I hate lateral thinking. The answers to the puzzles usually don’t
make any sense. How can you answer a question when all of the facts
aren’t presented to you in the beginning? There are a couple that
make some sense, though. Here’s one that isn’t too bad:
A man lives in an apartment on the 35th floor. He gets in the
elevator to leave his building for work. He hits the button for the
first floor, gets off there and goes to his office. At the end of
the work day, he returns home, gets in the elevator and hits the button
for the 32nd floor. He gets off on the 32nd floor and takes the
three flights of stairs to his apartment. If he didn’t do it for the
exercise, why did he get off the elevator to take the stairs up?
And another:
A detective receives a call at the precinct. He leaves the
station and arrives at an apartment to find Harry and Sally laying dead
behind the couch in the living room. The only traces of evidence are
a damp spot (of water) and little bits of broken glass in the carpet near
the bodies, and a cat, which is standing atop a shelf with it’s back
arched, hissing. Using only these clues, he’s able to determine that
Harry and Sally have suffocated to death. How did he reach this
conclusion?
The answer to the first puzzle:
Usually you’re supposed to ask yes or no questions as they relate to
the puzzle, but in this case, since I’m not around to answer, I’ll just
give you the solution. The reason that the man got off on the 32nd
floor instead of the 35th is that he’s short. He’s vertically
challenged. He ain’t tall. Because of this, he couldn’t reach
the button for the floor on which he lives, and had to get out on the
highest floor that he could reach, the 32nd.
The answer to the second puzzle:
This one’s tricky, too. It all has to do with making assumptions
about the victims in the "crime". Of course, when you
realize that the murdering cat is the one who knocked over the fish bowl,
you can reach the correct conclusion. Of course, if you investigate
further, you might also discover that the apartment belonged to the
detective, and his neighbor called him at the station because she heard
the glass bowl break. The illusion that the apartment is not the
detectives is perpetuated by the fact that his pet fish have names, while
his cat does not. Isn’t that odd?
