How does context help us understand language?

[Jimmy Snyder]

A person takes the elevator to the 86th floor of the Empire State Building, jumps off and freefalls all the way to the street below. He walks away uninjured. How can this be?

 

[JamesU]

He's superman?

OOH! he's nugie jumping! No, freefall

is he any sort of superhero?

 

[Huckleberry]

He must have reached terminal velocity at about 120 mph. A fall from 100ft isn't much different from 1000ft. That someone could walk away after a fall like that is incredible, but I've heard stories of people falling from planes and surviving. Coincidence, luck, whatever you want to call it, I wouldn't try to repeat that experiment.

 

[arildno]

The person jumping was a "she"; the "he" was the pedestrian she narrowly missed..[/color]

 

[dextercioby]

Is it the same person who jumps from the 86-th storey the one who walks away unharmed?..

Daniel.

 

[BicycleTree]

He could land on one of those huge balloons that are designed to be fell on from large heights.

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

It was the same person who did all those things. There was no balloon to break his fall and he landed standing up so that the full force of the impact traveled up his entire body. He didn't even fall over.

Hint. I haven't told you everything that he did

 

[arildno]

He reduced g?

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

Some other things he did at about that time: (don't read this if you still want to solve the puzzle)

1. He took the elevator back down.

2. He stood on the steps of the building.

3. He smoked a cigarette (he's quite the daredevil).

4. He walked over to the curb.

 

[arildno]

Blaargh, I think I've got it: He jumps up and down inside the elevator on its way down..[/color]

 

[honestrosewater]

Does he travel back down to a lower floor before jumping?[/color]
Okay, I checked. Yeah, I rock. ;)

 

[Icebreaker]

It is unfair that you don't tell us everything he does, in sequence. For instance, I could ask you, "A person loads a .45 JHP round into a pistol and shoots himself in the head with that pistol. He walks away uninjured." And the trick would be that he loads the round, then takes it out and replaces it with a blank.

 

[BicycleTree]

If that's the intended answer, the problem is based around a reference error. "Jumps off" implies that he jumps off the 86th floor, not off the curb.

Virtually any question can be answered in that way. Try the same idea on the "nothing" puzzler:

It's better than your favorite food, but poor people are more like to have it than rich people. If they eat it, though, they die. What is it?

The first "it" in the first sentence is diamonds. The second "it" in the first sentence is diabetes. The "it" in the second sentence is poisonous mushrooms. The "it" in the third sentence, and the "answer" to the puzzle, is Barney the purple dinosaur.

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

It is unfair that you don't tell us everything he does, in sequence.

A person takes the elevator to the 86th floor of the Empire State Building.
He gets off the elevator. He walks around. He puts a quarter into the binoculars and looks at the city. He smokes a cigarette. He chats with another tourist. He looks at his watch and frowns. He climbs over the security fence and dangles precariously over the edge.

How am I doing so far? I know I left out a lot of things. For instance, he lit his cigarette. But I'm certain I didn't leave out anything pertinent to the solution of the puzzle.

He jumps off the building and freefalls all the way to the street below. He walks away uninjured. How can this be?

 

[Huckleberry]

Oh, I know! He's juggling three balls while freefalling.
Or... he's dreaming.

 

[Rahmuss]

Godzilla? His other day job is an action performer. He does stunts like this all the time.

 

[Icebreaker]

How am I doing so far? I know I left out a lot of things. For instance, he lit his cigarette. But I'm certain I didn't leave out anything pertinent to the solution of the puzzle.

He jumps off the building and freefalls all the way to the street below. He walks away uninjured. How can this be?

You left the part where he took the elevator back down, as stated here:

Some other things he did at about that time: (don't read this if you still want to solve the puzzle)

1. He took the elevator back down

and here:

Hint. I haven't told you everything that he did

 

[BicycleTree]

It's not even a matter of leaving things out, it's just a grammatical error. When the man "jumps off," the word "off" is an adverbial phrase with "it" implied. i.e., he "jumps off it." In this case, "it" means "the 86th floor of the Empire state building." Saying it refers to something else is just a grammatical error, specifically a reference error.

If you're going to violate grammar like that, why even bother saying he goes down to the bottom floor? Why not say that the jump referred to is a jump off a bus that the man did when he was five years old?

