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Topic: An Attempted Theft Puzzle (Read 1247 times) |
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K Sengupta
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An Attempted Theft Puzzle
« on: Apr 4th, 2006, 7:55am » |
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I am looking for a solution to this puzzle which I found in a Puzzle Periodical.
A man with a previous criminal record broke into an apartment to steal a gun. While he was there, the gun accidentally went off. Panicking, the burglar dropped the gun and fled the building. Although the thief had worn gloves and no one had seen him, when the police arrived they knew who the burglar was in a matter of minutes.
How is this possible?
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| « Last Edit: Apr 5th, 2006, 6:59am by K Sengupta » |
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Icarus
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Re: An Attempted Theft Puzzle
« Reply #1 on: Apr 4th, 2006, 2:54pm » |
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One idea: the gun went off while he was stuffing it in his pants. By sheer luck, instead of injuring himself, the blast merely ripped the pants, and his wallet fell out of the resulting hole.
Another idea: he did injure himself: he shot off the end of one of his fingers. The police found the finger and were able to match the fingerprint quickly because they knew he was working in the area and checked against his prints immediately.
Third idea, similar to #2: he only bled, but they have his DNA "fingerprint" on file and did a quick match on the blood. (How long does it take to do a DNA analysis?)
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Noke Lieu
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Re: An Attempted Theft Puzzle
« Reply #2 on: Apr 4th, 2006, 6:32pm » |
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that depends if you believe TV or not.
Either way, it takesmore than a few minutes.
Fourth possibitly... in the burglar's haste to leave the scene, he tripped and fell. To his death.
Fifth... there was a parrot that saw him, heard him etc...
All things considered, I like Icarus' first answer.
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otter
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Re: An Attempted Theft Puzzle
« Reply #3 on: Apr 4th, 2006, 6:58pm » |
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Another possibility: The burglar was mortally wounded by the gunshot and was only able to exit the building before he collapsed and died. When the police arrived they found him and his blood trail and identified him as the burglar.
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evergreena3
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Re: An Attempted Theft Puzzle
« Reply #4 on: Apr 6th, 2006, 8:19am » |
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I think it has to be the finger-shot-off answer.
The police knew the identity of the thief "in a matter of minutes." If it was his wallet, it would have been seconds. If it was blood and DNA, it would have been at least hours.
Fingerprint is the only process that can take but minutes.
Other than that, it says nobody saw him. What if there was a blind guy who heard him, and could identify him by the sound of his voice?
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Zelyoni
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Re: An Attempted Theft Puzzle
« Reply #5 on: Apr 24th, 2006, 10:59am » |
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How about looking at it from a different angle?
The guy has a previous criminal record. Maybe he used this gun in the previous crime, hid it in the apartment, and went back to get it when he served his time?
The Police who covered this break in dealt with the previous one and knew there was a gun missing, and surmised who it had been fairly easily.
Bah, what do I know?
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| « Last Edit: Apr 24th, 2006, 11:16am by Zelyoni » |
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Grimbal
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Re: An Attempted Theft Puzzle
« Reply #6 on: Apr 26th, 2006, 9:52am » |
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This happened in a ghost town.
There are only three people living in that town. Two are police officers, the last is a thief.
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gigbox_69
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Re: An Attempted Theft Puzzle
« Reply #7 on: Apr 27th, 2006, 5:47pm » |
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when the gun went off he was holding it and it shot him in the foot. His blood was on the ground and police took it to find DNA?
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graphia
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Re: An Attempted Theft Puzzle
« Reply #8 on: Apr 27th, 2006, 7:34pm » |
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I'd guess that it was a particularly valuable gun and he'd been arrested before for trying to steal it.
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alien
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Re: An Attempted Theft Puzzle
« Reply #9 on: Apr 29th, 2006, 11:12am » |
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The police know the identity of the burglar who looted the apartment first time, since this happened before? 
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Whiskey Tango Foxtrot
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Re: An Attempted Theft Puzzle
« Reply #10 on: May 2nd, 2006, 9:24pm » |
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I may be trying to think a bit too far outside the box here, but could this answer have more to do with where he broke into than what he did when he was there? That is, if he was breaking into an apartment because he knew the gun was there, he would need to have seen the gun at some point. You could make an argument that he simply heard through word of mouth, but that seems boring.
Maybe only one person knew the gun was in the apartment. I don't know who that could be, but DNA testing seems to be the only other viable option, and is less in line with the somewhat outlandish scenarios these questions usually employ.
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Weazel
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Re: An Attempted Theft Puzzle
« Reply #11 on: May 25th, 2006, 9:12am » |
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There was a servaillence camera in the room.[
He was so filled with guilt that after a couple minutes, he turned himself in to the police.
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DewiMorgan
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Re: An Attempted Theft Puzzle
« Reply #12 on: Jun 5th, 2006, 8:12pm » |
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| hidden: | | Flash gun. On a camera. |
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jess
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Re: An Attempted Theft Puzzle
« Reply #13 on: Jul 11th, 2006, 8:29pm » |
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| hidden: | my friend shane had an interesting idea. maybe they were fingerless gloves  |
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alien
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Re: An Attempted Theft Puzzle
« Reply #14 on: Jul 12th, 2006, 4:23am » |
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on Jul 11th, 2006, 8:29pm, jess wrote:| hidden: | | my friend shane had an interesting idea. maybe they were fingerless gloves |
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These gloves are called mittens. 
