266-Lateral Thinking Puzzles

Futility Closet

Greg Ross

History

4.8 • 748 Ratings

🗓️ 30 September 2019

⏱️ 33 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

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

Intro:

The Rotator typeface presents the digits 0-9 even when turned upside down.

In 1897 The Strand designed a complete alphabet using three human acrobats.

The sources for this week's puzzles are below. 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 from Kyle's Hendrickson's 1998 book Mental Fitness Puzzles.

Puzzle #2 was contributed by listener Chris.

Puzzle #3 was contributed by listener Wayne. Here are two links with further information.

Puzzle #4 is from listener Jeff Harvey.

Puzzle #5 is from listener Ben Sack, who sent two corroborating links.

Puzzle #6 is based on an item in Dan Lewis' Now I Know newsletter. Here's a corroborating link.

Puzzle #7 is from listener Katie Tripp.

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

Please consider becoming a patron of Futility Closet -- you can choose the amount you want to pledge, 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.

Many thanks to Doug Ross for the music in this episode.

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	Welcome to the Futility Closet Podcast, forgotten stories from the pages of history.
0:14.5	Visit us online to sample more than 10,000 quirky curiosities from an invertible typeface to a human alphabet.
0:21.7	This is episode 266. I'm Greg Ross.
0:24.5	And I'm Sharon Ross. This is a special episode of lateral thinking puzzles.
0:29.5	These are puzzles where one of us describes a strange sounding situation,
0:33.2	and the other has to work out what's going on, asking only yes or no questions.
0:37.3	Thanks so much to everyone who's been sending in puzzles for us to try.
0:40.4	We can always use more, so please keep sending them to podcast at futilitycloset.com.
0:45.2	And we'll be back next week with another dose of quirky history and another lateral thinking puzzle.
0:59.9	This is from Kyle Hendrickson's 1998 book Mental Fitness Puzzles.
1:05.8	A burglar is stealing two bars of gold, each so heavy he cannot lift them above his waist.
1:09.8	On his way out of the vault, he suddenly sees a security camera ahead.
1:12.0	Thinking quickly, he disguises himself without putting down the gold bars. How? So he's carrying two gold bars lower than his waist,
1:20.3	or no higher than his waist. And he's going to use these to disguise himself? No.
1:33.6	He's going to disguise himself without putting down the gold bars, but he's not using the gold bars in some way to disguise himself.
1:35.6	That's correct.
1:38.0	Presumably both of his hands are occupied.
1:40.3	That's right.
1:40.7	So he's not going to be using his hands?
1:42.7	Right.
1:44.3	Okay. Security camera. So he's not going to be using his hands. Right. Okay.
1:45.9	Security camera.
	...

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