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Stock Lateral Thinking Puzzle
- 247 statements
- 45 feature instances
- 20 referencing feature instances
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The trickier variant of the Stock Puzzle where the solution doesn't just require the application of logic and reasoning but the ability to think of things in another way. Frequently they are presented to appear like a difficult regular puzzle, but with a trick solution that is simple but not obvious. Can sometimes be frustrating as it is often perfectly possible to construct a solution that explains all the presented facts in an unconnected way, but isn't the "right" answer that explains things by tying everything together. These puzzles often may depend on semantics, cognitive theories, wordplay, and cultural codes and cues such as when (or when not to) take spoken words literally. As a result, such puzzles are not effectively translated into other languages. Nor are they universally considered fair measures of IQ or intelligence in general (except by 2000s-era job interviewers). In fiction, they can be life or death questions. Such puzzles are also often subject to Rule Zero. In such cases, no other interpretation of the solution is acceptable than the specific one that is enforced, even in cases where alternate solutions are shown to make sense or when the enforced solution has been proven to be flawed or biased. As there are entire websites dedicated to building collections of lateral thinking puzzles, please limit examples to puzzles that have been featured in the media (somewhere other than puzzle books). Compare Outside-the-Box Tactic. |
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| Stock Lateral Thinking Puzzle / int_1ed2c571 | type |
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An episode of The Cosby Show has a member of the family tell this riddle as part of a bet. | |
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| Stock Lateral Thinking Puzzle / int_219a8958 | type |
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Myst IV: Revelation has a variant in Tomahna, where you have to reroute the Age's backup power from several buildings to the dam via this puzzle. | |
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| Stock Lateral Thinking Puzzle / int_2275c659 | type |
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| Stock Lateral Thinking Puzzle / int_2275c659 | comment |
House: At the end of the episode "Failure to Communicate", House realizes the patient's illness causes him to say the word "bear" when he wants to say "polar". He then tells his subordinates this riddle to guide them towards this realization. | |
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A variant is used during the riddle contest in EP8 of Umineko: When They Cry. The bear-hunting is omitted, which changes the challenge to figuring out where you are. Your choices of answer are "a hot place", "a cold place", or "such a place doesn't exist". | |
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The Simpsons: In "Bart vs. Lisa vs. the Third Grade", Bart is dropped a grade and Lisa bumped up, leaving them both in the same class. This question stumps Lisa, but Bart gets it because he heard it the last time he was in that grade. | |
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Mentioned in one Miss Marple story, where she compares it to the mystery, which is also based on a trick question. | |
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Ali G had a quiz sketch which posed this question to the contestant. The contestant gets it straight away, but Ali has to have it explained to him by the quiz producers. | |
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Scrubs: Used by JD to trick the Janitor and Troy, who are thoroughly confused by the wordplay. Their solution involves scouring a book for coin collectors, finding and pointing out a coin that the book prices at 29 cents, and are enraged when JD explains the real answer. Their response at the end of the episode is to pose a riddle of their own: "Two guys destroyed your bike with a crowbar and a bat. One of 'em wasn't me." This happens TWICE. | |
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Again used in the Corner Gas episode, and Hank's answers include "The Alberta side," (referring to the plane crash example above). "The roof is flat," and "The egg is square!" | |
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Sesame Street: The girl calculates the total number of people as the song is sung the second time and reveals her answer after being told the trick. And again with Kermit singing it as a song, with Grover frantically trying to keep track of the total. |
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The Dream Park novel The California Voodoo Game uses this as the basis for a really tough logic puzzle. The measurements are the same, but the hunter runs down a bird instead of shooting a bear. Obviously (he's near the south pole), the solution is that he's a distance (the answer is a formula) that causes his "sideways" walking to carry him back to his original longitude.note The starting point must be 1 + 1/(2Ï€N) miles north of the South Pole, for positive integer N. | |
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Inside Man has the bank robber ask the question of which weighs more, "all the trains that pass through Grand Central Station in a year - or the trees cut down to print all U.S. currency in circulation?" The NYPD think it's the former once they figure out the U.S. currency part, but Frazier is smart enough to recall Dalton saying it was a trick question and the answer is always they both weigh the same, before deducing both answers. The answer to both is 0: U.S. currency is made of cotton; Grand Central Station is the name of the post office and the informal name of Grand Central Terminal. Humorously, after answering that the police then start debating among themselves whether the question is wrong anyway, as no trains pass through Grand Central because all of its tracks terminate there, unless you include the tracks of the subway stations. | |
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Implied in the cold open of an episode of Batman: The Brave and the Bold. The Riddler has Batman and Booster Gold chained up on a mock game show set, and gives Batman an electric shock for each question Booster gets wrong. A montage of Booster's attempts includes "You don't bury survivors." | |
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Knights of the Old Republic: In this example, the substance is gas pressure, but the method of solving it is exactly the same. | |
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Also used in the 2006 version of Safecracker. | |
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xkcd gives the appropriate response to this kind of trickery. | |
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This question pops up in a Dungeons & Dragons source book (2nd edition Complete Bard), but without the bear. Rather, a character asks in how many places this is possible, then smugly and condescendingly points out that your answer of "the north pole" is wrong, since he asked "how many" and the answer therefore is "one" (missing the point that, because of the south pole issue, the answer should be "infinity"). | |
