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

Like last week's lateral-thinking puzzles, I'm sure some of these have more than one answer, so don't feel you have to get the official one. Indeed, I think a couple of the standard answers are on very shaky ground.

As before, I'm sure these are easy to look up, so if you do, please don't share your search results here.

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1. The more you take, the more you leave behind. What?

2. What goes up the chimney down, but can't go down the chimney up?

3. What walks all day on its head?

4. Little trotty hetty-coat / in a long petticoat / and a red nose / the longer she stands / the shorter she grows. What?

5. Three people stand in a line facing forwards. Chris is behind Bob who is behind Alice. Each is wearing a hat which is either black or white, but they don't know which. All they know is that there is at least one hat of each colour. Without any communication between them (or any third party), how can one person work out the colour of his/her own hat?

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1. A Hole

2. An Umbrella

4. A snowperson

5. If Chris sees two black hats or two white hats then she can say her hat is white/black respectively.
If Chris doesn't say anything, Bob deduces she sees a black and a white hat. If Bob sees a white hat, then he can say his is black, and vice versa.

You've found the standard answers for 2 and 5

5 concerns me deeply, as they're not supposed to communicate, so Bob would never know whether or not he could deduce his own hat in that way. Bob could deduce that either he or Chris could work out their own hat colour, but that's not quite the same thing, is it?

Your answer to 1 doesn't really work for me, but then the standard solution isn't great either.

4.

Fork handles

Fork handles ???

That took me a while.

1.

The so-called penis worm walks on its head, but I suspect that's not the answer you were looking for.

<BB<

Yes, 1 is footsteps (but when you leave them behind they become footprints, surely?)

And 4 is a candle.

And no, I wasn't looking for that answer to no 3.

The standard answer to 5 assumes that each of the people can make logical deductions in a reasonable amount of time, and that they announce the result when tgey know the answer. The person in the middle must wait until they know the person at the back could have figured it out but hasn't.

As a result it is often stated more explicitly. The three people are all logic experts. An adjudicator asks the person at the back do they know the answer. Then when they don't, they ask the next person and so on.

I'm guessing the standard answer to 3 is your shadow and that you're not very happy with that answer.

Not my shadow, but it is something with a head, and I would question the grammar/syntax of the solution.

3 If you walk past a lake, your reflection seems to be upside down --i.e., walking on its head.

3. A sheep living on Sheep's Head, the rocky peninsula in West Cork, Ireland.

Maybe the relevant part of No. 3 is the "all day" part.

Unless there's a part of a shoe called a "head". I'm sure I've heard this before (possibly in a comic back in my childhood, or somewhere else on the 'net.)

And I know Dara O'Briain did the one about the coloured caps on his maths programme, but I didn't quite get the answer the way it was explained then. I had to figure it out for myself later, but I reckoned some of the rules weren't made clear.

A clock walks with the whole day on its face (and hands).

I have a dim recollection of "Little Nancy Hetticoat". I wonder does Nancy mean a cylinder, like a knitting nancy?

TC's closest with it being part of a shoe, although it's not an integral part.

A shoelace?