Correct!

In the middle of the garden, on the grass are several objects : a hat, a shawl, a carrot... What happened there?

You killed frosty!

Let's say that's correct!

Rox is down sick. Someone else take it...

Hmm, that's a tricky one, looks cryptic.

Wait, I got it: small pox!

"Rox is sick" = pox, "down" = small/deadly, "someone else can take it" = highly contageous.

PS. Laughter is the best medicine.

My first is a creature whose breeding is unclear. My second, a price you must pay. My whole can be found in the river of Time and refers to events of today. What am I?

Current! Cur = mixed-breed dog, rent = a price that you must pay, current can mean a flow such as in a river, and current also refers to the present.

I'm awful at riddle-making, so someone else can make the next riddle if I'm correct.

Callum

correct
anyone can post the next one

There was a 300 foot long boat that crashed off the coast of California. It had 70 people on board. 49 survived the crash, and 36 were able to make the swim to a deserted island.
One night, a man woke up to find his wife missing from his bed side. She was never found again. The man was obviously devastated.
Later that day, they found some salmon for dinner. What a feast!
They were rescued a few days later. The man moved to a foreign country, cutting off all his contact with his life. He starts over, changes his name, gets a new haircut.
One day, he decides to splurge and go out for a fancy dinner. Ever since the accident, he had been living off nothing but Kraft Mac and Cheese and TV Dinners. His conversation with the waiter went something like this.
"Hello, welcome to Michael's Tavern. What can I get you today?"
"Hmm, I think the Deluxe Burger sounds good. What's the special tonight?"
"Tonight we have a nice grilled salmon."
"Well that sounds absolutely scrumptious! I'll have that!"
Exit waiter.
A little later, the waiter comes back with the fish. "Enjoy your meal, sir!"
He takes a sip of wine, then digs into his fish.
And spits it out. He carefully lays his fork and knife back down, and calls the waiter over.
"I'll have the check, please."
"Oh, you didn't like it? I would be happy to get you a new dish."
"That's alright, thank you."
The waiter goes to get the check. Once the man has paid for his dinner he makes the long journey back out of civilization and into his home.
He then hangs himself.
Why did he commit suicide?

-Doug

Hmm...the salmon reminds him of his missing wife because they had salmon the same day as her disappearance?

Nope!

-Doug

The fish tasted bad, and didn't meet his expectations of what the outside world would be like. Either that, or he didn't get the Deluxe burger.

Is the boat crash even related to the man? The wording would suggest that they are independent events.

That's kind of what I was thinking, but then he says 'ever since the accident, he had been living on Mac&Cheese'...The question is whether or not the salmon has anything to do with his death, or how the salmon might be connected to his wife. Perhaps he found his wife's wedding ring in the salmon?

I think I've figured it out. The man is blind, and he was eating whatever the survivors fed him. He then went to the restaurant and ordered salmon. The only problem: the salmon didn't taste anything like the salmon that he ate on the island. He figured that the other survivors had killed his wife and fed her to him, calling it 'salmon'.

Correct! Although he isn't (or at least, doesn't have to be) blind.

-Doug

Okay: If he had seen the sawdust, he wouldn't have died...

Not sure if this is your riddle or not
Anyways, if it's not, there wasn't necessarily saw dust on the meat- they cooked it first.

-Doug

It is...and not quite. Try thinking outside the box...or inside the circle!

https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=%22If+he+had+seen+the+sawdust%22
The question lacks originality and the answers are all variations on the man being a very short circus performer who's cane keeps being shortened making him think he's growing taller. When he realizes he's no longer the tallest performer he decides to kill himself since he no longer has anything to offer the circus.

Since the answer is an arbitrary story woven to to match the question, here is my original answer:
The man is a carpenter. One day he's using a table saw while distracted. Normally he keeps tabs on the constant stream of sawdust coming off the blade as he cuts planks. Because he's distracted though he accidentally slips and cuts his radial artery and bleeds to death. If he'd only seen only sawdust he wouldn't have died.

I was actually crafting another one because that one was rather obtuse. Since you didn't provide another riddle (and cheated by Google), here's my other one:

Uncle John had to visit an unimportant conference in Denver. He was about to catch his 10 PM flight when he realized that he left his briefcase at the office. He swung by around 9:15 (in the days before security was very tight) and entered the building. He greeted the night watchman, who was the only other one in the building at that late hour, climbed 3 flights of stairs, and grabbed his documents. As he was leaving, the watchman bolted from his station, grabbed Uncle John's arm, and pleaded "don't get on that flight; I had a dream last night that the plane is going to crash". Uncle John, being the superstitious man that he is, decided to stay home. Sure enough, the flight crashed. Uncle John returned early the next morning and thanked the watchman for saving his life, but promptly fired the man. Why did the night watchman lose his job?

Who's the greater cheat? The man who plagiarized a low-quality riddle or the man who Googled it and then provided an original answer?

Are we playing the "lets plagiarize riddles and pretend nobody will Google them game" or are we playing the "lets be creative and original even if it's harder than Google game"? I'm not interested in the former and very few seem interested in playing the latter.

Sorry, didn't mean 'cheat' in quite as negative a way...I think people are playing "share your favourite riddle" instead...though I'll try to think of an original one...(interesting answer, BTW, but I'm not sure why he would watch the sawdust instead of the saw...)

Point taken.

It's hard. I've been working on one all evening. I have the strategy I want folks to use for solving it but constructing a riddle that actually leads to that strategy in a non-arbitrary way is hard.

If you're watching the dust you aren't watching your work. If you're seeing sawdust and then the sawdust stops while you're cutting, you're probably cutting into yourself rather than your work.

He is the night watchman, so he was sleeping on the job if he was having "a dream last night".

A plane crashes right exactly on the border of two countries, killing over half the passengers. In which country should they bury the survivors?

Dave

In their respective countries when they die years later

I was looking for "you don't bury survivors!" but it's clear you got the picture. I surprising number of people don't spot this, kind of like answering "toast" to "what do you put in a toaster?" (bread, you take *out* toast).

Dave

Alright, I think I have a reasonable riddle / logic problem. This is based on something Nan Ma (forum user schuma) posed to me. This is a forum about "twisty" puzzles and I think the solution is appropriately twisted.

There is a television studio executive trying to capture a big TV audience with a new prime-time gameshow. One night he's watching the competition and he sees deal or no deal where a bunch of women are standing up holding numbered cases:

So the executive decides he'll create a new, similar show. Instead of 20-some-odd women he decides to feature 100 women, each with a case numbered 1 through 100. Before the start of the show each night they take the numbers 1 through 100 and they place them randomly into the cases numbered 1 through 100. This is done at the beginning of the show since randomly placing the numbers into 100 cases takes a long time.

Then, for each night they hold the show, each contestant can pick any number they want from 1 to 100 inclusive. Then, the contestant gets to open up to 50 cases. They pick a case and the woman opens it. If it contains their number then they win. If after 50 guesses they still have not picked their number then they lose.

The studio decides that this is a fair game with 50% odds of winning for each contestant. Because they don't shuffle the numbers in the cases after each contestant they sequester each contestant so that they don't know what is in the cases while the other contestants play. The studio also prevents any form of communication from the audience or any other person to the contestants so that it isn't possible to cheat.

For many nights the show is on and 50% of the contestants win a prize by finding the number they picked in a case. Then one night, the studio decides to bring on 20 math professors on to the show and to the dismay of the studio, every single professor wins the prize by finding the number they picked in one of the cases.

The studio claims the chances of all of them winning are less than one in a million and accuses the professors of cheating but they insist they did not. Did the professors cheat? If not, what was their strategy and how lucky were they?

Did the professors speak to each other before hand at all to strategize?

No. One strategy is that they could all just pick 1 and then open up the first half of the cases and in the 50% chance that the 1 happens to be in the first half of the cases then they'd either all win or all lose. That is not what they did. In fact, assume that the number they choose to find is chosen randomly. That is, each contestant is unaware of the number any other contestant chose (or just assume the game show chooses the number you need to find for you).

Is the probability of each of the mathematicians finding their number guaranteed, or a very high probability?

Just a clarification question. Do the contestants get to watch the previous contestants?

-Doug

Okay so the studio gets all of the mathematicians into a room and tells them that the studio is sure they cheated and they are going to invalidate their winnings unless they can do it again.

HINT 1:
One of the mathematicians responds: "We can't do it again 100% of the time. If we play the game over and over, about 30% of the time 100% of us will win and the other 70% of the time a smaller percentage of us will win (usually less than 50%)."

No. Each contestant has no idea what the previous contestant did, which cases they picked, what was in the cases, or even if they won or not.

HINT 2:
Dismayed about what the mathematicians told the studio, the studio exec asks them "what would we have to do to prevent all of you from winning?" to which a mathematician answers: "If you randomly re-arranged (permuted) the numbers inside of the cases after each contestant then each one of us would only have a 50% chance of winning and the chance of all 20 of us winning would be less than one in a million like you've calculated."


Clarification 1:
The exact number of mathematicians (20) is not important. Even if there were a different number their strategy would still work just fine.


Clarification 2:
There is absolutely no form of communication between each mathematician. They didn't leave each other notes. No audience member is helping them. They don't use hand signals or any other cheat. They truly have no idea what numbers each other picked or what cases they opened. It is their strategy that wins, not cheating of the game.


Curiosity 1:
When the studio presses the mathematicians more about just how likely it is for N of them to win, they provide this plot:

Is this related to the blue eyes puzzle by any chance?

If you're thinking of the one solved via induction, then no. In that puzzle there is an implicit form of communication between the islanders because if they don't take an action then you can infer an additional bit of information. In my riddle there is no information inferred or implied.

A few notes...
The first hint implies that the strategy used by the mathematicians is not perfect. It works off of probability, and it would be extremely unlikely for it to work every time. 
The second hint implies that if the numbers were rearranged every time, the mathematicians would be no different than regular contestants. In other words, the plan wouldn't work.
Intriguing.

-Doug

Also, I am a little confused with the graph. What exactly does the title of the Y axis mean?

-Doug

The Y axis is the percentage of games where N mathematicians win. So if you look along the X-axis at the number 1 then that bar is 5% tall meaning in 5% of the games only 1 mathematician wins. If you look at the 20 on the X-axis then it is about 31% tall meaning in 31% of the games all 20 mathematicians win.

Just to be clear, 30% of the time 100% of the mathematicians are going to win using their strategy. If the game show only had 5 on this would be the outcome distribution:

And if they had 70 on this would be the outcome distribution:

'randomly placing the numbers into 100 cases takes a long time.'

Has it something to do with this? I dont think that placing 100 numbers randomly takes that much time, maybe they are placed in way that seems randomly to the organisation of the show, but still has some logic that the mathematicians can see?

The placement of the numbers in the cases is truly random. There is no predictable pattern.

The amount of time it takes to put the numbers in the cases is not relevant. I only stated that because I need some sort of justification for why they didn't scramble the numbers in the cases after every contestant . If they did, the mathematicians strategy wouldn't work.

Can the mathematicians see which boxes already have been opened by other players?
Has it anything to do with even and odd numbers?

No they have no way of determining what boxes the previous contestants opened. They could have decided on a strategy beforehand where the first guy opens the first 50 and the second guy opens the second 50 or something like that but if they were to know what the other contestants opened it would only be because they discussed beforehand exactly what they were going to open.
Not really.

Hint: the solution has a "twisty" theme to it. Quite appropriate for this forum

Are the women blonde?

Brandon, will you ever spill the beans?

-Doug

The mathematicians are actually contortionists, and they can bend over backwards and see the bottom row of cases!! But only some of the time, accounting for the fact that they only sometimes win...

Alright, here is another hint:
"The simplest strategy the mathematicians could use would leave the audience and studio dumbfounded. They'd all see the strategy and think "these guys are idiots" until they all won. Then many of the audience members would claim the studio deliberately setup the cases in some special way and that's the only reason why what the mathematicians did worked. The question would not be "what was their strategy?" but rather "why the heck did that work?"."

And a super big hint:
"To make their strategy much less obvious to the audience and studio they could use a rule like "number * 7 + 3 mod 100"."

Super big I can't believe I'm telling you this hint:
"Permutation cycles."

Here is the answer:
"The answer."

Well, that explains why I'm not getting it, it's because it has to do with math! I'm no good at math

Well I think twisty puzzle enthusiasts would also be particularly well suited for this strategy (hint hint)!

Question: Do the mathematicians get to communicate with each other and agree on their (combined) strategy before the game starts, or do they all go in not knowing what strategy or algorithm the others will follow?

I thought I should ask to clarify, because the latter would be a *lot* more impressive than agreeing how to allocate the numbers upfront.