Bowls for setting
Fifty situation puzzles to play together, each with its answer (the truth). One person reads the puzzle aloud; everyone else finds the truth by asking only yes-or-no questions. Every puzzle here was written for this collection.
The full rules and tips for asking are in How to play.
Quick ones that first-timers and children can crack in a few minutes. Start here for a family game.
A man ate his first meal in three days and left half of it. The woman watching him smiled with joy.
Sample questions
The truth
The man was in hospital after an operation and had not been allowed to eat for three days. When he managed half of his first bowl of rice porridge, his wife, who was visiting, was glad to see he was getting better.
"Meet me at the bank tomorrow," said one friend. The next day both of them waited an hour at the place they had agreed on, yet they never met.
Sample questions
The truth
One waited outside the bank on the high street; the other waited on the bank of the river. Same word, two places.
A boy broke a window of a house he did not know. Instead of being angry, the people who lived there thanked him again and again.
Sample questions
The truth
The boy saw smoke coming from the kitchen. He broke the window and shouted until the old woman asleep inside woke up. The fire was put out while it was still small.
One morning in July, a girl put on her coat and gloves and went to school. She hates the heat, and nobody thought it was odd.
Sample questions
The truth
She lives in Australia. In the southern hemisphere the seasons are reversed, so July is the middle of winter.
A little shop is always closed on sunny days and opens only when it rains. It does not sell umbrellas.
Sample questions
The truth
The owner is a farmer who works in the fields all day when the sun is out. Only on rainy days, when farm work is impossible, does she open the shop to sell her vegetables and homemade pickles.
The team always raise their glasses after a match. This time the coach muttered, "We're toast." When the players picked up their drinks to make a toast, he was furious.
Sample questions
The truth
"We're toast" means "we're finished". They had just lost badly, and the coach was in no mood for a celebration.
A girl handed in a completely blank answer sheet and got full marks. The teacher did not make a mistake.
Sample questions
The truth
That day's science lesson was about invisible ink. The girl wrote her answers in lemon juice, so the paper looked blank. When the teacher warmed it, every correct answer appeared.
A boy is in a family photo taken three months before he was born. The photo has not been edited.
Sample questions
The truth
He was inside his mother's belly in the photo.
Every evening, Hachi the dog leaves the house. Nobody in the family ever worries.
Sample questions
The truth
Every day Hachi goes to the street corner to meet the boy coming home from school, and they walk home together.
In the park, children are taking turns putting their heads inside a lion's mouth. No adult stops them; there is even a queue.
Sample questions
The truth
It was a stone lion in a playground. Its wide-open mouth is a hole for children to put their faces through for photos.
Every week a woman goes to a karaoke room on her own. She has never sung a single song there.
Sample questions
The truth
She is learning the trumpet. Playing at home would bother the neighbours, so she practises in the soundproof rooms of a karaoke place.
A boy heard that "the press is coming to school tomorrow". He spent the morning looking for where a huge machine could fit.
Sample questions
The truth
"The press" meant newspaper reporters. They were coming to write about the flower bed his class had made.
Every morning a long queue forms outside a shop. Nobody in it ever goes in or buys anything.
Sample questions
The truth
There is a bus stop right outside the shop. The queue is people waiting for the morning commuter bus.
A boy came home with his shoes and clothes covered in mud. His mother saw him and said, "Well done!"
Sample questions
The truth
His class had gone on a school trip to a rice farm. He waded barefoot into the paddy field and planted lots of rice seedlings.
"Never lose it," her father said, and she never lost her house key. Even so, she could not get into the house.
Sample questions
The truth
To make sure she never lost it, she kept the key safely in a drawer of her desk, inside the house.
In AI Umigame no Soup, an AI diner master sets the puzzle and answers your questions with yes or no. Play puzzles nobody has spoiled yet, on your own, any time (free, sign-in required).
Classic difficulty: you close in on the truth question by question.
After closing time, the jeweller's showcase still holds what should be the most expensive ring in the shop, and it is not even locked. The owner is not the least bit worried.
Sample questions
The truth
At night the showcase holds a very good fake. Every evening the owner wears the real ring home on her own finger.
At the cinema box office she was told the screening was sold out. During the film, only half the seats were taken. Everyone who had bought a ticket came, and nobody lied.
Sample questions
The truth
To keep people apart during an epidemic, that screening sold only every other seat. Every seat that could be sold had been sold.
A ring left on the windowsill of an inn room vanished. The door was locked, and nobody had come in or gone out.
Sample questions
The truth
A crow came in through the window, which was open a little, and flew off with the shiny ring. A few days later it was found in a nest in a nearby tree.
A man wrote the invitations to his own funeral and sent them to his friends. He is in perfect health.
