Clever People Share Life’s Most Useful Loopholes

It may seem like it’s easy to play life by the rules without worrying about getting in trouble for stepping over your bounds, but there are some loopholes around that could score you free food, more TV channels and even better service when you’re on the move.

After all, these tips aren’t against the rules, they’re just a hidden advantage. 

Keep Your Wits About You

The Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution provides that people must be tried for crimes in, and have a jury drawn from, the state and district in which the crime occurred.

Now, when it comes to Federal Court districts, generally that’s a non-issue; all states have at least one federal district, and the borders of that district are usually coterminous with the borders of the state.

Usually.

However, for convenience, Yellowstone National Park, which is mostly in the state of Wyoming but spills over slightly into Idaho and Montana, was placed entirely within the Federal Court district of Wyoming. NBD, right? Wrong.

The tiny sliver of Idaho covered by Yellowstone (and therefore in the District of Wyoming) has no inhabitants whatsoever. Therefore, no federal jury could be chosen from there.

Nevertheless, any federal crime committed in that area must be tried there, with a jury drawn from there. A jury from any other area of Wyoming or Idaho would be a violation of the Sixth Amendment.

Therefore you could technically get away with murder in this “Zone of Death,” because you could not be constitutionally convicted by due process of law.

Federal judges have said that as a practical matter the law would never allow such an outrage to stand, but do you really want to depend on that?

No one has shifted the district borders even though this lacuna in the law was discovered several years ago, so if you find yourself hiking with your worst enemy in a certain remote tract of Idaho, well… make sure you keep your wits about you.

Story credit: Reddit / Wrkncacnter112

Way Over My Head

A loophole in my Physics class kept me from failing the class and having my college acceptance rescinded.

Long story short: it was senior year, last semester of high school. My final finals week of high school. I ended up taking a physics class that was WAY over my head. I wasn’t a bad student, just could not wrap my head around physics.

Went into our final assignment with an F. The assignment was on buoyancy and we needed to make a boat out of cardboard that could support you and your partner in a pool.

My buddy and I built our boat and the day came for everyone to test the quality of their boats in my buddy’s pool (bad idea in hindsight. Pool cloudy with glue by the end.

)

To get full credit, you needed to go back and fourth once across the pool without sinking. Then my teach made a big mistake. She offered 40 extra credit points for each additional length paddled before sinking.

A bunch of groups went and most people made it across once before sinking. One team made it ten times. Amazing! Then it was our turn. We were the final group. My buddy and I get in and paddle back and fourth. Nice! Then another length. And another.

And another. And another…

We went back and fourth SIXTY TIMES. Finally our teacher made us stop. We weren’t even close to sinking. I got 2400 extra credit points on my last final in high school and went from an F to an A-. Greatest redemption story of my life.

Our teacher was awesome and totally honored what she said. Good times!

Story credit: Reddit /byfuryattheheart

Ticket Scam

We used to run a ticket scam operation at the local Chuck E Cheese.

We started small time, we used to cheat at the games like SkiBall while traffic was low and it was off times.

After a few times of pulling that heist we decided to cool it because we thought it might be suspicious that we’d earn the mega bonus ticket payout regularly.

We did similar things with other games but nothing paid out like SkiBall. That’s when my buddy found out the big one.

I’m not sure if it’s like this now. Back then they used to weigh the tickets at the front in a bowl on a scale, but then they replaced them with these new machines.

These machines you would feed tickets into; it would count the tickets and then present you with a slip listing how many tickets it was worth that you could redeem.

Turns out if you were delicate and had enough finesse, you could pull the strip of tickets out and then feed them back in, it would count the tickets over and over again, even though they had unique serial numbers.

Boom, infinite tickets.

The ticket counters were in the corner of place by the front, near the registers. But a few were kind of hidden away from plain sight. We would have 2 people stand guard while my buddy worked his magic.

If staff came by we’d signal him and he’d feed the tickets in like normal.

Instead of having a bunch of really large tickets. We’d make some moderately sized ones mixed with some big ones and spread them out a bit, I think they had dates printed on them.

We got it all, the glowing disco ball, the special edition Barbie for my friend’s girl, candy, spray foam; the sticky hands. We never got the crazy big items like the bike because we thought it’d be too suspicious.

I think we could even redeem them for Pizza which we would do when we were hungry.

We never got found out. But we eventually cooled it because it was only a matter of time. It was like Oceans’s Eleven but instead it was like Chuckee’s Four.

More of a straight up hustle than a loophole. Good memories.

Story credit: Reddit /LoveHerMore

Straight A’s

This is a good one. I found, and exploited, a loophole that let me get straight As without attending class at all.

So at my high school we had a packet system in place as a kind of safety net for failing students. If you failed a class, they’d let you do a packet to earn a better grade, with a final test at the end. Pretty simple, right?

I discovered this by accident, when I saw another student working on a packet, and asked a few questions.

Turns out, the packets were easy. It was a safety net, after all. To a failing student, they’d pose a serious challenge, but to a clever kid like me who was always bored with the level of my classes, it was a breeze.

I discovered I could finish an entire packet, with the essay at the end included, in under 2 hours.

And the packets were never graded. Your final grade depended on your score on the last test, which you could take any time. The test was an absolute joke.

20 questions, super straightforward, and you were actually allowed to use the packet for reference. Naturally getting a perfect score was easy.

Here’s the best part though. It wasn’t just a system to give you a credit, it actually replaced your failing grade on the records to an A. Indistinguishable from any other hardworking honor student.

I stopped attending classes that bored me, except for tests and review days. (I could learn the material quickly, so just the reviews were as valuable to me as an entire term of slow, boring learning speeds.

) For two years, I only attended classes I enjoyed, like ceramics and creative writing, failed most of my classes, and then “fixed” the grades within a single week. Straight As, practically zero effort.

Thanks to review days, I still had a solid grasp of each subject by the end. And my school never fixed the loophole.

Story credit: Reddit /LittleMissFirebright