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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQS);faqs.474


Section 1: "Realistic" situation puzzles.

1.1.  In the middle of the ocean is a yacht.  Several corpses are floating
in the water nearby.  (SJ)

1.2.  A man is lying dead in a room.  There is a large pile of gold and
jewels on the floor, a chandelier attached to the ceiling, and a large
open window.  (DVS; partial JM wording)

1.3.  A woman came home with a bag of groceries, got the mail, and walked
into the house.  On the way to the kitchen, she went through the living
room and looked at her husband, who had blown his brains out.  She then
continued to the kitchen, put away the groceries, and made dinner.
(partial JM wording)

1.4.  A body is discovered in a park in Chicago in the middle of summer.
It has a fractured skull and many other broken bones, but the cause of
death was hypothermia.  (MI, from _Hill Street Blues_)

1.5.  A man lives on the twelfth floor of an apartment building.  Every
morning he takes the elevator down to the lobby and leaves the building.
In the evening, he gets into the elevator, and, if there is someone else
in the elevator -- or if it was raining that day -- he goes back to his
floor directly.  However, if there is nobody else in the elevator and it
hasn't rained, he goes to the 10th floor and walks up two flights of
stairs to his room.  (MH)

1.6.  A woman has incontrovertible proof in court that her husband was
murdered by her sister.  The judge declares, "This is the strangest case
I've ever seen.  Though it's a cut-and-dried case, this woman cannot be
punished."  (This is different from #1.43.)  (MH)

1.7.  A man walks into a bar and asks for a drink.  The bartender pulls
out a gun and points it at him.  The man says, "Thank you," and walks out.
(DVS)

1.8.  A man is returning from Switzerland by train.  If he had been in a
non-smoking car he would have died.  (DVS; MC wording)

1.9.  A man goes into a restaurant, orders abalone, eats one bite, and
kills himself.  (TM and JM wording)

1.10.  A man is found hanging in a locked room with a puddle of water
under his feet.  (This is different from #1.11.)

1.11.  A man is dead in a puddle of blood and water on the floor of a
locked room.  (This is different from #1.10.)

1.12.  A man is lying, dead, face down in the desert wearing a backpack.
(This is different from #1.13, #2.11, and #2.12.)

1.13.  A man is lying face down, dead, in the desert, with a match near
his outstretched hand.  (This is different from #1.12, #2.11, and #2.12.)
(JH; partial JM wording)

1.14.  A man is driving his car.  He turns on the radio, listens for five
minutes, turns around, goes home, and shoots his wife.  (This is different
from #1.15.)

1.15.  A man driving his car turns on the radio.  He then pulls over to
the side of the road and shoots himself.  (This is different from #1.14.)

1.16.  Music stops and a woman dies.  (DVS)

1.17.  A man is dead in a room with a small pile of pieces of wood and
sawdust in one corner.  (from "Coroner's Inquest," by Marc Connelly)

1.18.  A flash of light, a man dies.  (ST original)

1.19.  A rope breaks.  A bell rings.  A man dies.  (KH)

1.20.  A woman buys a new pair of shoes, goes to work, and dies.  (DM)

1.21.  A man is riding a subway.  He meets a one-armed man, who pulls out
a gun and shoots him.  (SJ)

1.22.  Two women are talking.  One goes into the bathroom, comes out five
minutes later, and kills the other.

1.23.  A man is sitting in bed.  He makes a phone call, saying nothing,
and then goes to sleep.  (SJ)

1.24.  A man kills his wife, then goes inside his house and kills himself.
(DH original, from "Nightmare in Yellow," by Fredric Brown)

1.25.  Abel walks out of the ocean.  Cain asks him who he is, and Abel
answers.  Cain kills Abel.  (MWD original)

1.26.  Two men enter a bar.  They both order identical drinks.  One lives;
the other dies.  (CR; partial JM wording)

1.27.  Joe leaves his house, wearing a mask and carrying an empty sack.
An hour later he returns.  The sack is now full.  He goes into a room and
turns out the lights.  (AL)

1.28.  A man takes a two-week cruise to Mexico from the U.S.  Shortly
after he gets back, he takes a three-day cruise which doesn't stop at any
other ports.  He stays in his cabin all the time on both cruises.  As a
result, he makes $250,000.  (MI, from "The Wager")

1.29.  Hans and Fritz are German spies during World War II.  They try to
enter America, posing as returning tourists.  Hans is immediately
arrested.  (JM)

