Around Christmas time last year, I received a fairly strange present. The present was a Lateral Thinking card game called mindtrap. Mindtrop is filled with wierd and wacky questions, designed to get you to think about a problem in a different way. Each card has a different question on it and a variety of answers to each questions. Some of the questions are jokes, others are so obscure you will never guess them, and some still are worded in a particular way, and you need to understand the exact meaning of each word to work out the puzzle.

Every few weeks this page will updated with new questions from the card game. Members of Elithium are invited and challenged to try to answer these questions, and email their answers to me at Raven@gamesurge.com. The person who manages to answer the most questions right, all give the most interesting answers in considered the winner. The winner will be announced on the page, and may receive prizes depending on how things pan out and on whether this card game will work.

Q.271 Candy Barr has five bags of sweets she wants to give to her nieces. Four of the bags together have a total of 84 sweets. The fifth contains four sweets less then the average of the give bags. How many sweets are in the fifth bag.   Answer 16 Sweets are contained within the final bag. *Think about it*

Q.151 What is the one thing that NO MAN wants, and that NO MAN wants to lose.   Answer A bald head.

Q.10 There is a robot that is programmed to assemble children's toys. During Laboratory tests, the robot assembles hundreds of toys without any error. The day arrives when the robot was to tgive a publie demonstation and as Murphy's law would have it, everything went wrong. The toy pieces were put into a carton and sealed and bought to the public demostation. The robot was given the carton filled with toy pieces but failed to assemble a single toy. What went wrong?   Answer During laboratory tests, no one had programmed the robot to open a carton.

Now that you've had your practice, and you realise that these questions are a little... "out of the box" here are the real ones for you to answer.

Q.17 Before Mt Everest was discovered what was the tallest mountain on Earth

Q.282 Art Conn was staring at the post office looking at the Wanted poster. When someone approached him and asked him who the man in the poster was. Art replied, Brothers and sisters I have none but this man's son is my father's son." Whose picture was on the poster that Art Conn was looking at?

Q.273 C.J Bragg claimed that, while on an African safari hunting a vicous lion, he slipped and broke his foot. Not to put off, he managed to contine on long enough to kill the lion. Then he said that while on an exploration to the north pole during the dead of winter, he caught a cold, but was still able to track and kill a polar bear. Then to top it off, while in a small boat of the coast of Florida, he was able to caugh and land a large shark, in spite of the fact that his arm was badly sprained. Although these tales are hard to believe, on what point/point's do you know CJ is lying?

Q.450 The letters on the glass of a beauty salon read correctly when viewed from the street. How would this lettering appear when seen in a mirrion in the salon, which reflects it from a mirror, which reflects it from another mirror? Explain?

Q.450 Dee Septor, the famous mind reader, said that his job discription can summed up with just three letters of the alphabet. What letters are they?

Q.450 Since 1066, the year of the Normal Conquest, approximately how many kings have been crowned in England? *Very abstract*

Q.450 Ben and Carl were in a 100 meter race. When Ben crossed the finish line carl was only at the 90 meter mark. Ben suggested another race. This time Ben would start ten meters behind the starting line. All other things being equal will Carl when lose or draw in the second race?