14 ms·

Two images of the miners' strike, an instant apart: so which is the classic?

115 points by prismatic 8y ago

retSava 8y ago
The famous photo of the Tank man from Tianamen square is shown in the article, and it's the most common view. But, it doesn't convey very well what the person must have seen. Standing up to a handful of tanks must require guts of steel, but standing up to a battalion of tanks is surreal. The following photo shows this much better: https://imgur.com/a/OkjFI6j https://imgur.com/a/OkjFI6j
- SonicSoul 8y ago
  Whoa, I’ve never seen this one thanks!
- ataturk 8y ago
  Except off camera, tank man was murdered along with hundreds of other people and tossed in a mass grave because that's how China rolls.
sureaboutthis 8y ago
Television "news" used to be really good about providing cinematic images instead of reality. A crowd of protestors on the street but, when the camera pulls back, you find the "crowd" is about 10 people and no one else paying any attention to them. Fortunately, some are better about pulling back intentionally to show such things but I still catch it occasionally.
- fabatka 8y ago
  A good example of this was when the hungarian state television reported on a protest. The reporter stood blocks away from the protest itself and reported that there were practically no protesters. In contrast, a non-state owned television's reporter was standing among the protesters, so the difference is astounding: https://thecontrarianhungarian.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/publictvreporting.png?w=640 https://thecontrarianhungarian.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/p... [0] [0] https://thecontrarianhungarian.wordpress.com/2012/01/08/to-the-margins-of-an-early-january-protest-in-hungary/ https://thecontrarianhungarian.wordpress.com/2012/01/08/to-t...
- kitd 8y ago
  On a similar theme, 2 of my favourite photos were taken when I was safariing in Tanzania. The first, 3 lions clustering over a recent kill, an example of wild, raw Africa. The 2nd, pulled back, has the 3 lions in the background and about a dozen Jeeps in the foreground, all with heads stuck out the top like me taking photos. The 2nd one even has someone looking into my lens with a slightly guilty look on their face, as if they knew I was revealing "commercialised" Africa.
- sparkzilla 8y ago
  Or when a well-known TV anchor pretends a whole area is flooded, but is actually standing in a ditch.
  - cannonedhamster 8y ago
    Please tell me you're not referencing the widely debunked Anderson Cooper conspiracy theory. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/anderson-cooper-hurricane/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/anderson-cooper-hurricane/
- baud147258 8y ago
  A more ironic version is when the journalist taking pictures of the protest are more numerous than the protest
- TheOtherHobbes 8y ago
  Here's another example. https://www.thecanary.co/uk/2017/05/13/a-bystander-took-a-behind-the-scenes-photo-of-theresa-may-that-reduces-her-campaign-to-a-sham-image/ https://www.thecanary.co/uk/2017/05/13/a-bystander-took-a-be...
theBobBob 8y ago
There is a brilliant picture illustrating this. I tried to track it down but couldn't find it anywhere. It is actually three "different" pictures. The first is a soldier (I believe it was US soldier) giving a drink of water to a very tired or distressed looking man (I think he looked Middle Eastern). The second was a very tired or distressed looking man (the same one in the same pose) with a soldier (different to the first one) pointing an assault rifle a the unarmed man's head. The third was actually just the full pulled out picture i.e. a soldier giving water to a very tired or distressed looking man while another soldier held an assault rifle to his head. It very powerfully shows that you can be reporting on facts but depending on how you frame it (in this case literally) can completely change the message behind the "facts" that you are reporting on. One picture showed the US army as a generous saviour to this poor man. The other showed the US soldier as a monster that was pointing a rifle at a poor distressed man's head. The third showed that is was actually both or maybe neither. Really wish I could track that one down.
- dessant 8y ago
  This is the uncropped image: https://i.imgur.com/hR2yEBe.jpg https://i.imgur.com/hR2yEBe.jpg And these are the versions with different framing: https://www.penser-critique.be/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/cadrage.jpg https://www.penser-critique.be/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/ca...
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - emeraldd 8y ago
    Looking at the full picture, that rifle is very likely not even pointed at the man being given water. I wouldn't be surprised to find that the solder with the weapon is facing away from the whole scene, and not watching the two helping the man on the ground at all.
    - russh 8y ago
      I think it only looks like the rifle is pointed at the man because it was taken with a telephoto lens that compresses the depth of the image a lot.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
