A test.

[Bigus Dickus]

The vast majority of these little puzzles are extremely contrived. I mean, things like the "A man is performing his job when his suit tears. Less than 5 minutes later, he's dead." or the "A man eats food which is not poisoned, but causes him to die." Both of those are perfectly fine, and have rather acceptable responses (though the second one has an alternate answer which is a bit ... eeeh.).

But puzzles like the "A man meets a one-armed man on the subway, who then pulls out a gun and shoots him." one is just all too contrived. The worst one I've ever seen had to be that "A man is dead in a room with a small pile of woodchips and sawdust." That's just not a puzzle by any means.

None of those are legitimate puzzles of any sort. For each, including the one in the OP, there are dozens of plausible explanations, many equally likely relative to the others. I can think of many things that would tear a suit and kill a man. Lots of things can go wrong eating food which causes death. There simply isn't enough information in the "puzzle" stem to differentiate them. So saying that not giving the "expected" answer is wrong is just absurd.

 

[ShootMyMonkey]

Well, the first two are a bit more open-ended, and indeed have a handful of "expected" answers. The first and second both has a number of plausible answers, but one of the second's answers is just kind of... shaky.

The latter two, while they lack information, the solutions are so contrived that it just can't be considered valid. Particularly the last one. That's the nature of all of these so-called "lateral thinking" puzzles... the whole point is to try and get someone to piece together the remaining information. When the remaining information is just so absurd that it requires a series of assumptions to even make sense, that's when I have to say it's not acceptable.

 

[AlNom]

A girl attends her mother's funeral and meets the guy of her dreams at the funeral. They talk and they hit it off. But at the end of the day when he leaves, she realizes that she never got his last name or his number.

The next day the girl's older sister is murdered. Why?

blah...

why was he there in the first place, and what made her think he'd show up at her older sister's funeral? What's the significance of the sister being older? The answer makes no use of the written details, and is a complete fabrication of someone's narcissistic attitude towards coming up with his/her own answer. (Oh...I'm so smart, I wonder if anyone can come to my conclusion.)




(Of course, all of these "questions" can be answered in the world of CSI. )

 

[Rolf N]

I don't think the point is cleverly guessing the correct answer with no other information than the puzzle. This whole stuff is a game which involves several people, of which only one starts with The Solution, having a back-and-forth conversation, and closing in. The Solution is not necessarily correct or meaningful. It's just the answer, out of many possible answers, that, when found, makes you win the game because the rules say so.

Playing alone doesn't work.

 

[nintenho]

Why "what"? Are you asking

• Why is it a favourite or
• why is there a dead, naked match-holder in the desert?

QUOTE]
b.

figured it out.

 

[Simon F]

None of those are legitimate puzzles of any sort. For each, including the one in the OP, there are dozens of plausible explanations, many equally likely relative to the others. I can think of many things that would tear a suit and kill a man. Lots of things can go wrong eating food which causes death. There simply isn't enough information in the "puzzle" stem to differentiate them. So saying that not giving the "expected" answer is wrong is just absurd.

That's because these puzzles are meant to be solved interactively by the solver asking questions that can be answered with just "yes" or "no". Putting them on a webpage is doing them a disservice.