Brain Teasers
Man with a Match
Situation
Situation puzzles (sometimes called lateral thinking puzzles) are ones where you need to ask lots of yes or no questions to figure out what happened in the situation. These are good puzzles for groups where one person knows the puzzle and answers the questions.Situation
A man is found in the desert dead. In his hand is half of a match. How did he get there and how did he die?
Hint
At one time he was in the air.Answer
He was a robber who, along with a partner in crime had robbed a bank and found a hot air balloon. They stole it and were being chased by the police when a problem arose. They were sinking due to the weight of the money. They had to throw over either 1 of the 2 men or the money. One of the men pulled out a match. They closed their eyes and the one with the lightable side had to jump out. The man pulled the lightable end and jumped out.Hide Hint Show Hint Hide Answer Show Answer
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Comments
I tried this in a group with people asking questions and I could only answer yes and no. They spent about 30 minutes getting nowhere before getting completely pissed off. I've decided to stop playing any of these "situation" games again. Do you really expect anyone to guess this obscure "puzzle"?
How is anything in this slightly related?
As I see it I will point out all the things I see wrong:
No way you would think a man lying in a desert has just robbed a bank. Absolutely unrelated.
Why would they decide to kill one of them? Surely no money is better than a 50/50 chance of killing yourself.
How can you relate a man dead in a desert to a hotair baloon. (OK very remote chance someone may guess fell out of something eventually) Half a match is nothing to do with robbing a bank, or a hot air baloon. You couldn't reasonably deduce anything from the man having a match, or conversly if you want to get obscure you could relate it to anything. Its of no use to help find a solution.
If they ended up flying over a desert, then would the police still be chasing them? COuld they not let the baloon go close enough to the ground so one has to get out but the other can get away?
Its ridiculous these are just some of the things wrong with this. THere is no way you could deduce what has happened from the info given. Plus the title says toothpick not match to add to the confusion
As I see it I will point out all the things I see wrong:
No way you would think a man lying in a desert has just robbed a bank. Absolutely unrelated.
Why would they decide to kill one of them? Surely no money is better than a 50/50 chance of killing yourself.
How can you relate a man dead in a desert to a hotair baloon. (OK very remote chance someone may guess fell out of something eventually) Half a match is nothing to do with robbing a bank, or a hot air baloon. You couldn't reasonably deduce anything from the man having a match, or conversly if you want to get obscure you could relate it to anything. Its of no use to help find a solution.
If they ended up flying over a desert, then would the police still be chasing them? COuld they not let the baloon go close enough to the ground so one has to get out but the other can get away?
Its ridiculous these are just some of the things wrong with this. THere is no way you could deduce what has happened from the info given. Plus the title says toothpick not match to add to the confusion
I agree with cathalmccabe. Even though we are supposed to use the comment box to ask questions, there is no way a normal person could conclude this.
These are so vauge that they aren't even fun.
I think Situation puzzles sould be taken off this website altogether. They re so tremendously stupid, and impossible to deduce.
Ok well lets start with this, you have to be intelligant to figure out this one. Then with cathalmccabe, there are many things you missed. I figure your not much into geography, Las Vegas is in the middle of the desert, common sense, they decided to kill himself so the ballon would stay afloat, no money is worth dieing for but a chance to get off free is (fly to mexico, and avoid bounty hunters), the match is used to decide whom will jump off, yes they could have let it go close enough to the ground nice thinking mabey u know more that i think after all, and my bad on the title thing, i just about shot down every idea u had, shot down...hmmm the police could of also shot down the balloon...no one thought of that.
God, you people are such poor sports! The reason they are situation teasers are because you can NOT figure them oyut on your own! I love situation teasers. They challenge the mind, and I love trying them on the family. Just because you people need to not be feel like thinking doesn't mean you have to go and say that it has nothing to do with the puzzle. The match has everything to do with the puzzle, because it is clearly inside of the puzzle. Therefore it has to do with the puzzle. Also, how can you say no money is worth a 50/50 chance of dying? Are you a robber? You need to look at this from a robber's point of view. They simply see that there is also a 50/50 chance of getting away with all the money and not having to split it.
situation teasers are the most fun!
It is still about impossible to get this answer, yes he has half a match but still, he could be a terrorist on a plane, out where the engine is tring to blow the plane up, and his mathbroke and a minute later he fell. You see, there are endless possibilities, with situation puzzles, you should have enough info that there is only 1 possible answer that makes since and is hard to think of, that is what a situation puzzle is.
well starlust than u can use ur way with ur friends. This is my version.
confusing.very very confusing.
I agree with all of the people thinking positive of these situations. Situations were not meant to have different answers, but that's what happened. When I was looking for teasers, and when I found this web site, I thought all of them were gonna be situation! See, the base of situations is that only ONE person knows the answer. I mean, if you look up the teasers i've made, you'll see Truth or Lie?. The same thing happened to me. I got a different answer before I knew the one posted. It just adds "flavor" to the teaser. And I liked this one!
this has such a long answer for such a short problem. Maybe just maybe u should have thought about the question more thoroughly
i kind of thought that he was flying on a oaraglider, or a parachute [hot desert air rising, thus keeping the guy on air], lights a match for a smoke, and the chute catches on fire, burns. but the guy falls to the ground with the match still in his hand, he didnt have to wait to get burned either. There are a million solutions.
opps. paraglider [not oaraglider]
Just in case anyone ever reads this thing again, what the H*LL does any of this have to do with a "toothpick" which is noted in the title??? Situation puzzles are hard enough without getting the facts all screwed up as well.
well just to bug all you people that said "who on earth would figure he was in a hot air balloon" - that was my first thought (when someone falls from somewhere holding a match which could well be used to light the gas for a hot air balloon it doesn't seem all that illogical), i figured that he was in a hot air balloon when the gas went out, he tried to relight it, but the match broke, making it impossible to get it relit, and thus plummeted to the ground and died.
I got this kind of right(I thought it was just 2 normal men who started to lose weight so one of them had to jump)but that's because i've already heard it.
I've heard it before, but without the robbery. It is impossible to deduce the robbery aspect here.
Go munkybubble!
Thegermangemini, situation teasers are my favourite teasers and THERE WAS NO NEED TO SWEAR. I don't care if you say that that is not a swear; when you use it that way, it is. And bighippo, you too need to be polite. This is a classic situation teaser that I've heard countless times and I really like it, so I didn't like all those nasty comments. You need to pay attention to what it says right under the title of every situation teaser: that they are supposed to be guessed through yes or no questions. Don't you people ever pay attention to stuff like that?! Honestly, in practically every situation teaser, I hear comments like these. You know there are very little kids on this site? What kind of an example are you setting for them? I'm surprised that some of you have good karma... you don't deserve it.
Situation teasers are my favorites!!! Don't erase them! NO!!!
That teaser took me 3 hours!
That teaser took me 3 hours!
These are the teasers that I can't stand, He robbed a bank, "found" a hot air balloon, figured out how to use it, and floated 500 miles away from civilization (where the bank was) and flew for however long with nary a problem and eventually came across a problem. Of course they decide who dies over a match of all things, completely out of random. Maybe he set a forest fire and burned down the forest until it became a desert.
My answer is usually wrong when the answer is longer than the question
This is a great teaser to do with friends. An obscure answer like this can really stump someone for a long time. Its funny when you do it with someone who says random answers
This is a great teaser to do with friends. An obscure answer like this can really stump someone for a long time. Its funny when you do it with someone who says random answers
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