One of the so-called psychological tests of creativity and lateral thinking involves what’s known as a remote association test. Here what you have to do is try to link up two words which seemingly have nothing to do with one another with a third word that associates them together. Like MAKER and POINT has the word MATCH that fits in with both as in MATCHMAKER and MATCHPOINT. Similarly you can do it with three words also as in RIGHT, CARBON and CAT which pair up with COPY to make COPYRIGHT, CARBONCOPY and COPYCAT.
So here are 10 more of the same kind of threesomes for your own lonesomes to solve. (1) Fence / Modern / Master; (2) Wise / Work / Tower; (3) Cry / Front / Ship; (4) Line / Fruit / Drunk; (5) Child / Scan / Wash; (6) End / Line / Lock; (7) Mother / After / Rate; (8) Lounge / Hour / Napkin; (9) Artist / Hatch / Route; (10) Pet / Bottom / Folk.
THROUGHPUT
(The problem was: “In a key scene in the film MacKenna’s Gold, a lengthening shadow at sunrise points to a particular location. This of course is rubbish because as the sun rises shadows shorten, not lengthen. However is there any situation when it can lengthen?”)
I think the only time this can happen is if the Sun is below the level of a long pillar. For example if the pillar is on a very high cliff when the Sun rises, its shadow will be very small. As the Sun moves up the shadow increases in length and the maximum length will be reached when the Sun in level with the pillar. After that the length of the shadow will start decreasing. – Dhruv Narayan, dhruv510@gmail.com (Not necessarily DN, try it with a torch sometime. – MS)
I guess any object leaning towards the East would have a lengthening shadow as the Sun goes up. – Pravin Pramanick, ppnick@gmail.com
(The second problem was: “What colour is hidden in the following sentence: ‘One dancer I see is out of step’.”)
The colour is CERISE. It is like this: “One danCER I SEe is out of step.” – Murali S L, murali_sl@yahoo.co.in
(Among the surging umpteen dozens who also got this one correct the first five are: Sanath Kumar T S, sanathkumarts1958@gmail.com; Raghunath K, rakhunath.k@gmail.com; Kishore Rao, kishoremrao@hotmail.com; Shashi Shekher Thakur, shashishekher@yahoo.com; Dr P Gnanaseharan, gnanam.chithrabanu@gmail.com.)
(And the third one was: “To get a peeled hard-boiled egg into a bottle just drop a burning taper in and the vacuum created by the loss of oxygen sucks the egg in. But the O2 loss is compensated by the production of CO2 and water vapour. So what sucks the egg in?”)
It has nothing to do with oxygen or carbon dioxide; it is pressure that matters. As you drop a burning taper into the bottle, the air inside heats up, expands and some of it goes out of the bottle. Since the mouth is closed with the peeled hardboiled egg, a low pressure is created inside the bottle when the air inside begins to cool. The egg is then pushed into the bottle by the atmospheric pressure outside. – Ramesh Kumar, rameshkumarthayyil@gmail.com
The issue is not about ‘compensation’ and production of CO2 and water vapour. It’s all about air pressure! When the burning taper is dropped into the bottle, the air inside the bottle heats up and expands. The expanding air escapes the bottle and we see the egg wiggle. The cooler air which now remains in the bottle exerts less pressure than the pressure outside the bottle, and also takes up less space. The air now pushing the egg from outside is greater than force of air pushing from inside. – Charanjit Singh Pardesi, cspardesi@gmail.com (Yes, Ganesh Ram Palanisamy, 1969ganram@gmail.com and G Jagannathan, geejay100@gmail.com, you got it right on time too.)
BUT GOOGLE THIS NOW
1. Okay so you’ve managed to get that peeled hardboiled egg into a wide-ish necked bottle. How do you get it out now without breaking the bottle? Two answers are preferable but even one will do.
2. Still on eggs, how do you get an unpeeled hardboiled egg into a similarly necked bottle without breaking the shell? (Bonus trick question: How would you get the contents of a normal egg out without breaking the shell?)
— Sharma is a scriptwriter and former editor of Science Today magazine.(mukul.mindsport@gmail.com)