Puzzles for Lateral Thinking – Can you answer these 4 famous riddles often asked in top job interviews?

Puzzles are great fun. While math puzzles are often used in many aptitude tests, lateral thinking puzzles are famous in job interviews. Many questions have been asked from UPSC aspirants in IAS Interview rounds to people in private job interviews to check someone’s ability to ‘think beyond the box’ or ability to think laterally. Can you? Here are 5 most famous lateral thinking puzzles. Answers are given at the end.

Before you start, remember, lateral thinking refers to the process of solving problems by approaching them creatively. It is not merely thinking out of the box but looking at the possibility of a fresh angle or perspective. So, when attempting to solve these puzzles, don’t just think out of the box, challenge the basic assumptions and probably you would be able to get to the answers.

Puzzle 1: The rainy day puzzle.

Mr. Smith stays on the 18th floor of a high rise building in the city and works at a bank nearby. Every morning he takes the elevator down to the ground floor and walks to his bank (except on Sundays). In the evenings, he returns at 6 pm and takes the elevator back up to the 10th floor and climbs back the remaining 8 floors to his home. Except on the days it is raining. On Rainy days, he takes the elevator to the 18th floor directly. Why?

Puzzle 2: The Invisible Murder

There is a small room with no windows and just one door, which was locked from the inside. You find a cat, small shards of glass, water and dead bodies of Romeo and Juliet. There is no blood but both Romeo and Juliet were murdered. Can you tell how? – No, it’s not poison.

Puzzle 3: Not twins

Alice has two sons, born on the same day of the same year at the same hour but they are not twins. How is that possible?

Puzzle 4: Missing day

Christmas and New Years’ Day falls on the same day but in 1945, Christmas was celebrated on a Tuesday but New Year’s day was on a Monday. How did that happen?

Are your answers ready? Check out how close or right you were. Answers are, remember, based on lateral thinking.

Puzzle 1- Answer to the rainy day puzzle is simplest. The man or Mr. Smith is a dwarf. When he goes from home to office, he can easily press Ground floor button but when he comes back, he cannot reach the button for the 18th floor. On rainy days, however, he can do it as he is carrying an umbrella.

For the invisible murder, the answer is really simple. Romeo and Juliet are goldfish. Cat caused the glass bowl to break, spilling the water and the two goldfish out on the floor, where they died of asphyxiation or cause they could not breathe!

Puzzle 3 has been in fact asked in a lot of interviews and the answer is simplest. The two brothers are not twins – cause they are ‘triplets’ or ‘quadruplets’. Just because twins are the most common does not mean that there can be no more.

And finally, the Christmas day puzzle. Here, we forget that the Christmas Day and New year’s day (of next year!) falls on the same day. For the same year, however, Christmas Day happens 51 weeks after News Year’s day and falls, in fact, on different days. Not only in 1945, every year’s New Years Day (January 1) and ‘Christmas Day’ – (December 25) fall on different days.