How to Solve Lateral Thinking Puzzles

These puzzles are alternately known as lateral thinking puzzles, lateral logic puzzles, paradox stories, stories with holes, contradiction puzzles, and a dozen other names. The basic idea is a type of riddle in which someone says one sentence that is seemingly paradoxical, or simply makes no sense. We'll use this classic as an example: "A man lies dead near a pool with a towel over his face. He did not drown. How did he die?"
How are you supposed to know how he died? By testing assumptions, asking questions, and making a lateral leap.

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• A few puzzles from a site or a Paul Sloane book.
• An interested friend.

1. 1

   Take a look at some lateral puzzles. Lateral thinking expert Paul Sloane has written several books' worth, and maintains a site where people write new ones (check out the resources below). For the first few you read, try to guess some ideas, but then you can look at the answers; this will give you a good idea of how they work. Then, ask a friend to read a puzzle and answer for themselves, so they can pose it to you. Make sure they pick one they think is good. Our example, remember, is, "A man lies dead near a pool with a towel over his head. He did not drown. How did he die?"

2. 2

   Test your assumptions. When you first read this puzzle, what did you picture? I know that I imagine a tan guy in swimming trunks, sitting on a pool chair with a towel over his face to block the sun, and mysteriously dead. So I ask my friend some questions: the rules of these puzzles are that the questions must be yes-or-no.
   "Was he sunbathing when he died?"
   She says no.
   "Is he in a pool chair?"
   She says no.
   "Is he face-up?"
   She says probably not.
   I have made some progress; I have thrown out all of the false assumptions that I had. But how do I get the right picture?

3. 3

   Ask some standard questions. If there's a dead person in the puzzle, it's a good idea to find out the cause of death, and then build the story around that. There are a lot of methods of death, so start by asking if it's murder, suicide or accident. In this case, my friend says "yes" to accident.
   Other good topics to ask about are whether anyone else was involved (No, in the case of the example), about any relevant characteristics of the man, such as disabilities (None), and if everyone involved is a human and an adult (Yes).
   Next, I would go through a list of possible ways to die, and ask "Did he die from..." for each. Eventually, I would get a "yes" to "Did he die from blunt trauma/falling?"

4. 4

   Make a lateral leap. Eventually, you have to simply think outside the box, taking everything you already know and reasoning to the conclusion. It sometimes helps to keep a mental picture of the situation, adding in more details as you know them.
   Since accidental deaths often happen when people are panicking, I might ask, "Did he die while trying to avoid something?" The answer would be yes.
   Since he fell, I might ask, "Did he jump?" Yes. "Did he jump from a building?" Yes.
   And with a lateral leap, I would realize that he was probably trying to land in the pool when he jumped.
   When you figure out a major step, you don't have to give your knowledge away right away, especially if you like to compete with other people who are asking questions. You still have to learn why he wanted to jump into a pool, and why there was a towel around his head.
   With another leap or a few more questions, I will finally get the full answer: He was in a building that was on fire. He put a towel over his face to keep from inhaling the fumes. He opened a window and tried to jump down to the pool and safety. He missed!

Tips & Warnings

• Asking and answering questions are both fun, and once you've mastered these, try making up your own puzzles!
• When answering questions, sometimes a simple "yes" or "no" just won't do. You should also allow "probably," "possibly," "sort of," and "false assumption," which means that the asker should back up to step two and challenge their assumptions before they ask that question. For example, if I asked "Did the man sunbathe with anyone else?" I would have a false assumption because he didn't sunbathe at all.
• Some puzzles can take hours to solve. Before you begin a tough one, set rules about whether hints will be allowed, and when you're allowed to give up.
• If you didn't like the morbidity in the example puzzle, be forewarned: a lot of lateral thinking puzzles contain death in some form.

Resources

• Here's a site where you can solve puzzles, and even post new ones, in an interactive forum. You'll find me there!

on 2/7/2010 Wow that sounds mysterously fun.