Is this troper the only one who's ever been lazy enough to want his shoes off, looked at the tightly tied laces, then looked at the readily available pair of scissors on the desk and thought "fuck it, shoelaces are only 70¢"?

50¢ for me, but yeah.

This Troper can solve a Rubik's Cube in 90 seconds without turning it once. How? Six different colors of paint.

Is this basically the updated version of solving the cube by taking the stickers off and putting them back on again in the right order?

An incident like this happens a lot when I roleplay, which is why I no longer make these puzzles despite enjoying solving them when they come. One example is when I have the only door of a relatively small dungeon room locked by a gate, with half the party on one end (outside), the other half of the party on the other end (trapped inside) and one of the players, who was a beast master of cute critters, had a pet cat who was fighting with another, larger monster over a doll where their fights were heavily focused on with the intent to hint that the door is unlocked and can be pushed open whenever the doll's head fell off, but locks if the doll's head is reattached. The door is nigh indestructible to ''anything'', and the parties are quick to notice that no matter what attack they throw, no matter how powerful the attack is, it won't leave so much as a dent because the dungeon "cell" was mentioned to be specifically designed to hold incredibly powerful god-like monsters (which explains why travelers, who have an eighth of said god-mon's powers, couldn't do anything to it). What do they do? They spend half of one week nuking the door to high hell, alternating on who nukes the door to high hell between inside and outside (all the while that tamer's cat kept stealing the doll, but was perfectly content to make its master hug it as opposed to allowing the other mon to take its head off if not do so itself), the other half to spam attacks for as long as possible, and nearly half of a second week was spent nearly causing a cave-in for the party inside the dungeon trying to blast the surrounding walls to get around the door, only to find ''even more of the indestructible barred walls was built within the surrounding dungeon walls''. Because, of course, they figured people who want to trap powerful gods inside what essentially is a giant cage would only bother building an indestructible door and won't take into account said god can blast the rest of the cell to break free. (As for the doll, the tamer got annoyed and tried to kill the other monster who kept trying to grab for the doll's head. Eventually I got the monster to be so agitated it ripped the doll's head off while the tamer was holding it despite getting attacked by the cat for it). It took them so long to realize that the doll had something to do with the door that I not only had to solve the connection in front of them myself, but push the door open afterward to let them go (because even when they attacked during a time the doll lost its head, they were attacking the surrounding walls they unearthed as opposed to the door, and it didn't occur to any of them that the door was unlocked until the monster blatantly opened it to walk through. ''TWICE''.). *HEADDESK* *HEADDESK* *HEADDESK*.

Then there was a second incident that seemed more like the players were The Fellowship of the Dicks than they were stumped. There was a boss they had to face, but it is only defeatable if they take advantage of its elemental weakness: water. The easiest weapon that is of the water element is an artifact guarded by a whole collection of races who were made entirely out of water. The solution? The players had a member of the party who was of the same race as these watery people and could ask the chief for the artifact to take with them, because they were a known important diplomat to them. ''Their'' solution? Try to kill everyone by slicing them to bits despite the fact, as water people, they regenerate back to normal no matter how many times you slice them. In the end I just had an NPC among the people feint ignorance that these people and what is essentially their prince tried to slaughter them all and just give them the damn artifact anyways, because it didn't occur to any of them that they could just. Oh, I dunno.... ''ASK?!''

This troper once had to do one of those "you have a 3 gallon bucket and a 5 gallon bucket. How do you get exactly 4 gallons?" problems. He jokingly suggested drawing a gun, pointing it at the nearest person, and tersely saying, "Four gallons. ''Now''." He still doesn't know how to solve this problem...

You take a A three gallon fill it then place the three gallons into the five. Now you take the three gallon again and continue filling up the five and stop when the five is full. Empty the five and poor the remaining one gallon from the three. Refill the three and pour it into the 5. Done.

And the alternate solution: You fill the five, pour three gallons from the five into the three, empty the three, pour the two gallons left in the five into the three, refill the five, and then pour one gallon from the five into the three to top it up and leave four gallons in the five. Double done.

I challenged my players with an unbeatable djinn who forced them, one by one, to answer one nearly impossible riddle each, or he would kill them. And they had three seconds to answer. The first was too surprised by the short time limit to do something, and died. The second just sat there until he was killed. The third decided to strike first and attacked, but was killed by the UNBEATABLE djinn. The fourth said "I don't know"... and passed. The djinn never said the answer had to be RIGHT.

Killer DM much?

Once, I was replacing a car battery with my father, and I accidentally dropped the wrench into the undercarriage. It wasn't on the ground, and we couldn't see it or reach it no matter how hard we tried, so we resigned ourselves to disassembling the car to get the wrench back. Then I said, "You know, this may be dumb, but why don't we just drive the car, brake really hard, and shake the wrench out that way?" It worked.

This troper remembers watching her friend play through the Temple of Time mentioned on the Zelda entry for the main page of this trope. Neither of us had played the game before so we didn't know the statue's hammer could smash the gates into pieces. So I watched him work the statue all the way down to the 3rd (at least I think it was the 3rd) floor, and he couldn't find a switch to open the gate blocking the way to the next transporter for the statue. He'd only JUST found out he could make the thing swing its hammer, so after looking everywhere he went over to the gate with the statue and started smacking it with the hammer while shouting "OPEN UP YOU STUPID-!" Right as he said 'stupid', the gate shattered. He stood there dumbfounded for a moment, then hid the wiimote behind his back and protested "I didn't do it!" It's hilarious to watch him play a new Zelda game for the first time. If he gets stuck, he ends up frustrated, and then he usually applies this trope at random. And it always works. I can't wait to see what happens when he gets his hands on Skyward Sword. In a computers class one of the exam questions was "what is the best way to permanently remove information from a hard drive?" My response was: "With a hammer." Got full credit.

BridgeOfDoom: (in my GameWorld, Khelefmiis and Howonda are expys for Europe and Africa) TollKeeper: what is the velocity of an unladen swallow? PC: Do you mean a Khelefmiis or a Howonda swallow? TollKeeper: Khelefmiis.

The correct answer is "24 mph". Knowledge Animal and such-like dice rolls. Next, TollKeeper asks the velocity of the Howonda Swallow, NPC whispers the answer and crosses the Bridge. PC rolls Listen to hear bits of the answer which is of course, "Nobody knows the velocity of the Howonda swallow. The Howonda swallow's chief weapon is Ignorance and Fear. The Howonda swallow's 2 chief weapons are Ignorance, Fear and a fanatical devotion to the Archbishop of Vayzey. The Howondaland swallow's 3 chief weapons are ..." By which time, NPC has crossed the bridge.