Answers+to+Think+Hard

~1. A bunch of people are on an ocean voyage in a yacht. One afternoon, they all decide to go swimming, so they put on swimsuits and dive off the side into the water. Unfortunately, they forget to set up a ladder on the side of the boat, so there's no way for them to climb back in, and they drown. ~2. Alice is a goldfish; Ted is a cat. ~3. The husband killed himself a while ago; it's his ashes in an urn on the mantelpiece that the wife looks at. ~4. A poor peasant from somewhere in Europe wants desperately to get to the U.S. Not having money for airfare, he stows away in the landing gear compartment of a jet. He dies of hypothermia in mid-flight, and falls out when the landing gear compartment opens as the plane makes its final approach. ~5. The man is a midget. He can't reach the upper elevator buttons, but he can ask people to push them for him. He can also push them with his umbrella. ~6. The sisters are Siamese twins. ~7. The man has hiccups; the bartender scares them away by pulling a gun. ~8. The man used to be blind; he's now returning from an eye operation which restored his sight. He's spent all his money on the operation, so when the train goes through a tunnel he at first thinks he's gone blind again and almost decides to kill himself. Fortunately, the light of the cigarettes people are smoking convinces him that he can still see. ~9. The woman is a tightrope walker in a circus. Her act consists of walking the rope blindfolded, accompanied by music. The musician (organist, or calliopist, or pianist, or whatever) is supposed to stop playing when she reaches the end of the rope, telling her that it's safe to step off onto the platform. For unknown reasons (but with murderous intent), he stops the music early, and she steps off the rope to her death. ~10. The man was in a ship that was wrecked on a desert island. When there was no food left, another passenger brought what he said was abalone but was really part of the man's wife (who had died in the wreck). The man suspects something fishy, so when they finally return to civilization, he orders abalone, realizes that what he ate before was his wife, and kills himself. ~11. He stood on a block of ice to hang himself. ~12. He stabbed himself with an icicle. ~13. He jumped out of an airplane, but his parachute failed to open. ~14. He was with several others in a hot air balloon crossing the desert. The balloon was punctured and they began to lose altitude. They tossed all their non-essentials overboard, then their clothing and food, but were still going to crash in the middle of the desert. Finally, they drew matches to see who would jump over the side and save the others; this man lost. ~15. The radio program is one of the call-up-somebody-and-ask-them-a- question contest shows; the announcer gives the phone number of the man's bedroom phone, and a male voice answers. ~16. He worked as a DJ at a radio station. He decided to kill his wife, and so he put on a long record and quickly drove home and killed her, figuring he had a perfect alibi; he'd been at work. On the way back he turned on his show, only to discover that the record was skipping. ~17. The man is a blind midget. For various reasons too complicated to go into, someone else has been sawing small pieces off of his cane every night, so that every day he thinks he's taller. Since his only income is from being a circus midget, he decides to kill himself when he gets too tall. (Variant answer: instead of sawing pieces off of his cane, someone has sawed the legs off of his bed. He wakes up, stands up, and thinks he's grown during the night.) ~18. A midget is jealous of the clown who walks on stilts. He saws partway through the stilts; the clown walks along and falls and dies when they break. ~19. A blind man enjoyed walking near a cliff, and used the sound of a buoy to gauge his distance from the edge. One day the buoy's anchor rope broke, allowing the buoy to drift away from the shore, and the man walked over the edge of the cliff. ~20. The man is a travel agent. He had sold someone two tickets for an ocean voyage, one round-trip and one one-way. The last name of the man who bought the tickets is the same as the last name of the woman who "fell" overboard and drowned on the same voyage, which is the subject of the article he's reading. ~21. Several men were shipwrecked together. They agreed to survive by eating each other a piece at a time. Each of them in turn gives up an arm, but before they get to the last one, they're rescued. They all demand that the last man live up to his end of the deal. Instead, he kills a bum and sends the bum's arm to the others in a box to demonstrate that he fulfilled the bargain. Later, one of them sees him on the subway, holding onto the overhead rings with the arm he supposedly cut off, realizes he cheated, and kills him. ~22. Both women are white and single. A black male friend of the one who goes into the bathroom was recently killed, reportedly by the KKK. The woman who goes into the bathroom discovers a bloodstained KKK robe in the other's laundry hamper, picks up a nail file from the medicine cabinet, and goes out and kills the other. ~23. He is in a hotel, and is unable to sleep because the man in the adjacent room is snoring. He calls the room next door (from his own number he can easily figure out his neighbor's, and from the room number, the telephone number). The snorer wakes up, answers the phone. The first man hangs up without saying anything and goes to sleep before the snorer gets back to sleep and starts snoring again. ~24. It's the man's fiftieth birthday, and in celebration of this he plans to kill his wife, then take the money he's embezzled and move on to a new life in another state. His wife takes him out to dinner; afterward, on their front step, he kills her. He opens the door, dragging