Lateral Thinking Puzzles

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i thought that too.


i came sort of close on #5. i thought the man would have been pushed or have fallen from a cold place (like a walk-in cold storage.) but then--i guess there would be no windows in such a thing.

the actual solution--that it was a (fill in the blank) didn't occur to me. (i don't want to ruin it!)

D'oh! I would NEVER have gotten that. Not obvious to me at all. Thanks for telling me so I didn't have to google it and hope it was common enough to find a posted answer.

Why didn't he stay for the drink he ordered? Hmm?

The problem with many of these "solutions" is that they're merely one of possibly dozens of solutions, also many of of the listed solutions require knowledge that is either necessary for the given solution, or just plain wrong. For example a solution that had the American way of writing dates (month/day/year) instead of the European way (day/month/year). I'm of a generation where I see both all the time so i have no reason to know or even consider that one is American and one is European. Another uses full knowledge of the American anthem, I'm Canadian, I barely know my own anthem let alone another country's.

As b9 pointed out, drowned bodies sink, they later float due to gas build up, so the corpses floating around a yacht solution is funky. The man and his wife racing through the streets was also odd. I came to the same conclusion that b9 did. The use of the stranger being the baby making me go huh? In this day and age people know quite a bit about their unborn children, they're not strangers.

Here's a good one

A woman throws something out a window and dies.

Solution: She threw a boomerang out the window it came back and killed her.

I know boomerangs were hunting weapons, but I'm pretty sure they were for small game, so odds of killing a person are pretty low, even for a head shot. I myself have never managed to get a boomerang to come back to exactly where I threw it from, plus it flies in a wide circle, the odds of it coming back in a window are next to nil.

I don't enjoy these kinds of puzzles at all, because they aren't really puzzles. they're like the jokes toddlers tell before they understand what a punch line is. they frustrate me because why would I take time to answer a question without enough data to give an accurate answer? it seems frivolous. the only use I can see for this kind of questioning is investigation, then you'd assume you find more information by being able to question back, so you can formulate a real answer, or you give up and put it on the cold case shelf.

Perhaps the 'drink' he asked for was merely a glass of water, requested between hiccups. Once the gun scare stopped the hiccups, he no longer needed the glass of water.

These sound more like creative writing exercises than actual puzzles, since there are any number of possible answers to each one...

it's hard not to look at the solutions, often. sometimes i see the solution and want to slap my forehead (doh!) at other times---they would never, ever have occurred to me. (the sunken ship, for example.)

the solutions do make me laugh at times--either because they're so "obvious" (on the one hand) or unexpected (on the other.)

Maybe someone in here is bold enough to post their own puzzle? Let’s see if we’d be able to guess the answer. Or how many answers different than what the author was thinking about we’d be able to think of.

Good point Willard my brain didn't stretch quite that far but then again, it's been that kind of day.

It seems I am, but I don't use a silly name... do we have anything in common?

What do you mean by "lateral thinking"?

Lateral thinking is the name for this sort of thinking which is characterized by a high level of creativity, when you are forced to look for a solution of some problem you don’t use only logic but you do it using more indirect approach.

What does your reference to silly names mean?

AAAHHHHH That explains why I've literally never been able top solve these puzzles, not even your "obvious" one about the man who turned out to need water because he was hiccuping.


I am not very creative at all, probably less creative than many people. I can play other peoples' songs on the guitar but I can't write one. I love to read but can't write a marginally decent story. I can draw or paint if and only if I'm looking at what I'm drawing or painting. I can't just "make something up". I need a cookbook or a memorized recipe to cook. I can't just "throw stuff together" and have it taste good. That whole sideways leap that is needed for creating unique art or coming up with a new idea or...solving these puzzles, it just escapes me. I can't do it. I can follow the leaps that others have made and appreciate them- how Coltrane broke away from melody, how Picasso broke away from form, how Darwin broke away from religion. But I can't can't can't make even the very modest leaps that are needed to solve these puzzles or write a poem, let alone anything grander. Sigh. I'll leave that to you creative, 3 eyed kitten types (I would never have thought to give a kitten a third eye) and plod along with my linear ways.

Last edited by Janissy on 21 Jul 2009, 4:42 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I agree. It might be more fun if you could ask questions about the situation, but in general I just find myself irritated by the misleading clues and missing information.

You CAN ask questions . Like here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Situation_puzzle in the example with our dear old friend with a hiccup.

I don't understand where the puzzles are. I read the thing about the man in the elevator, but what are you trying to figure out?

I love lateral thinking puzzles. I don't know if you keep on doing them if you can make the skills you learn transfer over to real life or to Science, but it's like you learn lessons from them.

Many scientific discoveries came about when people would see things in ways that were different, thus lateral thinking.