by Tom Cutler
No matter how many matches your friend chooses, by breaking them in half you double their number, guaranteeing an even number of broken matches. All you need to do to leave your chum with the last match, and the bill, is to pick the first piece.
Thinking outside the box
The bet
There was a fellow on the news the other day who kept saying ‘going forward’ and ‘iconic’ and ‘thinking outside the box’. He also kept describing something or other as the ‘most unique’ thing of its sort. He said ‘most unique’ about nine times. Then he said ‘completely unique’ and I switched him off.
If something is unique there’s only one of it, so you can’t have a ‘most unique’ or ‘completely unique’ anything. However, it did strike me that this betcha contains an item so remarkable that you might feel that it really could be described as the most unique thing in the world.
What you do is bring out a small, mysterious-looking box. It is covered in cabalistic carvings of snakes and whatnot, or maybe sequins and glitter. If you’ve got some hoop earrings, a turban and a crystal ball these will help sell the idea.
There is a little keyhole in the box and you produce a tiny key and begin to tell your tale. ‘Inside this magic box,’ you say, ‘is a unique item. So singular is it that nobody has ever seen it, not even me. But tonight I’m betting you that, not only will you be the first person ever to see this unique object, but, once you have seen it, nobody will ever see it again. If you’re prepared to stand me a drink I will give you the magic key that unlocks the box. What do you say?’
You can bet £1, a drink, your shirt, or whatever you like. The answer is so delightful that you might even get £1 as well as the drink. And the whole thing (after the box) will set you back less than a penny.
The chicanery
First get yourself a fancy container, about the size of a Rubik’s Cube. The words charity shop, car boot sale and eBay come to mind. It needn’t have a lock, but if it does, so much the better. I’ve seen alluring lockable boxes going cheap on the internet. If it’s insufficiently fancy then spend a little time tarting it up. This is where your untapped creativity comes in.
In an emergency you can contain your unique mystery object in a twisted paper napkin.
Next, buy yourself a bag of peanuts roasted in their shells (monkey nuts). Supermarkets and the internet have these at about a fiver for a 2lb bag, which should last you a lifetime, if you don’t eat them.
Now put one of the shells (containing two nuts) into your box and shut the lid. Lock it if you can.
When you are ready, bring out the box and key, and, as moodily as you are able, tell your story of the esoteric experiments of the alchemists of yore, whose search for the so-called ‘philosopher’s stone’ that would transmute base metals into gold ended in the creation of modern chemistry but never got anywhere near the gold.
‘Yet in this box,’ you say, ‘I have something more precious than gold. More precious even than the Star of Africa diamond, and rarer than a taxi on a Saturday night in Soho. I bet you a double Scotch, or dinner [depends on who you’re talking to], that in this box is an object so rare, so uncommon, so extraordinary, scarce, strange and subtle that nobody has ever seen it before. So singular is it that even I have never seen it. Its whole existence has been spent in darkness, waiting for you to look at it. You will be the first person in the world ever to see it. But more than this, as soon as you have seen it it will disappear from the world forever. It will cease to exist and nobody will ever see it again.’
Now this is a good story, and most people will be so intrigued that they will cough up the bet. Take the money, and slowly – for dramatic purposes – unlock and open the box. As soon as you take out the monkey nut the truth will dawn on your victim and they will probably laugh at the pedestrian nature of the object you produce from this fancy container.
Crumble the shell at one end and remove the seed. ‘There it is,’ you say. ‘You are the first person ever to see that. Nobody has ever seen it before. And now nobody will ever see it again.’ With that, pop the nut into your mouth and chew it up.
It’s a fun bet, this one. You have gone from the sublime to the amusingly ridiculous but you’ve also given your audience something interesting to think about. Which, let’s face it, is what it’s all about.
THE SOLUTIONS
The sailor who ate the cream tea
Daisy realised that the man eating the cream tea in such a peculiar fashion was a sailor because he had his naval uniform on.
The Wishing Cup of Keriput
The mysterious inscription around the rim of the excavated pot is not Latin but English and is today thought to have been one of Lord Elpus’s elaborate practical jokes. The legibility is compromised by some rather poor letter spacing, but when this is adjusted it clearly reads: IT IS A PISSPOT AND A BIG ONE.
Murder in the snow
The fiery Ferrario is indeed the murderer. He has hatched a plot to do away with Trethewey, who is as he suspected taking liberties with his missus.
The first thing he did was to steal Trethewy’s boots from his porch, an easy thing to accomplish since he lives next door. Two days later, after a fresh fall of snow and knowing that Trethewey will be heading off to the pub, probably in his moccasins again, Ferrario offers to carry him across the snowy field. He is already wearing his neighbour’s monogrammed boots, which fit his small feet and look like any other boot once they are on. Trethewey accepts the offer.
Putting on a long coat, he conceals in the poacher’s pocket his sawn-off shotgun. He has previously hidden his own boots in the copse.
