“A penniless sculptor made a beautiful metal statue which he sold. Because of this he died soon afterward. Why?”
“This” is really vague. For the question to be meaningful, the answer should incorporate that he was penniless, the statue was metal, and that he sold it. The zinc in pennies answer leaves out the selling.
“The body of a climber is found many years after his death 1000 ft below the summit of one of the world’s highest mountains. In his pocket is a diary claiming that he had reached the summit and was on his way down. How was it discovered that he was not telling the truth?”
Whose diary? Why phrase the question that way instead of '… his diary …"?
If it was an ink and altitude issue the correct word would be ‘determined’ rather than ‘discovered’.
I can understand why everyone in this thread is annoyed by these puzzles.
As far as I understood, they are supposed to be posed by someone who has an answer in mind. In trying to solve them you ask yes/no questions to slowly work out the answer. It generally would take lots of questions - it isn’t really possible to work out these puzzles definitively without asking questions (as you can see been demonstrated by the various of plausible answers already posted above).
For example, you might begin by asking “Did the sculpter die of old age?” or maybe something more clever.
Some lateral thinking puzzles are very carefully constructed such that only one set of hard-to-imagine circumstances will serve as a plausible back story. In the case of such tightly-constructed puzzles, there is little or no need to ask questions. Discovering the solution just calls for a flash of insight, presumably one based on applying the principles of ‘lateral thinking’, which transforms the seemingly bizarre set of facts into the plausible conclusion of an inventive back story.
However, most lateral thinking puzzles are not constructed this well. In most cases, there are many possibilities and options, and the puzzle itself has many vague fringes. The fun comes from asking yes/no questions to elucidate the precise back story which the puzzle-setter had in mind.
The two examples in the OP fall into the latter category, and unless we can play Twenty Questions with the puzzle-setter, there’s no way of accessing the ‘right’ solution.
#2) Perhaps I’m thinking about this too simplistically, but…
If he was retreating back down the mountain, he would have been facing toward the base. If he was still trying to get up the mountain, he would have been facing the summit. Ergo, since he was facing the summit he never actually made it.
(Yes, I understand that he is free to face whichever direction he chooses when he sits down to take a rest, or to camp for the night, or whatever.)
When solving lateral thinking puzzles, you have to understand the spirit of such puzzles to understand which answer to go with.
I said the climber wrote in fountain pen, which would he could not have used if he carried it to the summit and back. It would not flow or would have leaked. Why not any of the other possible answers? Because the puzzle gives you chosen information, and only based on that information can you draw the conclusion.
He had a diary - understanding lateral puzzles means this is relevant to the answer
He was found many years after his death - likely relevant to the answer (fountain pens really aren’t used now or in the time he was found, so the answer didn’t jump out at those finding him
It was discovered that he didn’t reach the summit - again, probably relevant
“Discovered”…well, when they finally found the fountain pen on him, that would constitute discovery.
When you break down a lateral puzzle, it falls apart like a joke does when you explain it.
*I’ll stick to my answer. They discovered the climber used a fountain pen. If he made it to that summit, it would not have be useable. *
The climber faked his diary entry beforehand, but too much of it. For obvious reasons he did not expect his death. If he described his way down to 2000 ft (or whatever) below the summit, it is known that he did not say the truth. This does not technically exclude the possibility of reaching the summit, but the question didn’t ask for that.
There is a simpler answer to the mountain climber problem. He faked the diary before he started the climb, and put the diary in his pocket. What he did not do was take a pen with him. So how would he write in the diary?
#1 - I found an asian bulletin board on the web where someone posed this question and everyone engaged in asking the yes/no questions. The answer was indeed that he used his home’s lightning rod, and was killed by lightning afterward.
Although, I like the answer that first came to my mind: He melted down his iron lung to make the statue.
#2 - I could not find that puzzle on the web. My money is on the fountain pen exploding. Although, my next preferred solution is that they found that the diary was not his… he stole it from a guy who actually made it to the summit.
I have to say I don’t think there are indisputable answers. Make up a weird answer that fits the story, and mess with your friends as they try to sort it out with yes/no questions. Otherwise, these ‘puzzles’ aren’t going to be much good to you.
F’r instance, while doing some web-research on these, I came across this lateral gem : A man died in the Arctic with a pack on his back. The answer? It was a pack of wolves. Do wolves live north of the Arctic Circle? I’m not sure. Are there a billion ways that someone with a backpack could’ve died in the Arctic? Yes.
