More anime lateral thinking puzzles

Two years ago I made a post of anime-themed lateral thinking puzzles, which are basically riddles that require you to use logic and put aside assumptions to solve. People seemed to like the original post (I enjoyed making them too), so today I felt like constructing some more anime lateral thinking puzzles…

Like last time, there are seven puzzles to solve. Just to note, I didn’t create these puzzles from scratch, but rather I took existing puzzles and tweaked them to be anime-themed ;) Also like last time, the hints and the solution can be viewed by selecting the text that follows each puzzle. I changed the hints part a bit by numbering each hint and making each succeeding hint more revealing.

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One day Spike and Jet decided to take a short break from bounty hunting and have a quick snack at a cafe on Mars. After walking in, Spike put five dollars on the counter and asked for a sandwich. The cashier asked if he wanted a cheese, ham, or turkey sandwich. Jet also put five dollars on the counter and asked for a sandwich. The cashier didn’t utter a word. He simply gave Jet a ham sandwich. How did he know that this was what Jet wanted?

Hints:
(1) This was not the last sandwich in the cafe. They still had plenty of others of the three kinds available.

(2) Neither Spike nor Jet (nor any of the Bebop crew!) knew the cashier or anyone at the cafe, nor had they ever been there before.

(3) Jet did not gesture in any way that he wanted the ham sandwich.

(4) Every item at the cafe has its price.
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Solution: There was a price list on the wall for all the items at the cafe. It was a small shop and thus only had three kinds of sandwiches. The cheese was three dollars, the turkey was four dollars, and the ham was five dollars. Spike put a five dollar bill on the counter, so he could have wanted any of the three. Jet put down five one dollar bills. The cashier correctly deduced that he wanted the ham.

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While wandering away from his Gurren teammates, Simon gets captured by a barbaric tribe of rogue Beastmen who decide that he should die. Kamina and the others soon come to his rescue and the chief of the tribe, being rather logical, gave Kamina a choice. He was to make a single statement. If it was true, Simon would be thrown off a cliff. If it was false, Simon would be eaten by the Beastmen. What statement did Kamina make that forced the chief to let Simon go?

Hints:
(1) Kamina must make a statement that is both true and false at the same time.

(2) It should be a statement that means any action the chief takes would place him in the position of having acted illogically.

(3) The statement has to do with the two ways Simon would die.
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Solution: Kamina made the statement, “Simon will be eaten by the Beastmen.” Now, if the chief does feed him to the Beastmen, his statement will have been true, so he should have been thrown off the cliff. But if he is thrown off the cliff, the statement will have been false, and he should have been eaten by the Beastmen. The chief admitted that the only fair course of action was to let Simon go free.

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Madoka and her family have a neighbor that lives a couple houses down named Mrs. Hashimoto, who was an invalid and vastly approaching her 94th birthday. One day they asked her into their house to do something that none of them could do. There was no skill that she had that one of them did not have, so why did they need her help?

Hints:
(1) Mrs. Hashimoto did indeed perform a physical task for them.

(2) It was not something they could do or learn to do for themselves.

(3) Mrs. Hashimoto would have been able to perform the same service for any other family.
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Solution: Mrs. Hashimoto acted as a witness to a document that Madoka’s parents signed.

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Within one dungeon of Sword Art Online, Kirito and Asuna become trapped in a room with two doors. One leads to certain death and the other leads to freedom. They don’t know which is which. One monster guards each door. They will let the duo choose one door, but upon doing so, they must go through it. They can, however, ask one of the monsters one question. The problem is that one monsters always tells the truth while the other always lies, and they don’t know which is which. What question should they ask?

Hints:
(1) They can’t bypass the riddle by killing the monsters or sneaking a peek through either of the doors.

(2) The two monsters know each other’s personalities. The lying one knows that the other always tells the truth and vice versa. The question has to do with this.
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Solution: The question that Kirito and Asuna ask one of the monsters is, “What would the other monster say if it was asked which door leads to freedom?” They then chose the other door. If you’re having trouble understanding, imagine that the door that leads to death is door #1 and the door that leads to freedom is door #2. If they ask the truthful monster this question, it would say that the lying monster would tell them door #1 (which is true). So they should go through the other door. If they asked the lying monster this question, it would say that the truthful monster would tell them door #1 (which is a lie). So again, they should go through the other door.

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Misato is driving down the street at 70 miles an hour. She passes three cars going 80 miles per hour, then gets pulled over by a police officer and is given a ticket. Why?

Hints:
(1) She did not go through red lights nor crash into anything or run anything over.

(2) She did not get a speeding ticket.
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Solution: She was driving the wrong way on the street.

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The landlord that the house Koyomi and his sisters live in (and parents too I assume though we don’t see them in the show…) is threatening to evict them. He’s a rather sick bastard who has perverted feelings towards Karen and wants her to agree to marry his son when she gets older. There are a lot of witnesses and in a false gesture of sincerity, the landlord offers them an opportunity to remain in the house without any marriage arrangement. He has a silk bag in which he says he has placed a white and a black stone from the footpath on which they’re standing. If Koyomi picks the white stone from the bag, then he wins and they can all stay in the house without any further issues; if he picks the black one, they lose. However, Koyomi saw him place two black stones in the bag. He can’t accuse the landlord of cheating, because he would say that his good character was called into question and storm off without showing the bag. How does the clever Koyomi win?

Hints:
(1) He wins without embarrassing the landlord in front of the witnesses.

(2) The solution lies in the fact that they’re standing on the footpath made up of the same black and (supposedly) white stones in the bag.
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Solution: Koyomi withdraws a stone and instantly drops in on the ground, pretending it was by accident. It gets lost amongst the others on the footpath. It then follows that the only way to know which color he picked is to look at the color of the one still in the bag…

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Yui walked into a restaurant and asked one of the waiters for a glass of water. They had never met each other before. The waiter pulled out a knife from under the counter and pointed it at Yui. After freaking out for a moment, Yui then said “Thank you” and walked out. Why should that be so?

Hints:
(1) The waiter was not expecting some kind of message or messenger.

(2) Yui was not expecting the waiter to pull out a knife.

(3) When Yui said “Thank you” she did indeed mean that she was grateful.

(4) The waiter was normal as was the water that he served.

(5) Yui, however, was not quite normal at the time (she had a slight ailment…nothing serious or long lasting, but annoying).
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Solution: Yui had the hiccups. The waiter recognized this from her speech when asking for the glass of water and pulled out the knife to give her a shock. It worked and cured the hiccups, so Yui was grateful (and no longer needed water).

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Hope you guys enjoyed these! Feel free to discuss or ask for help in the comments but try not to reveal the answers XD