Classic Puzzles: Dead men, albatrosses, midgets & elevators

[Balin]

This is the collection of classic lateral thinking puzzles that occupied a prominent space on the old (archived) forum but has not yet been posted here. For the benefit of new puzzlers, here it is, complete with old title and introduction.

These puzzles are the real classic lateral thinking puzzles. Do not post them again: they'll either get ignored or be solved immediately. Whichever, it's no fun for you or anyone else. It's not that they're not great puzzles – it's just that we've all heard them before. There's no need for us to hear them again.

Anyway, have a good look through. You never know: they might inspire you. But don't post them again.

A man lives in a penthouse apartment in New York City. When he goes to work, he takes the elevator down to the lobby. When he comes home he only takes it halfway up. Unless it's raining, when he takes it all the way up. Why?

Answer:
The man is a midget and can't reach the buttons to go all the way up to his penthouse. When it is raining, he has an umbrella with which he can push the buttons.

A man walks into a bar and orders a glass of water. The bartender pulls a gun on him. The man thanks the bartender and leaves.

Answer:
The man had hiccups and wanted to get rid of them by drinking a glass of water. The bartender shocked him by pulling a gun on him, which got rid of his hiccups, so he thanked him and left.

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

Answer:
The man, his wife, and a second man were in a ship that was wrecked on a desert island. The man's wife died in the wreck. When there was no food left, the second man brought what he said was an albatross but was really part of the dead wife. Some time after their rescue, the first man decides to order albatross at a restaurant. It tastes nothing like what he was told was albatross on the island, which makes him realize he really ate his wife. Unable to cope with the realization, he kills himself.

A man is found dead in a field, a broken match in his hand. Explain.

Answer:
The man was in a hot air balloon that was losing altitude. They had thrown out everything but themselves, so one of them had to jump to save the others. They used the time-honored method, and whoever picked the broken match had to go.

The police walked into the room and found a dead man next to a stick.
(Alternate: If he saw the sawdust, he wouldn't have died.)

Answer:
The man is blind, and is the shortest man in the world. Another midget, jealous because he's not as short, has been sawing small pieces off his cane every night, so that every day he thinks he's taller. Since his only income is from being a circus midget, he offs himself.

The music stopped. She died. Explain.

Answer(s):
(This puzzle has had the most variations of answer with the same statement than any other puzzle in history. Here are the most common answers.)
-She was a blindfolded tightrope walker. The music was her cue to step off. One day, the machine playing the music broke down. She stepped off too early and fell to her death.
-She was a spider on a chair in a game of musical chairs. When the music stopped, one of the children sat on her and squashed her.
-She was a blind swimmer, who swam out from her boat every day. She played a radio in her boat so she knew where to swim to at the end of the day. When the transmission cut out, she could no longer find her boat and drowned.
-She was a radio DJ who was using work as an alibi to kill her husband. She played a long CD, then left the studio to hunt down her husband. Unfortunately, she took too long, and on the drive back to work she discovered that the CD had finished and the station was in complete silence. She then committed suicide to avoid the prison sentence. (A common alternate puzzle statement for this scenario is near the bottom of this list.)
-She was a spinning ballerina in a music box. When the box was closed, the music stopped and she "died" (i.e. stopped moving).

A man is dead in a desert. A rock lies next to him. What happened?

Answer(s):
-It's Superman, and the rock is kryptonite.
-It's Goliath after having been struck by David.

A man pushes a wheelbarrow past a hotel, and sighs with relief. Why?
(Alternate: A man pushes his car to a hotel and realizes he's bankrupt. Why?)

Answer:
He was playing Monopoly, the wheelbarrow was his piece, and he was relieved he didn't have to pay a huge rent.
(In the alternate, the rent from the hotel causes him to go bankrupt in the game.)

A man is found dead in a locked room with a puddle of water near him. How did he die?

Answer:
The man stood on a block of ice to reach the ceiling and hang himself. The water is the remains of the now melted ice.

A man wakes up and sees a dead body next to him. He soon knows he will die too. Why?

