I’m using the markdown editor, so maybe my attempt at redacting will take this time.
Match
Lighter
Build Boy Scout-approved fire and stick candle in it
Flint and striker
Take it to California and use an existing wildfire
Put Crysis on Ultra, run the benchmark, and put the wick on my video card
Parabolic mirror
Find a smoker and hold it up to their cigarette
Buy a sketchy laptop, wait for the battery to catch on fire, use that
Use positive thinking
Wait for quantum uncertainty to lead to a state where it’s lit
Sneak onto an aircraft carrier and hold it up to the exhaust of a jet taking off
While on aircraft carrier, detonate a bomb and use that flame
While on aircraft carrier, borrow an M9 from a sailor and use propellant explosion
Make a potato battery using a giant potato, run it through highly resistant wire that gets really hot
Move a magnet near a wire so it gets really hot
Drill a hole in my car engine to reach combustion chamber
Hook spark plug up to car battery
Find a Tesla that just crashed and is on fire
Travel back in time to a Spanish Inquisition auto-da-fe and use that fire
Fly to the sun in a rocket and get close enough to light the candle
Use the rocket’s exhaust to light the candle
Use a toy rocket engine to light the candle and also launch a toy rocket
Call my genius engineer friend and use the craziest idea he comes up with
Learn some chemistry and come up with a really baroque way to make purple fire
Go back in time, learn how Greek Fire was made, use that
Go back in time, use any of these methods to light the candle, and presto—the candle is lit in the present
Shoot incendiary bullet at the candle
Throw a white phosphorous grenade at the candle
Light my dog’s fart on fire in the direction of the candle
Stationary bike hooked to a generator
Striker on gas stove
Attend dyno test of F1 engine; use red-hot headers to light candle
Go to Bonneville Salt Flats during rocket-car test, use rocket-car exhaust
World’s most badass capacitor generates spark
Arc welder
Oxy welder
Plasma torch
Magnifying lens
Pray to Prometheus
Turbocharge a record player, replace CD with flint, replace needle with striker
Fabricate evidence of WMD in dictatorship country, send in the military, use a burning building or tank to light candle
Tweet at Elon Musk that the candle needs to be lit in order to avoid AI X-risk
Tweet at Donald Trump that it’s sad that the candle isn’t lit
Stake out the Olympic Torch route in Japan
Put match on end of barbell and strike surface near Lasha Talakhadze during world-record snatch attempt
Order a kid’s chemistry set and start mixing until I find an exothermic reaction by accident
Go to an import tuner illegal street race, find the person with the biggest exhaust flame
Go to an Italian restaurant with the little red candle covers, remove the cover to access the flame within
At same Italian restaurant, throw candle into their pizza oven
Crash neighbor’s weekend barbecue and use grill flame
Funeral home incinerator
Get matches from an old MRE
Put match in sole of my track flats, sprint past striker and candle next to track
Put candle in 100% heat-insulating box, then kick the box until the kinetic energy converted into heat gets hot enough to light candle
Sneak into transformer substation and start swinging a bat around until something sparks
Borrow flame from hobo trashcan fire
Make hologram of signal fire; go to next station where they’ve lit an actual signal fire
Conceive a desire that the candle be lit; future AI has this as part of its utility function, sends a time traveler back to light the candle
Put striker surface near candle, teach my cat to scratch the striker rapidly after giving him cool metal claws
Climb natural gas well plume and use that fire
Visit set of anti-fracking documentary where someone has lit their contaminated drinking water on fire, and use that fire
Harness power of fracking-induced earthquakes in Oklahoma
Bathysphere to active underwater magma eruption
Hike to active magma eruption in Hawai’i
Overcharge the flash on my camera
EDM festival subwoofer vibrations
Road flare “borrowed” from police officer
Throw paper in a hot oven
Follow a smoker around to gas stations until they light up and something catches on fire. Administer first aid and call 911
Take a hammer to my cell phone until it starts sparking
Toss lithium in water
Don’t clean out lint trap in dryer; keep running dryer; use flame from burning dryer
Old-timey chemical camera flash, on steroids
Biceps curl machine that charges a capacitor
Get a PhD in oxidative chemistry and pick the absolute simplest possible reaction that will work
Pilot light
Go to church just before ceremony starts but after altar kids have lit the candles already
Visit friends in the country on burn day
Cigarette lighter in car
Purple flame is already burning outside Gozer the Gozerian’s lair
Disconnect Pornhub server from cooling system until it catches on fire
Take tour of coal-burning power plant, sneak into area with fire
Get a job as a short-order cook, use their grill
Attend Texas A&M; use their bonfire
Strip club in city of previous residence had fire sconces outside, wouldn’t even have to go in
Dumpster fire caused by 2020
Genetically engineer myself to be able to breathe fire like the dragons in Reign of Fire
Use hot coals at a firewalking seminar
Crash a holiday party; use their fireplace
Use police scanner to listen for location of fire caused on Thanksgiving by someone putting a turkey in a deep fryer without thawing it first; use existing fire
Go to Scientology center and offer to use E-Meter if they’ll light candle for me
Invading aliens’ blasters
Airstrike on candle
Orbital kinetic bombardment using rods made of striker; target flint near candle
Douse wick in oil with low flame point, then touch wick to fancy steak as it comes out of steakhouse’s 500-degree finishing oven
Breathe really, really, really hot breath on candle
Convince PhD optics student to give me access to the good lasers
Tour whiskey distillery that makes its own barrels, put candle in front of the fire they use to get the barrels ready
I’m using the markdown editor, so maybe my attempt at redacting will take this time.
