The Case of the Grounded Tightrope Walker

To me the circus is not the greatest show on earth—at least not while Cher is still touring—but I still love to go every year it’s in town. You see, I nearly joined the traveling show in my teens after a girl told me I looked sexy in clown makeup. After realizing she was certifiably crazy, I traded the three-ring circus for a three-ring binder of insurance forms, but I still feel the thrill every time I see the big top rising.

As I bounded up to the entrance amid a zoo of domesticated wild animals, plate spinners and conjoined contortionists, I spied something really odd: a man in a sparkly red unitard trying to walk across a twoby-four lying fl at in the trampled grass. With his arms out to the side, he would make it halfway across the board before his legs turned to jelly and he slipped off.

He looked like a man in need of answers, hopefully to the question: “What am I supposed to wear to a circus?” The unitard wasn’t working, unless he wanted to work on making strangers giggle. With time to kill before the first act, I walked over to offer my assistance.

“Sir, can I help you?”

“I can’t perform my act for the circus!” he thankfully interrupted.

“I am Ropert, the tightrope artist, and I’ve lost all my confidence because of some lousy insurance policy.”

“Wait right there. Insurance isn’t lousy…it’s just difficult to decipher sometimes, like a 3 a.m. tweet from Lindsay Lohan. Now spill it.”

“I suffered severe water damage on the second floor of the interior of my house. A heavy rainstorm caused water to accumulate on a second floor deck which seeped into the interior of the structure. My homeowner’s insurer denied coverage based on the surface water exclusion. But surface water refers to the accumulation of water on the ground, not 12 feet above it, right? If the ground can shift like that, raise a dozen feet up and back again, then I can’t imagine walking above it on the tightrope!”

“Ropert,” I said, watching the elephants walk by tail-to-trunk. “Your insurer’s argument is just like your deck—it doesn’t hold water.”

How was Ace going to cure this man’s performance anxiety?

For help solving this mystery and to check your solution against Ace’s, click here.

Jonathan Hermann (hermannism@gmail.com) is an IA contributing editor.