From Marilyn vos Savant’s “Parade” column, September 12, 1999. She didn’t know, and I don’t have a follow-up issue. I’ll repeat the entire riddle, including the names of the guilty parties in case any are still alive–and it’s possible that it was just a troll, somewhat like “How is a raven like a writing desk?”
For math class at Elm Place Middle School, we were assigned to write you a letter. The first person published in your column will receive a free lunch, compliments of our teacher, Mr. Bergman.
Here’s a riddle:
A man is born in the year 1985. Fifty years later, while playing poker with his buddies, he dies. However, he dies in 1986. How is this possible?
–Jeffrey Leibovich
Highland Park, IL
Marilyn didn’t know and offered it to the readers for responses.
That’s one possible solution, and about the same as what I came up with. But it’s the nature of puzzles like this that you can’t tell, just from the statement of the problem, what the solution is. I’m not sure what’s more obnoxious: Someone passing the riddle on without knowing the solution (which leaves open the possibility that they slightly misquoted it in a way that changes the trickery), or someone who does know the solution (or purports to) but only ever just says “no, that’s wrong” to everything anyone comes up with, no matter how plausible it is.
It would be clever if he were in a hotel in a country that uses a calendar 49 years behind the Gregorian so on his death certificate it did say the year 1986.
Yeah. Most riddles rely on something like that where the early setup causes the typical reader to later assume details not actually in evidence. The psychological term of art is “priming”.
That year vs no year on the two numbers is such an obvious priming set-up that it’s almost got to be the trick = trap.
Although as @Chronos says, that doesn’t prove it’s the answer.
Which also gets into my pet peeve: problems with multiple plausible answers where the “right” one isn’t a better or best one, but is simply the only answer the ignorant puzzle-writer happened to notice.
After all, they could be playing poker in a town named “1986”. Or an apartment. Or a building.
I’m guessing this was her point. Not that she couldn’t come up with an answer but there wasn’t just one answer that followed from solving a logic puzzle. So she opened it up to the readers to come up with some creative answers.
Maybe so, but her response was “I have no idea!” If it’s based on some nitpicky technicality in the wording or a mishearing, then it’s probably a dead issue.
There’s a YouTube clip where Christopher Walken bets some guy mucho bux that he can do between 3 and 400 hundred push-ups, then proceeds to do four and wins the bet.
The Nepali calendar is 57 years ahead of ours – it’s currently the year 2082 B.S. (Bikram Sambat). So if he was born in 1985 B.S, that would be 1928 A.D. making him 58 years old in 1986.
But the riddle states 50 years later, not more than 50, and given the lack of “year” with 1986, the answer is probably supposed to be the hotel room.
