The End of the Search
A man was using a single photograph to search for a woman whose whereabouts were unknown.
One day, a friend looked at the photograph and said, “That looks familiar.”
The man went to the place his friend told him about.
He did not meet the woman, but when he found the same photograph there, he stopped searching for her.
Why did the man stop searching for the woman?
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Hints
Use as many hints as you need, one at a time.
Hint 1
He did not stop searching because he had found out where the woman was.
Hint 2
The friend did not say that they had met the woman in the photograph.
Hint 3
The man had never met the person he was searching for in person either.
Hint 4
The photograph had been sent by someone he met online, who said it was a picture of herself.
Hint 5
At a shop, the man found an item containing the same photograph.
Hint 6
The item was a picture frame, and the photograph had been placed inside as a sample.
Hint 7
The man considered the possibility that the person had used someone else’s photograph to misrepresent her identity.
Check the Answer
Answer
The woman the man was searching for was someone he had met online.
He had never met her in person and had only one photograph to go on: a picture she had sent him, saying it was of her.
At the shop his friend had told him about, the very same photograph was being used as a sample inside a picture frame for sale.
The man suspected that the person he had been talking to had used someone else’s photograph.
Searching for the woman in the picture might not lead him to the person he had been in contact with. With that in mind, he stopped searching.
Explanation
The man had become close to a woman he met online, and they had been exchanging messages.
She had sent him a photograph, saying, “This is me,” and he had believed her.
But one day, she stopped contacting him.
He had never met her in person or asked for her address. Worried that something might have happened to her, he began searching, showing the photograph to people he knew.
Then a friend said the photograph looked familiar and told him about a shop.
When the man went there, he found picture frames on display.
One of them contained the very same photograph the woman had sent him, used as a sample.
The picture he had believed was of her was a photograph anyone could obtain.
He suspected that the person he had been talking to had used someone else’s photograph to hide her own face.
If so, searching for the woman in the photograph would not help him find the person he had been in contact with.
He could no longer trust the identity she had presented to him, so he stopped searching for her using that photograph.
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