So I hate “lateral thinking” problems. Seriously. They usually seem to be more of an exercise in thinking about how other people think – normally an interesting if not enjoyable topic – but somehow sucked dry of the positives of the experience. Never thought much about why I feel that way but I will certainly give it more thought now that I need to write some for my puzzle / math book.
So at some stage I need a tutorial on how to approach these sorts of problems algorithmically – to that end I wrote up this example.
A problem I found online for “lateral thinking” was stated as:
Problem: “How can you throw a ball such that it always comes back to you?”
I am paraphrasing the problem but this restatement has the critical property of the original – at least one answer that is obvious from reading it. Answer: “Throw the ball straight up!”.
These problems always have a basis set of assumptions. For example that the person is in a gravity field or on Earth, that that they can’t throw the ball at escape velocity. I broke down some examples below that have easy graphical representations of the problem. The graphics should help with the book and relaying understanding.