He lifts his victim onto his broad back and as they cross the field he inevitably leaves a deeply marked impression of Trethewey’s monogrammed boots behind him in the fresh snow, deeper in fact than the much lighter Trethewey could have made. There is, of course, only one set of tracks in the snow.
Halfway across, Ferrario reaches under his coat, swiftly pulls out the gun, and, stretching behind himself, releases both barrels upwards at Trethewey’s face. The shot takes off the handsome features of the interloper, killing him at the same time.
Ferrario continues on his way, inevitably leaving less heavy prints as he strides to the edge of the field without Trethewey on his back. He goes on to the copse where he cleans himself up and buries the evidence. He then puts on his own boots, strolls to the pub and sits down to wait for his ‘friend’, who will never arrive.
The Yorkshire factory
Looking at the name S.GARTONS reflected in the stream Gerald realises that back-to-front the word reads SNOTRAG.S.
The riddle of the Burns Supper
The coal, the carrot and the scarf are all that is left of the snowman that Julie and Jeremy made with the help of Suzanne the babysitter yesterday evening, while their parents were out. It snowed in the afternoon and there was just enough for them to make a snowman. Jeremy found an old scarf in a box of rags in the cellar, along with a few lumps of coal for his eyes, smile and buttons. The carrot came from the kitchen.
After the children went to bed a heavy rain began falling. It kept up till gone midnight, washing away much of the snowman. The morning’s sun did the rest, leaving the strange objects on the Jones’s snowless lawn.
Getting out of their taxi and coming up the garden path in the dark, Mr and Mrs Jones couldn’t see the melting snowman. In any case they were not in much of a state to see anything.
Please drink responsibly.
The annoying computer password
Bill spelt ‘his password’ the same way as everybody else: H I S P A S S W O R D. This is one of the best lateral thinking puzzles for reading out to friends. It is better read out than written down because to be absolutely fair when written down ‘his password’ should have inverted commas around it. But there you go – who said life was fair?
Terry’s girlfriends
The eastbound ‘Emma’ train leaves Terry’s station once an hour, on the hour. The westbound ‘Wen
dy’ train also leaves once an hour, but at five past the hour, just five minutes later. Now what does this mean?
What it means is that although there are exactly as many westbound trains as eastbound trains – one every hour – there is a huge gap of fifty-five minutes between the westbound train leaving and the eastbound train arriving. Whatever time Terry arrives at the station during this fifty-five-minute period the next train will always be eastbound. On the other hand the gap between the eastbound train leaving and the westbound train arriving is only five minutes. So to catch a westbound train Terry must arrive at the station during this very brief slot, and, since he is arriving at the station at random times, this is most unlikely to happen. Terry is therefore almost certain to catch an eastbound train and very unlikely to catch a westbound train, which is why Wendy West is sick of waiting for him. Actually Emma East is also sick of him, but only because he leaves his dirty socks everywhere and never picks up the bath mat.
The lorry driver slaying
The police did not let every person off scot-free, only the men. They arrested the dealer, who continued to admit her crime, and they charged her with murder. She was sent to Holloway Prison for a very long stretch.
The magic bucket
Stu has a swimming pool. To do his demonstration he puts on his swimming trunks and gets in, Laverne hands him the bucket, and he does everything with the bucket under water. When he’s finished, he hands it out to her, still full of water.
The impossible brothers
The brothers are, in fact, two of three triplets. The third triplet is called Roger, in case you care. The answer could, of course, have involved quadruplets, or any kind of multiple birth you care to think of. So if you worked out the essence of the problem award yourself a gold star.
Arms and the child
The children Margaret teaches are in the reception class and are only six years old. The children in Jenny’s class are in the top year and are therefore older and, on average, taller, with correspondingly long arms. Write it out a hundred times.
The window cleaner in the sky
Horace Morris lived in a flat on the 40th floor of the Alto Tower. He was cleaning the inside of his windows and standing on a chair to do so. When he slipped he fell onto the carpet, sustaining the kind of injuries a 60-year-old man might expect.
The troublesome signpost
I was able to discount two possible directions without reference to the sign. I thought it most unlikely that I would continue ahead in a straight line, or Arthur would have said so. It also seemed ludicrous to go back to Brooksbridge, the way I’d already come.
Next I realised that although the signpost was horizontal its fingers were still pointing the correct way in relation to one another. I noticed that Rotherborough was to the left of, and at right angles to, the sign pointing to Brookbridge, from where I had just come. So I realised that standing with Brookbridge behind me I must make a left turn at the crossroads to get myself to Rotherborough.
I turned left and within fifteen minutes saw the bronze sculpture of Betty la Roche ahead of me, with Arthur waiting underneath, whistling a merry tune. We rather overdid our lunch in the Plasterers’ Arms and I was obliged after our meeting to get a taxi back to the station.
The Knightsbridge barber
Mr Teasy-Weasy said he would rather cut the hair of three Cockney women than one Yorkshirewoman because he would earn three times as much money.
