, day,
and year, have the same mother and father, but are not twins.
63.  A couple will build a square house.  In each wall they'll have a
window, and each window will face north.
64.  There are a pipe, a carrot and a pile of pebbles together in the
middle of a field.
65.  The telephone rang in the middle of the night and the woman woke
up.  When she answered it the caller hung up.  The caller felt better.
66.  The seals came up to do their show but immediately dove back into
the water.
67.  A man is found dead in an alley lying in a pool of red with two
sticks crossed near his head.
68.  A man called to a waiter in a restaurant, "There's a fly in my
tea!"  "I will bring you a fresh cup of tea," said the waiter.  After a
few moments, the man called out, "This is the same cup of tea!"  How did
he know?
69.  A man is found dead outside a large marble building with three
holes in him.
70.  An ordinary American citizen, with a clean police record but no
passport, managed to visit over thirty foreign countries.  He was
welcomed in each country, and left each one of his own accord.  He did
this in one day.
71.  Three heavy people try to crowd under one umbrella, and nobody
gets wet.
72.  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.
72.  The wind stopped blowing and the man died.
74.  An Arab sheikh tells his two sons that are to race their camels
to a distant city to see who will inherit his fortune.  The one whose
camel arrives last will win.  The brothers, after wandering aimlessly
for days, ask a wise man for advise.  After hearing the advice they jump
on the camels and race as fast as they can to their destination.
75.  A man puts a quarter down, and leaves.
76.  A man lies dead next to a feather.
77.  A man carrying an attache case full of $20 bills falls on the way
to the bank and is never seen again.
78.  The pope is giving a speech.  A man in the audience shoots the
mayor who is behind the pope.
79.  A man travels to twenty countries and stays in each country for a
month.  During this time he never sees the light of day.
80.  King Henry VIII is lying at the bottom of the stairs with a gash
across his face.
81.  Joe wants to go home, but he can't go home, because the man
in the mask is waiting for him.
82.  A man lies dead in a room with fifty-three bicycles in front of
him.
83.  Two people are playing cards.  One looks around and realizes he's
going to die.
84.  A woman opens an envelope and dyes.
85.  A man is holding a box.  Though he cannot see into it, he knows
what's inside.
86.  A man was walking along some railroad tracks when he noticed that
a train was coming.  He walked toward the train before stepping aside.
(RM)
87.  A man was going about his daily occupation when he noticed that
his shirt was torn.  15 minutes later, he was dead.
88.  A train pulls into a station, but none of the waiting passengers
move.
89.  In his own home a man watches as a woman dies, yet does nothing
to save her.
90.  There is a dead man, a beetle on top of a book, and a pile of
bricks.
91.  A dish moves, a scientist makes a discovery.
92.  A man is alone on an island with no food and no water, yet he
does not fear for his life.
93.  A husband coming home hears his wife call "Bill, don't kill me!".
He walks in and finds his wife dead.  Inside are a postman, a doctor,
and a lawyer.  The husband immediately knows the postman killed his
wife.
94.  Bruce wins the race, but he gets no trophy.
95.  A man rolls over a glass bottle.  He travels the last 100 miles
of the Sahara 5000 roadrace with a flat tire.
96.  Man pleads with boss not to fly to Chicago.  The boss goes and
when he returns, he fires the man.
~97.  On an archeological dig, the frozen remains of a man and woman
are found.  Immediately, the archeologists realize that the remains are
those of Adam and Eve.
98.  A horse jumps over a tower and lands on a man, who disappears.
99.  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.
100.  Two people are talking long distance on the phone; one is in an
East-Coast state, the other is in a West-Coast state.  The first asks
the other "What time is it?", hears the answer, and says, "That's funny. It's the same time here!"
101.  A boy and his father are injured in a car accident.  Both are
taken to a hospital.  The father dies at arrival, but the boy lives
and is taken to surgery.  A grey-haired, bespectacled surgeon looks at
the boy and says, "I cannot operate on this boy -- he's my son."

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