Talk:Initiation

Has anyone else noticed the similarity between the opening riddle scene and Richard Feynman's story from Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman about being quizzed on puzzles at a dance?

"So I got a fancy reputation. During high school every puzzle that was known to man must have come to me. Every damn, crazy conundrum that people had invented, I knew. So when I got to MIT there was a dance, and one of the seniors had his girlfriend there, and she knew a lot of puzzles, and he was telling her that I was pretty good at them. So during the dance she came over to me and said, "They say you're a smart guy, so here's one for you: A man has eight cords of wood to chop. . ."      And I said, "He starts by chopping every other one in three parts," because I had heard that one.       Then she'd go away and come back with another one, and I'd always know it.       This went on for quite a while, and finally, near the end of the dance, she came over, looking as if she was going to get me for sure this time, and she said, "A mother and daughter are traveling to Europe. . ."      "The daughter got the bubonic plague." She collapsed! That was hardly enough clues to get the answer to that one: It was the long story about how a mother and daughter stop at a hotel and stay in separate rooms, and the next day the mother goes to the daughter's room and there's nobody there, or somebody else is there, and she says, "Where's my daughter?" and the hotel keeper says, "What daughter?" and the register's got only the mother's name, and so on, and so on, and there's a big mystery as to what happened. The answer is, the daughter got bubonic plague, and the hotel, not wanting to have to close up, spirits the daughter away, cleans up the room, and erases all evi¬dence of her having been there. It was a long tale, but I had heard it, so when the girl started out with, "A mother and daughter are traveling to Europe," I knew one thing that started that way, so I took a flying guess, and got it."