Mastering the marterial 4 docx

STUDY AEROBICS

Check Your Assumptions at the Door!

Exercise your reasoning muscles in your study group with some fun

lateral thinking puzzles. Lateral thinking puzzles are often strange

situations that require an explanation. They are solved through a

dialogue between the quizmaster, who knows the puzzle and its

solution, and the solvers, who try to figure out the answer. (Pick a

new quizmaster for each problem.)

The puzzles, as stated, generally do not contain sufficient infor￾mation for the solvers to uncover the solution. A key part of the

process, therefore, is asking questions. The questions can receive one

of only three possible answers: “Yes,” “No,” or “Irrelevant.”

When one line of inquiry reaches its end, another approach is

needed, often from a completely new direction. This is where the

lateral thinking comes in. Some people find it frustrating that for

any puzzle it is possible to construct various answers that fit the ini￾tial statement of the puzzle. However, for a good lateral thinking

puzzle, the “proper” answer will be the most apt and satisfying. When

you hear the right answer to a good puzzle of this type, you should

want to kick yourself for not working it out!

This kind of puzzle teaches you to check your assumptions about

any situation. You need to be open-minded, flexible, and creative in

your questioning. You may need to put lots of different clues and

pieces of information together. Once you reach a viable solution,

you have to keep going in order to refine it or replace it with a bet￾ter solution. This is lateral thinking!

Puzzles

A: The Man in the Elevator. A man lives on the tenth floor of a

building. Every day, he takes the elevator down to the ground floor

to go to work or to shop. When he returns, he takes the elevator to

the seventh floor and walks up the stairs to reach his apartment on

the tenth floor. He hates walking, so why does he do it?

B: The Carrot. Five pieces of coal, a carrot, and a scarf are lying

on the lawn. Nobody put them on the lawn, but there is a perfectly

logical reason why they are there. What is it?

C: Trouble with Sons. A woman had two sons who were born on

the same hour of the same day of the same year. They were not

twins, and they were not adopted. How can this be true?

Getting the Most Out of Class 99