Tag Archives: Lateral thinking puzzle

Arts, Drama

Whodunnit: The Captive

LATERAL THINKING DRAMA & CONUNDRUM

Issue No. 7 in the Whodunnit crime series. Tap into your inner detective by explaining why Inspector Parnacki has become more suspicious of one the suspects in this case.

ROSALYN Reyes had been missing for three days, and when she was discovered, it was only by the thinnest thread of luck. Andrew Baum was an enthusiastic walker and knew much of the local countryside like the back of his hand. Taking a welcome day off from work, he decided to go for a hike in Easton woods and follow a trail he had not tried before. After walking for some time, he took a wrong turn and found himself at odds with his map.

. Previously Whodunnit: ‘The Necklace’

He was about to retrace his steps when he realised he could hear a very faint sound of someone crying. Following the sound led him to a clearing, in which stood a rickety shack. Inside, he discovered the missing young woman, uninjured, but chained securely to a pole. As soon as she was safe, the police put up a dragnet around that part of the woods and waited. Over the course of the afternoon, three men were apprehended in the area.

That was where the good luck ended. Miss Reyes knew nothing whatsoever about her captor. She had woken on the first day to find herself restrained and blindfolded, and had remained that way throughout. Not only had she not seen her captor, he had also refrained from touching her, and had only spoken to her very minimally in a highly contrived hoarse whisper. Material found in the shack suggested that he was preparing a ransom demand to deliver to her parents, but again, there was nothing in it that would help identify the kidnapper. As a final blow, none of the three suspects had been carrying anything incriminating on their persons.

Inspector Parnacki smoothed out his moustache, fiddling with the ends irritably. He needed a lead suspect in order to justify an in-depth investigation. A stroll would help him to gather his thoughts, he decided. He packed a pipe, picked up the interview reports, and made his way to a local park.

Newton Stevens was an impecunious odd-job man who lived at Easton, a couple of miles from the woods. His transcript was quite irascible. “Of course I was in the woods. I’m always in the woods, aren’t I? No crime to trap rabbits, leastways not last time I looked. I was going to check on my snares. Friday, ain’t it? What else I am supposed to do on a Friday? Nothing, that’s what, not since darned Adrian stopped work on that darned wall. Eh? Shack? Of course I don’t live in a shack, you darned fool. It’s a cabin, and it’s in Easton. Shack indeed. You better turn me loose quickly, or so help me, I’ll lose the light, and then it’ll be boiled greens for dinner. No way for a man to live, boiled greens. Not without some rabbit.”

Terence Moss worked at a drinking establishment in Easton. “I didn’t do anything wrong,” his transcript began. “You’ve got no right to arrest a man like that for just having a walk. If you worked in a bar like the Imperial, you’d want to get some peace and quiet of an afternoon yourself. I don’t know what you’re after, but you’ve got the wrong man. No opium, no hashish, I don’t do any of that stuff. I haven’t stolen anything since I was twelve. No, I don’t recognise that shack. Never been near it. Don’t even know where it is. Never seen that woman. I’d remember if anyone even slightly like that had ever been into the Imperial. Look, you know where I work and live. Just let me out of here, will you? I really can’t afford to lose this job. I haven’t done anything!”

Matthew Bird, finally, was a service engineer with a pipe-manufacturing company in Easton. “My last job had run long, so I decided to stroll in the woods while I had my packed lunch. Cheese and pickle sandwich. Very nice. I often do go for a little lunchtime walk, if it’s been a tough morning. Nice to have a little break from it all, you know? My boss won’t be very sympathetic about the amount of time this is taking now, however. I understand you’re just doing your job, but surely, we can get this sorted out swiftly. Why don’t you put me in a line-up? I’d be delighted to . . . Well yes, of course, I want to be helpful. No, that shack doesn’t look familiar, I’m afraid. Hardly seems the sort of place to develop steam-pipe problems. No, I’m afraid that girl doesn’t look familiar either.”

Parnacki tapped his pipe thoughtfully, and read over the transcripts again. His eyes brightened, and he turned to start back to the station.

Who has made Inspector Parnacki suspicious, and why?

