Detective riddles

logicdetectivestory

A man is found dead in the desert. He is wearing only his underwear. Half of a straw is found nearby. How did this man die?
The man was flying in a hot-air balloon with another man over the desert. The balloon started to go down because of excess weight. Both men would die if they ended up stranded in the desert, so they stripped down to their underwear and threw their clothes off the balloon to try to reduce the weight. Unfortunately, that didn't work well enough. So they drew straws to decide who would jump. The dead man pulled the short straw and jumped out of the balloon.
58.11 %
132 votes
logicmysteryscarydetective

Dodge was staying with Cousin Jamie in Jamie's lakeside cabin. They were setting up Jamie's will. As Dodge was Jamie's closest living relative, much of Jamie's estate was being left to him. One day, Jamie went to Dr Dodge very disturbed. "Doctor," he began, "I have just found out that a man named Georgio wants to get me. He will be here very soon. Where will I go? Where can I hide? If he finds me in here, he will surely kill me. I do not have time to leave this clearing and go farther into the woods." Dr Dodge thought for a moment, and then grabbed a 5' long bamboo pole, with a diameter the size of a quarter. "Jamie, follow me out to the lake. This lake is 4' deep. If you lie on the bottom of the lake and breathe through this pole, Georgio will never find you. I will be in the bulrushes with a shotgun, and I will shoot him when he comes. I will swim down to find you when he is gone." Jamie consented, and lay down on the bottom of the lake with the bamboo pole in his mouth. A few hours later, a ranger passed by. He found Jamie's body, dead. Dr Dodge told the police of the circumstance, and that Jamie had probably panicked, and died. Police arrested Dr Dodge, on the charges of murdering Jamie. Why? The bamboo pole did not have any cracks or holes. Its opening was above water the whole time.
Jamie died of carbon dioxide poisoning. The pole was 5' long, but only the size of a quarter. The first time he breathed in, he breathed oxygen. When he exhaled, the air could not travel 5' before he breathed in again. He was just breathing what he exhaled. Before long, all he was breathing was carbon dioxide. He died of CO2 poisoning. Doctor Doge was the one who told him to use the pole, therefore the cause of his death. Dodge is a DOCTOR, and therefore knows about the CO2. Dodge did murder Jamie. His motive: the money in the will.
57.35 %
372 votes
storymysterydetective

A couple went on holiday for three weeks. They carefully locked their house, and had a neighbor check on the place while they were gone. When they returned, the wife was distressed to lean that because of a power failure she had lost all her fine jewelry. She had hidden the jewelry in what she thought was a very safe place. She was not robbed. Her jewelry was lost by accident. Why?
In this true incident, the wife had hidden her best jewelry inside her freezer in a bag among all the frozen food. Because of a general power failure the freezer had gone off. A friendly neighbour (who had a key in order to water the plants) had tried to be helpful by throwing out all the bad food - and with it went the jewelry.
57.26 %
205 votes
logicmysterydetective

A man entered his house and was about to hang up his coat when he heard his wife shout; "No John! Don’t do it!" There was a shot and he could hear his wife fall down. When he entered the kitchen he saw his wife and the gun lying on the floor. There was a police officer, a doctor, and a lawyer standing next to her. Peter immediately knew that the police officer had shot her. But how did he come to know?
The police officer has a name on his badge.
57.25 %
344 votes
logicmysterydetective

It was a man's birthday. He lay dead in the lounge room of his house. Next to his body was a note, written in pencil. The note read 'Happy Birthday, Friend'. The victim had a girlfriend and the police suspected her ex-boyfriend. They could find no obvious evidence. While searching the ex-boyfriend's car, the police saw an envelope with the girlfriend's address written on it. They thought they would get the handwriting checked against the note. The scientist in charge came in early to work the next day; it was 7am. He looked out his window which faced east and stared at the rising sun and it was then that he realised how to prove the ex-boyfriend killed the man, even though the girlfriend's address was not written in the same handwriting. How did he do it?
The scientist's office faced east, and the sun was coming in through the window at a very low angle. He saw some very faint shadows on the surface of the envelope. He looked closer. There were the words embossed on the paper. They read "Happy Birthday, Friend". The ex-boyfriend had forgotten that a pencil leaves an impression on paper beneath the page written on.
48.81 %
188 votes
logicmathmysterydetective

100 people are standing in a circle. The person standing at number 1 is having a sword. He kills the person next to him with the sword and then gives the sword to the third person. This process is carried out till there is just one person left. Which number survives at the last?
73rd person will survive at last. If the number of players is the power of 2, the last person to survive will be the one who started it. But since the number here is not the power of 2, we will take the greatest power of 2 that is less than the number of players (100) which is 64. So when starting with 100 players - we need to kill 36 of them to get down to a power of 2 (64). Since we kill every other person starting at player 2 the last person we need to die is player 72, they will be killed by player 71 and the first person in the effective power of 2 game, who will win is player 73. It's worth noting that this process of reducing to a power of 2 will always be completed in the first round regardless of the number of players. Consider X players, let Y be the highest power of 2 that is less than or equal to Y The winning player is 2 * (X - Y) + 1
39.56 %
232 votes