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.

Man in Elevator

A man lives on the tenth floor of a building. Every day he takes the elevator to go down to the ground floor to go to work. When he returns he takes the same elevator to the seventh floor and walks up the stairs to reach his apartment on the tenth floor. If there is someone else in the elevator with him or if it was raining that day, he goes back to the tenth floor directly.

Note that there is nothing wrong with the elevator or the design of the building. It’s a perfectly normal elevator in a perfectly normal building.

He hates walking up the stairs, so why does he do it?

Riddle Answer

Cards in the Dark

You are standing in a pitch-dark room. A friend walks up and hands you a normal deck of 52 cards. He tells you that 13 of the 52 cards are face-up, the rest are face-down. These face-up cards are distributed randomly throughout the deck.

Your task is to split up the deck into two piles, using all the cards, such that each pile has the same number of face-up cards. The room is pitch-dark, so you can’t see the deck as you do this.

How can you accomplish this seemingly impossible task?

Riddle Answer