finnthehuman 8y ago
Pictures are how the press misleads us, in a way where they don't have to acknowledge to us (and often not even to themselves) what they're doing. Here's some interesting commentary on that: https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2008/09/mms_chicks_oil_sex_drugs_and_a.html https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2008/09/mms_chicks_oil_sex_d... https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2010/07/did_bp_fake_a_picture_yes_but.html https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2010/07/did_bp_fake_a_pictur...
- Shivetya 8y ago
  they merely follow the lead of politicians and political machines everywhere. both strive on strive. To do so requires separating people along ideals and the first step to that is misrepresentation or distortion of a fact and then exploiting that without backing off. the internet turned a lot of that upside down while enabling more to begin with. however in the end many more eyes on the news means it is possible to get to the truth a lot easier than before
everdev 8y ago
A picture is worth a thousand words, but also a thousand questions. It's amazing how we can craft an entire narrative for an event from a split second of light exposure.
- mbrumlow 8y ago
  This is where things went wrong. It was the job of the journalist to do this, eg, pick the best images that convey what really happened. Along the way the news and journalist changed. Now they are all politically aligned and do their best to pick the images that best align with their political agendas. At some point we are going to have to put a stop to bias reporting and force news organizations to either not be called "news" or report un framed - unbiased --- facts. I don't need to hear the reporters, or anybody from the news organizations opinion on the matter. I just what the raw information.
  - frabbit 8y ago
    I disagree with the idea that: 1)journalists were ever not politically aligned; 2) that it is possible to have unbiased reporting. I think it is more honest to admit that we are all highly political... especially the people that claim that they are not, or that a particular question is not political. In fact the latter is one of my bug-bears about HN culture. Frequently it is claimed that discussing politics is divisive and/or uninformative. I consider this to be a veiled (possibly unconscious) desire to claim that there are objective realities about non-physical/mensurable observations. All is politics. The most honest journalism is that which admits its bias and makes its best explicit case for how well its model fits the world.
    - mbrumlow 8y ago
      Sure, you could say it is all politics, and it would be hard to separate out any biases and political views form these organizations. But I think most can read between the lines. These things are on a scale, say from 0 to 9. At some point in the past - bias and political charged reporting and news was was closer to say a 3. But today our news organizations have cranked it up to a 11.
benj111 8y ago
So I suppose these prove that photography is art? (down to our interpretation, provoke an emotional response). So that leads on to other questions. Why hasn't photography developed the same delineation between 'documentary' and 'art', that film seems to have developed? These images seem quite stylised,and emotive in a way that tv news isn't (even those pictures of African kids with flies in their eyes). Even in text theres stylistic differences between 'news' and 'novel'. To put it in perhaps a clearer way. I could see these hanging in an art gallery. I wouldn't expect a newspaper to win a literature award, or a news item to win a film award. And yes there are many exceptions to both those examples :)
- fetus8 8y ago
  Photography has developed a very defined delineation between "documentary" and "art". For reference, compare the work of Dorothea Lange versus Robert Mapplethorpe. Lange's body of work definitely consists of many works of "art" but I think it all fits nicely into the category of documentary and photojournalism. Mapplethorpe on the other hand produced many pieces of "art" but rarely did it fall into the category of documentary. There are some artists, perhaps, Diane Arbus, who made art out of documenting marginalized peoples. The point being, photography has developed a delineation between documentary and art, but there's also quite a bit of overlap. That overlap exists in film as well. There are a variety of documentary films that would also be considered works of art.
  - benj111 8y ago
