Lateral Thinking Questions

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ANSWER: L.T.Q. #58  !
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Date: Date: Thu, 02 Jan 1997 17:44:36

I had a really good New Year's Celebration this year. Linda came over and we made dinner, and had a bottle of my Dad's homemade wine (Zinfandel Blush), and had snacks galore, and watched some Sandra Bullock movies, and then switched to the local TV station for the New Year's countdown, and popped a bottle of champagne for a toast at midnight.

Good food, good company, good cheer, and a good time had by all. I can't think of a better way to spend New Year's Eve!

Here is this week's question:

    1. How can you drop a raw egg onto a concrete floor without cracking it?
    2. If it took eight men ten hours to build a wall, how long would it take four men to build it?
    3. Which would you prefer to have: an old ten-dollar bill or a new one?
    4. Approximately how many birthdays does the average Japanese woman have?
    5. If you had three apples and four oranges in one hand and four apples and three oranges in the other hand, what would you have?
    6. How can you lift an elephant with one hand?
    7. What do you always get hanging from apple trees?
    8. How can a man go eight days without sleep?
    9. Why are so many famous artists Dutch?
  10. Divide twenty by a half and add ten. What is the answer?

ANSWER:

    1. Concrete floors are very hard to crack!
    2. No time at all-- it is already built.
    3. An old ten-dollar bill is worth ten times as much as a new one-dollar bill.
    4. Just one. All the others are anniversaries.
    5. Very large hands.
    6. It is not a problem, since you will never find an elephant with one hand.
    7. Tired.
    8. He sleeps at night.
    9. They were born in Holland.
  10. Fifty. Dividing by a half is the same as multiplying by two.

This week, oddlystrange loses a point for replying in the first place. She said that the egg (Q#1) should be dropped "on still wet concrete... or take the shell off it before you drop it. (it bounces that way)" Well, actually I doubt a raw egg would bounce.

However, she is compensated with a special Combination point for her explanation of wall building (Q#2): "Well, it takes no goths to screw in a lightbulb since they prefer sitting in the dark. I will apply the same logic to say that four men will take no time to biuld it since the cement is still wet from the egg experiment above."

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