Lateral Thinking Puzzles - third time is best!

Yes, congrats!

OK, so I’m curious… What was the park? What was the ride? What did the sign actually say?

Well, it was Universal Studios Florida, and it was the Fast & Furious: Supercharged ride. It wasn’t written words on signage: Ludacris appears on video monitors and conversationally refers to the ride attendants while you and the rest of the group may otherwise get bored waiting for the get-on-the-ride doors to open; these aren’t, of course, the real-time video calls they purport to be — and that slackjawed little kids might figure they are — but are, instead, just prerecorded bits where he’d conveniently made use of unisex names.

Thanks.

A few think I should be the 13th member of the group but everyone is satisfied with just the twelve. Adding to that identity crisis, no one is really sure who I am although pretty much everyone on Earth has seen me. At least they know I study herpetology so that’s something.

Are you a constellation?

Yes

I thought it would be solved in 24 hours but this is crazy

Are you Rufus, the 13th disciple?

Nope I am not.

@colinfred sort of gave it away…

Are you Ophiuchus, the constellation of the serpent-bearer?

Yep. I was afraid it was too easy. I almost left out the reference to herpetology.

I didn’t know about Ophiuchus. I think leaving out the 12 would have been better, as I think that just made it too obvious.

That’s the weird thing. Sometimes you think it is too easy but they will be one of the better ones.

Absolutely. Some of my best ones were unexpected. Some of the ones I thought would be great landed with a thud.

Speaking of the unexpected and landing with a thud, let me try one I’ve mentioned in another thread: my daughter was once given a homework assignment, and did at least nine-tenths of it correctly; having reviewed her answers, her teacher then accused her — quite reasonably, and in good faith — of not having done any of it. She then wordlessly showed the evidence that, no, she’d put in the work to get the right answer every time.

What explains the accusation and the vindication?

Was the assignment multiple choice?
Was the assignment true/false?
Did the assignment have ten questions?
Were the questions on the assignment all discrete (i.e., you could remove any of the questions, or put one of the questions on a different assignment, and have it still make sense?)
Did the teacher believe that she had gotten the answers from someone else (copying, or someone doing it for her, etc.)?
Did she do the last tenth correctly?
Did the assignment have objective, right or wrong answers (like math calculations)? Did it have subjective answers (like assessing the tone of a poem)? Did each question have only one right answer?

Ten true/false questions.

Yes.

No.

Yes.

Objective.

No.

Did you maybe give an incorrect response there? Or did you really mean that some of the questions have two or more correct answers? So that on one or more questions T and F are both correct answers?

I really meant it, but maybe not in the way you have in mind. For example, consider kindergarteners or first-graders who get asked if their first name has an odd number of vowels: for some kids in the class that’d be true, and for some false, right?

Well, then, would your daughter’s answers have been correct for every student in the class? Is there any one specific other student for which they would all have been correct?

Did the teacher know, before this assignment, which answers would be true or false for any given student?

Was there an unexpected pattern in your daughter’s answers (for instance, all true, or alternating true and false)?