I remember this one puzzle-ish story that I saw on a Japanese game show way back from when I was a kid (OK so maybe I was in my early teens). It went something like this (obviously language has been changed to English, names have been Americanized, cute little graphics are gone, and details distorted after over a decade):
Bob was telling Alice about his weekend in the woods. He and three of his friends were out hiking, when they realized that they had very little sunlight left, but their car was very far away. Realizing that they probably wouldn’t make it back to the car before the sun set, they found an abandoned rectangular cabin nearby and decided to take shelter there for the night.
The cabin was totally bare. It was basically just a rectangular room, with no lights, no furniture, nothing. It was pitch dark inside, but the four friends weren’t ready to go to bed yet, so they decided to play a game to entertain themselves and to keep warm. They’d each stand in one corner of the rectangular cabin. One person would start running along the wall till he hit the corner, and tag the person who was standing there. Then that person would run along the next wall, and tag the person in the next corner. And they would keep going like this, circling the room over and over. (Not much of a game, but it kept them warm.) They kept doing this until they were exhausted, and they just fell asleep right on the floor. They woke up the next morning when the sun came out and made their way back to the car.
Upon hearing Bob’s story, Alice turned white in horror. (Side note: in Japan, people turn blue when they’re horrified. Why Americans and Japanese turn different colors when they’re scared, I don’t know.) Why was Alice so horrified by Bob’s story?
Answer at the bottom of this post. Note that this isn’t a trick question. This has nothing to do with Alice, it’s not like she has a hidden past and is afraid of cabins, or anything like that. You’re supposed to be able to figure it out from Bob’s story, just like Alice did. Yes, the wording is kind of vague, but that’s because it’s been a long time, and I don’t have the benefit of being able to show little animations with big-headed characters.
I remember this little puzzle from the game show because it gave me nightmares for a long time. It wasn’t even like it was a realistic scenario, at least not for me. I don’t go out into the woods very often, and I certainly wouldn’t just waltz into an abandoned cabin that was pitch dark inside and stay there the whole night. But the solution just really terrified me. Maybe it’s just fear of the unknown. I really hate the dark.
OK so here’s the answer: there was a fifth person in the cabin. If you visualize the four people in their corners starting to play this game, you’ll notice that the fourth person will end up running into an empty corner. To keep this game up all night, there needed to have been a fifth person in the cabin playing this little game silently with them. Isn’t that freaky? Where did he come from??