1.30.  Tim and Greg were talking.  Tim said "The terror of flight."  Greg
said "The gloom of the grave."  Greg was arrested.  (MPW original, from
"No Refuge Could Save," by Isaac Asimov)

1.31.  A man is found dead in his parked car.  Tire tracks lead up to the
car and away.  (SD)

1.32.  A man dies in his own home.  (ME original)

1.33.  A woman in Paris in 1895 is waiting for her husband to come home.
When he arrives, the house has burned to the ground and she's dead.  (JM)

1.34.  A man gets onto an elevator.  When the elevator stops, he knows his
wife is dead.  (LA; partial KH wording)

1.35.  Three men die.  On the pavement are pieces of ice and broken glass.
(JJ)

1.36.  She lost her job when she invited them to dinner.  (DS original)

1.37.  A man is running along a corridor with a piece of paper in his
hand.  The lights flicker and the man drops to his knees and cries out,
"Oh no!"  (MP)

1.38.  A car without a driver moves; a man dies.  (EMS)

1.39.  As I drive to work on my motorcycle, there is one corner which I go
around at a certain speed whether it's rainy or sunny.  If it's cloudy but
not raining, however, I usually go faster.  (SW original)

1.40.  A woman throws something out a window and dies.  (JM)

1.41.  An avid birdwatcher sees an unexpected bird.  Soon he's dead.  (RSB
original)

1.42.  There are a carrot, a pile of pebbles, and a pipe lying together in
the middle of a field.  (PRO; partial JM wording)

1.43.  Two brothers are involved in a murder.  Though it's clear that one
of them actually committed the crime, neither can be punished.  (This is
different from #1.6.)  (from "Unreasonable Doubt," by Stanley Ellin)

1.44.  An ordinary American citizen, with no passport, visits over thirty
foreign countries in one day.  He is welcomed in each country, and leaves
each one of his own accord.  (PRO)

1.45.  If he'd turned on the light, he'd have lived.  (JM)

1.46.  A man is found dead on the floor in the living room.  (ME original)

1.47.  A man is found dead outside a large building with a hole in him.
(JM, modified from PRO)

1.48.  A man is found dead in an alley lying in a red pool with two sticks
crossed near his head.  (PRO)

1.49.  A man lies dead next to a feather.  (PRO)

1.50.  There is blood on the ceiling of my bedroom.  (MI original)

1.51.  A man wakes up one night to get some water.  He turns off the light
and goes back to bed.  The next morning he looks out the window, screams,
and kills himself.  (CR; KK wording)

1.52.  She grabbed his ring, pulled on it, and dropped it.  (JM, from
_Math for Girls_)

1.53.  A man sitting on a park bench reads a newspaper article headlined
"Death at Sea" and knows a murder has been committed.

1.54.  A man tries the new cologne his wife gave him for his birthday.  He
goes out to get some food, and is killed.  (RW original)

1.55.  A man in uniform stands on the beach of a tropical island.  He takes
out a cigarette, lights it, and begins smoking.  He takes out a letter and
begins reading it.  The cigarette burns down between his fingers, but he
doesn't throw it away.  He cries.  (RW)

1.56.  A man went into a restaurant, had a large meal, and paid nothing for
it.  (JM original)

1.57.  A married couple goes to a movie.  During the movie the husband
strangles the wife.  He is able to get her body home without attracting
attention.  (from _Beyond the Easy Answer_)


Section 2: Double meanings, fictional settings, and miscellaneous others.

2.1.  A man shoots himself, and dies.  (HL) (This is different from #2.2.)

2.2.  A man walks into a room, shoots, and kills himself.  (HL) (This is
different from #2.1.)

2.3.  Adults are holding children, waiting their turn.  The children are
handed (one at a time, usually) to a man, who holds them while a woman
shoots them.  If the child is crying, the man tries to stop the crying
before the child is shot.  (ML)

2.4.  Hiking in the mountains, you walk past a large field and camp a few
miles farther on, at a stream.  It snows in the night, and the next day
you find a cabin in the field with two dead bodies inside.  (KL; KD and
partial JM wording)

2.5.  A man marries twenty women in his village but isn't charged with
polygamy.

2.6.  A man is alone on an island with no food and no water, yet he does
not fear for his life.  (MN)

2.7.  Joe wants to go home, but he can't go home because the man in the
mask is waiting for him.  (AL wording)

2.8.  A man is doing his job when his suit tears.  Fifteen minutes later,
he's dead.  (RM)

2.9.  A dead man lies near a pile of bricks and a beetle on top of a book.
(MN)

2.10.  At the bottom of the sea there lies a ship worth millons of dollars
that will never be recovered.  (TF original)

2.11.  A man is found dead in the arctic with a pack on his back.  (This
is different from #1.12, #1.13, and #2.12.)  (PRO)

