July 14, 2006

• Riddle

  Imagine you’re in an enclosed cement room. The dimensions are about the
  same as a public bathroom, there are no doors, and the only window
  there is has impenetrable bars. Three tigers have just woken up, and
  you can tell from the way their skin clings to their ribs that they
  haven’t been fed in a while. They catch your scent, and turn towards
  you. Slowly, they advance, poised to pounce. You look around, but
  there’s nothing else in the room except for their water bowls. The
  tigers get closer, and you walk backwards to keep an eye on them until
  your back is against the wall. They are so close now you can see them
  salivating and you know you have very little time left. What do you do?

  ---

  If you know the answer, post it on your own blog. Don’t be an ass and ruin everyone else’s fun by posting it here.

  ---

  So the assistant manager of the store gives me a riddle, not the one I
  just wrote, but a unicursal one. Even though I stated, warned, begged
  him not to give me a riddle – they drive me nuts – he did it anyway. I
  spent about an hour at work trying to figure it out. But he said that
  if I gave him a solution to the riddle, he would take the whole staff
  out for Outback Steakhouse. So I applied all my intellectual fortitude
  towards the problem – he told me it had taken him 8 months to solve. I
  told him to give me 24 hours. Yeah, I can be arrogant like that.

  Of course I googled it when I got home. Took about 10 minutes to find
  the specific one, and I got the proof to what I had suspected – that it
  was a trick question. The next day, I run up to him.

  Me: “We need to renegotiate the terms of the riddle.”
  Him: “I don’t think there’s room for negotiations.”
  “You gave me a trick question. That opens the door to negotiations.”
  “……..”
  “I’m just trying to make it easy on you. A steak lunch for 10 people is not gonna be cheap.”
  “So solved it?”
  “Yes and no, which is why I’m letting you renegotiate the prize. Instead of steak, why don’t you just buy us ice cream?”
  “Tell me what the solution is first.”
  “Ok……. The solution to the riddle is: There is no solution.”
  “What? Nooooo, there’s a solution. Why don’t you just tell me you quit?”
  “Because I know I’m right. The solution is there’s no solution.”
  “Ah, but there IS a solution.”
  “Bullshit.” – and anyone else would have been reprimanded for cussing at an assistant manager, but he just laughed.
  It went on like this for about 5 minutes, me getting angrier that he
  would renig on his word until our voices echoed off the warehouse
  walls. The head manager of the store suddenly appeared.
  “What’s going on here?”
  “He gave me that riddle that I told you about and I told him the solution and now he won’t buy us steak,” I pout.
  The head manager offers to mediate if the assistant manager tells him
  the solution, and he’ll judge if my answer qualifies. I walk off in a
  huff to get some work done, but half an hour later I run up to the
  assistant manager.
  “I don’t want this to ruin my day so I’m not gonna think about it
  anymore. I know I’m right, and I can buy my own steak and ice cream.”
  He gets a weird look on his face and says
  “You got it half right before. But I was looking for a specific answer
  to the riddle: The definition of Insanity. It took me 8 months of doing
  the same thing over and over again expecting different results. It took
  you less than 24 hours.”
  “Well, you didn’t let me finish my solution to the riddle earlier so
  here it is: The solution to that riddle is there’s no solution. But,
  the solution is also this: Not every problem has a solution. Or, if it does, it might not be the solution you expect, or the solution that you want.” Checkmate.

  • 10:55 am
  • 6 Comments