I answered with, 'He just drove there,' I think I was supposed to infer a night time incident from the context but it didn't work. The person asking got a bit mift at this point, she was never the brightest light on the Xmas tree, not dim exactly, she just put too much faith in rote, one of those folk with predicable thought processes who accepted answers depending on the status of their source. Anyway I tried out the question myself, for curiosity's sake, guess what, it didn't work then either. She must've been asked the question herself at one point, for her to be as impressed by its implications as she seemed. So I started to wonder, was the question posed to her with a more effective wording or did she fail it deliberately? By deliberately I mean, appear to make the assumption of a night time context in the question, for the sake of social acquiescence, then use self deception to convince herself that her assumption was genuine. That might seem a little tenuous but the nature of her reaction, when I failed to make the elicited assumption, was something akin to that which follows from a break in social etiquette, it was if I was being rude.
A much better question of this ilk is: if a tree falls in the forest and no one is there, does it make a sound? Yeah that question, this one went so far over my head that I always dismissed it as some zen type thought mangling, that needed sufficient drug induced cerebral hindrance to be effective. It wasn't until it was pointed out, that the word sound, a bit like the word colour, can be, and is often interpreted as reference to a sensory phenomena, that the penny dropped for me.
So here's another question, that falls somewhere between the forest question and the equivocal wording of the car hits deer question. Here it goes: there are three people travelling together, each of them has just applied for a job as a bus driver. The first person is a good driver and got the job. The second person is a fair driver and didn't get the job, the third person can't drive. Who wins?
But why did a guy who can't drive apply for a job as a driver? Many years ago, I came up with one after reading a Reader's Digest booklet with similar puzzles. Here it is: A man marries my mother. He's not my father, nor is he my mother's husband. Who is he? It's surprising how many people were caught out by this back in the late '60s, early '70s, but if I ask it today, most people get it. That led to a slight rewording, which allows me to deny the obvious answer and substitute an alternate one. I'll tell you the new version after you've answered the old one.
ReplyDeleteUm, I'm gonna say the man is some kind of cleric or some other such, empowered to conduct marriage rites, captain on the high seas, blacksmith in Gretna, that kind of thing.
DeleteMost people would say minister or priest, but here's another way of asking it, Someone marries my mother, but they're not my dad or my mother's husband - who are they? If someone says "minister" or "priest", you can cop out by saying "No, a female registrar!" (This was before women ministers or priests.) You obviously anticipated that by the clue I gave about substituting an alternate answer.
ReplyDeleteNow you can say, she's her wife or maybe, in the not too distant future, my auntie, her sister. Although that's not in the spirit of the question which is a play on the verb, marry, which has two meanings, within the same context, I think that must be unique.
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