Customer Reviews

Clever Lateral Thinking Puzzles

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Edward J. Harshman's "Clever Lateral Thinking Puzzles" is a rather serious disappointment. For the uninitiated, "lateral thinking puzzles" are mind exercises that discourage standard problem-solving methods and reward cleverness and innovation. One of the problems with Harshman's book is that it includes no instructions or introduction. Some sort of proem would have gone a long way to helping the uninitiated. While it would seem clear what the puzzles want (i.e., an explanation of apparently strange facts), there is indeed room to wonder.

Consider, for example, the puzzle in which a man locks his son out of the house, for which the son thanks his father. Harshman's solution is that the father's actions forced the pampered son to strike out on his own and make a living for himself. While there is nothing wrong with that solution as *an* (as opposed to *the*) answer, certainly other answers come to mind. The father could have bombed the house for fleas without the son being aware of that fact; the father then could have locked the door to prevent his son from inadvertently walking in and inhaling the noxious fumes. The point is that few of the solutions are unique, and there is really no clear way to arrive at Harshman's answer and not an alternate one that works.

In fairness, this problem is hardly unique to "Clever Lateral Thinking Puzzles." Games such as "MindTrap" and the Mensa quiz books contain similar problems, though not on the scale that "Clever Lateral Thinking Puzzles" does. And at least in the case of MindTrap, it is clearly intended to be interactive and therefore allows one person to answer questions and avoid the ambiguities.

It had the things you know mixed in with the things you wouldn't think of. The answers are things you would never think of. You really have to rack your brain to think of the right answer which I promise you is not totally impossible.

This book was great. I loved it the puzzles streched my brain it made me a lot smarter. Hours of fun!

Things Aren't Always As They Seem.....,

This book is an excellent way to test and expand your problems solving ability. It presents a collection of 99 problems hidden in ordinary situations. The puzzles are arranged in 11 chapters: Batty banditry, People puzzles, Crazy cars and tricky transports, odd offices, Asinine actions, Haphazard happenings, Crass creditors and dull debtors, Daffy doctoring, Eccentric electronics, Mad money, and Goofy gambling.

Lateral thinking is a term coined by Edward de Bono, a Maltese psychologist, physician, and writer. he defines Lateral Thinking as methods of thinking concerned with changing concepts and perception.

Techniques that apply lateral thinking to problems are characterized by the shifting of thinking patterns away from entrenched or predictable thinking to new or unexpected ideas. Getting a new idea that is the result of lateral thinking is not always easy, and sometimes it may not be a helpful one, but after a good idea is discovered in this way it is usually perceived as being reasonable to expect and sometimes even obvious.

If you like critical thinking puzzles, this book may be for you. Critical thinking is primarily concerned with judging the truth value of statements and seeking error. Lateral Thinking is more concerned with the movement value of statements and ideas, how to move from them to other statements and ideas.