5 Riddles To Stimulate Creative Thinking

Creative or lateral thinking was first introduced in the 1990s by psychologist Edward de Bono. Nowadays, this way of thinking and reasoning is increasingly valued, therefore, the attempt to enhance this side; mainly at an educational level.

People always tend to think strictly logically. When faced with a problem, the most obvious answer is immediately sought, without valuing, on the other hand, other, more original dimensions that could be more useful.

These are situations we find ourselves in every day, moments when stress or anxiety can make us feel stuck and lose that spark of originality where creative or lateral thinking would be so helpful.

So, with this way of thinking, we want to propose 5 original riddles that will certainly amuse you and make you see things from another point of view. Do you want to try?

First step: develop your creative or lateral thinking

Before facing our riddles, let’s give you a series of strategies so that you have a basis for solving them.

They are pillars that define creative or lateral thinking, and that are worth putting into practice in our daily lives. Take note:

• Life is full of problems small and big. In some cases they are so absurd that we don’t know how to approach them. Therefore, to be able to overcome them, first, we have to stop giving so much importance to logic.
  In daily life “two plus two doesn’t always have to be four”, especially when we talk about “human problems”. People are a little chaos of emotions and desires. So start looking at things from different points of view without giving too much importance to logic.

• Develop your imagination, take it to the fullest of its possibilities and go beyond what your eyes see. Imagine more possibilities, situations, invent data, evaluate, compare and re-imagine.
  Don’t be left with just one option.
• Let go of your prejudices, let your inner child out and create challenges. Dare to be original without fear of what they might say about you.
• Forget about labels and stereotypes.
• The information we have will not be decisive, they are small clues to which we must add our own assumptions, imaginative ideas and intuitions.
  Follow your heart, open yourself to all kinds of assumptions and don’t be afraid to make mistakes.
• The ideal is to avoid following the most obvious and logical path. Be original and the more imagination you bring to the problem at hand, the better!

Riddle 1: parking

What number is the car parked at? This riddle is used in Chinese educational institutions in primary school entrance tests. Six-year-olds solve this question in seconds, thanks precisely to their creative or lateral thinking.

As we grow up, this type of riddle gets more and more complicated because we focus on a more logical point of view.

Want to try to solve it? Here’s the question: in which parking space is the car in the illustration parked ?

Riddle 2: the hat and the carrot

Let’s look at another situation. Imagine that, after a long car journey, you arrive at a relative’s house. Then he gets out of the car, puts on a jacket to wrap himself up, and when he turns to the right, he sees something strange in the house’s garden.

What’s a carrot and a hat doing there? You can not understand. How about thinking in detail for 2 minutes before reading the solution?

Riddle 3: the man from the bar

Let’s go now to one more situation. We are in a bar. Some man enters and approaches the counter to ask the waiter for a glass of water. The latter keeps looking at the man for a few seconds, then bends down and picks up something he had hidden inside the counter: it’s a weapon.

The waiter then holds and points the gun directly at the face of the man who, in a broken voice, had asked for water.

Seeing the waiter pointing the gun, the man takes a deep breath, thanks him and leaves. What happened?

Riddle 4: a dead man in the field

We are in the middle of a field, a desolate place where the lifeless body of a man lies. Beside him a kind of closed box.

Think for 2 minutes about what might have happened, and remember to use your creative or lateral thinking.

Riddle 5: the lonely man

Now we will meet a man. He lives alone, without any company, in an equally lonely place, where he hardly ever receives visitors, but one day he makes a mistake.

Without realizing it, all the lights in his house go out, and when he leaves, he discovers to his horror that 90 people have died. Then he begins to cry in despair, for being the only one to blame for such a disaster.

What happened?

SOLUTIONS

• Riddle 1: The space number is 87. You should see the parking lot as if you were parking your car.
• Riddle 2: The carrot and the hat are from a melted snowman.
• Riddle 3: The man who asked for water had the hiccups and the waiter wanted to scare him so that the hiccups would go away.
• Riddle 4: the man fell from a plane, beside him is the unopened parachute.
• Riddle 5: the man worked in a lighthouse. When the lights went out, a boat crashed into the rocks.