Answer(s):
-The dead body was his Siamese twin; now he knows he soon will die as well.
-The man is a prisoner who made a deal with a guard to escape: the next time someone in the prison dies, he will be buried with the corpse and the guard will dig him up. This is done, but he is not dug out. The prisoner strikes a match and sees that the dead body is that of the guard, so he knows he will soon suffocate. (A common alternate puzzle statement for this solution is "A man strikes a match and dies," with the prisoner dying of fright upon making the fatal realization.)

A police officer spotted a truck driver clearly going the wrong way down a one-way street, but didn't arrest him. Why not?

Answer:
The truck driver was walking.

Alice is found dead in a puddle of water and glass. Everyone knows Ted killed her, but he is never prosecuted.
(An alternate version of this puzzle eliminates Ted and adds "There are train tracks nearby.")

Answer:
Alice is a goldfish; Ted is a cat. Ted knocked Alice's bowl off the table.
(In the variant, the vibrations from the train knocked the bowl off.)

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.

Answer(s):
-She is looking at a photograph of her long-deceased husband.
-She is looking at the urn holding his ashes.

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.

Answer:
The man tried to stow away on a jet liner by hiding in the landing gear; during flight, he died from hypothermia. When the gear extended in preparation for landing, his corpse fell out and landed in the park, breaking many of its bones.

A man is found dead in a cabin. It is obvious what killed him.

Answer(s):
-The cabin is that of an airplane which crashed. (A common alternate puzzle statement for this solution is "A man is found dead in a cabin in the woods. How did he die?"
-The cabin is on board a ship which has sunk.

A man and his young son were in a car accident. They were both severely injured and rushed to hospital. The surgeon refused to operate on the man's son, saying "This is my son." How was that possible?

Answer:
The surgeon was the boy's mother.

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

Answer(s):
-A group of people were on an ocean voyage in a yacht. One day, they decided to go swimming; they put on their swimsuits and dove off the side. They discovered belatedly that they have forgotten to put a ladder down the side of the yacht and were unable to climb back in, so they drowned.
-The same situation, but they set out a ladder that was just barely long enough. When they dove into the water, the boat, without their weight, rose slightly in the water, putting the ladder just out of reach.

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

Answer:
The man used to be blind; he's returning from an eye operation which restored his sight. He spent all his money on the operation, so when the train (which had no internal lighting) goes through a tunnel, he thinks he's gone blind again and decides to kill himself. But before he could do it, he saw the lights of the cigarettes people were smoking and realized he could still see.

A man and his wife raced through the streets. They stopped, and the husband got out of the car. When he came back, his wife was dead, and there was a stranger in the car.

Answer:
The wife was about to have a baby. They drove to the hospital. The husband left to get a wheelchair, but the baby was born in the meantime, and the wife didn't survive the birth.

Beulah died in the Appalachians, while Craig died at sea. Everyone was much happier with Craig's death.

Answer:
Beulah and Craig were hurricanes.

A policeman hears "No, John! Don't shoot!" and then a single shot. He enters the home finding a doctor, an engineer, and a lawyer standing over a dead body. Without talking to anyone, he arrests the doctor. Why?

Answer:
The others are women.

A man in scuba gear is found dead on top of a tree. How?

Answer:
The man was lifted out of the water by a helicopter which was fighting a forest fire. When the helicopter dropped the water it also dropped the man who fell on a tree and died from the impact. (This was later shown by MythBusters to be impossible.)

A man wakes up in the night and is thirsty. He goes to the kitchen and gets himself a glass of water, switches of the light and goes back to bed. In the morning he hears 250 people have died, and commits suicide. Why?

Answer:
The man was a lighthouse keeper. Because he switched off the lighthouse light, a boat crashed into the rocks.

A girl is told by her parents never to open the cellar door. One day, after many years, her curiosity gets the better of her, and she opens it. What does she see?

Answer:
She sees the outside world – her parents had been keeping her trapped in the cellar, and she was not allowed to open the door from the inside.

A man is heading home after being out drinking. He is dressed entirely in black. He is heading down a deserted country road with no lights. Suddenly, a car with broken headlights comes around the corner, heading straight for the man, but he swerves at the last second. How did the driver know the man was there?

Answer:
It was broad daylight.

