You never used my two-minute mystery. I will now pout.
But since I am doing laundry, I will also play the game.
Are there footprints leading towards her body?
Did the woman cause her own death?
If so, was it a suicide?
Was it an accident?
Wee-sicle from a plane landed on her and killed her, then melted.
I'll use yours, Cala. Unless you want to run it. But I looked at it just now considering whether to use it and I realized there were things I didn't get, and I needed to ask you clarifying questions.
There are footprints leading towards her body.
The woman did not cause her own death.
It was not a suicide.
It was an accident.
Damn. This was a short game. Didn't Anthony win a game before?
Under controversial circumstances. BUt now I feel bad, so I take it back. Carry on!
Okay, since Anthony already guessed, Cala, do you want to do yours and be the answerer?
I call foul. Weesicle wouldn't have made a puncture wound. If it killed her, it would have been the impact.
Bitten by a venomous frost-viper? Uh, by accident? It crawled into her pocket to stay warm? It's still there, watch out!!!
Why couldn't it have made a puncture wound? What if it was a long, sharp weesicle?
No, I don't want to be the answerer, because there's no way I won't fuck it up and give wrong answers by accident.
We need a weesicle expert.
How many times have I said that today!
Okay, then I'm going to email you because there's stuff I don't get.
"stabicle" should become one of the weapons in Clue...
Okay, I put Cala's scenario on the main page.
A car and a rock fell from a plane onto a guy and killed him, then someone drove the car away. Also a weesicle may have been involved.
A car and a rock did not fall onto the guy. No weesicle was involved.
I say dunebuggy reversed over him and is currently sitting on the rock, but that may abuse the meaning of "tire tracks" leading away.
(I am not playing. I have things I desperately need to do, like find the packing tape so I can seal the box that my cat has just decided to sit down in, which was not part of the plan.)
And I think we're all enjoying the word "weesicle" a smidgeon too much.
quotes should be around "leading away"
The dunebuggy is not sitting on the rock. "Tire tracks leading away" should be interpreted conventionally.
Why do all your games involve someone dying?
i think "Dunebuggies!" should suffice as a solution, without explanation...
Who's for Matt sealing the cat in the box and mailing it somewhere?
28: let me see if i can dig up some ex-girlfriends' addresses...
A blog commenter, having asked too many questions, is found dead at his computer. What happened?
Why the hell won't objects stay in one place? I can't find the fucking packing tape. I fear I may have left it in the Office Depot parking lot; I suppose I may as well go check, since if I don't find it I have to buy a new roll anyway.
Do the tracks show four tires? Or only two? How about one?
If one, is the dead man wearing only a speedo and a handlebar mustache? And if so, is he a circus bodybuilder crushed by his own boulder, causing his unicycle-carrying clown lover to ride away in hysterics?
An epistemologist is trying to seal a box. He has no packing tape. What the hell happened?
Can you afford not to have a speedo?
Is this an African desert?
What color is the sand?
Is it a windy day?
Are there scorpions in this desert?
Is the rock an asteroid?
Is the dead man wearing pants?
I'm working on a hypothesis...
These four tires -- are they car-sized, or more like a remote-control car or perhaps a pram? Or both -- it's a Barbie Dream Car, isn't it!
The location of the desert isn't relevant, nor is the sand color. It is a windy day. Scorpions weren't involved. The rock was not an asteroid (but in my effort not to be misleading, I'll tell you that I looked up "asteroid" in order to answer that question). The dead man is not wearing pants.
And did Barbie's Dream Car burst, Alien-like, out of the guy's stomach, killing him, and then drive off?
Damn! So are you (almost) saying this rock is a meteorite?
The dead man is not wearing pants.
Mystery solved!
The man drove to the place, with a friend, in a car. He got out of the car and was killed by a falling meteorite, whose impact kicked up enough sand to obliterate the car's tracks. The friend, heartlessly, drove away.
I'm not almost saying the rock is a meteorite.
Two astronaut with a moon roverish vehicle rode a meteorite down from orbit, Slim Pickens style! One did not fasten his seatbelt.
The friend, heartlessly, drove away.
After taking the guy's pants, as a memento.
Has the dead man been dead long enough to fossilize?
The truth is, I don't know if the rock is a meteorite. My investigations reveal that it could be a meteorite, but it could not be as well.
Are you almost not saying it isn't a meteorite?
Was the man killed by impact with the rock?
was he dropped from a helicopter along with another person and an all-terrain vehicle? was it a black helicopter?
Alright, tell you what. I'll say for the sake of argument that it is a meteorite.
The man was not killed by impact with the rock. Neither the man nor the vehicle was dropped by helicopter.
It's a windy day -- windy enough to obliterate tire tracks leading to the body?
IS there some quality that a meteorite has that is important to the story, but that you aren't sure that a terrestrial rock might not also have? Or is its meteoriteness or not just irrelevant?
Is the rock Kryptonite? Is the man Superman? And are his pants anywhere around?
Yes, it is windy enough to obliterate tire tracks leading to the body.
Why is Anthony so good at this? Superman, you'll note, wears tights. I just should have said 'no' to asteroid.
Again I cry foul. Superman is not a man. He is an alien.
Is there a flash flood involved here?
I was just being silly. Superman isn't real, you know...
The dead man WAS wearing a speedo!
