Situation puzzle - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Situation puzzles are often referred to as lateral thinking puzzles or "yes/no" puzzles.

Situation puzzles are usually played in a group, with one person hosting the puzzle and the others asking questions which can only be answered with a "yes" or "no" answer. Depending upon the settings and level of difficulty, other answers, hints or simple explanations of why the answer is yes or no, may be considered acceptable. The puzzle is solved when one of the players is able to recite the narrative the host had in mind, in particular explaining whatever aspect of the initial scenario was puzzling.

These puzzles are inexact and many puzzle statements have more than one possible fitting answer. The goal however is to find out the story as the host has it in mind. Critical thinking

Critical thinking

Critical thinking is the process or method of thinking that questions assumptions. It is a way of deciding whether a claim is true, false, or sometimes true and sometimes false, or partly true and partly false. The origins of critical thinking can be traced in Western thought to the Socratic...

and reading, logical thinking, as well as lateral thinking

Lateral thinking

Lateral thinking is solving problems through an indirect and creative approach, using reasoning that is not immediately obvious and involving ideas that may not be obtainable by using only traditional step-by-step logic...

may all be required to solve a situation puzzle. The term lateral thinking was coined by Edward De Bono

Edward de Bono

Edward de Bono is a physician, author, inventor, and consultant. He originated the term lateral thinking, wrote a best selling book Six Thinking Hats and is a proponent of the deliberate teaching of thinking as a subject in schools.- Biography :Edward Charles Francis Publius de Bono was born to...

to denote a creative problem-solving style that involves looking at the given situation from unexpected angles, and is typically necessary to the solution of situation puzzles.
The term lateral thinking puzzle was popularised by Paul Sloane

Paul Sloane

Paul Sloane is an author and public speaker on lateral thinking and innovation. He was born in 1950 in Johnstone, Scotland and was educated at St Joseph's College, Blackpool and Trinity Hall, Cambridge where he read Engineering. He is the leading author of books of lateral thinking puzzles, many...

with his 1992 book, Lateral Thinking Puzzlers.

Example

The question and answer segment might go something like this.

Question: Could the bartender hear him? Answer: Yes
Question: Was the bartender angry for some reason? A: No
Question: Was the gun a water pistol? A: No
Question: Did they know each other from before? A: No (or: "irrelevant" since either way it does not affect the outcome)
Question: Was the man's "Thank you" sarcastic? A: No (or with a small hint: "No, he was genuinely grateful for some reason")
Question: Did the man ask for water in an offensive way? A: No
Question: Did the man ask for water in some strange way? A: Yes

Eventually the questions lead up to the conclusion that the man had the hiccup

Hiccup

A hiccup or hiccough is a myoclonus of the diaphragm that repeats several times per minute. In humans, the abrupt rush of air into the lungs causes the vocal cords to close, creating a "hic" sound....

s, and that his reason for requesting a drink of water was not to quench his thirst but to cure his hiccups. The bartender realized this and chose instead to cure the hiccups by frightening the man with the gun. Once the man realized that his hiccups were gone, he no longer needed a drink of water, gratefully thanked the bartender, and left.

Terminology

Yope is a word devised to answer a question with yes and no
Yes and no
Yes and no are two words for expressing affirmatives and negatives respectively in English . Early Middle English had a four-form system, but Modern English has reduced this to a two-form system consisting of 'yes' and 'no'. Some languages do not answer yes-no questions with single words meaning...

simultaneously. You can think of it as an answer saying Yes, but ... and No, but ... at the same time. This would be used when it would be misleading to give a simple "yes" or "no" answer to the player's question. (See also: Mu
Mu (negative)
or Wu , is a word which has been translated variously as "not", "nothing", "without", "nothingness", "non existent", "non being", or evocatively simply as "no thing"...

)
N/a (or stating "irrelevant") is used when a question is not applicable to the current situation or when a "yes" or "no" answer would not provide any usable information to solving the puzzle.
Irrelevant, but assume yes is used when the situation is the same regardless of what the correct answer to the question is, but assuming one direction will make further questioning easier or the situation more likely. An example question that might have this answer from the puzzle above is: "Was the bartender human?"

Example

Terminology

Further reading