Most of these puzzles are useless and devoid of fun.
Pardon, but in the spirit of these kind of riddles, answers such as “his partner said he didn’t make it” just as “oh someone had a security camera with the summit in background and no one was seen reaching the summit” , don’t work.
You can shoe horn in any answer you want, but the spirit of these riddles is getting just with the info provided. The mountain…a climber…a peak…a diary…he was found years later…these are the components.
Now, there ARE puzzles which require a 20 question format, such as: A man ate albatros soup and then killed himself. Those demand shoehorning based on questions and answers of the teller until the shoe horning is the actual answer that fits.
The puzzles in the OP are more of the type where you explain that a cabin was found in the deep woods with three dead people inside. Upon seeing the cabin and the dead people, the hiker that found it knew immediately how they died.
Now, go ahead and fill in the blanks. You could childishly say, “Well it was burned and they died in the fire”. And that’d be great, but a puzzler would be thinking…okay…what KIND of cabin. An aircraft cabin! It was a dead crew from a plane’s cabin.
That’s the answer in the spirit of these types of riddles.
Philster, that’s an interesting take on it. I was going to post that it appears (to me) that these things are not riddles, or puzzles, but games, and we just got the opening. The game would include taking the opening and then playing a yes/no questions game. I can see how that would be (interesting.GT.0).
But you propose just the opposite. To take your example with the cabin in the mountains, I don’t see why the answer of an aircraft cabin is any better than a cabin with a gas leak (which is what I thought of becuase I knew someone who died just like that), or any of a million other possible explanations. What could possibly be interesting about a puzzle like that?
The joy of puzzles like these is that there isn’t necessarily one answer. The trick is to hypothesis the most elegant answer that fits best with what the puzzle tells you. Hence lots of possibles and an thought provoking discussion, as this thread has already proven.
Saying that the puzzle doesn’t give enough information or leaves too many possibilities open misses the point of them. They’re supposed to do that. Not everything has a right answer, just a best answer.
Of course, the motivation is always that there is at least one clever answer to be revealled at the end of it all, and the riddle isn’t just nonsense. Even if you don’t get the ‘official’ answer, you might have a better one. But if no-one knows it, then things could get frustrating.
My initial wags are ;
The sculptor obtained the metal from his fillings. This caused some kind of complication, infection, etc, which killed him.
The climber’s pen would have been damaged by conditions at the summit. Either air pressure conditions or temperature. Or maybe the peak of this mountain is simply impossible for a single climber to scale. Sheer cliffs etc.
But I accept that they require some fine-tuning before they’re likely to be correct.
Futile Gesture and Philster are right, IMHO. You can always provide your own answers to these types of questions. But the key is to find the answer that’s the simplest based on what’s given. This means that you should add as little as possible to the story.
For example:
A man is found dead lying in an open field, next to an unopened package. How did he die?
A) The package was his heart disease medication. He couldn’t open it because he had no arms. He was running to the home of his nearest neighbor who lived 2 miles away. He had a heart attack and died.
B) He stole a box that he thought contained a TV. Instead it contained nerve gas. As he was running home, the box was shaking, releasing some of the nerve gas. It escaped through the unsealed corners of the box killing him.
C) The box was his unopened parachute. He was a skydiver whose parachute didn’t open.
What was the simplest, most elegant answer? Obviously C. I can’t believe more people don’t appreciate these types of puzzles.
The box was heavy, and the exertion overtaxed his heart. It’s simple. It’s elegant. It fits the facts. It’s also utterly boring. I think the explanation I provided adds less than assuming he’s a skydiver and the package was his parachute.
The fact remains, there’s no single correct answer to that question.
Ah, but the package was unopened. It was an open field. These were givens that weren’t needed for your answer. You still need to work with what’s given in the question. I think we all agree that there is no single correct answer. But there is a best answer (to this one, at least).
The fact that it’s an open field doesn’t bear any relevance to the skydiving explanation, either. In fact, the first time I heard a variation of the puzzle you put forth about the skydiver, it was in a forest.
I would be interested to know where the puzzles in the OP came from. I’d like to know what the person who devised them had in mind - are we supposed to ask questions or not? Finding the source seems to be the only way to really know. I tried a bit of googling but no luck.
Any ideas?
This guy’s explanation fits with my understanding:
