Ideation and Creative Problem Solving - Journal - Week 5
Lateral Thinking, is the topic for this day, it’s a unique way of thinking of a solution that uses bizarre methods or elements that are normally not considered as logical way of thinking. We are given few questions that will exercise our lateral thinking. Here are the questions:
1.     You are driving down the road in your car on a wild stormy night, when you pass by a bus stop and you see three people waiting for the bus:
a.     An old lady who looks as if she is about to die.
b.     An old friend who once saved your life.
c.     The perfect partner you have been dreaming about.
Knowing that there can only be one passenger in your care, whom would you choose?
This question is something I have encountered before because my brother asked me about it. I remember clearly that I have answered the wrong answer the first time I heard this. I chose the old lady because I know my friend can still take the bus and he will understand me for it, and I can always meet the perfect partner if we are really meant to be. Because of that I can’t forget this question and the answer to it. So as soon as I finished reading the question, I immediately raised my hand and answered the question, that I would choose to let my old friend who once saved my life to drive and take the old lady that looks about to die to the hospital and ride the bus with the perfect partner I’ve always dreamt about.
2.     There are six eggs in the basket. Six people each take one of the eggs. How can it be that one egg is left in the basket?
This one is new to me, that made me wonder why I wasn’t able to encounter these kinds of questions when I was still in elementary and high school. I was able to encounter some but not this question. We all took our guesses but we still couldn’t answer why that one egg is still in the basket, until my quiet classmate answers the question that one took the basket with the egg still in it. That really made me laugh and I said to myself, “That’s right! Why didn’t I think of that?”
3.     A fire officer has 12 matchsticks lying in front of her. She removes just one of them. She now sees 9 in front of her. How is this possible?
We also took a lot of time to figure this out, we we’re all silent when we are trying to come up with the answer. No figured out the right answer, but I was able to know it before Miss told us because I searched it and was amazed by the answer. I was so busy thinking that it could be a trick question that I actually tricked myself and didn’t come up with an answer. The answer is that the matchsticks are forming the word “Nine” after 1 matchstick was removed.
4.     Three of the glasses below are filled with orange juice and the other three are empty. By moving just one glass, can you arrange the glasses so that the full and empty glasses alternate?
I wasn’t able to solve the question, but my classmate was quick in solving it. She pointed out that all we have to do is to pour the wine on the 2nd cup to the 5th cup.
5.     You have to choose between three rooms
a.     The first is full of raging fires
b.     The second is full of tigers that haven’t eaten in three years.
c.     The third is full of assassins with loaded machine guns.
Which room should you choose?
Most of us knew the answer to the problem that we’ll choose the second room because the tigers inside are probably dead because they haven’t eaten in three years.
6.     A man comes up to the border of a country on his motorbike. He has three large sacks on his bike. The customs officer at the border crossing stop him and asks,“What is in the sacks?”
 “Sand,” answered the man.
 The guard says, “We’ll see about that. Get off the bike.”
 The guard takes the sacks and rips them apart; he empties them out and finds nothing in them but sand. He detains the man overnight and has the sand analyzed, only to find that there is nothing but pure sand in the bags. The guard releases the man, puts the sand into new bags, lifts them onto the man’s shoulders and lets him cross the border.
 A week later, the same thing happens. The customs officer asks, “What have you got?”
  “Sand,” says the man.
The officer does another thorough examination and again discovers that the sacks contain nothing but sand. He gives the sand back to the man, and the man again crosses the border.
This sequence of events repeats every day for the next three years. Then one day, the man doesn’t show up. The border official meets up with him in a restaurant in the city. The officer says, “I know you’re smuggling something and it’s driving me crazy. It’s all I think about. I can’t even sleep. Just between you and me, what are you smuggling?”
 What is the man smuggling?
Everyone took their time since it’s the last question, but after 4 minutes some of my classmates figured it out that it’s the motorcycle that is being smuggled by the man. I liked the lesson of today, I would love to challenge myself in answering similar questions so that I’ll be able to hone my lateral thinking skills.
We have continued our lesson regarding Lateral Thinking and introduced us to another methods as well, Divergent Thinking and Convergent Thinking. Divergent thinking is a task of creating unique ideas or solutions to a problem. While, Convergent thinking is practical application to come up with a single correct answer. For Divergent thinking we were tasked to rename 10 words, 5 words are given and we will come up with 5 words more and rename them as well and we have to be unique. Here are the words I worked on:
1.     Cloud - sky cotton
2.     World - Circular Habitat
3.     Classroom - Creative Factory
4.     Mobile - Wireless Telephone
5.     Sky - floating canvas
6.     Sword - sharp metal stick
7.     Seat - Butt Rest
8.     Aircon - Cold Air Dispenser
9.     Glasses - Wearable Lenses
10.  Keyboard - Alphanumeric buttons
For Convergent Thinking an example given was answering multiple choice questions. We also tackled Lateral Thinking and Vertical Thinking, and we are introduced to Edward De Bono’s book “Lateral Thinking”.
