184-Lateral Thinking Puzzles

Futility Closet

Greg Ross

History

4.8 • 748 Ratings

🗓️ 1 January 2018

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Here are six new lateral thinking puzzles -- play along with us as we try to untangle some perplexing situations using yes-or-no questions.

Here are the sources for this week's puzzles. In a few places we've included links to further information -- these contain spoilers, so don't click until you've listened to the episode:

Puzzle #1 is adapted from an item that Sharon heard on the podcast No Such Thing as a Fish. Here are two corroborating links.

Puzzle #2 is from listener Simon Grimes.

Puzzle #3 is from listener Jean-Yves. Here's a corroborating link.

Puzzle #4 is from Kyle Hendrickson's 1998 book Mental Fitness Puzzles.

Puzzle #5 is from listener Alex Baumans.

Puzzle #6 is adapted from W.S. Anglin's 1994 book Mathematics: A Concise History and Philosophy.

You can listen using the player above, download this episode directly, or subscribe on iTunes or Google Play Music or via the RSS feed at http://feedpress.me/futilitycloset.

Please consider becoming a patron of Futility Closet -- on our Patreon page you can pledge any amount per episode, and we've set up some rewards to help thank you for your support. You can also make a one-time donation on the Support Us page of the Futility Closet website.

If you have any questions or comments you can reach us at [email protected]. Thanks for listening!

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hello, listeners, and happy New Year.
0:01.9	Here's another special episode of lateral thinking puzzles.
0:04.4	These are puzzles where one of us describes a strange sounding situation and the other has to work out what's going on, asking only yes or no questions.
0:11.7	And thanks so much to everyone who's been sending in puzzles for us to try.
0:15.0	We always need more.
0:16.2	So please keep sending them to podcast at futilitycloset.com.
0:20.1	We are off next week, but we'll be back on January 15th with another dose of quirky
0:24.4	history and another lateral thinking puzzle.
0:27.5	This puzzle is based on a piece of trivia that I heard on the podcast, no such thing
0:31.8	as a fish.
0:32.9	Why did the owner of a famous racehorse retire the horse from racing even though it had been winning its races?
0:39.8	That's interesting. This is true?
0:41.2	Mm-hmm.
0:42.0	Retired the horse from racing.
0:43.6	Mm-hmm.
0:44.2	Did the owner want to use the horse for some other purpose?
0:47.3	Not necessarily.
0:48.4	Did the owner hope to make money or gain somehow by doing this?
0:51.8	No.
0:53.3	Retire the horse from racing even though it had been winning? It had been winning its races doing this. No. Retire the horse from racing, even though it had been winning.
0:56.8	It had been winning its races, yeah.
0:58.8	And this is a conventional horse.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Greg Ross, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Greg Ross and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.