    "Lange's body of work definitely consists of many works of "art" but I think it all fits nicely into the category of documentary and photojournalism" That kind of proves my point? Yes Mapplethorpe's work is definitely 'art', Langes work isn't definitely 'documentary', to the point that if you saw a picture in isolation, I'm not sure you could reliably say which it was /supposed/ to be. I'm aware the line between 'art' and 'documentary' are very slippery. Thus the inverted commas, and thus (I would argue) the need for clear delineation. As I said in my prior post, there are plenty of exceptions, but I'm not sure you can get much past generalisations without defining art. And I've yet to see a definition of art without exceptions, to the definition. Edit: To expand further. Think of films like District 9 or Blair Witch Project. Both are shot in a 'documentary' style, but both are 'art'. But both are A. Notable for being in the opposing style (they're exceptions that prove the rule). B. Understood that they aren't really real (they aren't seeking to mislead). You don't really get that in photography, although the limitation of the medium doesn't really allow you to do that set up.
jlawson 8y ago
I'm reminded of almost every image you see of Trump interacting with world leaders. Merkel A: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/angela-merkel-donald-trump-photo-viral-g7-shinzo-abe-a8392186.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/angela-mer... Merkel B: https://www.thenational.ae/world/the-americas/donald-trump-slams-canadian-prime-minister-justin-trudeau-as-g7-summit-ends-in-farce-1.738392 https://www.thenational.ae/world/the-americas/donald-trump-s... Trudeau A: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/07/01/donald-trumps-very-affectionate-tweet-about-justin-trudeau-explained/?utm_term=.56fc14a67294 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/07/01... Trudeau B: https://ottawacitizen.com/news/politics/watch-live-justin-trudeau-and-donald-trump-hold-a-joint-news-conference https://ottawacitizen.com/news/politics/watch-live-justin-tr... When these are used to manipulate as they so often are, I consider these lies just the same as if they were printed words. Imagine your friend sent you a photo like this with the implication that the people were being aggressive somehow, but it turned out to be an instantaneous facial expression in a completely different moment. Such choice of image is a way for the media to lie with some veneer of deniability, and they do it every chance they get. It's even worse on Twitter. And don't remind me of the images of the Kavanaugh hearing...
- frabbit 8y ago
  Those are very good examples of how choosing from among(what must now with digital cameras tens or hundreds of ) images can result in very different perceptions of what an event truly was.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - ianmcgowan 8y ago
    Meta: can we ever know what "an" event truly was? Or are there as many events as there are people there? This whole thread reminds me of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talking_It_Over https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talking_It_Over) which goes over the same events from three different perspectives. There's a rich tradition of trying to figure this out through art...
bobthechef 8y ago
Manipulation and outright lying with the help of photographs is common. A recent example I came across were the (by now routine) claims of independent day events in Poland marred by fascism in Poland. The Western or Western-owned media (80% of Polish media is German-owned) will throw up an image of a tightly cropped image of a few shouting people holding flags of meaning unknown to the Western eye and make frankly slanderous claims in the article. Knowing people who actually attended the festivities can help, and by their accounts there was no such presence and such questions have only provoked quizzical looks. Further investigation revealed that there indeed was a group of protestors, but that it was very small, was present somewhere on the periphery for a very brief period of time, and were not fascists but nationalists (i.e., those who believe in the sovereignty of the nation state, etc, though I realize that fascism and nationalism have been tirelessly conflated by globalists either out of ignorance or malice). In a word, this was nothing but a routine and frankly unnoticeable presence of a group of people most people probably don't even know exist. But now you have people unjustly believing Poland is an emerging fascist state which gives globalists leverage. Basically, while fake news is a problem, we should not be too eager to believe the corporate and official media that present a simple, comfortable, easy to believe, self-serving narrative to us.
- vkou 8y ago
  How do you know that there were only a few nationalists, and no fascists present at the celebration? Does your news source of choice not have an agenda?
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
apo 8y ago
Huh? The article does a poor job of answering the question posed in the title (please, author, just tell me which is the "classic"). I've never seen the image in question and just wanted to get that basic fact straight before reading. The article leads with two side-by-side images. The one on the right, apparently, is the "classic" one. However, it has been cropped, which makes the comparison pointless. The caption is no help either, just giving the photographer's last name but not identifying the "classic." Was the goal to force the reader solve the riddle for themselves? If so, it ruins the rest of the discussion.

