h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Remember lateral thinking puzzles? They were all the rage a couple of decades ago: Romeo and Juliet found dead in a puddle of water and broken glass? The guy found dead in a middle of a field with only a backpack? The answers were always annoying ("I didn't know that was in the rules!")

Some of us loved the puzzles and others hated them. It's about time I revived them for the Friday Quiz, if only to make everyone without exception hate them.

Here are five classic lateral-thinking puzzles for you to have a go at. They do have model answers, but I'm sure that you will come up with far better ones between you.

These are easy to look up, I'm sure, but if you do look them up, please don't share your search results here.

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1. Why does an old lady always answer the door wearing her hat and coat?

2. Two drivers stop at a traffic light which is showing red. A nearby police officer immediately arrests one of the drivers. Why?

3. A man is found dead in a field. He is holding a broken match. What happened?

4. Billy's mother told him never to open the cellar door. One day while she was out, the cellar door opened and Billy saw a man kneeling and smiling at him. What was the man wearing?

5. How could a toddler fall out of a thirty-storey building to the ground and survive?

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5. The toddler fell out of a ground-floor window?

1.) The old lady is going out and getting a lift.

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2.) The driver stopped at the red light only by crashing into the policeman's car

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I'll respond according to the model answers I have (but remember yours may be better):

5. The toddler fell out of a ground-floor window - Correct

1. The old lady is not planning to go out as such.

2. Both drivers pulled up normally at the red traffic light.

The lady answers the door and if she likes who is there she says she has just come in from outside and takes her coat off, but if she does not like the visitor, she is 'just going out and can't stop'

The old lady is either a hovercraft stewardess helping people disembark from the hovercraft while wearing her uniform outside, or she works as a hat and coat designer.

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1. The lady answers the door and if she likes who is there she says she has just come in from outside and takes her coat off, but if she does not like the visitor, she is 'just going out and can't stop' - Correct!

But bonus points for the hovercraft stewardess, or rather getting an IoW reference in there

2. One of the drivers is a) a child or b) an orangutan.

4.) The smiling man was wearing a smile.
To quote Annie,
'Who cares what they're wearing on Main Street or Saville Row
It's what you wear from ear to ear and not from head to toe
That matters.'
- 'You're never fully Dressed without a Smile

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2.) One of the drivers was Minnie Driver, and the policeman had heard her singing in 'GoldenEye'

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2. There's nothing at all wrong with those answers, but in this case the driver was an adult homo sapiens with a different surname.

4. No, the man was wearing much more than a smile

3. The man invested all his fortune in a new type of match that is guaranteed to light the first time you strike it. When standing in the middle of a field he tried to light his pipe with one of these matches, but it failed to light, and he kept striking without result until the match broke. He realised he had lost his entire fortune on a dud match, so he either committed suicide or died of a heart attack.

3. That's no less plausible than the model answer, I have to say. I'm concerned why the man would walk into the middle of a field to test his invention.

The man wanted to burn a fake crop circle in the field, only in the instant before he lit it genuine aliens appeared and made a real crop circle , killing him and bending the match as they did so.

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3.No

4

We don't know whether Billy was inside the house or out. If he was outside and he saw the cellar door open from within, our first thought might be that something/someone might have been imprisoned there that his mother did't want him to find out about. The man is kneeling. Maybe he has had his hands and/or feet tied so he can't stand? Might he be wearing handcuffs?

Of the remaining problems, 4 is probably the most straightforward scenario. 2 is also straightforward, but it will soon be obsolete. 3 is far-fetched.

2> one of the men was driving a stolen car , or his tag had expired

F S

2. That would sound obvious, wouldn't it? The answer here is no. This wasn't picked up on the police computer or anything like that. The policeman arrested one of the two drivers. They hadn't identified them as a past offender, and the cars were legal.

As a clue, this didn't happen in the USA (or in the UK)