Standard
Arts, Drama, History

Lateral Thinking Drama & Whodunnit: The Caryatids

LATERAL THINKING DRAMA: PUZZLE CONUNDRUM

TAKING a deep breath, Oliver James knocked on his father’s office door and went in.

“Ah, there you are, m’boy.” At 6ft Cameron James was just a little shorter than his son, but where Oliver was trim, his father had the broad power of a man who’d spent most of his life handling large amounts of stone and brick. “Come in, come in. Jacob and I were just discussing ornamentation for the Southwell building. Thought maybe you could lend a hand.”

Oliver winced, and braced himself. Cameron still hadn’t come to terms with his son’s preference for architectural design over actual construction, and the lectures about his future were getting tediously frequent.

“Do you remember Pick & Sons, Oliver?” Now in his forties, Jacob York had been his father’s right-hand man for as long as Oliver could remember. He at least was on Oliver’s side regarding architecture.

Oliver nodded.

“Cruz has a line on a couple of Roman statues at a very good price,” Cameron said.

“Maybe too good,” Jacob added.

“Maybe, maybe,” said Cameron. “But if not, they’d fulfil Southwell’s requirements for the frontispiece and then some, considerably under budget as well. You’ve got a good eye, Oliver. I thought maybe you’d give us your opinion on the matter.”

A relieved Oliver said he’d be delighted to help.

“Pull up a seat,” Cameron said, waving at the pile of paperwork on his desk.

A pair of Diocletian caryatids.

Oliver sat down and ran his eye over the details. According to the papers, the statues were a matched pair of elegant caryatid columns from the region of the Roman emperor Diocletian, in surprisingly good condition. The date of construction was clear, since the sculptor had marked the bases with his own name, Emperor Diocletian’s full titles, and the year, AD 302. That year marked the start of the emperor’s bloody persecution of the Christians, during which every Roman citizen was compelled to offer sacrifices to the Greek gods. Some venues had undoubtedly been constructed for the purpose, and caryatids – supporting columns in the form of a woman – while not common in Roman times, were not unheard of either.

From the pictures that had been included, the statues looked as if they were made from marble. There was some wear and tear – it would have been miraculous if there hadn’t been – but even so, the pieces could quite easily have been in a museum.

Oliver looked up. “Where did Pick find them?”

“He got them from a Turkish fellow,” Cameron said. “The man said that they’d been sold to him by an Ottoman pasha who’d fallen on hard times, having had them in his family since the time of the Seljuks in the 13th century.”

“There is some supporting documentation,” Jacob said.

“Well, it’s not totally impossible for a couple of Diocletian pieces to have survived in private collections,” Oliver said. “Diocletian was in Antioch for several years, up to AD 302 at least. I can see temples being raised in his name, and then statuary being purloined later, as the empire shrank. In this case, however, I feel comfortable saying that those pieces are absolutely and definitely fakes. Sorry, father.”

How can Oliver be so sure?

Standard
Arts, Drama

Lateral Thinking Drama: Highly Strung

 

Alfonzo the Magnificent bowed to the audience. He put his hands into the bowel of chalk and clapped them together. The band stopped playing and the drum-roll began. All the spotlights were fixed on Alfonzo as he began to climb the ladder up to the platform thirty feet in the air.

. You might also like Lateral Thinking Drama: ‘The Lost Idol’

Waiting for him at the top of the ladder was his beautiful assistant, Clara, dressed in a pink bodysuit and wearing a crown of white ostrich feathers. When he stepped onto the platform, she handed him the balancing pole. The drum-roll ceased, and a hush fell over the crowd. The air was hot and humid at the top of the circus tent, and Alfonzo gave Clara the signal to wipe his brow with a lace handkerchief. She then dangled the handkerchief in mid-air, at the end of her long, outstretched fingers and let it drop slowly to the ground. There was no safety net to catch the flimsy, white square as it floated down to the ring below, and people shifted nervously in their seats, craning to get a better look at the little man in the black tuxedo perched like a penguin in the sky.

