3 Mind-Blowing Lateral Thinking Puzzles

Published by
Anna LeMind, B.A.

Have you ever wondered if your mind is normal (i.e. average) or somehow different? Here are 3 lateral thinking puzzles. The answers are published below, but do not go immediately to read them! Think up your own answers first.

Tests

TEST 1

Here is the story of a young girl. At her mother’s funeral, she saw an unknown young man. He was charming, really the man of her dreams. She madly fell in love with him. After a couple of days, the young girl killed her own sister…

Question: What motive did she have to do it?

TEST 2

Take at most 10 seconds to do this test, otherwise, it will not work.

Find how many ‘f’s there are in the following text:

+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

FINISHED FILES ARE THE RE-

SULT OF YEARS OF SCIENTIF-

IC STUDY COMBINED WITH THE

EXPERIENCE OF YEARS

+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

TEST 3

Do the following reasoning exercise, answering the questions one by one, without going to the next question if you have not answered the previous yet.

It is not necessary to write your answers.

How much is:

15 + 6 =

3 + 56 =

89 + 2 =

12 + 53 =

75 + 26 =

25 + 52 =

63 + 32 =

Yes, these are a bit more difficult but the exercise is really worth doing, so be patient:

123 + 5 =

Now think of a tool and a color!

Answers

TEST 1

She hoped that the young man would appear again at the funeral.

Explanation: If you gave the correct answer, you probably think like a psychopath.

The test was developed and used by a famous American psychologist to determine whether a person has a murderous mentality. Several criminals who did the test correctly answered the question.

If you did not give the correct answer, it is good for you! If someone of your friends found it, keep away from him! 🙂

TEST 2

How many ‘f’s did you find? Three?

It is wrong, there are six!

If you don’t believe me, go above and count them again!

Explanation: The mind cannot process the ‘OFs’. Awesome huh?

Anyone who manages to find six ‘f’s is a genius, those who find four or five are really rare, three – are normal… Less than three – change your glasses! 🙂

TEST 3

Did you think of a “red hammer”?

It is the answer given by 98% of people who did this exercise.

If you thought of something else, then you probably are one of the 2% of the people whose mind and thinking are quite different.

Did you solve these lateral thinking puzzles?

View Comments

  • *0* I LOVED THIS ANNA !! THANKS *-*
    I would've also enjoyed reading the Science behind these exercises.
    Keep up the awesome work.

    • There is no science behind the first one, it's an urban legend, actually.

      The second one is because of a quirk of how our brains interpret the English language, after years of use, especially monosyllabic words; phonetically. To your brain, "of" is parsed as "uv", and so doesn't count as an F word

      As for the last one, it's actually a bit misrepresented here: Nontrivial math problems actually make it HARDER. When the trick is done in person, the math problems are very simple, but the questioner demands rapidfire answers, to get the questionee used to answering without thinking too hard. The numbers themselves have nothing to do with it. The simple fact is, under pressure, the first colour people are likely to think of is red, and the first tool is a hammer.

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Published by
Anna LeMind, B.A.