What is the answer to this question?

Animation | James Kerr's instagram

Editor | Taixi

On Mid-Autumn Festival, let's play an appropriate game together.

In the 57th episode of Legend of Wulin, Li Dazui pretends to be crazy, and Yan Xiaoliu tests him with the question 16. Everyone doesn't know that these questions are opposite, and the more correct the answer, the more abnormal it is. They painstakingly set the answers and created a hilarious farce.

The questions and answers in the play are extremely scary and may have left a shadow on many people's childhood. For example, the one about "aquatic plants":

Xiaoming and his girlfriend go for a walk by the river. Suddenly, his girlfriend fell into the river. Xiaoming jumped into the water to save people, but failed to find his girlfriend and left sadly. A few years later, Xiao Ming revisited his old place. Two old people were chatting by the river and said, "Clear water means no fish. If there are no aquatic plants in this river, there will be no fish. " Xiao Ming drowned himself after hearing this. Why?

At first glance, this topic is puzzling and illogical, but the answer is open, terrible, shocking and speechless:

There are many similar questions about "giving reasons for bizarre events", which actually belongs to a game popular in Europe, America and Japan, commonly known as "turtle soup"

What the hell is turtle soup?

According to legend, a retired soldier burst into tears after drinking a bowl of turtle soup in a restaurant. When someone asks, he only answers yes or no. Everyone guessed the truth based on scattered information: the soldier went to the battlefield with his father and ran out of ammunition, so his father asked his partner to share himself with his son after he committed suicide and lied to him that it was turtle soup. The soldiers survived, and now they drink real turtle soup. They find that the taste of turtle soup is different from what they remember. They know everything, and they are very sad.

This touching "turtle soup" story hides the game mode of "giving an incomprehensible event for people to guess the reason", and it is said that it is also the origin of this game. However, this game is called "lateral thinking puzzle" (lateral thinking problem) or "situational puzzle" (situational problem) in Europe and America, not "turtle soup".

Before this game was introduced to Japan, it was very popular on the website of 2ch (a large Japanese online forum). Based on these materials, Sophie Kamei published a collection of questions, Reasoning クィズガメのスープ.

Lateral thinking is a term created by Edgar de Bono, which refers to a way of thinking that seeks new ways to study problems instead of following logical steps.

The game "Turtle Soup" relies on providing refined information and creating unexpected results, which leads to confusion. Players need to imagine and reason according to the limited hints in the topic, and supplement the events completely and reasonably, which means "lateral thinking". For example, "A woman wore a pair of red high heels to work and then died. Why? " The words "red", "high heels" and "going to work" in the title can make us guess the woman's occupation, but what is fatal is the color or height of the shoes.

In practice, the title of "turtle soup" is called "noodle soup" and the answer is called "soup bottom". The answer can put forward various conjectures, and the questioner only answers "yes", "no" or "irrelevant" to get information, which is close to the original appearance of the event.

The information of noodle soup can be increased or decreased according to the situation, and the same noodle soup can correspond to different soup bases. Just like the story of "Turtle Soup" has multiple versions, the protagonist can be father, girlfriend and wife, and the material of the soup can be turtles, penguins, etc., depending on how the questioner imagines and answers. The questioner is shortening the story, while the respondent is expanding the story, as long as it is reasonable. This is the fun of playing "turtle soup".

Come on, dry this bowl of turtle soup.

The topic of "turtle soup", usually related to strange murders or sudden deaths, is the most popular. People's detective ability and reasoning experience have played a role, and the resulting sense of terror has become an indispensable part of this game. Let's take a look at several classic "turtle soup" topics and experience the excitement and brain burning of this game.

Timid, please skip to the next section.

The first soup:

Noodles in soup: A group of friends helped a blind man with one arm celebrate his birthday. After singing the birthday song, everyone applauded, but the blind man killed all his friends. Why?

The key words in the soup are "blind man", "one arm" and "clapping", which shows that for a blind man, his friend should not clap or has no clapping ability, because he can't see, so he was cheated, which is his motive for killing people. Imagine that he has been deceived by applause.

Launch the soup base: they were once in trouble. In the absence of food, everyone agreed to cut off their hands and eat together, but because the blind man could not see, he was the only one who cut off his hands. When he heard applause, he knew that he had been cheated.

The second soup:

Noodles in soup: Two good friends were trapped in a cave in an avalanche. They have plenty of food and a pistol. A few days later, rescuers came to the cave and found that both of them were dead. There was no sign of a struggle. There are several bullet holes in a person, only one bullet hole in a person, and a pit next to it. How did they die?

The key words in the soup are "good friend", "adequate food", "no signs of fighting" and "pit". There is no motive for killing, and there is no trace of fighting, which means that the person who died first was killed by mistake, or both of them were unconscious. Imagine how both sides are unconscious, what is the function of this pit and the strange number of bullet holes.