2.12.  There is a dead man lying in the desert next to a rock.  (This is
different from #1.12, #1.13, and #2.11.)  (GH)

2.13.  As a man jumps out of a window, he hears the telephone ring and
regrets having jumped.  (from "Some Days are Like That," by Bruce J.
Balfour; partial JM wording)

2.14.  Two people are playing cards.  One looks around and realizes he's
going to die.  (JM original)

2.15.  A man lies dead in a room with fifty-three bicycles in front of
him.

2.16.  A horse jumps over a tower and lands on a man, who disappears.  (ES
original)

2.17.  A train pulls into a station, but none of the waiting passengers
move.  (MN)

2.18.  A man pushes a car up to a hotel and tells the owner he's bankrupt.
(DVS; partial AL and JM wording)

2.19.  Three large people try to crowd under one small umbrella, but
nobody gets wet.  (CC)

2.20.  A black man dressed all in black, wearing a black mask, stands at a
crossroads in a totally black-painted town.  All of the streetlights in
town are broken.  There is no moon.  A black-painted car without
headlights drives straight toward him, but turns in time and doesn't hit
him.  (AL and RM wording)

2.21.  Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice all live in the same house.  Bob
and Carol go out to a movie, and when they return, Alice is lying dead on
the floor in a puddle of water and glass.  It is obvious that Ted killed
her but Ted is not prosecuted or severely punished.

2.22.  A man rides into town on Friday.  He stays one night and leaves on
Friday.  (KK)

2.23.  Bruce wins the race, but he gets no trophy.  (EMS)

2.24.  A woman opens an envelope and dyes.  (AL)

2.25.  A man was brought before a tribal chief, who asked him a question.
If he had known the answer, he probably would have died.  He didn't, and
lived.  (MWD original)

2.26.  Two men are found dead outside of an igloo. (SK original)


Attributions key:

   When I know who first told me the current version of a puzzle, I've put
initials in parentheses after the puzzle statement; this is the key to
those acknowledgments.  The word "original" following an attribution means
that, to the best of my knowledge, the cited person invented that puzzle.
If a given puzzle isn't marked "original" but is attributed, that just
means that's the first person I heard it from.  I would appreciate it if
attributions for originals were not removed; however, this list is hereby
entered into the public domain, so do with it what you wish.

LA == Laura Almasy               RSB == Ranjit S. Bhatnagar
CC == Chris Cole                 MC == Matt Crawford
MWD == Matthew William Daly      KD == Ken Duisenberg
SD == Sylvia Dutcher             ME == Marguerite Eisenstein
TF == Thomas Freeman             JH == Joaquin Hartman
MH == Marcy Hartman              KH == Karl Heuer
GH == Geoff Hopcraft             DH == David Huddleston
MI == Mark Isaak                 SJ == Steve Jacquot
JJ == J|rgen Jensen              KK == Karen Karp
SK == Shelby Kilmer              KL == Ken Largman
AL == Andy Latto                 HL == Howard Lazoff
ML == Merlyn LeRoy               RM == "Reaper Man" (real name unknown)
TM == Ted McCabe                 JM == Jim Moskowitz
DM == Damian Mulvena             MN == Jan Mark Noworolski
PRO == Peter R. Olpe (from his list)
MP == Martin Pitwood             CR == Charles Renert
EMS == Ellen M. Sentovich (from her list)
ES == Eric Stephan               DS == Diana Stiefbold
ST == Simon Travaglia            DVS == David Van Stone
RW == Randy Whitaker             MPW == Matthew P Wiener
SW == Steve Wilson (not sure of name)

Special thanks to Jim Moskowitz, Karl Heuer, and Mark Brader, for a lot of
discussion of small but important details and wording.


Notes and comments:

   My outtakes list (items removed from this list for various reasons,
most of which came down to the fact that I didn't like them) is now
available from the r.p FAQ server.