At a South African hospital, there is a certain bed which has a reputation for being unlucky, Whichever patient is put in it seems to die on a Friday night. Why?

Answer:
Patients in this bed are connected to a life support machine. Every Friday night, the cleaner unplugs the machine in order to plug in the vacuum cleaner!

A man at his place of work notices that his short is torn (or that he has lost a glove). Within minutes he is dead. How come?

Answer(s):
-He is an astronaut whose suit depressurized because of the tear (or lost glove).
-He is a deep sea diver and he ran out of oxygen because of the damaged suit (or lost glove).

The phone rang and the man realized his mistake but it was too late.

Answer:
There had been a huge nuclear war. The man had thought he was the only man left alive, so he decided life wasn't worth living. After swallowing poison, the phone rang. This meant there must be someone else alive, so he realized he didn't want to commit suicide, but by that time, it was too late.

A man hears the music on the radio start to skip and kills himself.

Answer:
The guy is a DJ. He goes to the radio station and sets the songs to autoplay so that he has an alibi. He is in the car after killing his wife and hears his radio station start to skip. The police would know he wasn't at the station. Instead of going to jail he commits suicide.

A man dies in a phone booth. Explain.

Answer:
The man is a fisherman and he just caught a big fish. Over the phone, he is describing how long the fish is, with the usual, "It was this big!" accompanied by hand gestures. His hands broke through the glass booth; he slit both wrists and bled to death.

[WiZ]

Great work, Balin.

I've had a look at the archived LTPF forum, and I think there are a few more to contribute. Those of you endowed with magical admin powers can amalgamate this with the previous post, or leave it in situ if you'd prefer.

A man is sitting in a room. Another person enters, carrying a closed cardboard box, and sits down nearby. How does the first man know what's in the box?

Answer:
The box contains a cat. The man is allergic to cats and feels the symptoms coming on.

A group of anthropologists discover two completely preserved human bodies in a glacier. One is a man and one is a woman. The anthropologists are able to reach the immediate conclusion that the identities of these two specimens are without a doubt, Adam and Eve. How?

Answer:
The bodies did not have belly buttons (Adam and Eve were not ‘born’ in the conventional sense).

A man sitting on a park bench reads a newspaper article headlined "Death at Sea" and knows a murder has been committed. How does he know?

Answer(s):
-The man was a travel agent who had sold tickets to the spouse of the victim. The spouse’s ticket was a return-trip but the victim’s was one-way only
-The man was a priest; the perpetrator had already confessed to him.

The man was afraid to go home because the man with the mask was there (sometimes after making three left turns). What is going on?

Answer:
He is playing baseball.

A man is lying dead in a field. Beside him is an unopened package. How did he die?

Answer:
The package was a parachute that failed to open.

Five pieces of coal, a carrot and a scarf are lying on the lawn. Nobody put them on the lawn but there is a perfectly logical reason why they should be there. What is it?

Answer:
A snowman melted on the lawn.

A woman had two sons who were born on the same hour of the same day of the same year. But they were not twins. How could this be so?

Answer:
They were two of a set of triplets.

One day a man received a parcel in the post. Carefully packed inside was a human arm. He examined it, repacked it and then sent it on to another man. The second man also carefully examined the arm before taking it to the woods and burying it. Why did they do this?

Answer:
Long ago, the two men were shipwrecked on an island, along with a doctor. They ran out of food. The doctor amputated the arms of the two men, and these arms were eaten. The Doctor pledged to amputate his own arm, but the men were rescued before this happened. The Doctor eventually fulfilled his promise, and sent the arm to the men as evidence. (Alternate solutions involve him sending the arm of a random patient instead, but this is immaterial).

A man rode into town on Friday. He stayed for three nights and then left on Friday. How come?

Answer:
Friday was the name of the man’s horse.

A man went to a party and drank some of the punch. He then left early. Everyone else at the party who drank the punch subsequently died of poisoning. Why did the man not die?

Answer:
The poison was in the ice cubes in the punch.

A man was walking downstairs in a building when he suddenly realized that his wife had just died. How?

Answer:
His wife is on life support; the man is in the hospital and notices that there has been a power cut.