her body in with him, and all the lights suddenly turn on and a group of his friends shout "Surprise!" He kills himself. (Note that the whole first part, including the motive, isn't really necessary; it was just part of the original story.) ~25. Abel is a prince of the island nation that he landed on. A cruel and warlike prince, he waged many land and naval battles along with his father the king. In one naval encounter, their ship sank, the king died, and the prince swam to a deserted island where he spent several months. In the mean time, a regent was appointed to the island nation, and he brought peace and prosperity. When Prince Abel returned to his kingdom, Cain (a native fisherman) realized that the peace of the land would only be maintained if Abel did not reascend to his throne. ~26. The drinks contained poisoned ice cubes; the man who drank slowly gave them time to melt, while the other didn't. ~27. Joe is a kid who goes trick-or-treating for Halloween. ~28. He's a smuggler. On the first cruise, someone brings the contraband to his cabin, and he hides it in an air conditioning duct. Returning to the U.S., he leaves without the contraband, and so passes through customs with no trouble. On the second trip, he has the same cabin of the same ship. Because it doesn't stop anywhere, he doesn't have to go through customs when he returns, so he gets the contraband off safely. ~29. Hans and Fritz do everything right up until they're filling out a personal-information form and have to write down their birthdays. Fritz' birthday is, say, July 7, so he writes down 7/7/15. Hans, however, was born on, say, June 20, so he writes down 20/6/18 instead of what an American would write, 6/20/18. ~30. Another WWII story. Greg is a German spy. His friend Tim is suspicious, so he plays a word-association game with him. When Tim says "The land of the free", Greg responds with "The home of the brave". Then Tim says "The terror of flight", and Greg says "The gloom of the grave". Any U.S. citizen knows the first verse of the national anthem, but only a spy would have memorized all four verses. ~31. The dead man was the driver in a hit-and-run acccident which paralyzed its victim. The victim did manage to get the license plate number of the car; now in a wheelchair, he eventually tracked down the driver and killed him. ~32. His home is a houseboat and he has run out of water while on an extended cruise. ~33. I'm told this is a true story. Windows in Paris at that time were apparently imperfectly flat; they could act as lenses. One particularly hot day, the sun shining in through such a window caused a woman's lingerie (which she was wearing at the time, awaiting her husband's return) to catch fire, and eventually the entire house caught and burned. ~34. He's leaving a hospital after visiting his wife, who's on heavy life-support. When the power goes out, he knows she can't live without the life-support systems (he assumes that if the emergency backup generator were working, the elevator wouldn't lose power). ~35. Both twins were wearing glasses. The burglar, however, was wearing photosensitive sunglasses; the policeman noticed them changing shade and realized the man must have just entered. ~36. Let's say "she" is named Suzy, and "they" are named Harry and Jane. Harry is an elderly archaeologist who has found a very old skeleton, which he's dubbed "Jane" (like "Lucy"). Suzy is a buyer for a museum; she's supposed to make some sort of purchase from Harry, so she invites him to have a business dinner with her (at a restaurant). When she calls to invite him, he keeps talking about "Jane," so Suzy assumes that Jane is his wife and says to bring her along. Harry, offended, calls Suzy's boss and complains; since Suzy should've known who Jane was, she gets fired. ~37. The man was a lion tamer. ~38. The murderer set the car on a slope above the hot dog stand where the victim works. He then wedged an ice block in the car to keep the brake pedal down, and put the car in neutral. The murderer then flew to another city to avoid suspicion. It was a rainy day but warm enough for the ice to melt. When the ice melted, the car rolled down the hill and struck the hot dog man at his roadside stand, killing him. ~39. There's a car wash on that corner. On rainy days, the rain reduces traction. On sunny days, water from the car wash has the same effect. If rain is threatening, though, the car wash gets little business and thus doesn't make the road wet, so I can take the corner faster. ~40. The object she threw was a boomerang. It flew out, looped around, and came back and hit her in the head, killing her. ~41. He saw the bird at 20,000 feet get sucked into an engine. ~42. The man is a heroin addict, and has contracted AIDS by using an infected needle. Since he has no hope to live, he shoots himself up with an overdose, and commits suicide. ~43. The man walked into a casino, and went to the craps table. He bet all the money he had to his name, and shot craps. Since he was now broke, he became despondent and committed suicide. ~44. Kids getting their pictures taken with Santa. ~45. He's a priest; he is marrying them to other people, not to himself. ~46. It's the cabin of an airplane that's crashed there. ~47. It's a game of Monopoly. ~48. She was a circus performer who performed rope tricks. During one of them, she hung from the ceiling holding only a rope in her mouth. The other end of the rope was held by her husband. ~49. This is a post-holocaust scenario of some kind; for whatever reason, the man believes himself to be the last human on earth. He doesn't want to live by himself, so he jumps, just before someone else calls... (of course, it could be a computer, but he has no way of knowing). ~50. The dead man is Santa Claus; he slipped while coming down the chimney and broke his neck. ~51. He's with a