365-Lateral Thinking Puzzles

Futility Closet

Greg Ross

History

4.8 • 748 Ratings

🗓️ 29 November 2021

⏱️ 32 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

For this final episode of the Futility Closet podcast we have eight new lateral thinking puzzles — play along with us as we try to untangle some perplexing situations using yes-or-no questions.

Intro:

Sears used to sell houses by mail.

Many of Lewis Carroll's characters were suggested by fireplace tiles in his Oxford study.

The sources for this week's puzzles are below. In some cases 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 Greg. Here are two links.

Puzzle #2 is from listener Diccon Hyatt, who sent this link.

Puzzle #3 is from listener Derek Christie, who sent this link.

Puzzle #4 is from listener Reuben van Selm.

Puzzle #5 is from listener Andy Brice.

Puzzle #6 is from listener Anne Joroch, who sent this link.

Puzzle #7 is from listener Steve Carter and his wife, Ami, inspired by an item in Jim Steinmeyer's 2006 book The Glorious Deception.

Puzzle #8 is from Agnes Rogers' 1953 book How Come? A Book of Riddles, sent to us by listener Jon Jerome.

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.

Many thanks to Doug Ross for providing the music for this whole ridiculous enterprise, and for being my brother.

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.
0:15.3	Visit us online to sample more than 12,000 quirky curiosities from mail order houses to Lewis Carroll's fireplace.
0:23.1	This is episode 365. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. For our final episode, we have
0:30.0	eight new lateral thinking puzzles. One of us will describe a strange sounding situation and the
0:35.6	other has to try to work out what's going on by asking
0:38.3	yes or no questions. Thanks again to everyone who sent puzzles into us over the years. We've always
0:43.1	appreciated your contributions. You all really helped make this show what it was and we hope you
0:48.7	enjoy this last set of puzzles.
1:04.8	Starting around 2010, when customers of the online eyeglass website, Decor My Eyes, complained about poor service and misfilled orders, the company responded with insults, threats
1:10.2	of violence, and other harassment.
1:12.3	Why?
1:15.3	They responded to the customers who were complaining with these things?
1:20.6	Yes.
1:21.9	Huh.
1:23.1	They deliberately wanted bad reviews?
1:26.4	Yes.
1:27.8	Were they a real company? Yes. Were they a real company?
1:29.7	Yes.
1:30.1	Were they really selling eyeglasses?
1:31.8	Yes.
1:34.8	Was it because they wanted the reviews to be so bad that nobody would take them seriously?
1:41.2	Because if a review seems like so bad and so over the top you think okay that's
	...

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