Push out the soup base: one of them has sleepwalking. He shot and killed his friend in his dream. After waking up, he dug a hole and buried his friend without knowing what happened. The next day, he dug up his friend in his sleepwalking, photographed the body again, and was surprised when he woke up, so he buried his friend again. After several days of repetition, he finally couldn't stand it, had a nervous breakdown and chose to commit suicide.

The third soup:

Noodles in soup: The female star has a daughter, and she will put a hat on her daughter from time to time. One day, she took her daughter to the hospital. When she knew the truth, she committed suicide. Why?

The key words in the soup are "actress", "hat" and "hospital". Hat somersaults are related to the face. It is necessary to imagine what kind of hospital this is, the identity characteristics of female stars and the role of hats.

Introduce soup base: female star disfigured. She raised her daughter and transplanted her face to herself. This hat is her own. Wearing a hat for your daughter from time to time can measure the size of her head and transplant it as soon as it is suitable.

Jin Shengtan commented on The Water Margin, saying that the aesthetic principle of plot design of the novel is "no danger is fast, but extreme danger is fast". This sentence can also be used to describe this kind of "turtle soup" game, which has elements of "reasoning" and "horror" and arouses players' curiosity about the incomplete truth.

The process of guessing the result is accompanied by the detective's sense of accomplishment and the pleasure of satisfying curiosity, and fear is the price that players must pay.

The soup is delicious, don't drink too much.

Just like watching detective mystery novels and film and television works, people who play this kind of "turtle soup" can't help playing it again, and at the same time sigh "how so abnormal" What they can't stop is the tension caused by terror.

Based on agatha christie's classic work no one lives, an English drama poster contains a horrible "killing nursery rhyme".

Experiments by researchers such as Meng, a professor of psychology in Peking University, show that children's emotions will flow between interest and fear under the stimulation of novelty. When they approach noisy robots, they will have emotional reactions of alternating interest and fear, namely fear and love. Fear is a highly intense and positive impulse pattern.

Therefore, terror not only creates creepy physiological and psychological reactions, but also adds shock and fury to the sweet and boring plain life, making people get some pleasure. From the Colosseum in ancient Rome to the Spanish bullfighting, from blindfolded hide-and-seek in childhood to extreme sports bungee jumping and skydiving, human beings have a complex nature of teasing, playing and even deliberately pursuing terror, just as someone once asked the American horror novelist Stephen King, "Why do you write horror novels?" His answer is: "I hope readers are afraid."

A scene in the movie The Shining is adapted from Stephen King's novel of the same name.

In addition to the nature of seeking excitement in terror, terror is also one of our childhood memories. Freud's psychoanalytic theory holds that mystery and terror originate from something familiar but repressed.

Most people have been exposed to mysterious and horrible culture in their childhood, which is even historic. Ghost Story Machamp's emotional, but before Sue Ji Shen, the horrible and grotesque ghost story has become a marginal and lasting topic. As we all know, Strange Tales from a Lonely Studio is a fascinating story, while the note novel Zi Wuyu and other folk stories have more stories aimed at scaring people. They are passed down from generation to generation, absorbed by film and television works and printed in children's minds.

With the increase of age and experience, people's rational thinking becomes stronger and stronger, and people begin to doubt the rationality of these events and suppress the sense of terror, but they will not be really eliminated. When playing "turtle soup", strange topics make terrible childhood memories reappear.

This is why "turtle soup" is terrible but attractive. The more you think about it, the more terrible it becomes. Of course, drinking too much horrible "turtle soup" will definitely have side effects, such as being afraid of going to the toilet at night, being suspicious when taking the elevator alone, and trying to cover the quilt when sleeping. Do what you can, and don't ask me how I know.

Soup tastes good, don't be greedy, three bowls are not enough.

[1] Yu Tianchi. China's horror novels and the horror aesthetic taste of Strange Tales from a Lonely Studio [J]. Literary Heritage, 2002, (06).

[2] Li Xinming. Analysis of aesthetic elements in horror novels [J]. Creation and Criticism, 20 17, (No.8).

Egg time: three bowls of turtle soup

The following three "turtle soup" are based on famous stories and novels, and the tips in brackets are the source.

1, a woman becomes beautiful after a sleep and gets rich and powerful parents. What's going on here? (Hint: Strange Tales from a Lonely Studio) 2. Two people got a pig's head, but they kept making it stink and didn't eat it. Finally, they were very angry. Why? (hint: scholar) 3. An old man who knows martial arts has an aunt. His concubine said he would sleepwalk, so he sent her away. Why? (Hint: Jin Yong's novels)

Haven't you figured it out yet? Pay attention to the upstream (ID: HeyUPFlow) and reply to the keywords "Liaozhai", "Scholars" and "Jin Yong" respectively to see the answers.

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