Table of Contents How to Ace the Brainteaser Interviewer Praise for How to Ace the Brainteaser Job Interview Why Brainteasers?—What Interviewers are Looking For Brainteasers Appropriate for Job Interviews Brainteasers Inappropriate for Job Interviews The Obvious Answer is Always Wrong: Strategies for Success Help! What Do I do When I’m Totally Stumped Prisoner and Cigarette Brainteaser Contest Winners New Challenging Brainteasers

Brainteasers Appropriate for Job Interviews

Puzzles appropriate for job interviews help catalyze a meaningful conversation between the candidate and the interviewer. It is in this conversation, more than the solution to any particular puzzle, that the value of the interview is experienced.

The world is full of puzzles, but relatively few of them are appropriate for job interviews. Most, for one reason or another, simply don’t create extended conversations (see Appendix D for types of puzzles inappropriate for job interviews). The puzzles that have the best possible traction for interviews have these attributes:

• Have Solutions—puzzles are meant to be solved.
  
  
• Short—the puzzle statement is clean, crisp, and obvious. Puzzles with elaborate narrations or many conditions don’t work too well. The best puzzles can be solved in less than 5 minutes, although the conversations about them can be extended.
  
  
• Open ended—puzzles that have multiple acceptable answers allow candidates to be creative or demonstrate their ability to come up with multiple solutions. Most of all, if there are no right or wrong answers, candidates cannot be defeated.
  
  
• Unobvious—by this, I mean not only that the problem is “deep” in some nontrivial way, but that it often suggests an “obvious” first impression that is inevitably wrong.
  
  
• Charming—the best puzzles engage our intellects in ways that leave candidates stimulated. It’s hard to define what gives a puzzle this quality, but we know it when we see it. Puzzles shouldn’t be arduous. One goal of puzzles in job interviews is to have fun while doing serious business.
  
  
• Capable of quick solution. The most appropriate puzzles, like almost all the puzzles collected in this book, can be addressed in less than three minutes.