There are two guys standing face to face in a room. On a wall, there is a clock. One of those is a prophet. He tells the other guy that he will be stabbed in the back in five minutes.
Shocked to hear that, the other guy stares at the clock. Just after the five minutes, he is stabbed on the back. Can you tell what happened?
You stand in front of two doors. A guard stands next to each door. You know the following things: one path leads to paradise, the other leads to death. You cannot distinguish between the two doors. You also know that one of the two guards always tells the truth and the other always lies. You have permission to ask one guard one question to discover which door leads to paradise. What one question would you ask to guarantee you enter the door to paradise?
The day before the 1996 U.S. presidential election, the NYT Crossword contained the clue “Lead story in tomorrow’s newspaper,” the puzzle was built so that both electoral outcomes were correct answers, requiring 7 other clues to have dual responses.