Sample questions
The truth
He held a "living funeral": a gathering, held while he was still well, so that he could thank everyone who had helped him in person.
The family's goldfish died. Everyone adored it, and it was fed every single day without fail.
Sample questions
The truth
Each of the four family members thought "I had better feed it" and fed it separately every day. The fish got four meals a day, and the leftovers fouled the water.
Before going on holiday, a man stuck a note on his front door: "Away for a week. No newspapers, please." When he came home, the house had been turned upside down.
Sample questions
The truth
A burglar read the note and learned the house would be empty for a week. The note meant to stop the papers piling up told everyone he was away.
The winner of the bicycle race was the man who crossed the line last. Nobody broke the rules.
Sample questions
The truth
It was a slow bicycle race: the rider who goes slowest without putting a foot on the ground wins. It is a classic event at school sports days, and he never once touched the ground.
A man goes to bed at nine every day and gets up at five. Even so, his family calls him a night owl.
Sample questions
The truth
He works night shifts: he goes to bed at nine in the morning and gets up at five in the afternoon. He is awake all night.
A man celebrated the moment the new year began twice, on the same New Year's Eve.
Sample questions
The truth
He took an evening flight from Japan to Hawaii on New Year's Eve and celebrated midnight Japan time on board. Hawaii is 19 hours behind Japan, so he landed on the morning of New Year's Eve, and that night he saw the new year in again.
A man won the top prize in the lottery. Instead of cashing the ticket, he framed it and hung it on his wall.
Sample questions
The truth
He noticed he had won the day after the deadline to claim the prize. He keeps it on the wall as a reminder to check things straight away.
Every night a woman gets a wrong-number call from the same number. She never blocks it and always picks up.
Sample questions
The truth
Her phone number used to belong to an old woman's daughter. The old woman, whose memory is fading, calls every night to say good night to her daughter. Knowing this, the woman answers and says good night back.
One snowy morning a man was found unconscious outside his house. When he was found, the only footprints in the snow around him were his own.
Sample questions
The truth
A large icicle fell from the roof and hit him on the head. It shattered and disappeared into the snow. A passer-by found him, and he recovered.
An inventor lost his whole fortune because of "the strongest safe in the world", which he built himself. Nobody has ever broken into it.
Sample questions
The truth
He forgot the combination he had set. Being the strongest safe in the world, it could not be broken open either, so his whole fortune stayed locked inside.
Not a single person came to the man's workplace that day. He went home happy, saying, "What a good day."
Sample questions
The truth
He was the officer at a small neighbourhood police post (a koban). No lost property, no lost children, no crimes: a peaceful day.
When a woman got home from work, there was a letter from a stranger in her letterbox and a new umbrella propped beside it. The letter said only, "Thank you."
Sample questions
The truth
Her house is right by a bus stop, and she kept a few old umbrellas by her gate with a sign saying "Please take one". Someone who borrowed one in a sudden shower brought her a new umbrella in return.
In Tokyo, a man told the police, "I was the jewel thief thirty years ago." Every word was true, yet he was sent home.
Sample questions
The truth
In Japan the statute of limitations for theft is seven years. It had long since run out, so he could no longer be charged.
A restaurant's signature dish is "the worst ramen in town". It sells out every day by early afternoon.
Sample questions
The truth
Word got around that it really is terrible. Customers come to see just how bad it is, or to eat it as a forfeit in a game with friends, and the place is busy every day.
In AI Umigame no Soup, an AI diner master sets the puzzle and answers your questions with yes or no. Play puzzles nobody has spoiled yet, on your own, any time (free, sign-in required).
The truth sends a chill down your spine. No ghosts involved.
Back from a trip he took alone, a man was looking through the photos on his camera. Halfway through, he stopped and called the police.
Sample questions
The truth
There were several photos of him asleep in his hotel bed. He had travelled alone. Someone had come into his room in the night and taken them with his own camera.
One day the sea drew far back, uncovering seabed that is never normally seen. People on the beach happily began collecting shells and fish. Seeing them, a fisherman ran for high ground, shouting at the top of his voice.
Sample questions
The truth
There had been a big earthquake far away a little earlier. When the sea pulls far back after an earthquake, it can be the sign of a coming tsunami. The fisherman knew this and ran uphill, shouting at everyone to get away.
A man was found unconscious in his bathroom. There was not a drop of water in the bath, and he had no injuries.
Sample questions
The truth
He used a chlorine bleach mould cleaner together with an acidic cleaner. Mixed, they give off a poisonous gas, which is why the bottles warn never to mix them. In the small bathroom with the window shut, he breathed it in and collapsed. His family found him quickly and he survived.
In the flat she had just moved into, a woman noticed the bathroom mirror was loose and took it off the wall. That same night she packed her things and left.