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DewiMorgan
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Re: An Attempted Theft Puzzle
« Reply #15 on: Jul 12th, 2006, 11:33am » |
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Basically, the gun has to capture information and store about the thief, because the going off and leaving behind of the gun is a relevant point. This makes the flash gun the most likely, but a police speedgun (which takes photos), "wallet stealing gun", a "fingerprint-taking gun", a "brain-reading gun", or any other kind of gun that would store the data in itself would work for this question.
Storing the data elsewhere doesn't answer the question, since the question mentions that the gun was dropped. A paint gun that sprays an outline of him on the wall, a gun that injures him or shoots off part of his identifying information (wallet, dna, face) off him, a gun that triggers a camera in the room when fired, is all possible, but then the question wouldn't need to mention his leaving it behind.
The point about fingerless gloves was I suspect, not to suggest that they were mittens (which have no fingers, but still cover the whole hand) but more like golfer's or cardplayers' gloves, which cover much of the hand, but leave some fingers bare so that they could still leave prints. This answer does not address the discharge and abandonment of the gun, however.
The information stored by the gun doesn't need to be obvious. For example, it could be a military base, and he's the only civilian, and the argument could run that only a civilian would have so little experience with guns that he would accidentally discharge it then drop it during the getaway. Here, the information stored is "the thief lacked basic firearms training".
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Lozboz
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Re: An Attempted Theft Puzzle
« Reply #16 on: Jul 13th, 2006, 6:43pm » |
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The leaving behind of the gun could simply be there to throw you off. I first thought it was the policemen who did it, one was out in the getaway car but this doesn't explain them taking minutes to figure it out.... unless they were really drunk and couldn't remeber it... it also seems unlikely that 2 cops would want another gun, aren't they givn them already?
Then i thought that the place had a security camera and the just watched for a few minutes until they saw the thief and then they recognised him because he's been in trouble with the law before
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DewiMorgan
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Re: An Attempted Theft Puzzle
« Reply #17 on: Jul 13th, 2006, 10:32pm » |
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Generally speaking, with riddles, red herrings are only thrown into questions where the answer is in the question, or can be derived obviously from a single clue, and not where the answer has to be calculated from the clues.
For example, any question asking about the colour of the stairs in a bungalow, with the answer "there are no stairs!" will have a huge amount of information about the colour of other items in the building to distract the user from the fact that it was a bungalow.
In any good riddle, the facts given will be the minimum required to identify the solution.
This eliminates possible answers like "he shot his partner in crime, and left him at the scene: his partner fingered him" because although this fits with all the information given, it is 1) in no way indicated by the evidence given, so there's no way it could be guessed, and 2) it leaves some of the evidence unused.
The only way to use all the information given to come to the answer, and to use no further information, is if the gun stores a person's identity in itself when it is fired.
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Grimbal
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Re: An Attempted Theft Puzzle
« Reply #18 on: Jul 14th, 2006, 2:30am » |
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I think that unless K Sengupta digs out the periodical where he found the riddle and gives the solution, we'll never know the intended answer.
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K Sengupta
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Re: An Attempted Theft Puzzle
« Reply #19 on: Jul 16th, 2006, 7:38am » |
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On Jul 14th, 2006, 2:30am Grimbal wrote:
Quote:| I think that unless K Sengupta digs out the periodical where he found the riddle and gives the solution, we'll never know the intended answer. |
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According to the puzzle periodical the events mentioned in the problem actually happened in Miami in 1996.
When the gun went off the burglar had accidentally shot his thumb off. In his haste, he failed to take it with him.
While this may correspond to the intended answer, the said solution in no way invalidates the responses posited by the members till date, since event(s) similar to the one mentioned in the problem may well have occurred in or outside US in the course of the last 10 years.
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cchris
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Re: An Attempted Theft Puzzle
« Reply #20 on: Jul 16th, 2006, 12:08pm » |
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The only problem is, fingerprinting is only so accurate. No matter how great the technology today, it still comes down to having to match the fingerprint by looking at the fingerprint, then looking at about five matching ones in a database. In the US, the FBI is the only one with this technology. DNA results take a while, too. This riddle's a little unrealistic, because blood/fingerprints would both take longer than a matter of minutes.
The best answer, with this being taken into consideration, would be the wallet answer.
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Lozboz
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Re: An Attempted Theft Puzzle
« Reply #21 on: Jul 16th, 2006, 7:24pm » |
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Well technically speaking anything that takes more than 119 seconds takes minutes, including a number of days, it's still minutes. We all just assume that it means between 2 minutes and 59. so the time thing doesn't really matter (as long as it takes longer than 119s). I think all ur answers are right! 
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graphia
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Re: An Attempted Theft Puzzle
« Reply #22 on: Jul 17th, 2006, 3:20pm » |
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If the police cordoned off the area all they'd have to do was look for a guy with a missig thumb and not worry about fingerprints.
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towr
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Re: An Attempted Theft Puzzle
« Reply #23 on: Jul 17th, 2006, 3:43pm » |
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on Jul 17th, 2006, 3:20pm, graphia wrote:| If the police cordoned off the area all they'd have to do was look for a guy with a missig thumb and not worry about fingerprints. |
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They wouldn't be able to check his thumbprint anyway, unless they already had it on file.
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DewiMorgan
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Re: An Attempted Theft Puzzle
« Reply #24 on: Jul 17th, 2006, 4:51pm » |
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Well the question DOES mention he was previously incarcerated, so one would suspect they had it on file.
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