   There are many possible wordings for most of the puzzles in this list.
Most of them have what I consider the best wording of the variants I've
heard; if you think there's a better way of putting one or more of them,
or if you don't like my categorization of any of them, or if you have any
other comments or suggestions, please drop me a note.  If you know others
not on this list, please send them to me.
   Of course, in telling a group of players one of these situations, you
can add or remove details, either to make getting the answer harder or
easier, or simply to throw in red herrings.  I've made a few specific
suggestions along these lines in the answer list, available in a separate
file.  Also in the answer list are variant problem statements and variant
answers.

--Jed Hartman
[e-mail] (as of 9/92)



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Subject: rec.puzzles FAQ, part 13 of 15
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==> logic/situation.puzzles.s <==
                  Answers to Jed's List of Situation Puzzles

   This is the list of answers to the puzzles in my situation puzzles
list.  See that list for more details.  This document also contains
variant setups and answers for some of the puzzles.

Section 1: "Realistic" situation puzzles.

1.1.  A bunch of people are on an ocean voyage in a yacht.  One afternoon,
they all decide to go swimming, so they put on swimsuits and dive off the
side into the water.  Unfortunately, they forget to set up a ladder on the
side of the boat, so there's no way for them to climb back in, and they
drown.
1.1a.  Variant answer: The same situation, except that they set out a
ladder which is just barely long enough.  When they all dive into the
water, the boat, without their weight, rises in the water until the ladder
is just barely out of reach.  (also from Steve Jacquot)

1.2.  The room is the ballroom of an ocean liner which sank some time ago.
The man ran out of air while diving in the wreck.
1.2a.  Variant which puts this in section 2: same statement, ending with
"a large window through which rays are coming."  Answer: the rays are
manta rays (this version tends to make people assume vampires are
involved, unless they notice the awkwardness of the phrase involving
rays).

1.3.  The husband killed himself a while ago; it's his ashes in an urn on
the mantelpiece that the wife looks at.  It's debatable whether this
belongs in section 2 for double meanings.

1.4.  A poor peasant from somewhere in Europe wants desperately to get to
the U.S.  Not having money for airfare, he stows away in the landing gear
compartment of a jet.  He dies of hypothermia in mid-flight, and falls out
when the landing gear compartment opens as the plane makes its final
approach.
1.4a.  Variant: A man is lying drowned in a dead forest.  Answer: He's
scuba diving when a firefighting plane lands nearby and fills its tanks
with water, sucking him in with the water.  He runs out of air while the
plane is in flight; the plane then dumps its load of water, with him in
it, onto a burning forest.  (from Jim Moskowitz)

1.5.  The man is a midget.  He can't reach the upper elevator buttons, but
he can ask people to push them for him.  He can also push them with his
umbrella.  I've usually heard this stated with more details: "Every
morning he wakes up, gets dressed, eats, goes to the elevator..."  Ron
Carter suggests a nice red herring: the man lives on the 13th floor of the
building.

1.6.  The sisters are Siamese twins.
1.6a.  Variant: A man and his brother are in a bar drinking.  They begin to
argue (as always) and the brother won't get out of the man's face, shouting
and cursing.  The man, finally fed up, pulls out a pistol and blows his
brother's brains out.  He sits down to die.  Answer: They are Siamese twins.
In the original story, the argument started when one complained about the
other's bad hygiene and bad breath.  The shooter bled to death (from his
brother's wounds) by the time the police arrived.  (from Randy Whitaker,
based on a 1987 _Weekly World News_ story)

1.7.  The man has hiccups; the bartender scares them away by pulling a
gun.

1.8.  The man used to be blind; he's now returning from an eye operation
which restored his sight.  He's spent all his money on the operation, so
when the train (which has no internal lighting) goes through a tunnel he
at first thinks he's gone blind again and almost decides to kill himself.
Fortunately, the light of the cigarettes people are smoking convinces him
that he can still see.
1.8a.  Variant: A man dies on a train he does not ordinarily catch.
Answer: The man (a successful artist) has had an accident in which he
injured his eyes.  His head is bandaged and he has been warned not to
remove the bandages under any circumstances lest the condition be
irreversibly aggravated.  He catches the train home from the hospital and
cannot resist peeking.  Seeing nothing at all (the same train-in-tunnel
situation as above obtains, but without the glowing cigarettes this time),
he assumes he is blinded and kills himself in grief.  I like this version
a lot, except that it makes much less sense that he'd be traveling alone.
(from Bernd Wechner)

