Category: Lateral

One day, the police finds a dead man inside a hut, with a bullet in his head. In his left hand, the man is holding a gun. In his right hand, he has a recording. When the recording is played, the police hears the man talking about how horrible his life has been and how he wanted it to end. The recording ends with a gunshot. The police are about to call it a suicide until a detective points out an important clue. What is it?

If the person shot himself and died, he wouldn’t have been able to stop the device from recording further.

A very rich man has many servants in his mansion. One day as he is about to travel, his night watchman warns him not to board his flight. “I had a dream last night that the plane crashed,” the watchman tells him. The rich man is annoyed at first, but since he is also superstitious himself, he decides not to take the flight.

Later that day as he is watching the news, he sees that his plane did, in fact, crash. He goes over to thank and reward his servant, and then fires him. Why?

The watchman has been sleeping at work instead of guarding the mansion, so that’s the reason he gets fired.

Barbara and Oprah went to a theater where two movies were being shown: “The Barbie Movie” and “Oppenheimer”. The ticket price for the former was $15 and the ticket price for the latter was $20. When Barbara handed $20 to the cashier, she was asked which movie she wanted to watch, to which she replied, “The Barbie Movie”. However, when Oprah handed $20 to the cashier, she was automatically given a ticket for “Oppenheimer”. How come?

Barbara handed two $10 bills, so the cashier wasn’t sure which movie she wanted to watch. However, Oprah handed four $5 bills, so it was clear she wanted to watch “Oppenheimer” (otherwise she would have handed just three $5 bills).

One day, the police found a man dead inside a hut. In his left hand, he was holding a gun. In his right hand, he had a recording device. When the recording was played, the police heard the man talking about how horrible his life was and how he wanted it to end. The recording ended with a gunshot. The police was about to call it a suicide until one detective pointed out a very important clue. What was it?

If the man shot himself with the gun, then he would not have been able to stop recording with the device.

A dog was tied to a tree with a 7-meter rope. How did the dog manage to get to its bowl of food which was 15 meters away from the dog?

The dog was initially on the other side of the tree and the tree’s diameter was 1 meter long. Thus, when the dog moved to the opposite side, it got 2×7+1=15 meters closer to its food.

You are walking alone on the sidewalk. There are no stars on the sky, no moonlight, all of the lamps on the street are broken, you don’t carry any source of light with you and there aren’t any cars or other people approaching. A silent black cat tries to cross your way, but you somehow spot it and turn around in order to avoid bad luck. How did you see the cat?

All of this happened during a (cloudy) day.