Brain Teasers
Army Helmets
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
A fairly poor country was in the middle of a war. Being on the lower-end of the economic scale, they didn't have enough money for fancy armor or weapons. They typically went into battle armed with nothing more than regular clothes, cloth helmets, and an assortment of older-model firearms.
A few months into the war, the ruler of the country decided that an investment in new Army helmets would probably be a wise choice (considering the large number of head injuries caused by the thin cloth ones). After spending nearly all the money the country could scrape together on new steel helmets, they were shocked to see the number of head injuries go up.
How could it be possible that steel helmets, assuming the helmets fit perfectly, caused more injuries than cloth?
A few months into the war, the ruler of the country decided that an investment in new Army helmets would probably be a wise choice (considering the large number of head injuries caused by the thin cloth ones). After spending nearly all the money the country could scrape together on new steel helmets, they were shocked to see the number of head injuries go up.
How could it be possible that steel helmets, assuming the helmets fit perfectly, caused more injuries than cloth?
Answer
When people in the Army would be shot in the head (with a cloth helmet) they wouldn't get head injuries, they would die. Cloth may protect somewhat, but not enough to stop most bullets. Death isn't considered a head injury. However, with steel helmets, the bullet could be slowed down enough to not kill, but just injure. If a hit in the head wasn't fatal, it would be considered a head injury. So, instead of most shots to the head being fatal, they became head injuries.Hide Answer Show Answer
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Comments
I like this one, but perhaps would have changed the info in the story to "considering the amount of death by head wounds". This would still hide the fact that in one case it was death, and afterwards only injury, but still make it somewhat difficult to reason out.
Great teaser!
It's a really cool idea, but it might have been a little bit easier if there had been a time period. Since they had cloth helmets, I was assuming they were living long before guns were around. Fun teaser though.
Very interesting & different. You got me!
Ah, I'd heard this somewhere before...But I can't think of where! I love it though. =]
Nice one got it right on the first try-OMG
hahaha... good one. I like it. good work!
Adding to one of my favs... loved the technicalities
Never would have thought of that one. You got me, GOOD!!
Yes, this is abit like the road accident staitics on drinking and driving. If you look at a graph of blood alcohol content versus involvement in accidents, at first, the higher teh blood alcohol the more likely you are to be involved in an accident but then it reaches a point where the correlation reverses. The higher the blood alcohol level, the less likely you are to be involved in an accident. It doesn't mean that drivers shoulkd drink more, it means that drinkers are reaching a point where they are incapable of driving...standing...breathing!!
Awesome teaser. You got me there!
This was interesting! Nice teaser!
haha nice one! although i would have invested on artillary...
Very good teaser! I didn't get it, but the reasoning is great!
well, i thought since they spent all their money on helmets, they didn't have any more money to get new weapons (rifles) so i thought the more injuries were caused by the extremely low amount of weapons.
good but should be under trick
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