Cunning Lateral Thinking Puzzles

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Paul Sloane and Des MacHale—the wily puzzle masters who have written several lateral thinking collections—are back with more tear-your-hair-out challenges. And once again, the purpose of their devious conundrums is to force solvers to think outside of the box. Instead of jumping to obvious conclusions, players have to ask lots of questions, use their imagination, piece together the subtlest clues, and come at the problem from a variety of perspectives. Here’s how to do one person, who knows the solution, takes questions. The answers help narrow down the possible explanations—and the more logic, creativity, and sheer determination that go into the queries, the better the chance of success!

96 pages, Paperback

First published August 28,2006

About the author

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Paul Sloane read Engineering at Trinity Hall Cambridge. He came top of Sales School at IBM, became MD of Ashton-Tate UK, VP International for MathSoft and CEO of Monactive. He now writes, speaks and gives workshops on lateral thinking in business, creativity, innovation and leadership. He is married and lives in Camberley in Surrey. He has three grown-up daughters. He is a keen chess and tennis player and he plays keyboards in a rock band, the Fat Cats. He has written a series of lateral thinking puzzle books, many co-authored with Des MacHale, published by Sterling Publishing. They have sold over 2 million copies and been translated into many languages. He has also written two management books, published by Kogan Page, and many articles for blogs and websites. He manages the Lateral Puzzles Forum where puzzlers can set and solve lateral puzzles.

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July 14,2025
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A woman cleaned a house and became rich halfway through. Why? This is a rather interesting and mysterious puzzle.

"A woman cleaned a house and became rich halfway through. Why?" She cleaned Aladdin's house and dusted the genie's lamp...


Oh come on...

Most of these puzzles indeed have numerous possible answers. The hint that it's "halfway" somewhat narrows down the range of what could be considered the "right answer," but still, you'll likely be frustrated by quite a few alternatives. It makes you think outside the box and consider various scenarios. Maybe there was a hidden treasure in the house that she discovered halfway through the cleaning. Or perhaps the owner of the house was so impressed with her work halfway through that they decided to reward her handsomely. There are so many possibilities to explore when trying to solve this kind of puzzle.
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