Sunday, October 25, 2009

Mind Trap

Sid Shady and Sam Sham are sitting at a bar. Both order a double shot of Johnny Walker Red Label Scotch. Sid offers a wager to Sam: Sid tells Sam to place his shot on the solid oak bar and place a solid glass bowl completely over the shot. Sid then bets Sam $1 that Sid can drink Sam's shot without touching either the bowl or the shot glass, and without the use of any other person or object. Should Sam take the bet?

Note: This is a paraphrased (and probably improved) version of a question from a substandard mind-problem/trivia game from the early 90's called "MindTrap." I purchased an unused copy of the game from Goodwill today for $1.95, and played it for a while with Greg and Sarah, with semi-hilarious results.

Please post your answers (Yes or No, with explanation either way) in the comments, and I will post the correct answer sometime tomorrow (Greg and Sarah obviously excluded).

3 comments:

kilgore said...

Ok, apparently no one found this at all interesting, so I will just give the answer. The answer is that no, Sam should not take the bet. If he does, Sid will simply remove the bowl, pick up the shot and drink it, and gladly pay Sam $1 for the $5 shot.

PopsArmstrong said...

Oh, sorry, I actually didn't see it until today, but I was interested. I admit, I never would have figured it out, though I think I've heard it before. Yikes! Bad knowledge (price of booze), bad reasoning, and bad memory all displayed in one puzzle.

kilgore said...

The real point of posting this one was that it was not a good questions to begin with. All of the other questions in the game were true "logic" or word-problem-type puzzles that had a legitimate and reasonable answer. This one was stupid and not in the spirit of the game, we thought.