This was a bad question. Most of your questions are good but this one was not good.

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

You left the part where he took the elevator back down.

A person takes the elevator to the 86th floor of the Empire State Building.
He takes the elevator back down. He stands on the steps at the front of the building. He jumps off the building. He smokes a cigarette. He walks over to the curb and jumps into the street. He freefalls all the way to the street below. He walks away uninjured. How can this be?

I don't get the point of a puzzle in which everything is stated explicitly. If you don't leave something out, it's not a puzzle. The point of this puzzle is no different from many others. Something is left out. The wording deliberately leads you to ignore that fact. I note that someone solved this 'unfair' puzzle. How do you explain his ability to think outside this particular box?

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

It's not even a matter of leaving things out, it's just a grammatical error. When the man "jumps off," the word "off" is an adverbial phrase with "it" implied. i.e., he "jumps off it." In this case, "it" means "the 86th floor of the Empire state building." Saying it refers to something else is just a grammatical error, specifically a reference error.

A person takes the elevator to the 86th floor of the Empire State Building, jumps off the Empire State Building, freefalls all the way to the street below. He walks away from it uninjured. How can this be?

The 'grammatical error' is gone. Now what say you?

 

[BicycleTree]

Now it's a good question, though the answer is now a little too obvious.

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

Now it's a good question, though the answer is now a little too obvious.

Tough crowd. I think the puzzle is fine as originally stated. If you disagree, you have to explain how honestrosewater was able to figure it out.

 

[BicycleTree]

Because she was looking for tricks in the wording of the problem. Just because you made a mistake doesn't mean she can't make the same mistake. (no offense)

 

[Rahmuss]

Tough crowd. I think the puzzle is fine as originally stated. If you disagree, you have to explain how honestrosewater was able to figure it out.

Maybe something like:

"A person takes the elevator to the 86th floor of the Empire State Building to see the view, later he jumps off the building and freefalls all the way to the street below. He walks away uninjured. How can this be?"

That works; but then it's a little more obvious that it happened after some changes were made.

 

[BicycleTree]

You could just say "then jumps off the building." (you don't have to say it was "later" to make the puzzle grammatical, but your idea of saying "the building" is good to make the puzzle less obvious while still grammatical) So it would be:
A person takes the elevator to the 86th floor of the Empire State Building, then jumps off the building. He freefalls all the way to the street below. He walks away from it uninjured. How can this be?

 

[honestrosewater]

I think "A person takes the elevator to the 86th floor of the Empire State Building, jumps off and freefalls all the way to the street below." is structurally ambiguous. Why not assume he jumped off of the elevator? And recall the fallacy: x follows y does not imply x was caused by y. Well, maybe that's a bit of a stretch- but it is just for fun after all. I think some puzzles work by being ambiguous and tricking you into making the wrong assumptions. BTW, I looked at the "I didn't tell you everything" hint.

 

[BicycleTree]

It's not ambiguous. Any sentence of the form "I went to x and jumped off" is equivalent (just by grammar) to "I went to x and jumped off it" and is therefore equivalent to "I went to x and jumped off x."

 

[honestrosewater]

It's not ambiguous. Any sentence of the form "I went to x and jumped off" is equivalent (just by grammar) to "I went to x and jumped off it" and is therefore equivalent to "I went to x and jumped off x."

Well, since the setting isn't formal, I wasn't being strict. But if you want to be strict, if you add it to get:

A person takes the elevator to the 86th floor of the Empire State Building, jumps off it...

What rule determines whether it refers to elevator, floor, Empire State Building, or something not even in the sentence? I've never seen such a rule, but I'm just now learning more about English grammar. I don't know the reasons why (I haven't studied pronoun reference yet), but from what I've read, the example above is indeed ambiguous, because it can refer to elevator, floor, or Empire State Building (or possibly something else). Googling "pronoun reference" turns up several examples.

 

[BicycleTree]

The pronoun references the most recently used noun that fits it. The most recently used noun is "the 86th floor." "of the Empire State Building" is only an adjective phrase. It's essentially part of the other noun ("the 86th floor"), so it can't be referenced on its own. "The 86th floor of the Empire State Building" is a single noun.

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

When I use a word, it means exactly what I intend it to mean, no more, no less.