The fastest beard in the world
Sean and his family lived in Barrow in Alaska. It is the USA’s northernmost city and is located above the Arctic Circle. When the sun sets there in the winter it doesn’t rise again for two months. That’s plenty of time for a chap to grow a decent beard.
The high window
The bottom of the window in question was, as Ms Scrunt put it, ‘almost eight feet from the floor’. Mr Snarbes, at five feet ten, is just shy of six feet. What he did when he heard the argument in the street was get the wooden chair that had been used to hold the door shut, put it against the wall, and stand on its back, the top of which was a standard three feet from the floor. This put his eyes at about eight feet six, halfway up the window, enabling him to see Joe Slepkava committing the crime.
The confusing coach trip
If you remember, you were asked to, ‘Imagine that … you are driving a large charabanc …’ Therefore, to decide how many siblings the driver has, you need only count your own brothers and sisters, if you have any.
The pilot who wore a dress
When asked what he would do if, after a long-haul flight, he met the captain wearing a dress in the hotel bar, the young trainee pilot answered the question like this: ‘I would buy her a drink.’ He thus revealed to his examiners that he had no prejudices about female pilots, and would get on well with any of them he met.
Picking up the children from school
Sue and her children live in an old people’s home because they are old people. Very old. Sue is 99 years old and her twins are 78. It’s true that their father ran off with his secretary, but that was in 1960. The pictures of handsome film stars on Mitzi’s wall are of Cary Grant and Gregory Peck. The twins were asked to give a talk on the Second World War because they were school-age children at the time and it’s well known around the town that they have lots of stories of the bombs landing in their street, which they enjoy telling people at the bus stop.
Time to take the teeth out and push along to bed.
The car in the river
The car had crashed into the River Greta, which is at points fast-flowing but at many points also quite shallow. At some places you can wade across it if you’re clever.
The sad end of Felicity Ffolkes
Felicity had been waved through into the safari park by a dozy fool smoking a mind-altering cigarette. So absent-minded was she that she had hired a convertible and was taking pictures with the top down. The lion simply lifted her out and had his lunch.
Please drive safely.
The blind beggar
‘The blind beggar’ is one of my all-time favourite problems. It is short, simple to understand, without any cheats or confusing detail, and it relies on lateral thinking and nothing else. The clue to the puzzle is that not all beggars, and not all blind people, are male. Indeed, although the two characters in this problem are not brothers, they are siblings, because the blind beggar is a woman. The pair are therefore brother and sister.
A birthday message from the Queen
Though Charlie Trimble celebrated reaching his 100th year in 2015 he was at that time only 99 and wouldn’t have lived for a hundred years until 2016. This is because anyone’s first year of life is ‘year zero’ not ‘year 1’. You are no years old in your first year and only reach your 100th birthday in your 101st year. Hope that’s clear.
Talking rubbish
The environmentally damaging items that are usually thrown away carelessly, without being put into a plastic bin liner first, are plastic bin liners.
The Flood
Moses took no animals on the ark, because he wasn’t on it. That would have been Noah.
Hospital assault
Mr Cutwell is a consultant obstetric surgeon. His patient is Mrs Sara Stansbeard, who is about to have a Caesarian section delivery of her son Wilfred. As he delivers the baby, Mr Cutwell smacks Wilfred’s bottom to provoke the first breath. This procedure is no longer recommended, but Mr Cutwell, who is a successful doctor with thousands of grateful patients behind him, is old fashioned.
The two Italians
The Italians, who are both successful professionals with strong academic backgrounds, are husband and wife.
House painting made simple
The two Franks have done exactly as Junior suggested. They have painted just one side of the house – the outside.
The absent-minded taxi driver
The policeman took little notice of the taxi driver going the wrong way down a one-way street because the taxi driver was walking.
> Plane crash in no man’s land
The chaplains decided that, all in all, it would be better not to bury the survivors, who they felt might not like it. Instead they buried just the dead.
The strange story of Antony and Cleopatra
Antony and Cleopatra are the owner’s goldfish. They died when his boisterous dog knocked their fish bowl onto the tile floor.
Incidentally, in case you were wondering, ‘BCE’ is a religiously neutral term dating from 1708 that stands for ‘Before the Common Era’. Scholars increasingly prefer it to ‘BC’ – ‘Before Christ’.
Bird strike
The flight on which the bird strike accident happened to Ruby was the last one. Don’t forget, it killed her, so her opportunity for flying aeroplanes after that one was severely limited.
Contradictio in adjecto
The solicitor told my friend that it is illegal under English law for a man to marry his widow’s sister – because he is dead.
Unconscious sexism
Practised lateral thinkers might well have got this one early on. It depends on our fondness for making assumptions about a person’s sex based on their profession. Most police officers are men, and some are no doubt sexist pigs. But in this case the traffic officer was a woman.
The motorcyclist’s shaded helmet had obscured her face and it was only at the moment when she spoke that the driver realised her mistake.