115 points by prismatic 8y ago

The famous photo of the Tank man from Tianamen square is shown in the article, and it's the most common view. But, it doesn't convey very well what the person must have seen. Standing up to a handful of tanks must require guts of steel, but standing up to a battalion of tanks is surreal. The following photo shows this much better: https://imgur.com/a/OkjFI6j https://imgur.com/a/OkjFI6j

SonicSoul 8y ago
Whoa, I’ve never seen this one thanks!
ataturk 8y ago
Except off camera, tank man was murdered along with hundreds of other people and tossed in a mass grave because that's how China rolls.

sureaboutthis 8y ago

Television "news" used to be really good about providing cinematic images instead of reality. A crowd of protestors on the street but, when the camera pulls back, you find the "crowd" is about 10 people and no one else paying any attention to them. Fortunately, some are better about pulling back intentionally to show such things but I still catch it occasionally.

fabatka 8y ago
A good example of this was when the hungarian state television reported on a protest. The reporter stood blocks away from the protest itself and reported that there were practically no protesters. In contrast, a non-state owned television's reporter was standing among the protesters, so the difference is astounding: https://thecontrarianhungarian.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/publictvreporting.png?w=640 https://thecontrarianhungarian.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/p... [0] [0] https://thecontrarianhungarian.wordpress.com/2012/01/08/to-the-margins-of-an-early-january-protest-in-hungary/ https://thecontrarianhungarian.wordpress.com/2012/01/08/to-t...
kitd 8y ago
On a similar theme, 2 of my favourite photos were taken when I was safariing in Tanzania. The first, 3 lions clustering over a recent kill, an example of wild, raw Africa. The 2nd, pulled back, has the 3 lions in the background and about a dozen Jeeps in the foreground, all with heads stuck out the top like me taking photos. The 2nd one even has someone looking into my lens with a slightly guilty look on their face, as if they knew I was revealing "commercialised" Africa.
sparkzilla 8y ago
Or when a well-known TV anchor pretends a whole area is flooded, but is actually standing in a ditch.
- cannonedhamster 8y ago
  Please tell me you're not referencing the widely debunked Anderson Cooper conspiracy theory. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/anderson-cooper-hurricane/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/anderson-cooper-hurricane/
baud147258 8y ago
A more ironic version is when the journalist taking pictures of the protest are more numerous than the protest
TheOtherHobbes 8y ago
Here's another example. https://www.thecanary.co/uk/2017/05/13/a-bystander-took-a-behind-the-scenes-photo-of-theresa-may-that-reduces-her-campaign-to-a-sham-image/ https://www.thecanary.co/uk/2017/05/13/a-bystander-took-a-be...

theBobBob 8y ago

There is a brilliant picture illustrating this. I tried to track it down but couldn't find it anywhere. It is actually three "different" pictures. The first is a soldier (I believe it was US soldier) giving a drink of water to a very tired or distressed looking man (I think he looked Middle Eastern). The second was a very tired or distressed looking man (the same one in the same pose) with a soldier (different to the first one) pointing an assault rifle a the unarmed man's head. The third was actually just the full pulled out picture i.e. a soldier giving water to a very tired or distressed looking man while another soldier held an assault rifle to his head. It very powerfully shows that you can be reporting on facts but depending on how you frame it (in this case literally) can completely change the message behind the "facts" that you are reporting on. One picture showed the US army as a generous saviour to this poor man. The other showed the US soldier as a monster that was pointing a rifle at a poor distressed man's head. The third showed that is was actually both or maybe neither. Really wish I could track that one down.

