I have a life simulator.

[Participation Prize: 500ml of drinking water per person]

"Putting aside the reward, this project seems quite fun."

Sakayanagi Arisu spoke first.

"And what's rare is that it's a topic that everyone can participate in."

Honami Ichinose nodded in agreement.

"I have never encountered a project with an unlimited number of participants so far."

Horikita Suzune glanced at Kitagawa Ryo:

"That's probably why someone keeps leaving the group and running around everywhere."

"Then let's go together!"

Kitagawa Ryo raised an eyebrow and shook his head dramatically:

"Actually, I've always avoided participating in the same research project as you, mainly because I'm afraid of discouraging you all too much and shattering your Dao hearts, since we're all in the same group."

Although it was a cheap way to provoke them, the girls cooperated and fought back. The four of them pushed and shoved each other, chatting and laughing, and finally chose this topic as their goal, heading in that direction.

Similar to the previous "Capture the Flag on the Beach" and "Cooking" events, this kind of topic with generous participation prizes easily attracted most of the nearby groups. By the time Kitagawa Ryo's group arrived, they had already filled more than half of the twenty spots.

Although Kitagawa Ryo's group was mainly there for the fun, the high reward for the top three also attracted the attention of elite groups from various classes. With just a quick glance, Kitagawa Ryo spotted Shiina Hiyori's group, Ayanokoji Kiyotaka, and Ryuen Sho.

After quickly reporting the names of the four members of their group to the teacher in charge, Kitagawa Ryo was just about to greet Shiina Hiyori when, unexpectedly, the teacher in charge stood up and announced:

"We now have twenty students participating, and the project is about to begin. Please get ready."

Kitagawa Ryo glanced back and saw that Katsuragi Kohei's group, which had arrived just moments after them, had filled the last four spots.

As the team currently ranked first in their group, Katsuragi Kohei and his three teammates immediately attracted everyone's attention upon their arrival. Apart from the students in Class A who were quite excited, the other three classes were secretly intimidated.

"It's okay, it's not an academic question, just a riddle."

Ishizaki Daichi, whom I had just met yesterday from Class 1-C, patted the shoulder of a rather thin boy with glasses next to him without any fear. This boy was Kaneda Satoru, a rare academic star in Class 1-C.

"That's precisely why I'm even more worried."

Kaneda Satoru smirked as he glanced at his group members: Ishizaki Daichi, the brute force specialist; Komiya Yogo, the basketball team substitute; and Yoshimoto Kosetsu, a member of the archery club (currently in a passionate relationship with a second-year student).

He doesn't seem like the type whose mind can make sudden turns.

However, Daichi Ishizaki's speech eased the atmosphere somewhat. After receiving the tablets from the school, the twenty participating students sat down and prepared to answer the questions, each maintaining a distance from the others.

As the first question appeared, the entire room fell silent instantly.

Kitagawa Ryo looked down at the question:

[Question 1: Police found a male body in a hotel. There was a bullet hole in his right temple from a close-range shooting. A pistol was clutched in his right hand, which was resting on his chest. A suicide note was found on the bedside table. Was the man's death a suicide or homicide? If so, please explain why.]

Kitagawa Ryo filled in the answer without even thinking:

[It was a homicide. A normal person cannot shoot themselves with their right hand and then put their hand back on their chest.]

[Second question: One summer night, teacher Taylor was found strangled to death in his living room. He was naked from the waist up when he died. Police quickly identified two suspects: Taylor's brother, Val, a notorious thug in the neighborhood who frequently borrowed money from Taylor for drugs; and Pete, the father of a student Taylor had recently expelled. Pete was short-tempered and mentally unstable, harboring resentment towards Taylor because of his son's expulsion.]

Who is the murderer? And why?

Kitagawa Ryo continued filling in the answers without blinking:

[Wal, a teacher wouldn't go shirtless to meet a student's parents in the living room.]

I don't know which detective magazine the school scavenged so many riddles from.

After easily passing nine questions in a row, Kitagawa Ryo was finally surprised when the question for the last one appeared.

[Question 10: Alice is trapped in locked room A. The room contains only a table with an unlimited supply of cookies that make her grow bigger and juice that makes her shrink. Room B is to the right of room A, and room B also has a table with a key that can open room A. Rooms A and B are connected only by a small mouse hole.]

[Given that neither room can be destroyed from the inside, and that juice cannot enter room B (it will disappear automatically if it does), how can Alice escape from room A?]

