Lateral thinking test

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Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesise new things.

Steve Jobs

Lateral thinking, is the ability to think creatively, or "outside the box" as referred to in business, to use your inspiration and imagination to solve problems by looking at them from unexpected perspectives. Lateral thinking involves discarding the obvious, leaving behind traditional modes of thought, and throwing away preconceptions.

Most of the questions in the following test are what we call "Insight puzzles". Research by Schooler and Melcher (University of California) found that people who wrote down the puzzles and tried to solve them on paper were on average 30% less likely to come up with the right solution than those who just solved them in their heads. Writing down the puzzles invokes the use of the left side of our brain which deals with verbal and logical reasoning, rather than the right side which deals with visual and creative thinking. These puzzles tend to require creative rather than logical reasoning to solve them, so we need to use right brain thinking.

Lateral Thinking Test

The following questions test your ability to think laterally. If you get more than 50% of these right you're certainly strong on your lateral thinking skills (or maybe you're just good at tests!)

1. A graduate applying for pilot training with a major airline was asked what he would do if, after a long-haul flight to Sydney, he met the captain wearing a dress in the hotel bar. What would you do?

2. A man built a rectangular house, each side having a southern view. He spotted a bear. What colour was the bear?

3. If you were alone in a deserted house at night, and there was an oil lamp, a candle, and firewood and you only have one match, which would you light first?

4. What can you put in a wooden box that would make it lighter? The more of them you put in the lighter it becomes, yet the box stays empty.

5. Which side of a cat contains the most hair?

6. The 60th and 62nd British Prime Ministers had the same mother and father but were not brothers. How do you account for this?

7. How many birthdays does a typical woman have?

8. Why can't a man living in Canterbury be buried west of the River Stour?

9. Is it legal for a man to marry his widow's sister?

10. If you drove a coach leaving Canterbury with 35 passengers, dropped off 6 and picked up 2 at Faversham, picked up 9 more at Sittingbourne, dropped off 3 at Chatham, and then drove on to arrive in London 40 minutes later, what colour are the driver's eyes?

11. A woman lives on the tenth floor of a block of flats. Every morning she takes the lift down to the ground floor and goes to work. In the evening, she gets into the lift, and, if there is someone else in the lift she goes back to her floor directly. Otherwise, she goes to the eighth floor and walks up two flights of stairs to her flat. How do you explain this?

12. A window cleaner is cleaning the windows on the 25th floor of a skyscraper when he slips and falls. He is not wearing a safety harness and nothing slows his fall, yet he suffered no injuries. Explain.

13. The band of stars across the night sky is called the "...... Way"?

14. Yogurt is made from fermented ........

15. What do cows drink?

16. The Zorganian Republic has some very strange customs. Couples only wish to have female children as only females can inherit the family's wealth, so if they have a male child they keep having more children until they have a girl. If they have a girl, they stop having children. What is the ratio of girls to boys in Zorgania?

17. How many hands does the clock of the tower of Big Ben have?

18. John's mother has 3 children, one is named April, one is named May. What is the third one named?

19. You are running in a race. You overtake the second person. What position are you in?

20. 0. In the same race, if you overtake the last person, then you are in what position?

21. A man and his son were in a car crash. The father was killed and the son was taken to hospital with serious injuries. The examining doctor exclaims: "But, this is my son!". How can this be?

22. You have to choose between three rooms. The first is full of raging fires. The second is full of tigers that haven’t eaten in 3 years. The third is full of assassins with loaded machine guns. Which room should you choose?

23. Name three consecutive days in English without using the words Tuesday, Thursday, or Saturday

24. What's unusual about this paragraph? Just how quickly you can find out what is so funny about it. It looks fairly ordinary and plain that you might think nothing is wrong with it. In fact, nothing is wrong with it! It is highly curious though. Study it and think about it, but you still may not find anything odd. But if you work at it a bit, you could just find out.

25. Three of the glasses below are filled with orange juice and the other three are empty. By moving just one glass, can you arrange the glasses so that the full and empty glasses alternate?

26. Join all the 9 dots in the picture below (scroll down) using four straight lines or less, without lifting your pen and without tracing the same line more than once. Do copy this onto paper if you wish to make it easier.