[Jack Simth]

Originally posted by TerranC:
Bah. I think that one was too easy. Here's a harder one IMHO.

A man and a woman were driving in their car when it broke down. The man decided to go for help at a gas station a few miles back. He made sure nobody was in the car, rolled all the windows up, and locked all of the sedan's doors. He went off, but when he came back, his wife was dead, and there was a stranger in the car. No physical damage was done to the car, so how did the stranger get in?

The woman was the stranger - she was already in the car, hiding (the trunk, perhaps?) (Alternately, the woman was the stranger and had the keys). There isn't anything in the riddle itself that says the woman was the man's wife; the wife could already have been dead at the outset.

Another possibility, requiring a few typos on your part: car should be plural; they were driving seperately. The woman's car broke down, and the man went for help for her. He locked up his own car, and found the stranger in her car, not his. Again, the wife was already dead, as there is nothing to say that the woman was the man's wife.

Another possibility: the woman was the man's wife, but opened the door for the stranger (she had the keys), who killed her.

Another possibility: There are methods for getting into a locked car without damaging it physically. The stranger could have gotten in with one of those methods. The man's wife was either the woman (who the stranger killed) or was already dead.

This one isn't hard, it's open-ended; there are many possibilities, but of course only one is what happened. There is no real way to choose which one is correct without already knowing the answer. If you care to contradict me on this, find a problems with all the answers I gave that are wrong.