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You are standing in front of water-filled pool with hungry and aggressive human-eating sharks. You scratch your skin so that you bleed, which will make the sharks even more hungry. You then take a leap into the pool and walk slowly until you reach the other end of the pool. You step out of the pool unharmed.

Why?

(The sharks are alive and you are walking in the same pool as the sharks)

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  • $\begingroup$ Unharmed except for the scratch, that is. ;) $\endgroup$
    – twasbrillig
    Dec 23, 2015 at 23:16
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    $\begingroup$ Is the question "why did you do it?" or "how did you remain unharmed?" $\endgroup$
    – 2012rcampion
    Dec 24, 2015 at 3:00
  • $\begingroup$ Since it's closed, I'll put my two cents in this comment: you scratched your skin on your forehead, but the pool isn't deep enough to reach your head, so the sharks aren't attracted by the blood. Since you walk slowly, they do not notice you as a potential food source and, thus, leave you alone. $\endgroup$
    – Gunnar Södergren
    Jan 7, 2016 at 11:04
  • $\begingroup$ answer: 'The pool is a planet and the man is a room outside.' Utter crap if you ask me, but the original riddle apparently spawned a bit of a meme-thing on the subject. wikifaqs.net/index.php?title=Lateral_Thinking $\endgroup$
    – Tim Couwelier
    Jan 20, 2016 at 16:58

4 Answers 4

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you are not a human, so the human-eating sharks don't care

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- There are fences/nets keeping the sharks away from you.
- You wear plate armor.
- You are Keanu Reeves, there are no spoons sharks.
- There was a substance in the water which made all sharks fall asleep.

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The pool is a circle with diameter of 100 feet, and depth of 30 feet. But across the middle of the pool is a rectangular section that is one foot wide and only 1 inch deep. You walk across this section. The sharks are on either side of the section so they cannot hurt you. It looks something like this:
enter image description here

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  • $\begingroup$ I would not dare to walk there $\endgroup$
    – DrunkWolf
    Dec 24, 2015 at 11:20
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You are lying. There are no sharks.

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