PDA

View Full Version : Alternative lateral thinking problems



Paul Beardsley
2010-May-24, 07:18 PM
For those who find jja's puzzles too arbitrary, too open, or otherwise frustrating (rather than fun) here is a thread for puzzles that have only one answer which can be guessed from the provided information if you think laterally enough.

Here's one to start.

True story: In the summer of 2007 I had a temporary part-time teaching job. One of the other teachers was a woman whom I befriended. She was also studying, and she spoke of the difficulties of juggling work and studies when one is a single mother.

One afternoon I visited her at her mother's house, where she was staying with her two year old son. Her mother looked after her son when she was working. (I did not meet the son.)

While I was there, the phone rang. It was the young woman's husband. Hearing half the telephone conversation, it was obvious that the two were very much in love - and the husband was the father of her son.

She had not lied to me about being a single mother, yet she was also happily married. How could this be?

*

That same summer, I had been teaching at Havant College, delivering mathematics lessons in the evenings for adults who had not gained a mathematics qualification when they were at school. When the term ended, there was no more teaching work, so I had to sign on at the Benefits office. I was interviewed by a woman who explained how Benefit worked. She and I had never met before, but she had a photograph of me on her desk. Why?

*

I'm on holiday so I might not be able to check this thread every day.

nauthiz
2010-May-24, 10:02 PM
#1:
Do she and her son have to live separately from her husband for some reason (military deployment, perhaps?), so that she's raising him as a single mother despite being married?

#2:
There's a photo of you in your file.


(text is in white- I can't figure out how to do spoilers. Is it unsupported on the new software?)

Paul Beardsley
2010-May-25, 07:52 AM
#1
Correct. In fact, she had married him in Thailand but there were problems getting him a visa so there was a quite long delay before he could join his wife and son.

This didn't occur to me so it seemed a bit weird at the time.


#2:

Nope!


(text is in white- I can't figure out how to do spoilers. Is it unsupported on the new software?)
I don't know - I thought white on white was the standard way.

Jens
2010-May-25, 08:26 AM
One wasn't too hard to guess. I think #2 could have more than one answer. Here's one:

2. You also worked part-time as a fashion model, and you were on the cover of a magazine that she happened to have on her desk.

Strange
2010-May-25, 08:32 AM
#1. I thought it can't be that obvious ... hmmm ... no, give up ...

#2. She was using someone else's desk (someone else being on holiday perhaps) and someone else had been on your course?

jokergirl
2010-May-25, 08:39 AM
1. was easy...
2. She had a photo of your graduation class/some other class/group photo?

Tog
2010-May-25, 08:41 AM
1. My thought was something similar to the above.

2. She had a photo of the current faculty on her desk. As you were teaching at the time, you would be in that photo, along with several others.

Paul Beardsley
2010-May-25, 04:16 PM
Tog's is close enough.

In fact, she had a Havant College brochure on her desk, which was mainly of courses that could help get claimants back into work. At least one of the photographs in the brochure was of me delivering a lesson.

I'll close for now with a crossword clue that puzzled me long ago: "Flower under London Bridge." (6 letters.)

BTW I regard this thread as a free-for-all - if you've got a puzzle you like, post it; if you want to attempt to solve a puzzle, solve whichever one grabs you.

Tog
2010-May-25, 05:32 PM
Tog's is close enough.Yay me.


I'll close for now with a crossword clue that puzzled me long ago: "Flower under London Bridge." (6 letters.)

Answer: Thames- The river that flows under the bridge, making it a floh-er, not a flao-er.

dwnielsen
2010-May-25, 08:33 PM
Ha, Tog strikes again

Strange
2010-May-25, 08:55 PM
The nice thing about that sort of crossword clue is that when you get the answer you know it is right. Unlike certain lateral problems where there are multiple "correct" answers that are arbitrarily wrong.

Sarawak
2010-Jul-15, 12:03 PM
Tog's is close enough.

I was going to say maybe she had some kind of poster that said, watch out for this man . . .