Note: This is the official answer to the riddle: This Is Not a Drill!
Greetings, dear friends, casual visitors and greetings all the rest. We’ve had some very interesting solutions posted here for the last riddle. Brandon Tilley opined that they celebrated the chief’s promotion. Deimos Tel`Arin took this a little further and advised that, in addition to the promotion, there’s surviving the battle to celebrate. pilotg2 made a connection with the previous Potatoes Attack and came up with a very plausible scenario that literally connects all the dots between the two riddles! Amazing! Go go go pilotg2! Wan Kong Yew thinks this was a good answer too. And last but not least, GeekMom created a solution involving a traitor that gets discovered, proving that good always conquers evil. See all those interesting stories here.
As far as the correct solution for the riddle goes, here’s what happened, and how the story goes from here:
Smiling, the captain announces on the intercom:
“Everyone, rejoice, we have beaten the resilience record. The amount of time the crew of a ship of USS class can stand still in battle positions. This was the second test of the day, not for the security chief, but for all the crew. We managed 7 hours, 31 minutes, and 2 seconds, which is one hour more than the previous record, held by USS CakeCheese.”
“Hurray, hurray,” booms the ship with the enthusiastic crew, so loud that the member who had passed out and was on the way to the infirmary jumps up and shouts “hurray” as well, not really knowing why.
After some time the navigator announces:
“Captain, we’ve reached Jojoba.”
“Open hailing frequencies!” orders the captain, then greeting the Jojoba control tower officer on duty, “Greetings, and may Jojoba prosper! Requesting permission to enter orbit. My men are thirsty and hungry for some of your renowned potatoes!”
“Permission denied! You will not enter Jojoba system space. You are not granted permission to approach orbit. Set course backwards, expedite, or you will be fired upon.”
As the captain, and everyone, were still confused, seconds pass, then suddenly the chief of security shouts:
“Photon torpedo approaching, estimated impact seven seconds!”
“Shields up!” booms the captain. “Engines backward full. Code red. Open coded subspace transmitters, expedite! Transmit code three, seven, niner, four, five, eight, niner, three. Expedite.”
Just as he said the last word, and the chief officer pressed the Go button, the photon torpedo hits the shield, but the ship doesn’t shake or break.
“What is this new devilry?” asks the captain in a low voice, unable to comprehend the situation. The security chief, however, figures something out and smiles behind his panel.
What was happening? What did the security Chieftain Admiral understand that the others are still confused about?
Note: The official answer to this riddle has not yet been confirmed by the riddle maker. Make your best guess in the comments below. You can subscribe via RSS or email to get the new riddles and answers automatically.
7 comments ↓
Methinks they got hit by potatoes!
Methinks Deimos is correct.
I’ll have to go with the guess that this is yet ANOTHER test, this time set up by someone ranking above the captain to see if they could react quickly enough to counter an unexpected attack. There was never any actual danger.
Aren’t photons light particles? Maybe the photon torpedo was just a spotlight. And, if they had arrived at the Jojoba system, and there was a torpedo of light heading toward them with 7 seconds until impact, that would have to be coming from very far away, and approaching extremely quickly (as fast as, perhaps, the speed of LIGHT?!), so the only way they could possibly outrun it would to be to go backwards faster than the speed of light, OR turn out of the path of the light (doesn’t light travel in a straight line?) to avoid being hit.
Since the riddle says they were hit by the torpedo, but there was no effect, perhaps the security chief figured out that it was just a beam of light, and everybody had gotten worried about nothing?
Jojoba has been invaded by a hostile force. They didn’t want their friends to be captured so refused them entry. Instead of sending a real photon torpedo, they sent a load of potatoes.
No updates for more than 10 days? Come on, we want to know the answer!
Mr Riddler? Where are you?
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