1.9.  The man was in a ship that was wrecked on a desert island.  When
there was no food left, another passenger brought what he said was abalone
but was really part of the man's wife (who had died in the wreck).  The
man suspects something fishy, so when they finally return to civilization,
he orders abalone, realizes that what he ate before was his wife, and
kills himself.
1.9a.  Variant: same problem statement but with albatross instead of
abalone.  Answer: In this version, the man was in a lifeboat, with his
wife, who died.  He hallucinated an albatross landing in the boat which he
caught and killed and ate; he thought that his wife had been washed
overboard.  When he actually eats albatross, he discovers that he had
actually eaten his wife.
1.9b.  Variant answer to 1.9a, with a slightly different problem
statement: the man already knew that he had been eating human flesh.  He
asks the waiter in the restaurant what kind of soup is available, and the
waiter responds, "Albatross soup."  Thinking that "albatross soup" means
"human soup," and sickened by the thought of such a society (place in a
foreign country if necessary), he kills himself.  (from Mike Neergaard)

1.10.  He stood on a block of ice to hang himself.  The fact that there's
no furniture in the room can be added to the statement, but if it's
mentioned in conjunction with the puddle of water the answer tends to be
guessed more easily.

1.11.  He stabbed himself with an icicle.

1.12.  He jumped out of an airplane, but his parachute failed to open.
Minor variant wording (from Joe Kincaid): he's on a mountain trail instead
of in a desert.  Minor variant wording (from Mike Reymond): he's got a
ring in his hand (it came off of the ripcord).
1.12a.  Silly variant: same problem statement, with the addition that one
of the man's shoelaces is untied.  Answer: He pulled his shoelace instead
of the ripcord.
1.12b.  Variant answer: The man was let loose in the desert with a pack
full of poisoned food.  He  knows it's poisoned, and doesn't eat it -- he
dies of hunger.  (from Mike Neergaard)

1.13.  He was with several others in a hot air balloon crossing the
desert.  The balloon was punctured and they began to lose altitude.  They
tossed all their non-essentials overboard, then their clothing and food,
but were still going to crash in the middle of the desert.  Finally, they
drew matches to see who would jump over the side and save the others; this
man lost.  Minor variant wording: add that the man is nude.

1.14.  The radio program is one of the call-up-somebody-and-ask-them-a-
question contest shows; the announcer gives the phone number of the man's
bedroom phone as the number he's calling, and a male voice answers.  It's
been suggested that such shows don't usually give the phone number being
called; so instead the wife's name could be given as who's being called,
and there could be appropriate background sounds when the other man
answers the phone.

1.15.  He worked as a DJ at a radio station.  He decided to kill his wife,
and so he put on a long record and quickly drove home and killed her,
figuring he had a perfect alibi: he'd been at work.  On the way back he
turns on his show, only to discover that the record is skipping.
1.15a.  Variant: The music stops and the man dies.  Answer: The same,
except it's a tape breaking instead of a record skipping.  (from Michael
Killianey)  (See also #1.16, #1.19e, and #1.34a.)

1.16.  The woman is a tightrope walker in a circus.  Her act consists of
walking the rope blindfolded, accompanied by music, without a net.  The
musician (organist, or calliopist, or pianist, or whatever) is supposed to
stop playing when she reaches the end of the rope, telling her that it's
safe to step off onto the platform.  For unknown reasons (but with
murderous intent), he stops the music early, and she steps off the rope to
her death.
1.16a.  Variant answer: The woman is a character in an opera, who "dies"
at the end of her song.
1.16b.  Variant answer: The "woman" is the dancing figure atop a music
box, who "dies" when the box runs down.  (Both of the above variants would
probably require placing this puzzle in section 2 of the list.)
1.16c.  Variant: Charlie died when the music stopped.  Answer: Charlie was
an insect sitting on a chair; the music playing was for the game Musical
Chairs.  (from Bob Philhower)
(See also #1.15a, #1.19e, and #1.34a.)

1.17.  The man is a blind midget, the shortest one in the circus.  Another
midget, jealous because he's not as short, has been sawing small pieces
off of the first one's cane every night, so that every day he thinks he's
taller.  Since his only income is from being a circus midget, he decides
to kill himself when he gets too tall.
1.17a.  Slightly variant answer: Instead of sawing pieces off of the
midget's cane, someone has sawed the legs off of his bed.  He wakes up,
stands up, and thinks he's grown during the night.
1.17b.  Variant: A pile of sawdust, no net, a man dies.  Answer: A midget
is jealous of the clown who walks on stilts.  He saws partway through the
stilts; the clown walks along and falls and dies when they break.  (from
Peter R. Olpe)
1.17c.  Rough sketch of variant: There were a mirror and a bottle on the
table, and sawdust on the floor.  He came in and dropped dead.  Answer: He
was a midget, but he wasn't aware of it, because the table used to be too
high for him to see his reflection in the mirror, until someone shortened
its legs.  He was horrified by the discovery, and the shock killed him.
(vaguely remembered by Ivan A Derzhanski, who adds that this would be best
used as raw material for some elaboration.  I agree; it's pretty
implausible as is)