Notwithstanding not being real, how can Superman not be a man? Can superglue be not-glue?
if it was superman, what do the tire tracks have to do with anything?
So, I still don't get the tire-tracks. Lex Luthor?
67: but you can't prick him, unless you have a kryptonite needle. who's driving the vehicle? or aren't we done yet?
Separate issue. Drove up, wind blew away the tracks, Lex killed Supe with Kryptonite, wind died down, Lex drove off leaving tracks.
The bad guys drove up in the dune buggy or whatever with Lois Lane. It got windy enough to cover their tire tracks. Superman flew in to save her. They zapped him with the Kryptonite. The wind died down before they drove away, still in possession of Lois.
Weinerpwned on my own Two Minute Mystery.
Well, that's nicely wrapped up. Now we just need to know what happened to Weiner's packing tape.
Superman carrying the car until he gets to the Kryptonite, when he loses his strength and the car crushes him, and the Lexus drives away?
It seems like whenever I try to do something something stupid happens and I spend half an hour staring into space, unable to do anything, because I can't find some crucial thing I had five minutes ago. It really pisses me off. I mean, I'll never seal the cat up at this rate.
I would rather the kryptonite meteor collided with superman in mid-air, and then fell to earth, crushing and entirely concealing a jeep full of, um, Karl Rove beneath it. after all, how can you possibly tell if the tire tracks are coming or going? huh? Huh?
Never mind. But I think these things ought to have thematic unity -- why not the mafia drove up in a dune buggy, shot some guy and threw him out next to a rock, the wind covered the tracks while they were doing it, and then they drove away?
Or, or, in the variation... there's *no* footprints. Lex Luthor used a helicopter!
The New Guy: please pick a pseudonym that will age better, if you would.
What?!? Superman??! I was sure it was a male prostitute...
How can you possibly justify having said the location of the desert was irrelevent? Superman never once went to Africa.
These games are rigged. First, our nation's electoral system, now this! Is there no one I can trust?
81: Because people are supposed to ask: Has the man been shot? Are there marks on his body? And you get to say NO, 'cause it's Superman.
DUH.
85. I sincerely regret not asking those questions.
BTW are other people still getting Internal Server Errors?
84: Superman was always flying out into space and orbiting the earth at superspeed, in order to stop time or whatever (which, BTW, Standpipe, is how I do it) so he could easily have crashed in to a meteorite over the Sahara. Or if LL had kidnapped him, he might have taken him to his secret Saharan hideout.
87: Yeah, today's been really bad.
I went to the supermarket to buy another roll of tape. My original roll, I assume, is currenty being used to secure the 12th beer to the hand of the 12th imam.
83: It could be just like Pont-Neuf, though. Or the New Criticism.
If we're going to involve Superman, why can't he just carry the car there for some reason, and then have passenger pull the Kryptonite on him? No high winds needed. Lex Luthor would totally pull something like that.
Will the dead man's pants age better than the new guy? Tune in next week to see!
87: Yes.
89: Is the cat still in the box?
The cat didn't stay in the box very long at all. It would've been hard to tape the cat in the box anyway, since the box was full without the cat and the cat is not exactly low-volume.
I realize that the packing tape story has been the most boring story ever. And it's a really dumb thing to worry about. I mean, Ogged has cancer.
(Now I'm sad.)
Cheer up, Matt. I liked the packing tape story.
Get a new box. Pack the cat in it, and send it to Ogged. I'm sure that'll cheer him right up. Plus, purring cats have healing powers, and when he takes the cat out of the box, it'll surely purr in relief. Voila! Miracle!
Does anyone know this one? Its pretty easy.
A man is found shot dead in a limousine. The coroner confirms that he was shot from outside the car. Yet all the windows are bulletproof and the doors were locked.
Why, it couldn't be simpler, Nicholas! The assassin was using "phasing" bullets which can pass through obstacles by temporarily switching into the plane of reality which is occupied only by souls, but not base matter. Thus its path was unobstructed. When it came near enough to the victim's soul, it switched back into the this-worldly plane and entered his body, killing him (and, incidentally, destroying his soul and hope for salvation).
Or from below, through the floorboards?
He's in the trunk. Mob victim or something.
Um, hello? I already solved this problem.
Also, car doors can be locked from the outside, too.
"in" is misleading: for why should we automatically assume that "in a limousine" means "in the smaller of the two disjunct volumes the surface of the limousine defines"? Suppose it means that the body was found in the larger of the two. Then when the coroner says that he was shot from "outside" the car, he means that he was shot from the smaller of the two volumes. Following the shot, the assassin closed the door (if it were open) and rolled up the window (if it were down), and drove off.
Problem solved!
No one's thinking is lateraler than mine!
It just said he was "shot", not necessarily with what. Perhaps it was a cannon. Or a missile. Or a laser gun.
The coroner, working on the crime scene, took pictures from outside the car before continuing the examination of the body. This is how the man was "shot dead."
In fact the man was found shot dead in Limousin.
So, is the principle of lateral thinking that taking an unexpected new perspective on things can help you solve the problem? Having slept on the futon last night, as soon as I woke up I saw that the packing tape was on top of the record shelf thingy (which is above eye level).
Matt, clearly by hiding the packing tape, the cat is trying to send you a message.
Superman shot the guy with a super-weesicle and then locked his body in the car.