For the average student, this brain teaser, being the last question in the first round, might seem to have suddenly become much more difficult.

But Kitagawa Ryo was even more certain that the person who set the question for the school must have been reading some mystery magazine recently.

This is because it is the first mystery set up in the detective novel "Alice's Crime Wonderland".

Kitagawa Ryo couldn't help but look up at Shiina Hiyori in front of him, but unexpectedly his eyes met those of Sakayanagi Arisu, who was turning her head to the side.

She easily solved the last question. When she saw the Alice in Wonderland and the food that could grow bigger and smaller in the question, she immediately thought of "Alice in Wonderland" and Kitagawa Ryo, who recommended the book to her.

Seeing that Kitagawa Ryo had indeed looked up in her direction, Sakayanagi Arisu smiled slightly, gently closed her right eye and then opened it again, giving Kitagawa Ryo a rather playful wink.

Kitagawa Ryo also returned the smile, taking the opportunity to play along.

The story in "Alice's Sinful Wonderland" is based on "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland," so it's normal for Arisu Sakayanagi to make the connection.

As a reader who has read this book, Kitagawa Ryo easily wrote down the answer:

[Pile an unlimited number of cookies in front of the door of Room A to form a staircase leading to the keyhole. Then drink the juice to shrink in size, walk up the staircase to the keyhole, break off a small cookie from the cookie staircase, and leave through the keyhole. At the moment you jump out of the keyhole, eat the cookie, grow larger in mid-air, and land perfectly.]

In fact, many reasoning puzzles are essentially brain teasers; leaving the room does not necessarily mean you have to get the key.

Kitagawa Ryo used to often find similar small problems to compete with Shiina Hiyori to see who could solve them faster.

The answers to the ten questions were manually reviewed. About three minutes later, a message appeared on Kitagawa Ryo's tablet: "You have entered the second round."

Relieved, Kitagawa Ryo began to observe the reactions of the other contestants around him. Most of the students were stuck on the last question, scratching their heads and looking very troubled.

For example, Daichi Ishizaki was muttering to himself about why he couldn't keep growing bigger and bursting the room.

Actually, there isn't just one answer to this question. If you've read "Alice in Wonderland," you might be able to come up with a second answer.

Kitagawa Ryo looked at Horikita Suzune. He believed that Horikita Suzune had read this fairy tale and that she would be able to understand.

Horikita Suzune was also lost in thought. The words "Alice" and "growing bigger and smaller" immediately reminded her of that fairy tale. In the fairy tale, when Alice first entered the underground world, she was also locked in a house.

And then? The plot of the story is...

First, she ate the cake that made her grow bigger, and then Alice cried and cried because she was scared. The giant Alice shed tears like a flood.

Alice then discovered a potion that would shrink her after drinking it, and after shrinking, she was washed out of the house by her own tears.

After recalling the entire storyline, Horikita Suzune immediately typed out her answer:

Block the mouse hole with cookies, then fill the room with an unlimited amount of juice until it's level with the keyhole. Drink the juice, keep the cookies in your mouth, and finally swim out through the keyhole.

At the same time, Kiyotaka Ayanokoji also finished answering, and his answer was similar to that of Suzune Horikita.

Five minutes later, the teacher in charge raised her hand and announced:

"The first round of questions has ended. Students who have been eliminated, please return to the audience."

More than a dozen of the twenty people stood up in a flash, and Katsuragi Kohei's group was completely wiped out, with only three students remaining after the first round.

Kitagawa Ryo, Shiina Hiyori and Sakayanagi Arisu.

What's wrong with my answer?

Horikita Suzune raised her hand in confusion and asked a question. She repeated her answer to the last question, and Ayanokoji Kiyotaka also looked up at the teacher in charge.

He was also eliminated in the first round.

The teacher in charge waved his hand and explained:

"The idea is correct, but the details are not up to par. Cookies can't block the mouse hole. They will be softened and dissolved by the juice. The juice will keep flowing down the mouse hole to room B, but it can't enter room B. It will disappear in the middle. So the juice in room A can never be poured to be level with the keyhole."

Horikita Suzune and Ayanokoji Kiyotaka were taken aback.

Then he said to Sakayanagi Arisu:

"Her line of thinking was the same as yours, but her answer was correct."

Which step is different?

Horikita Suzune turned to Sakayanagi Arisu and asked.

"Just one place."