dessant 8y ago
This is the uncropped image: https://i.imgur.com/hR2yEBe.jpg https://i.imgur.com/hR2yEBe.jpg And these are the versions with different framing: https://www.penser-critique.be/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/cadrage.jpg https://www.penser-critique.be/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/ca...
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- emeraldd 8y ago
  Looking at the full picture, that rifle is very likely not even pointed at the man being given water. I wouldn't be surprised to find that the solder with the weapon is facing away from the whole scene, and not watching the two helping the man on the ground at all.
  - russh 8y ago
    I think it only looks like the rifle is pointed at the man because it was taken with a telephoto lens that compresses the depth of the image a lot.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

finnthehuman 8y ago

Pictures are how the press misleads us, in a way where they don't have to acknowledge to us (and often not even to themselves) what they're doing. Here's some interesting commentary on that: https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2008/09/mms_chicks_oil_sex_drugs_and_a.html https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2008/09/mms_chicks_oil_sex_d... https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2010/07/did_bp_fake_a_picture_yes_but.html https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2010/07/did_bp_fake_a_pictur...

Shivetya 8y ago
they merely follow the lead of politicians and political machines everywhere. both strive on strive. To do so requires separating people along ideals and the first step to that is misrepresentation or distortion of a fact and then exploiting that without backing off. the internet turned a lot of that upside down while enabling more to begin with. however in the end many more eyes on the news means it is possible to get to the truth a lot easier than before

everdev 8y ago

A picture is worth a thousand words, but also a thousand questions. It's amazing how we can craft an entire narrative for an event from a split second of light exposure.

mbrumlow 8y ago
This is where things went wrong. It was the job of the journalist to do this, eg, pick the best images that convey what really happened. Along the way the news and journalist changed. Now they are all politically aligned and do their best to pick the images that best align with their political agendas. At some point we are going to have to put a stop to bias reporting and force news organizations to either not be called "news" or report un framed - unbiased --- facts. I don't need to hear the reporters, or anybody from the news organizations opinion on the matter. I just what the raw information.
- frabbit 8y ago
  I disagree with the idea that: 1)journalists were ever not politically aligned; 2) that it is possible to have unbiased reporting. I think it is more honest to admit that we are all highly political... especially the people that claim that they are not, or that a particular question is not political. In fact the latter is one of my bug-bears about HN culture. Frequently it is claimed that discussing politics is divisive and/or uninformative. I consider this to be a veiled (possibly unconscious) desire to claim that there are objective realities about non-physical/mensurable observations. All is politics. The most honest journalism is that which admits its bias and makes its best explicit case for how well its model fits the world.
  - mbrumlow 8y ago
    Sure, you could say it is all politics, and it would be hard to separate out any biases and political views form these organizations. But I think most can read between the lines. These things are on a scale, say from 0 to 9. At some point in the past - bias and political charged reporting and news was was closer to say a 3. But today our news organizations have cranked it up to a 11.

benj111 8y ago

So I suppose these prove that photography is art? (down to our interpretation, provoke an emotional response). So that leads on to other questions. Why hasn't photography developed the same delineation between 'documentary' and 'art', that film seems to have developed? These images seem quite stylised,and emotive in a way that tv news isn't (even those pictures of African kids with flies in their eyes). Even in text theres stylistic differences between 'news' and 'novel'. To put it in perhaps a clearer way. I could see these hanging in an art gallery. I wouldn't expect a newspaper to win a literature award, or a news item to win a film award. And yes there are many exceptions to both those examples :)

fetus8 8y ago
Photography has developed a very defined delineation between "documentary" and "art". For reference, compare the work of Dorothea Lange versus Robert Mapplethorpe. Lange's body of work definitely consists of many works of "art" but I think it all fits nicely into the category of documentary and photojournalism. Mapplethorpe on the other hand produced many pieces of "art" but rarely did it fall into the category of documentary. There are some artists, perhaps, Diane Arbus, who made art out of documenting marginalized peoples. The point being, photography has developed a delineation between documentary and art, but there's also quite a bit of overlap. That overlap exists in film as well. There are a variety of documentary films that would also be considered works of art.
- benj111 8y ago
  "Lange's body of work definitely consists of many works of "art" but I think it all fits nicely into the category of documentary and photojournalism" That kind of proves my point? Yes Mapplethorpe's work is definitely 'art', Langes work isn't definitely 'documentary', to the point that if you saw a picture in isolation, I'm not sure you could reliably say which it was /supposed/ to be. I'm aware the line between 'art' and 'documentary' are very slippery. Thus the inverted commas, and thus (I would argue) the need for clear delineation. As I said in my prior post, there are plenty of exceptions, but I'm not sure you can get much past generalisations without defining art. And I've yet to see a definition of art without exceptions, to the definition. Edit: To expand further. Think of films like District 9 or Blair Witch Project. Both are shot in a 'documentary' style, but both are 'art'. But both are A. Notable for being in the opposing style (they're exceptions that prove the rule). B. Understood that they aren't really real (they aren't seeking to mislead). You don't really get that in photography, although the limitation of the medium doesn't really allow you to do that set up.

