BRAIN TEASERS

Presented by -

 Sandhya
 Subashini
 Kavya
 Manvitha
 Sri lekha
 Manuja
What are brain teasers?

Brainteasers are puzzle-like questions that challenge a person’s

problem-solving skills. They often require lateral thinking or “thinking
outside the box,” because answers can’t be calculated and solutions can’t
be reached via conventional methods.
 
Using brainteasers during interviews can be a useful tactic for
employers who are looking for a way to get to know their candidates
 and better understand a potential hire’s critical thinking, logic, creativity
and mathematical skills. Brainteaser interview questions also allow
employers to see how candidates perform under pressure.
Types of Brain teasers

1. Illusion Brain Teasers

2. Draw-Explanation Brain Teasers

3. Wording Brain Teasers

4. Pattern/Trend Brain Teasers

5. Logical Brain Teasers

6. Letter-Trick Brain Teasers

7. Market-Sizing & Guesstimate questions

 1. Illusion Brain Teasers
 These questions trick you into wrong conclusions by drawing your attention to seemingly interesting
but insignificant and misleading details.
 To avoid that trap, pay close attention to every detail of the question – that way, you’re more likely to
notice actually-important details.
Question 1: 
Is it possible for a man in California to marry his widow’s sister?
Question 2:
Tracy’s mother has four children. One child is named April. The second one is May. The third is June.
What‘s the fourth one’s name? 
2. Draw-Explanation Brain Teasers

 This type of question gives you “weird” and seemingly impossible situations, then asks
you to explain that situation.
 For this one, you need to be creative and imaginative. Don’t be afraid of delivering
“weird” answers – the question is already weird, to begin with; your answer only needs
to fit with that universe.
Question 1:
A horse jumps over a castle, then lands on a man. The man disappears. What’s happening?
Question 2: 
A doctor’s son’s father was not a doctor. How is this possible?
3. Wording Brain Teasers

 These questions confuse you by using seemingly conflicting words to create inexplicable
scenarios.
 The key to solving them is to doubt your first interpretation of every word in the question,
then actively find other meanings that make the scenario possible.
Question 1:
What two words, when combined, hold the most letters?
Question 2:
What goes from Z to A ?
 4. Pattern/Trend Brain Teasers

 This kind of question presents data (often numbers) following certain patterns or trends and demands
you to fill in the blanks.
 If you’ve given such questions, try to take different angles, find as many trends as possible, and
check if those trends actually fit the data.
Question 1:
What is the next number in the following sequence: 0 0 1 2 2 4 3 6 4 8 5 ?
Answer :
10. There are two alternating sequences: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 0, 2, 4, 6, 8
Question 2:
What is the next number in the following sequence: 125, 64, 27, 8?
Answer :
The answer is 1. The cube-roots of the four given numbers are 5, 4, 3, 2 respectively, so the next one
should have its cube-root being 1.
5. Logical Brain Teasers

 Logical brain teasers involve no tricks, illusions, or creativity. You have to rely on the logic
muscles of your brain.
Question 1:
An explorer found a silver coin marked 7 BC. He was told it was a forgery. Why?
Question 2:
A boy and a girl are sitting on a bench. “I’m a girl,” says the child with brown hair. “I’m a
boy,” says the child with blond hair. If at least one of them is lying, which one is lying?
6. Letter-trick Brain Teasers

 Letter-trick questions play with the organization, composition, and demonstration of letters
to illustrate the meaning of a word or phrase.
 The key to answering these questions is to examine as many aspects of the letters as
possible: meaning, pronunciation, visual presentation , etc.
Question 1: 
What does this mean? “GGES EGSG SEGG ESGG”
Question 2:
What does this mean? “CCCCCCC”
7. Market-sizing & Guesstimate Questions

 A guesstimate question asks you to estimate an obscure number; when that number
represents the size of a market, it’s called a “market-sizing question”.
 These questions do not require “thinking out of the box”; instead, the emphasis is placed
on estimating with a structured approach. You show such an approach by breaking down
the problem into smaller pieces, estimate each piece, then combine for a final answer.
 There are 4 steps to answer market-sizing and guesstimate questions:
• Step 1: Clarify all unclear terms in the question
• Step 2: Break the number down into 3-5 small, easy-to-estimate pieces
• Step 3: Estimate each piece using math and background knowledge
• Step 4: Consolidate the pieces to arrive at the final result
Question 1:
 What is the fuel cost to cover Germany’s Autobahn (federal highway) on a car?
Clarify
1. The fuel is gasoline.
2. The Gasoline price is measured at the present German price, in US Dollars.
3. “Cover the Autobahn” means covering a distance equal to its officially-stated length.
4. The car is a small sedan.
5. The car moves at the typical highway speed and carries no luggage
Break down the problem
The answer depends on three determinants: 
6. The Autobahn’s length
7. The car’s mileage
8. The gasoline price
Solve each piece
The basis of each estimation is in brackets:
1. The Autobahn is about 13,000-km long. (I happen to know this figure)
2. A small sedan typically consumes 5 liters of gasoline per 100 km on the highway (I deduct
this from my driving experience).
3. The current gasoline price in Germany is $2 per liter (it’s currently $0.6 in Vietnam; I
know prices in Germany are usually 3-4 times higher than in my country).
Consolidate the pieces
4. The car consumes 650 liters of gasoline to cover the Autobahn (13,000 km / 100 km x 5
liters).
5. 650 liters of gasoline cost $1,300
 => Answer: it costs $1,300 of fuel to cover Germany’s Autobahn on a car