Sakayanagi Arisu smiled and tilted her head slightly:

I'll let you know when the project is finished.

Seeing that Sakayanagi Arisu didn't want to talk about it, the teacher in charge was too lazy to explain further:

"The second round of the project will begin soon."

"Please have the three students who passed the first round come up and draw lots."

The results of the lottery were quickly made public.

"The first match is between Hiyori Shiina and Arisu Sakayanagi."

"Kitagawa, why don't you go and rest for a bit?"

"Oh well."

Upon hearing this, Kitagawa Ryo also got up to leave. As he passed Shiina Hiyori, he heard her whisper something:

"It's Alice in Wonderland, because Ryo really likes this book, so I still remember the answer to this question."

This detail was noticed by Arisu Sakayanagi on the other side. She also smiled and whispered as Ryo Kitagawa passed by her:

"My answer is, let Alice take off all her clothes and use them to plug the hole."

Perhaps it was Sakayanagi Arisu's perverse sense of humor, but she deliberately emphasized the pronunciation of the words "strip naked," making it sound like a ticklish sensation that tantalizes the heart.

Kitagawa Ryo fled back to the audience seats.

Arisu (Alice)'s remarks were even bolder than he had imagined.

After Kitagawa Ryo left the field, Shiina Hiyori and Sakayanagi Arisu naturally began to confront each other. The two, with similar hair colors, stared at each other before simultaneously looking away.

The first person to receive ten questions and choose one to set as the question is Hiyori Shiina.

She seemed to have found a riddle she really liked.

There's a person who lives on the tenth floor. If there are other people in the elevator or it's raining, they will take the elevator directly to the tenth floor. However, whenever they ride the elevator alone, they only go up to the seventh floor and then climb three floors to get home. Why is that?

Sakayanagi Arisu took a deep breath; this wasn't a difficult question.

but.

The petite girl answered through gritted teeth:

“Someone can help press it; on a rainy day, you can hold an umbrella and press it, but one person can’t press it alone.”

"Because—I'm short."

Chapter 161: Is KISS a noun, a verb, or some other word?

After Shiina Hiyori finished asking her questions, it was Sakayanagi Arisu's turn. None of the ten questions the school had given her seemed to be to her liking, so she only glanced at them briefly before randomly choosing one:

George murdered the wealthy businessman John. To stage the scene as if John had committed suicide, he practiced imitating John's handwriting for a long time. After killing John in the study, he immediately wrote a suicide note on a piece of paper with an ink pen on John's desk and placed it aside. Then he put a pistol in John's hand and pointed it at his temple. After committing the crime, he carefully wiped away all the fingerprints he had left.

However, the police quickly determined that the suicide note was not in John's handwriting, but not through handwriting analysis. What method did they use to determine this?

After hearing the question, Shiina Hiyori lowered her head to think for a moment before immediately looking up and answering:

“George wiped away all his fingerprints after committing the crime, including the ink pen he used. So, although there were no fingerprints on the pen, there were no fingerprints on the pen either, which means that the suicide note was not written by John.”

In the audience, Hiyori Shiina and Mio Ibuki, who were in the same group, were also waving and cheering for her.

"Liang, which side do you think will win?"

Horikita Suzune seemed to still be bothered by the last question in the first round, and her expression wasn't very good.

"I think if all the questions are like this, it's highly unlikely that a winner will be decided."

Beichuan shrugged:

"Hiyori and Arisu have no problem with their knowledge and logical thinking. If I were to give them a question, I would have to ask them a question that hits their blind spot."

"Blind spot?"

"It's that kind of knowledge that you think everyone knows, but some people actually haven't encountered before. For example, if you ask Hiyori a riddle of the reasoning type, she could probably answer a hundred in a row, but if she encounters..."

Kitagawa Ryo didn't continue speaking, because with both of them answering correctly in the first round, Sakayanagi Arisu and Shiina Hiyori's question-asking game had entered the second round, and this time the order was reversed, with Sakayanagi Arisu asking the question first.

A fire broke out in the house. When the fire department arrived, they only managed to rescue one body. The only survivor was a woman. According to her statement, she was cooking lunch that day when, due to improper handling, the oil in the pan caught fire. In her haste, she mistakenly poured oil from a nearby bucket into the pan, causing the fire to intensify. She was forced to flee the house in a panic.

The fire department immediately determined that the other party was lying. Why was that?

"This question is quite easy."