Brain Teasers
Perplexing Perusal
Situation
Situation puzzles (sometimes called lateral thinking puzzles) are ones where you need to ask lots of yes or no questions to figure out what happened in the situation. These are good puzzles for groups where one person knows the puzzle and answers the questions.Situation
In a library, a man casually takes a book off the shelf, opens it, and starts flipping the pages from the right to the left. As he's flipping the pages, he notices that the page numbers are decreasing. How can this be?
Hint
There is nothing wrong with or unusual about the book, and it is written in English.Answer
The book is upside down. It was already upside down when he took it off the shelf. The page numbers are therefore upside down as well, but he can still read them.Try it for real if you doubt that this is plausible.
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Comments
Fun, easy and entertaining teaser; I got it very quickly.
Thanks for your feedback, mrbill51.
I thought it might be a book in Arabic or Hebrew, which are written right to left, so the page numbers would be in the reverse order from a book in English etc. Does that work?
Nice try, Vervet, but the hint rules out this possibility.
Oh yes. I didn't read the hint - I tend not to, as I find it more satisfying to keep struggling. I think it's good for the brain of old bears like me. And of course when I think I have an answer I go to "see answer".
I also tend to resist looking at the hint (if there is one), until I am feeling like I'm never going to solve it otherwise. Glad you enjoyed it!
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