Paul Sloane (1)Rezensionen

So far so good. I think these days we call this "Thinking out of the Box". A very good introduction to this concept of lateral thinking. Don't know if they teach these principles in management courses but many of you might be consciously or otherwise be adopting a lot of these techniques already. The other books I would like to read on this topic would be the ones written by De Bono.

So far so good. I think these days we call this "Thinking out of the Box". A very good introduction to this concept of lateral thinking. Don't know if they teach these principles in management courses but many of you might be consciously or otherwise be adopting a lot of these techniques already.

A collection of puzzles that are meant to be solved by "lateral thinking" -- that is, by questioning your natural assumptions and coming at things from a different angle.

There are really three different kinds of puzzle here. First, there are straightforward riddles or logical puzzles, where you can figure out the answer just from the information given in the question and the common knowledge in your own head, either by careful reasoning or by chewing it over until insight suddenly dawns. For me, these were far and away the most fun. While a few were familiar, there were plenty I hadn't seen before, and some of them were quite clever and entertaining and made for great exercise for the brain. (Here's one for you: "The day before yesterday Freda was 17. Next year she will be 20. How can this be so?")

A few were really more trivia questions than anything, with answers that probably you either know or you don't, and which I imagine most of us would be unlikely to be able to guess. (Example: What was the first man-made object to exceed the speed of sound?)

The majority, though, describe some odd, unlikely, or even seemingly impossible scenario and require you to figure out the explanation or the backstory. (E.g.: A man is lying dead in a field, with an unopened package next to him. What happened?) The authors recommend approaching these as a group activity, where one person knows the answer and the others get to ask yes or no questions until they figure it out. Not having a willing group of people around, I didn't get the full effect of these, I'm afraid, and the clues provided for those of us playing on our own were often either useless or too much of a giveaway, and were seldom the questions I wanted answered, anyway. I'm sure it is more entertaining to do it properly, but, well, I do actually remember doing a couple of them that way in college, thanks to a housemate who must have either had a copy of this book or one much like it. And my recollection is that it was fun for a little while, then quickly got frustrating, and that the answers, when revealed, provoked less of an "Aha!" reaction and something more along the lines of, "How the hell were we ever supposed to get that?" A lot of the answers in this collection -- not all of them, by any means, but a lot -- elicited a similar reaction from me. And several, frankly, seemed like cheats even when you're expecting a sneaky answer. Still, some of them were moderately nifty and reasonably guessable.

This volume, by the way, is actually a compilation of three books: Lateral Thinking Puzzlers, Challenging Lateral Thinking Puzzles and Great Lateral Thinking Puzzles. I'd say the first one was the best. By the time they got to the third volume, the authors seemed to be running out of creative ideas; half the puzzles in it are little more than re-purposed urban legends.½

Fun, great for road trips!

Fun, great bathroom or road trip read!

The subtitle "Exercise your mind and find creative solutions," is a highly appropriate & accurate description of what the 30+ cognitive, conceptual, and mental functional activities presented in this book represent. As someone who once operated as a professional facilitator to structure high impact solutions using some of the same creative techniques presented here, I find this to be a reasonably valuable resource for anyone looking to expand their creative abilities.½

Lateral thinking encourages us to solve problems in non-standard ways. This is a collection of several hundred puzzles that lend themselves to this type of thinking. This would be a great book to take along on a long car trip. I like the previous reviewer's suggestion of putting up the puzzle of the day on his (her?) whiteboard at work. Or a teacher on the blackboard. It would be a great way to keep the students awake...not necessarily concentrating on the lesson though!

Absolutely horrible. One example will suffice:

A man was drinking a cup of tea when he was suddenly blinded. How?

Now, MY answer to that would be that the steam from the tea fogged his glasses and temporarily blinded him. A bit obvious, but fair, and lateral.

No. The correct answer is "He had left his teaspoon in his cup of tea. When he raised the cup to drink, the teaspoon poked him in the eye, temporarily blinding him.".

FAIL.½

Lateral puzzles are best done in a group. One person reads the puzzle, and then others ask questions requiring only a YES/NO answer. Like brainstorming, one person's question will often trigger another's thought patterns to veer off on a tangent not considered before (thus "lateral" thinking). Sometimes it takes a few samples to get folks to start thinking outside the box.
Some might remember the puzzle from the Cosby show about the accident victim taken to the ER. The attending physician refuses to treat him saying, "He's my son." All knew the doctor was not his father. ??????

The only hint I would give is that even feminists often flub this one.
I LOVE lateral thinking puzzles and so does my husband. We sometimes use them on long trips, especially with the grandchildren.½

For a while, everyone at work looked forward to the lateral thinking problems I put on my board. This book had an interesting selection of varying difficulty.½

Small but well-organized collection of puzzles. Good for both beginning and expert lateral thinkers.