Lateral thinking (situation) puzzles
...the sense of the most apt and satisfying. When you hear the right answer to a good puzzle of this type you should want to kick yourself for not working it out! This kind of puzzle teaches you to check your assumptions about any situation. You need to be open-minded, flexible and creative in your questioning and able to put lots of different clues and pieces of information together. Once you reach a viable solution you keep going in order to refine it or replace it with a better solution. This is lateral thinking! This list contains some of the most renowned and representative lateral thinking puzzles as well as some of those which crop up most frequently on the rec.puzzles newgroup. One of the most famous of these puzzles goes something like this: A man walks into a bar, and asks the bartender for a drink of water. The bartender pulls out a gun, points it at the man, and cocks it. The man says "Thank you" and leaves. The question and answer segment might go something like this. 1. Question: Did the bartender hear him OK? Answer: Yes 2. Q: Was the bartender angry for some reason? A: No 3. Q: Did they know each other from before? A: No, or irrelevant 4. Q: Was the man's "Thank you" sarcastic? A: No, or No, he was genuinely grateful for some reason 5. Q: Did the man ask for water in an offensive way? A: No 6. Q: Did the man ask for water in some strange way? A: Yes Eventually the questions lead up to the conclusion: The man had the hiccups, and asked for water. The bartender heard the hiccups, guessed the mans need, and chose instead to cure the hiccups by frightening the man with the gun. Once the man got over his fear, he realized his hiccups were gone, was grateful, and didn't...