Lateral Thinking

Domain	Title
Books	Intriguing Lateral Thinking Puzzles (reference) Psychometric Testing: 1000 Ways to assess your personality, creativity, intelligence and lateral thinking (reference) Perplexing Lateral Thinking Puzzles (reference) Brainstrains: Sneaky Lateral Thinking Puzzles (reference) Great Lateral Thinking Puzzles (reference) (more book examples)

Theater & Movies	Lateral Thinking - Logic of Creativity (reference) Lateral Thinking - Six Thinking Hats (reference) Lateral Thinking - Movement & Provocation (reference) (more DVD examples; more video examples)
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

Specialty Definition: Lateral thinking

Lateral thinking means thinking correctly about a problem, even if you have to temporarily ignore rote learning and misconceptions. For example :

It took two hours for two men to dig a hole five feet deep. How deep would it have been if ten men had dug the hole for two hours ?

Simplistically, the answer appears to be 25 feet deep. This is based on a few incorrect assumptions :

The plan is to make the hole deeper, rather than longer or wider, as with a ditch.
Ten men have just as much room to move around and shovel in (without getting in the way of other men) as two men do.
Each of the ten men will work just as hard as the two men will—generally, the more people you have working on a project, the more each person will assume he can slack off.

The correct answer—whatever it is—goes against standard mathematical training. This does not make it incorrect; standard mathematical training does not teach how to apply math to the real world very well, except with finances. Lateral thinking gets answers that are correct (or closer to the truth) because it takes into account more factors and the meanings of the words.

Example problems

How long would it take to dig half a hole ?
- You can't dig half a hole.
If one egg takes three minutes to boil, how long do two eggs cook ?
- About three minutes (more energy is needed to boil the water than the eggs).
If a knot in a 5-foot rope takes five minutes to undo, how long would a knot in a 10-foot rope take to undo ?
- Also five minutes (the length of rope usually has nothing to do with the complexity of the knot).

Language		Translations for "lateral thinking"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses.
Greek		εναλλακτική σκέψη. (various references)

Japanese Kanji		水平思考 . (various references)

Japanese Katakana		すいへいし�"う. (various references)

Pig Latin		aterallay inkingthay
Source: compiled by the editor from various translation references.

Anagrams: Lateral Thinking

Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams
	Words within the letters "a-a-e-g-h-i-i-k-l-l-n-n-r-t-t"
	-3 letters: alliterating.
	-4 letters: alternating, enthralling, inthralling, reattaining, retaliating.
	-5 letters: alienating, annihilate, herniating, inearthing, ingratiate, intreating, lateraling, reknitting, rethinking, tangential, trinketing.
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro.

Alternative Orthography: Lateral Thinking

Hexadecimal (or equivalents, 770AD-1900s) (references)

4C 61 74 65 72 61 6C 54 68 69 6E 6B 69 6E 67

Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519; backwards) (references)

Binary Code (1918-1938, probably earlier) (references)

01001100 01100001 01110100 01100101 01110010 01100001 01101100 00100000 01010100 01101000 01101001 01101110 01101011 01101001 01101110 01100111

HTML Code (1990) (references)

&#76 &#97 &#116 &#101 &#114 &#97 &#108 &#32 &#84 &#104 &#105 &#110 &#107 &#105 &#110 &#103

ISO 10646 (1991-1993) (references)

004C 0061 0074 0065 0072 0061 006C 0054 0068 0069 006E 006B 0069 006E 0067

Encryption (beginner's substitution cypher): (references)

Expression	Frequency per Day
lateral thinking	119
lateral thinking puzzle	91
lateral thinking question	10
lateral thinking problem	10
exercise lateral thinking	5
lateral thinking riddle	3
lateral thinking quiz	3
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

Lateral Thinking

Definition: Lateral Thinking