jlawson 8y ago

I'm reminded of almost every image you see of Trump interacting with world leaders. Merkel A: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/angela-merkel-donald-trump-photo-viral-g7-shinzo-abe-a8392186.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/angela-mer... Merkel B: https://www.thenational.ae/world/the-americas/donald-trump-slams-canadian-prime-minister-justin-trudeau-as-g7-summit-ends-in-farce-1.738392 https://www.thenational.ae/world/the-americas/donald-trump-s... Trudeau A: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/07/01/donald-trumps-very-affectionate-tweet-about-justin-trudeau-explained/?utm_term=.56fc14a67294 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/07/01... Trudeau B: https://ottawacitizen.com/news/politics/watch-live-justin-trudeau-and-donald-trump-hold-a-joint-news-conference https://ottawacitizen.com/news/politics/watch-live-justin-tr... When these are used to manipulate as they so often are, I consider these lies just the same as if they were printed words. Imagine your friend sent you a photo like this with the implication that the people were being aggressive somehow, but it turned out to be an instantaneous facial expression in a completely different moment. Such choice of image is a way for the media to lie with some veneer of deniability, and they do it every chance they get. It's even worse on Twitter. And don't remind me of the images of the Kavanaugh hearing...

frabbit 8y ago
Those are very good examples of how choosing from among(what must now with digital cameras tens or hundreds of ) images can result in very different perceptions of what an event truly was.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- ianmcgowan 8y ago
  Meta: can we ever know what "an" event truly was? Or are there as many events as there are people there? This whole thread reminds me of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talking_It_Over https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talking_It_Over) which goes over the same events from three different perspectives. There's a rich tradition of trying to figure this out through art...

bobthechef 8y ago

Manipulation and outright lying with the help of photographs is common. A recent example I came across were the (by now routine) claims of independent day events in Poland marred by fascism in Poland. The Western or Western-owned media (80% of Polish media is German-owned) will throw up an image of a tightly cropped image of a few shouting people holding flags of meaning unknown to the Western eye and make frankly slanderous claims in the article. Knowing people who actually attended the festivities can help, and by their accounts there was no such presence and such questions have only provoked quizzical looks. Further investigation revealed that there indeed was a group of protestors, but that it was very small, was present somewhere on the periphery for a very brief period of time, and were not fascists but nationalists (i.e., those who believe in the sovereignty of the nation state, etc, though I realize that fascism and nationalism have been tirelessly conflated by globalists either out of ignorance or malice). In a word, this was nothing but a routine and frankly unnoticeable presence of a group of people most people probably don't even know exist. But now you have people unjustly believing Poland is an emerging fascist state which gives globalists leverage. Basically, while fake news is a problem, we should not be too eager to believe the corporate and official media that present a simple, comfortable, easy to believe, self-serving narrative to us.

vkou 8y ago
How do you know that there were only a few nationalists, and no fascists present at the celebration? Does your news source of choice not have an agenda?

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

apo 8y ago

Huh? The article does a poor job of answering the question posed in the title (please, author, just tell me which is the "classic"). I've never seen the image in question and just wanted to get that basic fact straight before reading. The article leads with two side-by-side images. The one on the right, apparently, is the "classic" one. However, it has been cropped, which makes the comparison pointless. The caption is no help either, just giving the photographer's last name but not identifying the "classic." Was the goal to force the reader solve the riddle for themselves? If so, it ruins the rest of the discussion.