Lateral Thinking Riddles

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

9 Cocktails

You and your 4 best friends have just graduated from university and celebrate by going out for drinks. You head to the local cocktail bar, famous for the following 9 cocktails: Aviation, Bronx, Caipirinha, Grasshopper, Hurricane, Kamikaze, Manhattan, Negroni, and Vesper.

In the spirit of your celebration, the bartender tells you that if you can identify all 9 cocktails after the third round of drinks (one drink each per round), he won’t charge you for the cocktails. The group then proceeds to order 5 drinks per round for 3 rounds. Although none of you know anything about cocktails, with clever ordering and deductive reasoning you find a way to do it. How?

This is not a trick question. The bartender doesn’t tell you which drink is which when he brings them and there are no pictures of the drinks, etc.

Riddle Answer