Lateral Thinking Puzzlers

Lateral Thinking Puzzlers consists of 93 puzzles, most of which are riddles. The puzzles are divided into 5 chapters: easy, moderate, historical, difficult, and fiendish. Following the puzzles is an extensive section with clues to each puzzle, and the last section is the solutions. I say most of the puzzles are riddles, but there are also some simple math-based logic puzzles, a few involving physics, some Jeopardy-style questions based on history and geography, and some puzzles that I would consider more like creative writing exercises.Of the 93 puzzles, about 25 are excellent. The best puzzles in the book have simple solutions that could theoretically be discovered in seconds by an 8 year old, but it may take a group of adults some time to solve them, even if they're asking the right questions and thinking in the right ways. Another 45 or so puzzles are enjoyable to varying degrees, and about 20 puzzles in the book range from unsatisfying to implausible to downright stupid. Some puzzles simply contain flawed premises, nonsensical scenarios that require special knowledge of site-specific architecture, international laws, etc. Some provide insufficient information for anyone to reasonably arrive at the answer. On too many occasions, additional essential information can only be found in the Clues section, making it impossible to solve them without consulting the book's help. There are a handful of puzzles with solutions that are extremely absurd and/or implausible (in particular the “Deadly Block of Wood”), but if you think of these more as stimulants for creative writing, in which a number of other plausible solutions can be deduced rather than the one provided, they're more enjoyable.As of 2014 this book is out of print. Despite its flaws, there's plenty of enjoyment to be had, and I'll be buying the author's other lateral thinking books. This book is great to contemplate alone, for parties and get-togethers or for teachers looking to enliven a classroom. I also recommend it to those who enjoy locked room mysteries and whodunnits.

Good range of puzzles. Awesome for two or a small group of people. I like that they take some time to solve. I pull this book out on road trips or slow days working at my museum kiosk.

So, some of these are fun and interesting, but others have completely random answers without any context to figure them out. It was definitely frustrating.

Paul Sloane's collection of lateral thinking puzzles presented here are thoroughly enjoyable and quite a challenge. However, as a longtime fan of such puzzles, more often than not I knew a solution due to prior knowledge and NOT due to personal ability. So, this would probably be the ideal book for someone who hasn't read many lateral thinking puzzles.I did like that the puzzles were divided into sections based on difficulty. That was helpful.

I use a puzzle each Friday with my 8th grade students. I read the puzzle and they can only ask YES or NO questions. It's great to see their creativity, and the competition to solve the puzzle first is intense. They look forward to it every Friday! I highly recommend this book!!

If you want a collection of these kinds of puzzles, this is a great resource, although many of them are commonly known ones or ones you could find online pretty quickly.

I remember these from my childhood. Cool to find again!

I got this book for my boyfriend who loves puzzles and thinking games. While we've had fun reading through some of them, there's alot that I wouldn't exactly describe as "puzzles", more just like a random guessing game. I think this book is fun and a good coffee table book, but beyond that there's not much else I can really give it.

I like that this book has short paragraph long stories that are easy to share with a classroom of students. The stories are hard enough that the students have to think. The answers are in the back for those of us who still need practice with lateral thinking. We are all enjoying this book.

Love, love, love this book!!!!! I have used it for Years!!! I had to re-order this from here because my original is,"tattered, and well used". Students I have used this with -- ask about it years later!!!! Even used on a flight to Costa Rica with the passengers!! Why too much fun!!

Good

I purchased this book initially for inspiration in my D&D campaign and the book failed thoroughly. The puzzles, if you could call them that, are mostly wild leaps that are more absurd than practical. There's no investigative reasoning, only unannounced parrots, irrationally upside down airplanes, and identical twins.

It’s okay, half the puzzles have logic, the other half are impossible, not because they are too hard, you can come up with what you believe is a decent answer, when you then read the real answer it’s so obscure and ridiculous. We tried it with a group of 8 at Christmas, quite often we felt one of our answers was far better than the one in the book.Spoiler Alert:A man walks into an empty house, he walks into a room, he holds his arms in the air, turns around, smiles and walks out the room, why?We guessed there was a cardboard cut out of a man holding a gun, when he realised it was cardboard he smiled and leftThe correct answer was that the guy was a thief, he was going to burglar the house, he walked into a room with a parrot who told him to stick them up, he turned around saw it was a parrot smiled and left.If I’d have picked this book up in a shop and scanned over a couple of the riddles and answers it would have remained on the shelf