1.18.  The man is a lion-tamer, posing for a photo with his lions.  The
lions react badly to the flash of the camera, and the man can't see
properly, so he gets mauled.
1.18a.  Variant: He couldn't find a chair, so he died.  Answer: He was a
lion-tamer.  This one is kind of silly, but I like it, and it sounds
possible to me (though I'm told a whip is more important than a chair to a
lion-tamer).  (from "Reaper Man," with Karl Heuer wording)

1.19.  A blind man enjoys walking near a cliff, and uses the sound of a
buoy to gauge his distance from the edge.  One day the buoy's anchor rope
breaks, allowing the buoy to drift away from the shore, and the man walks
over the edge of the cliff.
1.19a.  Variant: A bell rings.  A man dies.  A bell rings.  Answer: A
blind swimmer sets an alarm clock to tell him when and what direction to
go to shore.  The first bell is a buoy, which he mistakenly swims to,
getting tired and drowning.  Then the alarm clock goes off.  In other
variations, the first bell is a ship's bell, and/or the second bell is a
hand-bell rung by a friend on shore at a pre-arranged time.
1.19b.  Variant answer to 1.19a: The man falls off a belltower, pulling
the bell-cord (perhaps he was climbing a steeple while hanging onto the
rope), and dies.  The second bell is one rung at his funeral.  Could also
be a variant on 1.19 (as suggested by Mike Neergaard): the bell-cord
breaks when he falls (and there's no second bell involved).
1.19c.  Variant answer to 1.19a: The man is a boxer.  The first bell
signals the start of a round; the second is either the end of the round or
a funeral bell after he dies during the match.  Could also be a variant on
1.19 (as suggested by Mike Neergaard): a boxing match in which the top
rope breaks, tumbling a boxer to the floor (and he dies of a concussion).
1.19d.  Variant: The wind stopped blowing and the man died.  Answer: The
sole survivor of a shipwreck reached a desert isle.  Unfortunately, he was
blind.  Luckily, there was a freshwater spring on the island, and he
rigged the ship's bell (which had drifted to the island also) at the
spring's location.  The bell rang in the wind, directing him to water.
When he was becalmed for a week, he could not find water again, and so he
died of thirst.  (from Peter R. Olpe)
1.19e.  Variant: The music stopped and the man died.  Answer: Same as
1.19a, but the blind swimmer kept a portable transistor radio on the beach
instead of a bell.  When the batteries gave out, he got lost and drowned.
(from Joe Kincaid)  (See also #1.15a, #1.16, and #1.34a.)

1.20.  The woman is the assistant to a (circus or sideshow) knife thrower.
The new shoes have higher heels than she normally wears, so that the
thrower misjudges his aim and one of his knives kills her during the show.

1.21.  Several men were shipwrecked together.  They agreed to survive by
eating each other a piece at a time.  Each of them in turn gave up an arm,
but before they got to the last man, they were rescued.  They all demanded
that the last man live up to his end of the deal.  Instead, he killed a
bum and sent the bum's arm to the others in a box to "prove" that he had
fulfilled the bargain.  Later, one of them sees him on the subway, holding
onto an overhead ring with the arm he supposedly cut off; the other
realizes that the last man cheated, and kills him.
1.21a.  Variant wording: A man sends a package to someone in Europe and
gets a note back saying "Thank you.  I received it."  Answer: This is just
a simpler version; the shipwreck situation is the same, and the man
actually did send his own arm.
1.21b.  Variant wording: Two men throw a box off of a cliff.  Answer:
Exactly the same situation as in 1.21a (one slight variation has a hand in
the box instead of a whole arm), with the two men being two of the fellow
passengers who had already lost their arms.
1.21c.  Variant wording: A man in a Sherlock Holmes-style cape walks
into a room, places a box on the table and leaves.  Answer: In this one
he's wearing the cape either to disguise the fact that he hasn't really
cut off his arm/hand as required, or else simply in order to hide his
now-missing limb.  (from Joe Kincaid)