Lateral Thinking Quiz

The following questions will test your ability to think laterally. If you get more than 50% of
these right you're certainly strong on your lateral thinking skills (or maybe you're just
good at quizzes!)

1. A graduate applying for pilot training with a major airline was asked what he would do if,
after a long-haul flight to Sidney, he met the captain wearing a dress in the hotel bar.
What would you do?
2. What can you hold in your right hand, but not in your left?
3. If you have two coins totaling 11p, and one of the coins is not a penny, what are the two
coins?
4. How many animals of each species did Moses take into the Ark?
5. A man built a rectangular house, each side having a southern view. He spotted a bear.
What colour was the bear?
6. If you were alone in a deserted house at night, and there was an oil lamp, a candle and
firewood and you only have one match, which would you light first?
7. What can you put in a wooden box that would make it lighter? The more of them you put
in the lighter it becomes, yet the box stays empty.
8. Which side of a cat contains the most hair?
9. The 60th and 62nd British Prime Ministers of the UK had the same mother and father,
but were not brothers. How do you account for this?
10. How many birthdays does a typical woman have?
11. Why can't a man living in Canterbury be buried west of the River Stour?
12. Divide 40 by half and add ten. What is the answer?
13. To the nearest cubic centimetre, how much soil is there in a 3m x 2m x 2m hole?
14. Is it legal for a man to marry his widow's sister?
15. If you drove a coach leaving Canterbury with 35 passengers, dropped off 6 and picked up
2 at Faversham, picked up 9 more at Sittingbourne, dropped off 3 at Chatham, and then
drove on to arrive in London 40 minutes later, what would the name of the driver be?
16. A woman lives on the tenth floor of a block of flats. Every morning she takes the lift
down to the ground floor and goes to work. In the evening, she gets into the lift, and, if
there is someone else in the lift she goes back to her floor directly. Otherwise, she goes to
the eighth floor and walks up two flights of stairs to her flat. How do you explain this?
17. A window cleaner is cleaning the windows on the 25th floor of a skyscraper, when he
slips and falls. He is not wearing a safety harness and nothing slows his fall, yet he
suffered no injuries. Explain.
18. The band of stars across the night sky is called the "...... Way"?
19. Yogurt is made from fermented ........
20. What do cows drink?
21. A farmer has 15 cows, all but 8 die. How many does he have left?
22. If a red house is made of red bricks, and a blue house is made of blue bricks, what is a
green house made of?
23. In what sport are the shoes made of metal?
24. The Zorganian Republic has some very strange customs. Couples only wish to have
female children as only females can inherit the family's wealth, so if they have a male
 child they keep having more children until they have a girl. If they have a girl, they stop
having children. What is the ratio of girls to boys in Zorgania?
25. If a plane crashes on the Italian/Swiss border, where do you bury the survivors?
26. If the hour hand of a clock moves 1/60th of a degree every minute, how many degrees
will it move in an hour?
27. How many hands does the clock of Big Ben have?
28. How many degrees are there between clock hands at 3.15 pm?
29. How many times do the hands of a clock overlap in 24 hours?
30. John's mother has 3 children, one is named April, one is named May. What is the third
one named?
31. A cowboy rode into town on Friday, spent one night there, and left on Friday. How do
you account for this?
32. How can you throw a ball as hard as you can, and make it stop and return to you, without
hitting anything and with nothing attached to it?
33. Using just ONE straight cut, how can you cut a rectangular cake into two equal parts
when a rectangular piece has already been removed from it?
34. A man went into a store to buy an item. He asked the assistant:
"How much does it cost for one?"
The assistant replied 2 pounds, Sir"
"And how much for 10?"
The assistant replied "£4"
"How much for 100?"
He got the reply "£6"
What was the man buying?

35. A man and his son were in a car crash. The father was killed and the son was taken to
hospital with serious injuries. The examining doctor exclaims: "But, this is my son!".
How can this be?

36. There are 23 football teams playing in a knockout competition. What is the least number
of matches they need to play to decide the winner?

One student, desperate to get into advertising,

had been rejected by the main London agencies,
so he decided to try a different approach. He
bought some pink envelopes and a small bottle of
expensive perfume. He placed his CV in the
envelopes and wrote "Private" on the outside. He
liberally sprinkled the envelopes with scent and
posted them to the senior agency partner in
several of the biggest agencies. When it arrived, nobody dared to open the letters and the
graduate was offered several interviews - presumably for his daring. Note that, we don't
recommend this approach!
 Most of the above are what we call
"Insight puzzles". Research by
Schooler and Melcher (University of
California) found that people who
wrote down the puzzles and tried
Answers: to solve them on paper were on
average 30% less likely to come up
1. Offer to buy her a drink! The captain was of with the right solution than those
course a woman. Many airlines are now hot on who didn't write it down and just
equal opportunities and a candidate who had solved them in their heads.
difficulty envisaging that an airline captain
might be female would not go very far! Writing down the puzzles invokes
2. Your left hand, forearm or elbow. the use of the left side of our brain
3. 10p and 1p - the other coin can be a penny! which deals with verbal and logical
4. None. NOAH built the Ark (algorithmic) reasoning, rather than
5. White. Only at the North Pole can all four walls the right side which deals with visual
be facing South. and creative (heuristic) thinking.
6. The match!
7. Holes These puzzles tend to require creative
8. The outside rather than logical reasoning to solve
9. Churchill was Prime Minister twice, from 1940 them, so we need to use right brain
to 45 and from 1951 to 55. thinking.
10. One
11. Because he is still alive .
12. 90. Dividing by half is the same as multiplying by 2.
13. None - it's a hole!
14. No - because he's dead
15. YOU are the driver!
16. The woman is of small stature and couldn't reach the upper lift buttons.
17. He was cleaning the inside of the windows.
18. Milky Way
19. Milk
20. Water. After the previous two questions, did you answer milk?
21. Eight
22. Glass
23. Horse racing; or other horse sports
24. About 1 to 1. Any birth will always have a 50% chance of being
male or female.
25. You don't bury survivors!
26. One
27. Eight: there are four faces to the clock of Big Ben (see the picture to the right)
28. Not zero degrees as you might at first think. The minute hand will be at 15 minutes (90
degrees clockwise from vertical) but the hour hand will have progressed to one quarter of
the distance between 3 pm and 4 pm. Each hour represents 30 degrees (360 / 12), so one
quarter of an hour equals 7.5 degrees. So the minute hand will be at 97.5 degrees: a 7.5
degree difference between the hands.
29. 22: the minute hand will go round the dial 24 times, but the
hour hand will also complete two circuits. 24 minus 2 equals
22.
30. John
31. His horse was named Friday
 32. Go outside and throw it upwards.
33. Cut it horizontally half way up (i.e. parallel to the top) . See right
34. House numbers.
35. The doctor was his mother. Going full circle, this is very similar to the first question.
36. In a knockout competition, every team except the winner is defeated once and once only,
so the number of matches is one less than the number of teams in this case 23-1 = 22.

Score

• Over 30. You are a true lateral thinking Guru. Edward De Bono would be proud of you.
Or maybe you are the man himself.
• 25 to 30. Very good.
• 20 to 24. Quite good.
• 15 to 19. Average.
• Under 15 - watch The Matrix, The Simpsons and Dr Who a few more times.