210-Lateral Thinking Puzzles

Futility Closet

Greg Ross

History

4.8 • 748 Ratings

🗓️ 23 July 2018

⏱️ 34 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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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 was contributed by listener Amy Howard.

Puzzle #2 was suggested by an item on the podcast No Such Thing as a Fish. Here are some corroborating links: 1, 2, 3, 4

Puzzle #3 was inspired by an item in Jerry Clark and Ed Palattella's 2015 book A History of Heists, and here's a link.

Puzzle #4 was devised by Sharon. Here are two links; note that both contain some nudity.

Puzzle #5 is from listener Justin Sabe, who was inspired by an item on the podcast 99% Invisible.

Puzzle #6 is from listener Sam Dyck, who sent these links.

You can listen using the player above, download this episode directly, or subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Google Play Music or via the RSS feed at https://futilitycloset.libsyn.com/rss.

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

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, listeners. Here's another special episode of lateral thinking puzzles. These are puzzles where one of us describes a strange sounding situation and the other one has to work out what's going on asking only yes or no questions.
0:11.2	And thanks so much to everyone who's been sending in puzzles for us to try. We always need more. So please do keep sending them to podcast at futilitycloset.com.
0:20.6	We're off next week, but we'll be back on August 6th with another dose of quirky
0:24.6	history and another lateral thinking puzzle.
0:28.4	This is from listener Amy Howard, and I've simplified it a bit. A man buys a farmhouse and
0:33.8	discovers that it's infested with mice, so he sets out a mouse trap each night to kill them one by one. One morning he finds a mouse in the trap and knows that it's infested with mice, so he sets out a mouse trap each night to kill them one by one.
0:39.2	One morning he finds a mouse in the trap and knows that it's the last one. How does he know?
0:44.2	Huh. That's a good question. How would you know that that's the last mouse?
0:50.9	I'm assuming he didn't like catch them and number them first.
0:55.4	No.
0:56.0	Put colored dots on them or something.
0:58.7	How would you know it's the last mouse?
1:00.7	Did the mouse look lonely?
1:03.8	Yes, that's it.
1:05.0	I'm astonished you solve that.
1:06.3	I have committed mouse suicide because I have no family anymore.
1:12.2	Okay. Okay.
1:14.3	Did this actually happen or you don't know?
1:16.5	I don't know.
1:17.7	Could it have theoretically happened?
1:19.0	Yes, I should say I'm not positive.
1:20.7	This is exactly how this works, but it makes a very good puzzle and it's plausible, I think.
	...

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