Lateral thinking
21. Betty signals to the headwaiter in a restaurant, and says, "There's a fly in my tea." The waiter says, "No problem, madam. I will bring you a fresh cup of tea." A few minutes later Betty shouts, "Get the manager! This is the same cup of tea!" How did she know?
ANSWER:
Betty had already put sugar in her tea before sending it back. When the "new" cup came, it was already tasted sweet.
22. A horse is tied to a five meter rope in front of an old saloon. Six meters behind the horse is a bale of hay. Without breaking his rope, the horse is able to eat the hay whenever he chooses. How is this possible?
ANSWER:
The rope is not tied to anything else.
23. Shadow was just about to board his flight to the West Coast when his assistant approached him and begged him not to fly. When Shadow enquired about the strange request, the junior detective said that the previous night he had had a terrible dream that Shadow's plane would crash. Shadow turned away and boarded the plane without a word. When he landed, he phoned back to his office and ordered the immediate dismissal of his young assistant. Why?
ANSWER:
Shadow's young assistant was supposed to be on a stake-out the night he claimed to have had this dream. He was obviously sleeping on the job.
24. Picture a bridge four kilometres long and strong enough to hold ten thousand kilograms, but no more. A loaded transport truck weighing exactly ten thousand kilograms drives onto the bridge. At the halfway point, a sparrow weighing 30 grams lands on the truck, yet the bridge doesn't collapse. How could this be?
ANSWER:
The truck would have burned off more than 30 grams of fuel in the first two kilometres of crossing the bridge. Therefore the sparrow's weight would have had no effect.
25. When Clara Clatter was purchasing her new parrot, the salesman assured her that it would repeat any word it heard. About a week later, Clara returned the parrot complaining it hadn't uttered a single word. Given that the salesman had spoken the truth about the parrot's abilities, why wouldn't the bird talk?
ANSWER:
The parrot was deaf.
26. What famous landmark in the United States moves backward constantly?
Niagara Falls. The brink is receding about two and a half feet a year.
27. 1. How can you drop a raw egg onto a concrete floor without cracking it?
2. If it took eight men ten hours to build a wall, how long would it take four men to build it?
3. Which would you prefer to have: an old ten-dollar bill or a new one?
4. Approximately how many birthdays does the average Japanese woman have?
5. If you had three apples and four oranges in one hand and four apples and three oranges in the other hand, what would you have?
ANSWER:
1. Concrete floors are very hard to crack!
2. No time at all-- it is already built.
3. An old ten-dollar bill is worth ten times as much as a new one-dollar bill.
4. Just one. All the others are anniversaries.
5. Very large hands.
28. Why is it that, in general, the hair on a man's head goes grey before the hair in his mustache does?
ANSWER:
The hair on a man's head is usually at least twenty years older than the hair in his moustache.
29. What is it that has six legs, two heads, and flies?
ANSWER:
A dirty person on a dirty horse.
30. Bruce wins the race, but he gets no trophy.
Bruce is a horse.