When did a teacher ask a question they secretly couldn't answer themselves? #shorts #redditstories — Transcript

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1. 0:00When did a teacher ask a question they
2. 0:01secretly couldn't answer themselves? Mr.
3. 0:03Vance had one tradition every senior
4. 0:04dreaded. Our entire final grade in AP
5. 0:06Government came down to a single
6. 0:07question. One question. He called it the
7. 0:08Gauntlet and for 18 years he bragged
8. 0:10that not one student had ever beaten it.
9. 0:11He'd stand at the front on the last day,
10. 0:13arms crossed, this thin smile on his
11. 0:14face. "Smartest kids in the state have
12. 0:16sat where you're sitting," he'd say.
13. 0:17"All of them failed, but please,
14. 0:19surprise me." The cruel part wasn't the
15. 0:20question. It was what came after. Vance
16. 0:22would read the best wrong answers out
17. 0:23loud to the whole class, doing voices,
18. 0:25pausing for laughs. Get it wrong in a
19. 0:26stupid way and you became the joke of
20. 0:27senior year. He'd been doing it so long
21. 0:29that being Gauntletted was a verb at our
22. 0:30school. I might have let it go. I really
23. 0:32might have. Except for what happened to
24. 0:33Eli Brennan. Eli sat next to me. Quiet
25. 0:35kid, worked two jobs, had a full ride to
26. 0:36State riding on his final GPA. He took
27. 0:38the Gauntlet seriously and studied logic
28. 0:39puzzles for weeks. When grades posted,
29. 0:41Vance had failed him. Eli lost the
30. 0:42scholarship by 4/100ths of a point. I
31. 0:44watched him clean out his locker like
32. 0:45someone had switched off a light inside
33. 0:47him. That's when I stopped being curious
34. 0:48and started paying attention. Here's the
35. 0:49thing about Vance. He kept a green
36. 0:51binder locked in the cabinet behind his
37. 0:52desk and he guarded it like it was
38. 0:53nuclear codes. Every year, same locked
39. 0:55drawer, same green binder. One day I
40. 0:57asked him straight up what was in it.
41. 0:58His whole face changed. "That," he said,
42. 1:00"is 18 years of people who thought they
43. 1:01were clever." Then he locked the cabinet
44. 1:03twice. So I did the thing nobody does. I
45. 1:05went and found the actual question. See,
46. 1:06Vance always called the Gauntlet "my own
47. 1:08creation, refined over two decades." But
48. 1:10I'd heard the puzzle before. Two doors,
49. 1:11one leads to freedom, one to death. Two
50. 1:13guards, one always lies, one always
51. 1:14tells the truth, and you don't know
52. 1:15which is which. You get one question to
53. 1:17one guard. What do you ask? I spent a
54. 1:18weekend in the public library instead of
55. 1:20studying. Turns out Vance's original
56. 1:21creation is one of the most famous logic
57. 1:23puzzles ever written. It's in textbooks.
58. 1:24It's in a movie. A mathematician named
59. 1:26Raymond Smullyan published the clean
60. 1:28version decades before Vance ever stood
61. 1:29in a classroom. And it has a correct
62. 1:31answer. A documented, agreed upon,
63. 1:33textbook printed correct answer. You ask
64. 1:35either guard, "If I ask the other guard
65. 1:36which door leads to freedom, what would
66. 1:37he say?" Then you pick the opposite
67. 1:39door. The liar and the truth-teller both
68. 1:40point you wrong, so you flip it. It
69. 1:41works every time. I photocopied the
70. 1:43textbook page. I printed the published
71. 1:44solution. Then I went to Ms. Reyes, who
72. 1:46was retiring that spring and had been at
73. 1:47the school longer than Vance. I asked
74. 1:48her one question. Had any senior ever
75. 1:50turned in that exact answer? She went
76. 1:51quiet for a long time. "Three that I
77. 1:53know of," she finally said. "He failed
78. 1:54all of them. Said their phrasing was
79. 1:55imperfect. One of those three was Eli."
80. 1:57Final exam day, Vance handed out the
81. 1:59single sheet with that smug little
82. 2:00smile. I wrote the correct answer, word
83. 2:02for word from the textbook, clean,
84. 2:03perfect. I turned it in first and sat
85. 2:05back down. He scanned it standing up in
86. 2:06front of everyone. I watched him get to
87. 2:07the answer. I watched him pause. And
88. 2:09then he did exactly what I knew he'd do.
89. 2:10Close, he announced to the room holding
90. 2:12my paper up, but not quite. The phrasing
91. 2:14fails. Another one for the binder. A few
92. 2:15kids laughed nervously. I raised my
93. 2:17hand. Can you show the class the correct
94. 2:18phrasing then since you have it? That's
95. 2:20not how this works. It's a simple
96. 2:21request, I said standing. You've said
97. 2:22for 18 years there's a right answer. So
98. 2:24show us. Read it out of the green The
99. 2:26room went dead silent. He stared at me.
100. 2:28That's when I set the textbook page on
101. 2:29his desk, then the printed solution,
102. 2:30then photocopies of the three failed
103. 2:32exams Miss Reyes had kept. That exact
104. 2:33answer marked wrong in his own
105. 2:34handwriting. This is Raymond Smullyan's
106. 2:36puzzle, I said loud enough for the back
107. 2:37row. It's in this textbook from 1982.
108. 2:39The answer I wrote is the published one.
109. 2:41You didn't write the gauntlet, you
110. 2:42copied it. And you've been failing the
111. 2:43students who actually solved it so you
112. 2:44could keep your little undefeated
113. 2:45streak. Vance's mouth opened. Nothing
114. 2:47came out. What I hadn't mentioned was
115. 2:48that our principal had been standing in
116. 2:49the doorway the whole time. I'd handed
117. 2:51her the same folder 20 minutes before
118. 2:52class. She wanted to see it for herself.
119. 2:54Mr. Vance, she said stepping in. I'd
120. 2:55like that green binder. Now, he didn't
121. 2:57have a single line left.