policeman, who's taking him to jail, and he uses the policeman's gun. He was convicted of his wife's murder; she had framed him for it somehow, involving cutting off two of her own fingers and mailing them to the police. Since he had already been convicted of her murder, he couldn't be tried twice for the same crime, and since he obviously hadn't actually been guilty before, he's set free. ~52. The dead man is Superman; the rock is Green Kryptonite. Invent a reasonable scenario from there. ~53. It's a wolf pack; they've killed and eaten (most of) the man. ~54. The room is the ballroom of an ocean liner which sank some time ago. The rays are manta rays. The man ran out of air while diving in the wreck. ~55. The man works in a lighthouse. By turning out the light he killed a couple hundred people. After reading about that the next morning, he killed himself. ~56. A group of people were floating down the Amazon river when they floated under a big tree. A snake was hanging down, so the entire boat ran to one side and capsized; the people were then eaten by piranha. ~57. The man caught a large fish and was so excited he went to a phone booth to call his wife. In trying to describe the size of the fish, he said, "It was THIS big!" and stretched his arms wide to indicate its length. His arms went through the sides of the phone booth, his wrists were sliced by broken glass, and he bled to death. ~58. The woman outside is a psychotic librarian. The woman inside has an extremely overdue book. ~59. A mosquito bit me, and I swatted it when it later landed on my ceiling. ~60. It's in Canada; she pays in American money and receives change in Canadian money. ~61. The comma, in European numbers, is used the same way Americans use a decimal point. The man thus (Americans would say) walked 62.137 miles. ~62. The children are two of a set of triplets. ~63. The house is at the south pole. ~64. It's the remains of a melted snowman. ~65. It was a husband calling from overseas to see that his wife arrived home all right. Hanging up before three seconds elapse results in no charge to the calling party. He could not call person-to-person because the local operators did not speak English. ~66. The seals were frightened by an audience of nuns, who, to the seals, looked like a herd of killer whales. ~67. The man died from eating a poisoned popsicle. ~68. The man had already sugared his tea before sending it back. ~69. The man was a paleontologist working with the Archaeological Research Institute. He was reviving a triceratops frozen in the ice age when it came to life and killed him. ~70. He was a mail courier who delivered packages to the different foreign embassies in the United States. The land of an embassy belongs to the country of the embassy, not to the United States. ~71. It is sunny and hot. ~72. It's daytime; the sun is out. ~73. The sole survivor of a shipwreck reached a desert isle. Unfortunately, he was blind. Luckily, there was a freshwater spring on the island, and he rigged the ship's bell (which had drifted to the island also) at the spring's location. The bell rang in the wind, directing him to water. When he was becalmed for a week, he could not find water again, and so he died of thirst. ~74. The wise man tells them to switch camels. ~75. The man has put a quarter of the cost of a new car into a down payment; he then drives away in the car. ~76. The man was a sword swallower in a carnival side-show. While he was practicing, someone tickled his throat with the feather, causing him to gag. ~77. The man falls off the river bank and drowns. ~78. The pope has returned to the village where he began his priesthood fifty years earlier. He was late for the ceremony, so the mayor spoke first; he claimed to be the first person to give confession to the pope, fifty years earlier. When the pope arrived, he related that the first confession he had heard was that of the murder of a young woman. The man in the audience had a sister who was murdered at that time. ~79. The man is a mummy, on tour to different museums throughout the world. ~80. It is a painting of Henry VIII. ~81. A baseball game is going on. The base-runner sees the catcher waiting at home plate with the ball, and so decides to stay at third base to avoid being tagged out. ~82. The bicycles are Bicycle playing cards; the man was cheating at cards, and when the extra card was found, he was killed by the other players. ~83. The one who looks around sees his own reflection in the window (it's dark outside), but not his companion's. Thus, he realizes the other is a vampire, and that he's going to be killed by him. ~84. Should be done orally; the envelope is an evelope of dye, and she's dying some cloth, but it sounds like "opens an envelope and dies." if said out loud. ~85. He's allergic to whatever's inside the box. ~86. The man was on a bridge. ~87. The man was an astronaut out on a space walk. ~88. It's a model train set. ~89. He saw it happening on TV. ~90. The man was an amateur mechanic, the book is a Volkswagen service manual, the beetle is a car, and the pile of bricks is what the car fell off of. ~91. The dish is a satellite dish. ~92. He is on a traffic island. ~93. The postman is a man. The doctor and lawyer are women. ~94. Bruce is a horse. ~95. The flat tire is his spare. ~96. The man was a night watchman who told his boss that last night he had a dream that the boss would die in a plane crash. The boss fired him for sleeping on the job. ~97. The two bodies lacked what only Adam and Eve would lack -- bellybuttons. ~98. A chess game; knight takes pawn. ~99. The two priests are playing chess; one of them just mated by moving his queen. ~100. One is in Eastern Oregon (in Mountain time), the other in Western Florida (in Central time), and it's daylight-savings changeover day at 1:30 AM. ~101. The surgeon is the boy's mother.