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Jackie Chan Adventures used almost this exact wording, only with "the end of every place." | |
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The Cave features a variant in the Monk's story where 4 + 7 = 6. | |
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"Hugh Grant?" | |
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The Office (UK): David appears to have given this riddle to Tim and Gareth at the end of the Christmas special. | |
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In The Office (US), this was one of the questions Dwight tried to confound the new guy with, but he has also read a lot of Mind Trap so he answers the each question nearly instantly. | |
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TED-ed has a variant on this one where the protagonist and their time-displaced self need to find two places where it's possible to head 1 mile South, 1 mile East, and then 1 mile North and end up where they started, in order to activate their time machines and set everything right. note The two places are the classic solution of the North Pole, and the other being 1 + 1/(2Ï€n) miles north of the South Pole. | |
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The Runescape quest The Fremenik Trials uses this as part of a series of puzzles that Peer the Seer gives to you as part of his trial. | |
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"George Washington!" | |
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In Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, the second part of the sphinx's riddle is "tell me what is the last thing to mend, the middle of middle and end of the end". Since the answer of the entire riddle is spider, the answer to the riddle is the letter "d", which is the last letter of the word mend, the middle letter of the word middle, and the last letter in the word end. Harry is stumped by that one, but guesses the first and third parts and figures out the answer to the riddle from those instead. | |
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Limmy's Show has a sketch where Limmy, in the guise of an edutainment programme narrator, asks the audience whether a kilogramme of steel is heavier than a kilogramme of feathers. Limmy's the only one to get the question wrong, and he seems to have a breakdown as everyone around him tries to explain "They're both a kilogramme." | |
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In Tin Cup, Roy stumps his buddies with this question, until Molly, in a Walk-In Chime-In moment, answers the question, and mentions how the question is used to make people realize gender stereotypes. | |
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"The Princess of Pure Delight" from Lady in the Dark presents this as an Engagement Challenge. | |
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Used as a gag rather than a riddle in Good Omens, in which Shadwell is described as hating all Southerners (no one knows where he's from, as his accent is from all over the UK including Wales and Scotland) and by inference, lives at the North Pole. | |
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When Jerry rhetorically asks Danny this question in Nukees, Danny points out, after some caveats, that a pound of lead would displace less air, and therefore weigh more. | |
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Planescape: Torment had this very puzzle. Being based on Dungeons & Dragons rules, you had to solve it via your character's stats and not "your" own knowledge. | |
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Used in a "Woman's Lib" episode of All in the Family, when Gloria asks the riddle of the rest of the family. Edith gets it right. | |
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A variant with a female circus performer was used in an Encyclopedia Brown story. | |
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In Paper Mario: The Origami King, this is used as a true-or-false statement in the Trial of Wisdom: "One ton of iron is heavier than one ton of cotton." The answer is false: "One ton equals one ton. The density of the individual materials does not matter." | |
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Turns up in Die Hard with a Vengeance. | |
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This was averted in an episode of The Golden Girls, when it was the answer to Final Jeopardy in Dorothy Zbornak's dream sequence. Rose Nylund's response, "Who is Cary Grant?" is deemed to be the correct response by both host Alex Trebek and series creator Merv Griffin. (After all dream-Alex didn't specify that it was Ulysses Grant's tomb...) | |
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Stock Lateral Thinking Puzzle | |
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In Pelle the Conqueror Pelle tries the gold-and-feathers question on his schoolteacher and gets a rap on the knuckles in response. | |
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The Touhou fan video "Cirno's Perfect Math Class" has a modified version of this puzzle (they wanted the number of people in total, rather than the number of people left on the bus); the answer Cirno gives is zero, because "there are no buses in Gensokyo". Given that Cirno is The Ditz, the absurdity of the answer makes sense in its own way. | |
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There's a similar puzzle with different volumes in Zork Zero. | |
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A John Finnemore's Souvenir Programme skit with the typical John Finnemore formula of a Sensible Person finding themselves in a stock storyline and deconstructing it. In this case, the final punchline is they're on a train to St. Ives. | |
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A variant is used during the Riddler's introduction in The Batman, combining this with the "That's Impossible" type above: "A hunter walks one mile north of his camp and spots a bear. He tracks the bear one mile east, shoots the bear, then goes one mile south to arrive at his camp. What color is the bear?" Detective Yin, who has been working on the puzzles with Batman's remote help to this point, is about to enter White as the answer, when Batman shows up in person to stop her, as it's a trick question - this version of the riddle refers to the South Pole, where there are no bears, polar or otherwise. Turns out the riddles were just a distraction from the Riddler's real objective.note This variant didn't recognize that you could be some distance from the north pole, then travel east for exactly one mile (circling the north pole exactly N times), then return south to the original starting point. | |
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A longer riddle in Masquerade begins with "the beginning of eternity" and ends with "the end of time and space". The full answer is eclipse. | |
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Though it doesn't involve a doctor, the infamous "WHO WAS PHONE?!" joke Creepypasta is basically this. | |
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One of the puzzles in Professor Layton. | |
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