No.
did nigel dial by touch? No.
does the phone vibration have relevance? No
Does the minimum number of digits to complete a call with 999 have relevance? No
Does dialling 999 on this particular phone allow him to do something he wouldn’t otherwise be able to do?
Yes
I think I remember this in the news. Is the phone a Blackberry?
Yes
I thought it was an urban myth? Apparently, if you called the emergency services on your Blackberry it tried harder to stay on and not switch off on low battery. Is that why Nigel was calling them?
Yes!
There was a phone charging myth that said that calling the emergency number would give an emergency charge to your phone.
Maybe Nigel believed the myth, maybe he knew the truth, but dialing 999 and hanging up allowed him to make another call immediately after even though his Blackberry had turned off his cell radio in response to low battery conditions.
This is because Blackberrys were programmed to turn the radio back on during a call to emergency services. And the radio stayed on for some minutes afterward, draining the last bits of energy from the battery.
Oh look, another entertaining Tom Scott video…
Ooooh, Slough.
I vaguely remember it being A Thing that you could call the emergency services and get a charge for your phone, which is so ridiculous on the face of it I dismissed it out of hand. It was only when the police asked people to stop doing it that I linked it with Blackberry phones.
Are you in the UK? I couldn’t really tell after poking around if this was ever really a thing in the states or not.
According to some investigative files from the CIA, who was responsible for the attempted murder of a US diplomat and the resulting international crisis ? Was it:
A. Soviet assassins cooly silencing critics or
B. Chinese spies stifling illicit opposition instigation or
C. Alice and Benjamin doing the laundry.
And how was the “crime” committed?
I am in the UK, yes.
Is this a word based puzzle, where the precise way you phrased options A and B are important?
Are A and B completely irrelevant and the actual question is just “how did Alice and Benjamin doing the laundry cause the attempted murder of a US diplomat and the resulting international crisis?”?
Yes. The riddle I suppose could be phrased that way. But the CIA did not know that. All they had was the attempted murder with the likely suspects being evil communist villains.
Does the answer involve bleach and ammonia?
Did the CIA suspect the attempted murder to be via poisonous gas?
Other poisonous substance?
Sonic attack?
blunt force trauma?
stabbing?
No
reply to Folly:
Did the CIA suspect the attempted murder to be via poisonous gas? No
Other poisonous substance? Yes
Sonic attack? No
blunt force trauma? No
stabbing? No
Chemical poisoning?
Radiation poisoning?
Polonium?
Was the poisonous substance in a food?
Was it eaten by the diplomat?
Drink?
Drunk by the diplomat?
Was the substance on clothes?
Was it worn by the diplomat?
reply to Folly:
Chemical poisoning? Yes
Radiation poisoning?
Polonium?
Was the poisonous substance in a food?
Was it eaten by the diplomat?
Drink?
Drunk by the diplomat?
Was the substance on clothes?
Was it worn by the diplomat?
No to everything else.