Brain-Busting Lateral Thinking Puzzles

by Paul Sloane, Des MacHale

These are think-out-of-the-box brainbusters, lots of fun for anyone who enjoys a challenge. Some of the situations presented may seem really strange, and almost impossible to solve, but once the obvious assumptions are discarded, the answers begin to come into focus. The key lies in being creative, and getting into the groove by trying the easier puzzles before moving on to the super-hard ones. The collection includes problems that use visual clues, timed questions, and thorny conundrums that ask you to look for sequences, uncover relationships, use deductive reasoning, and make clever observations. It’s a true test of anyone's smarts.

Genres: Puzzles

192 pages, Paperback

First published May 28, 2004

About the author

Paul Sloane read Engineering at Trinity Hall Cambridge. He came top of Sales School at IBM, became MD of Ashton-Tate UK, VP International for MathSoft and CEO of Monactive. He now writes, speaks and gives workshops on lateral thinking in business, creativity, innovation and leadership. He is married and lives in Camberley in Surrey. He has three grown-up daughters. He is a keen chess and tennis player and he plays keyboards in a rock band, the Fat Cats. He has written a series of lateral thinking puzzle books, many co-authored with Des MacHale, published by Sterling Publishing. They have sold over 2 million copies and been translated into many languages. He has also written two management books, published by Kogan Page, and many articles for blogs and websites. He manages the Lateral Puzzles Forum where puzzlers can set and solve lateral puzzles.

Reviews

[Nynke · Rating 2 out of 5]

Seems like a fun thing to do at a party. I did the wally tests to get a feel of the book and desided not to keep it. The questions are a mixture of super obvious, fun, tricky and a few too many questions that made the answer seem not a clever word play or trick, but one of those bad riddles that 8 year olds, who have not yet quite understood the rules, come up with.

It seems not much thought and/or quality checking has gone into this.

Holland is not a country. Not everyone who is Dutch is from Holland. I can forgive football fans for such a minstake (because Dutch football fans keep making it too and are singing "hup holland hup" all the time, not because of IQ related steriotype jokes) However, Cambridge educated authors and/or their editors should know better.

[Robert · Rating 3 out of 5]

great little stories! each challenge leaves me defeated but I appreciate the manner in which the problems are presented.