1
$\begingroup$

I put a bit of work into answering a picture based question based on details in the drawing, and it was deleted by a moderator with the comment Since this is not a serious attempt to answer the question, it has been removed.

Could Deusovi reconsider? If you have questions on the story illustrating the answer or interpreted something as mocking the community (I assure you it wasn't intentional), I'm happy to hash them out to fix everything up to standards. Having my contribution, which I thought made very good use of the details in the picture to solve the riddle, deleted has kind of bummed me out.

In it's full form:

I think Bob knew the bus was facing north because of

the direction of the bloody trail his fellow bus driver Alice left running towards Canada.

Allow me to explain:

Alice the after-school bus driver is a bit of a lush, which Bob is sure no one else knows about because of their notoriously secure correspondences. He's been on ride alongs with her during semiannual reviews and personally seen her swerve around underage pedestrians playing near the school. "She better be careful," Bob would say under his breath, "or she might catch a disciplinary action form one day."

When Bob got into the bus that morning, he was horrified to find

the body of a dead child unceremoniously stuffed into the first row, almost fully dressed in outdoor play gear, but with the head caved in and covered with black, frozen blood. "Of course," thought Bob, as he recalled the cracked headlight on the left side of the bus moments ago. And wasn't there something on that same tire? He couldn't remember, but vaguely thought he recognized red paint, which he now understood to be the tiny victim's blood.

In a flash, he remembered

almost tripping on something right before he boarded. A shoe. In his mind's eye, he could see it. One, child-sized, red shoe, perfectly matching the one on the corpse before him. It would perfectly cover the exposed, white sock on the other side. The streaks and markings of blood around the bus steps strongly suggested it was flung from the child's body during a turbulent ride to the bus park and subsequently kicked off during Alice's hasty escape...

Which Bob could plainly see at a glance, because as he slowly raised his head, facing the door he just entered, he looked past

that little red shoe and saw Alice's tracks, in the gray Michigan snow, extend straight through the parking lot, across the adjacent field, all the way to the Detroit river. Due east. Into Canada.

Therefore, Bob knew the bus must be facing north!

$\endgroup$

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
7
$\begingroup$

The answer was deleted because it was clearly meant as a joke, and not based off of the information in the question. Your answer for which direction the bus was facing - north - comes from your own made-up story about a fellow bus driver and the direction in which they ran, not anything actually given in the question.

Sure, you "made very good use of the details in the picture" - but you did so to tell a story, not to actually solve the puzzle.

$\endgroup$
6
  • 5
    $\begingroup$ It's also fairly graphic. $\endgroup$
    – feelinferrety
    Commented Jun 23, 2017 at 22:14
  • 5
    $\begingroup$ I greatly enjoyed reading the joke. But I'm inclined to agree that joke answers don't really belong here even if they're enjoyable. (If OP had written a first-rate sonnet or something, I'd have enjoyed reading that too, but it wouldn't belong as an answer here. Merely being enjoyable does not suffice.) $\endgroup$
    – Gareth McCaughan Mod
    Commented Jun 23, 2017 at 22:28
  • 1
    $\begingroup$ For the record, I also enjoyed it. You have a great sense of storytelling. But as the others have said, it was just that -- storytelling. And while I don't mind the horror/gore, I feel it's a bit much for this site -- we're generally no more than PG13 'round here. $\endgroup$
    – feelinferrety
    Commented Jun 23, 2017 at 22:47
  • 2
    $\begingroup$ @all, OK, I think I understand the issue, now. It wasn't actually intended to be a joke (exception where I named Alice) and it was a serious attempt at an open puzzle problem, but exposition is inappropriate for answers? Maybe it should have read "Someone killed: 1) shoe, 2) blood, 3) headlight. Attacker fled north to Canada." I'm just bummed I wasted so much effort on something no one will see again, and that effort is why it was deleted. Also, if the graphic part is a problem I would gladly tone it down, but I don't think Deusovi will give me that chance. Thanks for the feedback. $\endgroup$
    – user1717828
    Commented Jun 24, 2017 at 0:22
  • 4
    $\begingroup$ If it wasn't intended as a joke, then I think a lot of people misconstrued it. $\endgroup$
    – Gareth McCaughan Mod
    Commented Jun 24, 2017 at 1:24
  • 6
    $\begingroup$ @user1717828 I think you may have misinterpreted Deusovi's reasoning. Looking at this purely from a puzzle-solving perspective, your answer did not find a solution that logically answered the question using only the information provided in the question. If a solver is allowed to add information (it doesn't matter if it's in story form, or just a point-form list of new data that wasn't in the question), then they can basically construct any solution they desire. Desusovi did not delete because of the format or content of the answer, but because it was manufacturing data. $\endgroup$
    – GentlePurpleRain Mod
    Commented Jun 24, 2017 at 18:26

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .