Tom Cutler - The Pilot Who Wore a Dress - And Other Dastardly Lateral Thinking Mysteries

One Sunday morning Mr and Mrs Jones return home in the early hours after a roisterous Burns Night supper in town. Letting themselves into the house in the pitch black, they relieve the babysitter and push straight off to bed.

Mrs Jones wakes later than usual the next morning. She had rather more sparkling wine than she’d meant to the previous night and John polished off a bottle of malt whisky with a couple of friends. Today her head is throbbing and he is snoring for Scotland.

Mrs Jones gingerly opens the bedroom curtains to take a look at the morning. The sun is streaming onto the front lawn and it is a good deal warmer than it has been over the past week, which is nice.

But Joan notices something unusual. Lying on the wet lawn are some objects that she cannot identify. Pulling on her dressing gown, she goes downstairs and turns on the kettle in the kitchen before padding over to the front door. She opens it a crack to have a better look at the things on the grass.

In the middle of the lawn are eleven pieces of coal, each very roughly the size of a walnut. They are not far apart and appear to have been placed together deliberately. Lying nearby all on its own is a large carrot, which a raven is eyeing from the wall. Somebody, presumably the person who placed the other objects on the lawn, has left his or her scarf on the grass, and it is now soaking wet. The scarf is of a very common design and looks rather moth-eaten. It certainly isn’t one Mrs Jones would allow John or Jeremy to wear in a similar state.

Behind her, Joan Jones hears the tread of Jeremy on the stairs. His hair is up on end and he is holding a jam jar with a snail in it. ‘Malcolm wants some lettuce,’ says Jeremy.

‘Good morning to you too,’ says his mother, shutting the door. ‘I hope you were good last night.’

‘Suzanne let us watch The Exorcist ,’ says Jeremy. Joan makes a mental note to think twice about the suitability of Suzanne as a babysitter next time.

‘What do you know about those things on the lawn?’ says Mrs Jones suspiciously, swallowing a couple of aspirin and pouring boiling water into two mugs. ‘Did you put them on the lawn?’ Jeremy smiles and shakes his head. He pours some sugar-coated breakfast cereal into a bowl and adds nearly a pint of milk and a good deal more sugar. ‘What about Julie?’ asks his mum.

‘No,’ replies Jeremy with his mouth full, ‘she didn’t put them on the lawn either. Nobody did.’

Mrs Jones is bemused but doesn’t fancy an argument. She also decides against breakfast. ‘Not too much noise this morning, darling,’ she tells her son. ‘Your father had a busy day yesterday.’ She carries the coffee cups upstairs, trying, between hiccups, to solve the mystery of the strange objects arranged on her lawn.

The problem

Jeremy was telling the truth. Nobody put the strange assortment of objects on the Joneses’ lawn. But there is a very straightforward reason why they are there. What is it?

Tap here for the solution.

The mystery

Children these days seem to have little trouble remembering twenty computer passwords, yet they still cannot remember the kings and queens of England. Why should they, when they can look them up on their iPhone?

Older people often have trouble remembering where they live and their own names, let alone recalling their PIN number, mobile number, telephone banking security questions and all that stuff.

I don’t know who is responsible for the following joke about computers – I wish I did – but it kind of sums up the situation.

COMPUTER: Please enter your new password.

USER: cabbage

COMPUTER: Sorry, the password must be more than 8 characters.

USER: boiled cabbage

COMPUTER: Sorry, the password must contain 1 numerical character.

USER: 1 boiled cabbage

COMPUTER: Sorry, the password cannot have blank spaces.

USER: 50fuckingboiledcabbages

COMPUTER: Sorry, the password must contain at least one upper-case character.

USER: 50FUCKINGboiledcabbages

COMPUTER: Sorry, the password cannot use more than one upper-case character consecutively.

USER: 50FuckingBoiledCabbagesShovedUpYourArseIfYouDon’tGiveMeAccessNow!

COMPUTER: Sorry, the password cannot contain punctuation.

USER: ReallyPissedOff50FuckingBoiledCabbagesShovedUpYourArseIfYouDontGiveMeAccessNow

COMPUTER: Sorry, that password is already in use.

Anyway, the point is to tell you about a man named Bill, who could never remember how to spell his password. He was alert, sane, and happy with computers, but spelling had always been a bit tricky for him. It wasn’t just unusual words like ‘acquit’ and ‘minuscule’ that gave him trouble, it was ordinary words with double letters, like ‘misspell’ – somewhat ironically.

The most annoying of the lot was his password, which he never could spell correctly, so that he spent many wasted hours trying to log on to his computer.

The problem

How did Bill spell his password?

Tap here for the solution.

The mystery

Terry is a young man with two girlfriends: Emma, who lives to his east, and Wendy, who lives to his west. Emma East is a petite and sultry redhead; Wendy West is a blonde volcano – cool on the outside but bubbling hot below the surface ice. Terry likes both girls equally and enjoys the company of one just as much as the other.

Terry’s local railway station has only one platform. It is one of those ‘island’ platforms of the sort where trains on one side always go one way and trains on the other side always go the opposite way. There is an unfailingly reliable hourly service in each direction, east and west, the trains always run on time, there are the same number both ways, and no train is ever cancelled. (You’ll have noticed that this is very unlike the real world.)

Unfortunately, Terry is completely disorganised, with no idea of the actual times of either service. In one respect this doesn’t matter, because Terry’s girlfriends never go out. They are so devoted to him that they’re always at home in their respective houses, looking out of their front window, waiting for him to visit.

Every time Terry fancies some female company he leaves home without consulting a watch or clock, goes straight to the station, buys a ticket valid to either station, runs up the steps to the middle of the island platform, and boards the first train that comes in, whether eastbound or westbound. There’s one of each every hour and they are perfectly normal trains in every way. He catches his trains at random times and on random days. Sometimes he gets there late in the evening. Sometimes it’s early morning. Sometimes it’s lunchtime, sometimes teatime. He arrives on any and every day of the week in no particular order and he goes either east or west according to which train arrives first.

The westbound train, going to Wendy, leaves at exactly the same time past each hour. The eastbound ‘Emma’ train does the same but leaves at a different time from the westbound ‘Wendy’ train, so Terry is never torn between the two.

The problem

Last year Terry saw Emma East a lot, and many more times than he saw Wendy West. In fact, he hardly saw Wendy West at all. Why?

Tap here for the solution.