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How to commit murder inside a locked room

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Re: How to commit murder inside a locked room

#81

Post by wzdd »

Douglas Adams did a great parody of this genre in The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul:

> "Gilks!" he said. "Your smart-alec suicide theory. I like it. It works for me. And I think I see how the clever bastard pulled it off. Bring me pen. Bring me paper."

> He sat down with a flourish at the cherrywood farmhouse table which occupied the centre of the rear portion of the room and deftly sketched out a scheme of events which involved a number of household or kitchen implements, a swinging, weighted light fitting, some very precise timing, and hinged on the vital fact that the record turntable was Japanese.

> "That should keep your forensic chaps happy," said Dirk briskly to Gilks. The forensic chaps glanced at it, took in its salient points and liked them. They were simple, implausible, and of exactly that nature which a coroner who liked the same sort of holidays in Marbella which they did would be sure to relish.

Re: How to commit murder inside a locked room

#82

Post by dontlaugh »

Melatonic wrote: post #56
onion2k wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And Deathloop is from Arkane Studios, who make very good games (Dishonoured in particular).

Havent had a chance to play that but I thought Prey was extremely underrated. Also hard as fuck on the harder difficulties however. Reminded me of a modern remake of the original Half Life on crack

Very good game, indeed. Clearly in the same tradition as System/Bio Shock.

Re: How to commit murder inside a locked room

#83

Post by zhte415 »

One needs to separate that there has been a murder with the perception there has been a murder.

The article mentions the possibility there has been no murder until someone enters the room and discovers/postulates there has been a murder.

What if no one ever enters, but no one ever leaves. Do we know the room is, in fact, not non empty, or is the room None?

Re: How to commit murder inside a locked room

#84

Post by mcv »

justinpombrio wrote: post #34

How to commit a murder inside a locked room, off the top of my head: - Are the windows locked? Otherwise it's a rock climber who can climb the side of the building. Some buildings are not that difficult to climb for a good climber. - The murderer was not in the room when the murder happened. Poison or a trap of some sort. (Kinda boring.) - The murderer was in the room when the murder happened, but locked the door beh…

> - The murderer was not in the room when the murder happened. Poison or a trap of some sort. (Kinda boring.)

Slow-acting poison seems easily the most obvious way to do it. I would hope every locked-room investigation quickly rules this out.

> - The murderer was in the room when the murder happened, but locked the door behind themselves. (This one doesn't really work because the door is presumably of a kind that can't be locked behind you, or else no one would be surprised. Good to double-check, though, that you're sure the door couldn't have been locked behind someone leaving.)

The clever trick might be in how the murderer managed to lock the door behind them. Using a magnet to shift the bolt, perhaps? (I'm sure this option must have been explored very early on in the locked-room genre.)

Re: How to commit murder inside a locked room

#85

Post by amelius »

Scarblac wrote: post #80
justinpombrio wrote: post #34

How to commit a murder inside a locked room, off the top of my head: - Are the windows locked? Otherwise it's a rock climber who can climb the side of the building. Some buildings are not that difficult to climb for a good climber. - The murderer was not in the room when the murder happened. Poison or a trap of some sort. (Kinda boring.) - The murderer was in the room when the murder happened, but locked the door beh…

- The murderer completely seals the room from the outside so that no oxygen can go in, and waits for the victim to suffocate. - Similar but just prevents the victim coming out long enough for them to die of thirst. - Murderer comes in with heavy machinery and breaks down the whole building except for the locked room, then lifts the locked room and drops it off a cliff.

Or throw some Havana style mystery in the mix.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-58396698

Re: How to commit murder inside a locked room

#86

Post by Ntrails »

justinpombrio wrote: post #34

How to commit a murder inside a locked room, off the top of my head: - Are the windows locked? Otherwise it's a rock climber who can climb the side of the building. Some buildings are not that difficult to climb for a good climber. - The murderer was not in the room when the murder happened. Poison or a trap of some sort. (Kinda boring.) - The murderer was in the room when the murder happened, but locked the door beh…

> Are the windows locked? Otherwise it's a rock climber who can climb the side of the building. Some buildings are not that difficult to climb for a good climber.

I'd probably rather just do a retrievable abseil to ground level to minimise risk. However I feel like we're subverting the meaning of "locked room" if it has unlocked egress points. ie ground floor window, or fire escape outside high window etc.

Re: How to commit murder inside a locked room

#87

Post by ASalazarMX »

copperx wrote: post #71
ASalazarMX wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Without reading mode You answered yourself. Read View is great even with well-behaved sites, use it generously. Edit: I retract my comment, Reader View shows about the last third of the article, and I had already blocked JavaScript there in a previous interaction. Vanity Fair sucks.

Or is it reader view the one that sucks?

It's the first case I've seen where Reader View shows incomplete content, and I use it almost daily because it makes long reads very comfortable. It might be that Reader View sucks, but I'm more inclined to blame Vanity Fair in this case.

Re: How to commit murder inside a locked room

#88

Post by hinkley »

boznz wrote: post #66
ridgeguy wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not familiar with the gas used in the Mystery show, but if it was nitrogen pumped into the victim's room, nobody in the rest of the hotel would have felt anything. Nitrogen is an excellent asphyxiant, with no sensible difference from air.

Could this method even be detected in an Autopsy ?

On cop procedurals the coroner often claims the victim died of asphyxiation. Whether that's true or not I couldn't say.

I know there are symptoms of hypoxia that can be readily diagnosed in a living patient.

Re: How to commit murder inside a locked room

#89

Post by jethro_tell »

justinpombrio wrote: post #34

How to commit a murder inside a locked room, off the top of my head: - Are the windows locked? Otherwise it's a rock climber who can climb the side of the building. Some buildings are not that difficult to climb for a good climber. - The murderer was not in the room when the murder happened. Poison or a trap of some sort. (Kinda boring.) - The murderer was in the room when the murder happened, but locked the door beh…

Carpenter here, how would you trim the door on the inside of you pulled it out?

That's gonna be pretty obvious.

Re: How to commit murder inside a locked room

#90

Post by GuB-42 »

Natsu wrote: post #3

That just gave me a crazy idea for a game, based on some similar books I've read online. Make a game where, say, you revive every time and your goal is to survive some set period of time but it's a mystery how to do so as many things are out to kill you. Say you have X hours before a large bomb will wipe out your city or whatever and several folks are waiting to kill you in the mean time or such and the goal is basic…

It reminds me of "428: Shibuya Scramble", a FMV-based visual novel that literally involves a bomb that will blow up in a very busy part of the city of Shibuya. At least that's the initial premise.

You have to make choices for different characters, and unless you get everything perfectly right, you die. There is often no way to know at first, but it is possible to go back in time and fix things up once you reach a bad ending.

This game is notable for having a perfect 40/40 score from Famitsu, a rare score usually only attributed to famous titles like some Zelda games. And yet, it is mostly unknown outside of Japan and it only got translated 10 years after it came out, in 2018.

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