The circus master tapped the end of his microphone and circled the ring, flicking the electrical cord like a whip. “Tonight, ladies and gentlemen, Alfonzo the Magnificent, tightrope walker extraordinaire, will perform a death-defying feat. There is no safety net to catch him if he falls, so I urge the audience to remain quiet throughout, and please refrain from taking any pictures as the flash might distract our performer. Good luck, Alfonzo. Now on with the show!”

Creative Writing

Do something. Be inspired.

Alfonzo looked straight ahead. He slid a slippered foot onto the wire and adjusted the pole in his hands. He slid his other foot out and steadied himself. He slowly raised his left foot and circled it around his right, then slid it forward. He heard a man cough in the darkness below him but continued to stare straight ahead. When Alfonzo reached the centre of the wire, he stopped. He raised himself onto the balls of his feet, threw his pole into the air and the crowd gasped. Alfonzo spun around, then caught the pole again. He teetered to one side, tottered to the other, while the audience below oohed and aahed. He managed to stabilise himself and continued on towards the other platform. When he reached it, there was an explosion of cheering and whistling. Sweat broke out on Alfonzo’s forehead as he raised his hand in the air and bowed again with a flourish.

After the performance, as Alfonzo was wiping his make-up off, his old rival, Guiseppe, burst into the dressing room.

“So, you think you are the best tightrope walker in the whole of Argentina?” Guiseppe said.

“Well, they don’t call me Alfonzo the Magnificent for nothing,” Alfonzo replied. “I know how to please a crowd. It is I they want, not some third-rate amateur like yourself.”

“I am not here for insults, Alfonzo. I came here to challenge you to the tightrope duel of your life. I dare you to meet me at the Plaza Maria on Thursday week, at midnight, where we will judge, once and for all, who is the best.”

“I am the best!” Alfonzo cried. “I am the best in Buenos Aires, the best in Argentina and perhaps even the best in the world!”

“Then prove it,” Guiseppe said, slamming the door on his way out.

Nine days later, Alfonzo looked at himself in the mirror and adjusted his bow tie. It was eleven o’clock on Thursday night, one hour before the duel. He picked up his pole and his bucket of chalk and headed for the door. He felt a slight foreboding but chose to ignore it.

As he approached the Plaza Maria, he could hear the crowd that had gathered to watch. He turned a corner and saw the plaza at the far end of the street. There were lights strung up between the buildings, and high above the square, Alfonzo saw the silver wire gleaming like a blade between the cathedral spire and the balcony of the Italian Embassy building. In the centre of the plaza, a man on a unicycle was juggling tenpins. As he got closer, he saw a woman with a snake wrapped around her shoulders.

When Guiseppe arrived, they tossed a coin to see who would go first. It landed heads up, and Alfonzo prepared himself to climb the ladder. He dusted his hands and looped the pole through his belt at the small of his back. He took one step and paused, then continued his ascent. The wire was a hundred feet up in the air and it took Alfonzo five and a half minutes to reach the top. When he stepped onto the slanted roof of the cathedral spire, he noticed a chill in the air. He could not hear the crowd for the wind in his ears.

From the ground, Guiseppe watched Alfonzo pull the pole out from under his belt and lay it across his hands. Alfonzo waited for a moment and then slid one foot out onto the wire. Just as he was about to lift his other foot, his body jerked, and the pole slid through his hands. He bent to retrieve it, but it was too late. It had started to slide down the roof. It slipped off the edge and fell down into the crowd. Alfonzo turned and started back down the ladder.

When he got to the bottom, Guiseppe was waiting for him.

“What on earth are you doing?” he screamed.

“I can’t go on like this,” Alfonzo said, pushing Guiseppe aside and striding off through the plaza and down a main street. Guiseppe set off after him.

Alfonzo stopped in front of the entrance to a bar and looked up at the sign. The bar belonged to a friend of his, and he opened the door and walked in. He walked over to the counter and ordered a glass of water. The bartender smiled knowingly at him, took a revolver out from under the bar and shot a bullet into the ceiling. After waiting a few moments, Alfonzo thanked his friend and they shook hands. He turned and left the bar without taking a sip of his water.

Why did the bartender shoot the ceiling, and why did Alfonzo thank him? 

md_logo

Standard