You Pass the Person in Last Place — What Place Are You In?

This race riddle sounds like a simple question, but there is a catch in the wording: You are running a race and pass the person in last place. What place are you in?

The answer is: you cannot normally pass the person in last place.

If someone is truly in last place, there should be nobody behind them in the race. For you to pass that person while running the same lap, you would have to be behind last place, which is not possible.

The only special case would be if you were lapping the runner, but that is not the usual interpretation of the riddle. The intended trick is to notice that “passing last place” is logically inconsistent in an ordinary race.

That is why the puzzle catches people who automatically answer “last” without thinking about the situation.

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