| "We are at the very beginning of time for the human race. It is not unreasonable that we grapple with problems. But there are tens of thousands of years in the future. Our responsibility is to do what we can, learn what we can, improve the solutions, and pass them on." Richard P. Feynman, Physicist, Noble Laureate. |
 |
Amitabha Ghosh Ph.D. Candidate Autonomous Networks Research Group Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical Engineering - Systems Viterbi School of Engineering University of Southern California Los Angeles, CA 90089 Email: amitabhg@usc.edu |
 
Office: Ronald Tutor Hall (RTH) 419 3710 S. McClintock Avenue Los Angeles, CA 90089 Ph. (213) 740 3759 |
|
website counter |
I'm interested in Lateral Thinking Puzzles, Brain Teasers, Crosswords, etc. This page contains a list of Puzzles from the Web that I have come across at different points in time, a list of puzzles from the Microsoft College Puzzles Challenge Contest, and a list of Lateral Thinking Puzzles compiled from Paul Sloane's website.
Blind Man and Cards A blind man is handed a deck of 52 cards with exactly 10 cards facing up. How can he divide it into two piles with each pile having the same number of cards facing up? Ant in a Room An ant has to crawl from one corner of a room to the diametrically opposite corner as quickly as possible. If the dimensions of the room are 3 x 4 x 5, what distance does the ant cover? Breaking a Chocolate How many steps are required to break an m x n bar of chocolate into 1 x 1 pieces? We may break an existing piece of chocolate horizontally or vertically. Stacking of two or more pieces is not allowed. Divide 100 Marbles into Two Piles How would you divide 50 black and 50 white marbles into two piles so that the probability of picking a white marble as follows is maximized: we first pick one of the piles uniformly at random, then we pick a marble in that pile uniformly at random? Three Boxes and a Ruby Alice places three identical boxes on a table. She has concealed a precious ruby in one of them. The other two boxes are empty. Bob is allowed to pick one of the boxes. Among the two boxes remaining on the table, at least one is empty. Alice then removes one empty box from the table. Bob is now allowed to open either the box he picked, or the box lying on the table. If he opens the box with the ruby, he gets a kiss from Alice (which he values more than the ruby, of course). What should Bob do? Forty Five Minutes How do we measure forty-five minutes using two identical wires, each of which takes an hour to burn. We have matchsticks with us. The wires burn non-uniformly. So, for example, the two halves of a wire might burn in 10 minute and 50 minutes respectively. 1000 Prisoners A prison has 1000 cells. Initially, all cells are marked with - signs. From days 1 thru 1000, the jailor toggles marks on some of the cells: from + to - and from - to +. On the i-th day, the signs on cells that are multiples of i get toggled. On the 1001-th day, all cells marked with + signs are opened. Which cells are these? 6 Colored Balls We have two red, two green and two yellow balls. For each color, one ball is heavy and the other is light. All heavy balls weigh the same. All light balls weigh the same. How many weighings on a beam balance are necessary to identify the three heavy balls? 3 Heavy and 3 Light Balls Three out of six lookalike balls are heavy. The other three are light. How many weighings on a beam balance are necessary to identify the heavy balls? Cube Cutting Imagine a 3x3x3 wooden cube. How many cuts do we need to break it into twenty-seven 1×x1 cubes? A cut may go through multiple wooden pieces.
Paul Sloane's list of Classic Lateral Thinking Puzzles Lateral thinking puzzles are often strange situations which require an explanation. They are solved through a dialogue between the quizmaster who sets the puzzle and the solver or solvers who try to figure out the answer. The puzzles as stated generally do not contain sufficient information for the solver to uncover the solution. So a key part of the process is the asking of questions. The questions can receive one of only three possible answers - yes, no or irrelevant. When one line of enquiry reaches an end then another approach is needed, often from a completely new direction. This is where the lateral thinking comes in. Some people find it frustrating that for any puzzle it is possible to construct various answers which fit the initial statement of the puzzle. However, for a good lateral thinking puzzle, the proper answer will be the best in 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 net. Lateral Puzzles Forum Man in the Building A man lives on the tenth floor of a building. Every day he takes the elevator to go down to the ground floor to go to work or to go shopping. When he returns he takes the elevator to the seventh floor and walks up the stairs to reach his apartment on the tenth floor. He hates walking so why does he do it? This is probably the best known and most celebrated of all lateral thinking puzzles. It is a true classic. Although there are many possible solutions which fit the initial conditions, only the canonical answer is truly satisfying. The Bar A man walks into a bar and asks the barman for a glass of water. The barman pulls out a gun and points it at the man. The man says 'Thank you' and walks out. This puzzle has claims to be the best of the genre. It is simple in its statement, absolutely baffling and yet with a completely satisfying solution. Most people struggle very hard to solve this one yet they like the answer when they hear it or have the satisfaction of figuring it out.
|
