300-Lateral Thinking Puzzles

Futility Closet

Greg Ross

History

4.8 • 748 Ratings

🗓️ 22 June 2020

⏱️ 29 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.

Intro:

In the 1850s, a $5 bill featuring Santa Claus was legal tender in the United States.

In 1910 DuPont suggested that "some farmers have a wrong idea about dynamite."

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 listener Cody Scace.

Puzzle #2 is from listener Jay Graham.

Puzzle #3 is from Greg. Here are two links.

Puzzle #4 is from listener Paul Rippey.

Puzzle #5 is from listener Hanno Zulla, who sent these links.

Puzzle #6 is from Greg.

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

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Futility Closet Podcast, forgotten stories from the pages of history.
0:14.8	Visit us online to sample more than 11,000 quirky curiosities from Santa Claus Money to to farming with dynamite. This is episode 300.
0:23.8	I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. This is another special episode of lateral thinking puzzles.
0:30.0	These are puzzles where one of us describes a strange sounding situation, and the other has to work out
0:35.3	what's going on by asking yes or no questions.
0:40.9	Thanks so much to everyone who's been sending in puzzles for us to try.
0:46.0	We can always use more, so please keep sending them to podcast at futilitycloset.com.
0:50.4	And we'll be back next week with another dose of quirky history and another lateral thinking puzzle.
0:55.9	This is from listener Cody Skace.
0:58.4	A farmer decided he wanted to grow a particular crop.
1:01.8	After buying the seeds and installing an irrigation system,
1:05.0	he sowed and fertilized and eventually successfully harvested his crop.
1:09.2	He was delighted with the results and promptly threw the harvest away.
1:13.5	Why?
1:17.4	Was the whole thing, would you say, some kind of experiment?
1:19.9	Like he was trying to grow something on the moon or in some kind of weird circumstances to see if it could be done?
1:25.4	No.
1:25.8	No.
1:26.4	Oh, okay.
1:30.4	So he grew a crop of something.
1:33.0	Would you say these are plants?
1:35.0	Yes.
	...

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