Collection · 15 riddles
Riddles from history, and every one of them really happened. Each scene sounds made up. The records say otherwise.
15 riddles
True Stories· ★☆☆
Eastern France, June 1791. A large carriage stops at a post house for fresh horses. Among its passengers is a stout man dressed as a valet. The postmaster has never met him, yet he thinks he knows that face, and he is right. A few hours later, further down the road, the man is arrested. How did the postmaster know him?
True Stories· ★★☆
Cape Verde islands, July 1522. A battered Spanish ship drops anchor after nearly three years at sea. One of the men has kept a journal every day, without a single gap. A boat goes ashore for supplies and learns that it is Thursday. On board, it is Wednesday. Nobody skipped a day or miscounted. How is that possible?
True Stories· ★★☆
Vienna, 1846. The general hospital has two maternity wards, taking women in on alternate days. In the first, staffed by doctors and medical students, more than one mother in ten dies of fever after giving birth. In the second, staffed by midwives, fewer than one in thirty. Women beg to go to the second; some would rather give birth in the street. Why the difference?
True Stories· ★☆☆
The Arctic, July 1827. North of Spitsbergen, a British party hauls its boats across the ice towards the Pole, several miles a day. Their course is due north. After five days, they fix their position by the sun at noon. They have gained barely a mile. How is that possible?
True Stories· ★★☆
Paris, winter 1870. An enemy army has encircled the city for months, and its lines hold. Yet thousands of Parisians receive news from their families in the provinces, written long after the siege began. No one carries it through the lines, nothing comes by river or underground, and every telegraph wire is cut. How does the news get in?
True Stories· ★☆☆
Berlin, 1904. Ask a certain horse what three plus five makes, and he taps his hoof eight times, then stops. A commission of thirteen experts examines him and finds no trickery: he answers strangers just as well, with his owner out of the room. Yet the horse cannot count. How does he get it right?
True Stories· ★★☆
Huelva, Spain, 1943. A fisherman pulls a body from the sea, a briefcase chained to it. From his papers, the Spanish identify the dead man as a British officer and bury him with military honours. He had never worn a uniform in his life, yet he saved the lives of thousands of Allied soldiers. How?
True Stories· ★★☆
Saint-Pierre, Martinique, May 1902. In two minutes, a burning cloud from the volcano sweeps the town and kills nearly all its 28,000 people. Days later, rescuers digging through the ruins of the town jail find one prisoner alive, badly burned. He had not escaped, had not hidden, and nobody had sheltered him. Why did he live?
True Stories· ★★☆
London, 1854. In ten days, cholera kills more than five hundred people in a few streets of Soho. Miles away, in Hampstead, where nobody else falls ill, a widow dies of it too. She has not set foot in Soho for months. For the doctor tracking the epidemic, her death is the best evidence he has. Why?
True Stories· ★☆☆
The Alps, on the Austrian-Italian border, September 1991. Two hikers find a man frozen into the ice of a glacier pass and alert the police. Ten years later, an X-ray shows that he was shot in the back. The police know they will never arrest the killer, and nobody blames them. Why not?
True Stories· ★★★
Amsterdam, 1945. A painter is arrested for selling Hermann Göring a painting the experts accepted as a lost Vermeer, a national treasure. Accused of collaboration, he could be shot. Two years later, he walks out of court with a one-year sentence, and the Dutch make a hero of him. How did he save himself?
True Stories· ★★☆
Canada, July 1983. A brand-new airliner’s fuel gauges are out of order, so the tanks are measured by hand and the crew work out how much fuel to add; the figures are checked again at the stopover. Halfway to Edmonton, at 41,000 feet, both engines stop: the tanks are empty. There is no leak and no theft. What happened?
True Stories· ★☆☆
France, 1996. In a hospital room by the sea, the editor of a fashion magazine composes a whole book, every word his own. He cannot speak, cannot write and cannot move his hands, and he uses no machine. A visitor takes the text down for him, three hours a day, for two months. How?
True Stories· ★★☆
Near Moscow, autumn 1983, just after midnight. In an early-warning bunker, the alarms go off: the satellites report American missiles launched at the Soviet Union. The officer on duty has minutes to pass on an attack that could set off a nuclear counter-strike. He reports a false alarm instead, and he is right. Why didn’t he believe the satellites?
True Stories· ★★★
London, 1918. For years, a stage magician has closed his show the same way: spectators mark two bullets, his assistants load two rifles in full view and fire at him, and the marked bullets clink onto the plate he holds up. One night, everyone, the magician included, does exactly as always, and nobody has tampered with anything. He falls, shot in the chest. What happened?
The great classics30 riddles
The telling detail16 riddles
Modern lives15 riddles
Halloween Night15 riddles
Christmas Eve15 riddles
The Odyssey15 riddles to unlock
The Labours of Hercules15 riddles to unlock
Into the Void15 riddles to unlock
Below the Surface15 riddles to unlock
True Stories II15 riddles to unlock