A man comes home from work and says “honey I m home”. The microwave is on, defrosting a chicken dinner. From the bedroom his wife shouts “Hi sweetie, could you have a look at the microwave and tell me how much time is left?”
He immediately runs out and calls the police, informing him that his wife is in danger? Why?
Short answer (the classic solution): he checked the microwave timer and it read “9:11” — i.e. 9:11 → 911 — so he realized his wife was signalling for help and called the police.
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Detailed explanation
The scene is set to sound ordinary: he comes home, the microwave is on, and his wife calls from the bedroom asking him to “have a look at the microwave and tell me how much time is left.”
That request is odd in an ordinary situation: anyone who’s safe and free to move can check the microwave time for themselves, so asking someone else to check it is unnecessary unless there’s a reason she can’t or mustn’t move or speak openly.
The usual riddle solution fills that gap by adding one small but crucial detail: when he looks at the microwave clock the display shows 9:11 (minutes:seconds). That is an unmistakable, deliberate signal — it reads like “911” — so the husband interprets it as an emergency plea and calls the police immediately.
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Why that works as a riddle
It depends on reading a mundane detail (a microwave timer) as a coded signal. The wife’s wording (“could you have a look…?”) is the hint that something is off — she couldn’t say “Call the police” out loud — so she uses the microwave display as a covert way to ask for help.
The twist is simple and visual: 9:11 looks like 911, so it’s an emergency code built from ordinary objects.
Other plausible interpretations & criticisms
Some people point out the riddle is underspecified: it never explicitly says the man actually looked at the timer, nor that it showed 9:11. If you allow that implicit step, the 9:11 answer is tidy; if you don’t, many other explanations (the man is blind, the wife is being coerced, she set the timer deliberately before danger, etc.) could also fit.
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Riddles like this trade realism for the “aha” moment; the neat 9:11 reading is more a lateral-thinking trick than a rigorously realistic short story.
Bottom line
The widely accepted solution: the husband reads “9:11” on the microwave display and understands his wife is covertly signaling for help, so he calls the police. It’s a small, clever twist that depends on noticing the unnecessary request and the visual pun of the timer.
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