Sample questions
The truth
Behind the mirror was a large hole in the wall that opened into the next flat. The mirror was a two-way mirror, and the bathroom had been watched from next door all along.
In the middle of the night, a stranger's voice singing a lullaby came out of the baby monitor. The mother rushed in: the baby was asleep on its own and nobody else was in the room.
Sample questions
The truth
The family next door used the same kind of baby monitor and the signals had crossed. It was the neighbour singing a lullaby to her own baby.
Long ago, on a stormy night, a ship's captain making for harbour steered straight at a light on the headland and ran onto the rocks. The lighthouse was shining in its proper place.
Sample questions
The truth
The light he steered for was not the lighthouse but a lantern someone was swinging on the rocks. Wreckers, so the story goes, lured the ship aground so they could plunder its cargo.
A woman who lived alone felt her puddings kept disappearing, so she stuck a note saying "3 puddings" on the fridge and went out. When she came back she read the note and called the police and a locksmith at once. There were exactly as many puddings as the note said.
Sample questions
The truth
Only two puddings were left, and the note had been replaced with one saying "2 puddings" in handwriting just like hers. Someone with a key was coming and going, and had even fixed the note so she would not notice.
A boy playing in the sea was being carried further and further out. His father shouted from the beach, "Don't swim for the shore! Swim sideways!" The boy was saved.
Sample questions
The truth
The boy was caught in a rip current, a narrow, fast flow running from the beach out to sea. Swimming against it wears you out, but it is narrow, so swimming parallel to the shore takes you out of it.
Money kept going missing from the till, so the shop owner put in a security camera. The next day he watched the recording. He did not call the police; that night he cried alone.
Sample questions
The truth
The one letting himself in with a key after closing time and taking money from the till was his own son, who was meant to take over the shop one day.
Tough ones that need a single piece of knowledge or a leap of insight.
On the morning of the New Year festival, a restaurant owner stuck a red paper with a single large character on it at the entrance, deliberately upside down. Customers were delighted and called it lucky.
Sample questions
The truth
The owner ran a Chinese restaurant and the character was 福, "fortune". In Chinese, "upside down" (倒) and "arrive" (到) are both pronounced dào, so an upside-down 福 reads as "fortune has arrived". It is a well-known Lunar New Year decoration.
On his first day at an office abroad, a man was asked to "table the proposal". He spent the day getting ready to present it. His boss was baffled.
Sample questions
The truth
In British English, "table" means to put something up for discussion; in American English it means to set it aside. He was British, his boss American, and the boss only wanted it shelved.
After the concert the pianist laughed, "Very quiet audience today." Not one person had clapped, and the pianist was perfectly happy.
Sample questions
The truth
The concert was in a cowshed on a dairy farm. Music is said to calm cows and help them give more milk, and the pianist was playing for them.
Letters are posted in a little postbox on a hill almost every day. No postman has ever delivered a single one.
Sample questions
The truth
The townspeople built that postbox for letters to people who have died or whom the writer can never see again. The letters are not delivered; they are kept in a hut where anyone can read them.
On a trip abroad, a man took a train that ran exactly to the timetable. It was not late at all, yet he was an hour late for his friend's wedding.
Sample questions
The truth
Daylight saving time had begun overnight in that country, and the clocks had moved forward an hour. His watch still showed the old time, so the train he took as "his" train was really the one an hour later.
Long ago, a traveller rode into a village and asked, "Where can I find a smith?" The villagers sent him to four different houses, and nobody in any of them could help.
Sample questions
The truth
His horse had thrown a shoe and he needed a blacksmith. The villagers took him to every family named Smith.
The man had a photo proving he was in a distant town at the time of the crime, with a clock tower in it showing exactly that time. One look, and the detective said, "This was taken at another time."
Sample questions
The truth
The clock had stopped years ago and always showed the same time. The crime happened at three in the afternoon, but the shadows in the photo were long, like early-morning shadows.
A man drove almost to the top of a mountain that is, measured one way, the tallest in the world. It is not Everest.
Sample questions
The truth
Mauna Kea in Hawaii rises about 4,200 metres above sea level, but measured from its base on the ocean floor it is about 10,000 metres, taller than Everest. A road runs up to the observatories near the summit.
A man works every day in a completely dark room. His work makes a great many people smile.
Sample questions
The truth
He develops film at a photo studio. Light ruins film, so he works in a darkroom. The customers who collect their graduation and family photos go home smiling.
In AI Umigame no Soup, an AI diner master sets the puzzle and answers your questions with yes or no. Play puzzles nobody has spoiled yet, on your own, any time (free, sign-in required).
These puzzles' answers are public, so they never appear on the menu, as Tonight's Bowl or in the rankings.