Situation
puzzles are a whole class of puzzles, many of which are
old chestnuts, intended to be played as a game in which a certain
situation is described briefly and the players ask the situation-writer
questions, somewhat in a
Twenty Questions format, until they can
identify what is going on.
Some of the examples are relatively straightforward, such as the one in old chestnut: situation puzzles. Others get a bit more twisted. One of these goes, "George and Gracie lie dead on the floor, in a puddle of water, with shards of glass all around. What happened?" The answer to this one is that George and Gracie are goldfish and their bowl got knocked down and busted.
For some reason, the situations tend to involve a lot of death and violence, although some of them only seem to on the surface.
Unfortunately, these are often asked as brainteasers without enough information to really figure out the situation. (Unless you've seen it before!) In the example above, I give the results of a couple questions along with the initial scenario, to make it fair and possibly solvable.