Match
Lighter
Build Boy Scout-approved fire and stick candle in it
Flint and striker
Take it to California and use an existing wildfire
Put Crysis on Ultra, run the benchmark, and put the wick on my video card
Parabolic mirror
Find a smoker and hold it up to their cigarette
Buy a sketchy laptop, wait for the battery to catch on fire, use that
Use positive thinking
Wait for quantum uncertainty to lead to a state where it’s lit
Sneak onto an aircraft carrier and hold it up to the exhaust of a jet taking off
While on aircraft carrier, detonate a bomb and use that flame
While on aircraft carrier, borrow an M9 from a sailor and use propellant explosion
Make a potato battery using a giant potato, run it through highly resistant wire that gets really hot
Move a magnet near a wire so it gets really hot
Drill a hole in my car engine to reach combustion chamber
Hook spark plug up to car battery
Find a Tesla that just crashed and is on fire
Travel back in time to a Spanish Inquisition auto-da-fe and use that fire
Fly to the sun in a rocket and get close enough to light the candle
Use the rocket’s exhaust to light the candle
Use a toy rocket engine to light the candle and also launch a toy rocket
Call my genius engineer friend and use the craziest idea he comes up with
Learn some chemistry and come up with a really baroque way to make purple fire
Go back in time, learn how Greek Fire was made, use that
Go back in time, use any of these methods to light the candle, and presto—the candle is lit in the present
Shoot incendiary bullet at the candle
Throw a white phosphorous grenade at the candle
Light my dog’s fart on fire in the direction of the candle
Stationary bike hooked to a generator
Striker on gas stove
Attend dyno test of F1 engine; use red-hot headers to light candle
Go to Bonneville Salt Flats during rocket-car test, use rocket-car exhaust
World’s most badass capacitor generates spark
Arc welder
Oxy welder
Plasma torch
Magnifying lens
Pray to Prometheus
Turbocharge a record player, replace CD with flint, replace needle with striker
Fabricate evidence of WMD in dictatorship country, send in the military, use a burning building or tank to light candle
Tweet at Elon Musk that the candle needs to be lit in order to avoid AI X-risk
Tweet at Donald Trump that it’s sad that the candle isn’t lit
Stake out the Olympic Torch route in Japan
Put match on end of barbell and strike surface near Lasha Talakhadze during world-record snatch attempt
Order a kid’s chemistry set and start mixing until I find an exothermic reaction by accident
Go to an import tuner illegal street race, find the person with the biggest exhaust flame
Go to an Italian restaurant with the little red candle covers, remove the cover to access the flame within
At same Italian restaurant, throw candle into their pizza oven
Crash neighbor’s weekend barbecue and use grill flame
Funeral home incinerator
Get matches from an old MRE
Put match in sole of my track flats, sprint past striker and candle next to track
Put candle in 100% heat-insulating box, then kick the box until the kinetic energy converted into heat gets hot enough to light candle
Sneak into transformer substation and start swinging a bat around until something sparks
Borrow flame from hobo trashcan fire
Make hologram of signal fire; go to next station where they’ve lit an actual signal fire
Conceive a desire that the candle be lit; future AI has this as part of its utility function, sends a time traveler back to light the candle
Put striker surface near candle, teach my cat to scratch the striker rapidly after giving him cool metal claws
Climb natural gas well plume and use that fire
Visit set of anti-fracking documentary where someone has lit their contaminated drinking water on fire, and use that fire
Harness power of fracking-induced earthquakes in Oklahoma
Bathysphere to active underwater magma eruption
Hike to active magma eruption in Hawai’i
Overcharge the flash on my camera
EDM festival subwoofer vibrations
Road flare “borrowed” from police officer
Throw paper in a hot oven
Follow a smoker around to gas stations until they light up and something catches on fire. Administer first aid and call 911
Take a hammer to my cell phone until it starts sparking
Toss lithium in water
Don’t clean out lint trap in dryer; keep running dryer; use flame from burning dryer
Old-timey chemical camera flash, on steroids
Biceps curl machine that charges a capacitor
Get a PhD in oxidative chemistry and pick the absolute simplest possible reaction that will work
Pilot light
Go to church just before ceremony starts but after altar kids have lit the candles already
Visit friends in the country on burn day
Cigarette lighter in car
Purple flame is already burning outside Gozer the Gozerian’s lair
Disconnect Pornhub server from cooling system until it catches on fire
Take tour of coal-burning power plant, sneak into area with fire
Get a job as a short-order cook, use their grill
Attend Texas A&M; use their bonfire
Strip club in city of previous residence had fire sconces outside, wouldn’t even have to go in
Dumpster fire caused by 2020
Genetically engineer myself to be able to breathe fire like the dragons in Reign of Fire
Use hot coals at a firewalking seminar
Crash a holiday party; use their fireplace
Use police scanner to listen for location of fire caused on Thanksgiving by someone putting a turkey in a deep fryer without thawing it first; use existing fire
Go to Scientology center and offer to use E-Meter if they’ll light candle for me
Invading aliens’ blasters
Airstrike on candle
Orbital kinetic bombardment using rods made of striker; target flint near candle
Douse wick in oil with low flame point, then touch wick to fancy steak as it comes out of steakhouse’s 500-degree finishing oven
Breathe really, really, really hot breath on candle
Convince PhD optics student to give me access to the good lasers
Tour whiskey distillery that makes its own barrels, put candle in front of the fire they use to get the barrels ready
Snap really, really hard
Nice! I like these ones for being quite straightforward, yet I didn’t think of them myself!
Cigarette lighter in car
Douse wick in oil with low flame point, then touch wick to fancy steak as it comes out of steakhouse’s 500-degree finishing oven
XD even though I haven’t owned a car that actually came with a cigarette lighter in about 12 years
So close! I added line breaks to the entries, since markdown doesn’t actually parse soft line breaks.
You’re my hero.