What is a puzzle question?
In the highly competitive Indian job market, recruiters can get overwhelmed with a large number of applications for a single position. As hiring full-time employees is an investment of the company’s resources, employers must thoroughly test the applicants before hiring. Logic-based interview questions are gaining popularity as they help employers gain insight into a candidate’s thought process and find the best candidates.
Puzzles are becoming an integral part of interviews in the tech sector, with IT companies relying on puzzles to find the right software developers and coders. Puzzles can include a variety of questions ranging from riddles to number tricks that test the candidate’s real-time ability to solve complex problems under pressure.
Pros of puzzle interview questions
While not an interview mainstay, puzzle questions have been around for a long while. Conventional interview questions help employers directly evaluate a candidate’s personality. However, puzzle interview questions can have certain advantages over general questions. Here are a few of them.
1. Puzzle questions help in evaluating a candidate’s response to stressful situations
A candidate may be expecting standard questions that focus on their career goals, past achievements, and personality. However, puzzle interview questions break this tradition and put the candidate on the spot. Interview puzzles test the candidate’s cognitive abilities while under pressure to impress the interviewer. So, puzzle questions can help employers to understand how a candidate might respond to workplace pressure.
2. Interview puzzles help test the candidate’s analytical and quantitative skills
In industries like the software development industry, sometimes recruiters only have a surface level of understanding regarding the skillset of a programmer or a coder. The recruiters may be interview veterans well-versed in behavioural insights but might not be able to adequately review the full extent of a developer’s skills. Interview puzzles can be a handy measure to evaluate a candidate’s analytical and quantitative skills, as they are essential to a developer’s success.
Interview puzzle questions have a specific niche and purpose that can help you to understand your candidate in specific contexts.
Cons of puzzle interview questions
While puzzles and brain teasers may seem necessary additions to your standard interview questions, they may not always be the right choice. Here are a few disadvantages of relying on puzzle interview questions.
1. Lack of objective correlation between a candidate’s personality traits and future performance
Puzzles are often used in interviews to predict a candidate’s response to stressful situations. However, there is a lack of evidence that suggests a direct relation between personality traits and a candidate’s future performance in their assigned role. While a puzzle may help you evaluate that a candidate may be skilled at finance modelling, you still need to determine whether as a team player they are able to implement specific business strategies that will help your business.
2. No standard format for puzzles in interviews
Most conventional interview questions are tried and tested additions that help employers evaluate job candidates efficiently. However, puzzle questions are based on statistics, probability, and set theory. These questions require high approximation and lack clear instructions. So, puzzle questions can be an inconsistent and unreliable way to test a candidate’s skills. The random nature of these puzzles makes them a stress test that isn’t an ideal indicator of a candidate’s suitability for a particular role in your organisation.
So, it is vital to consider the pros and cons of puzzle interview questions before using them in your interview process.
5 examples of puzzle interview questions
Puzzle interview questions can be helpful in your interview process as long as you understand their limitations. Here are five interview puzzle questions with their answers that you can use in your next interview.
- The Batting team’s players get dismissed in 10 consecutive balls without attempting to take runs. All the balls were legal deliveries. Which number Batsman will be shown not out on the scorecard?
Answer and explanation
The 8th batsman will be shown not out on the scorecard. An over consists of 6 legal deliveries. Batsman 1 will open the strike with batsman 2 on the other end. As the batting team’s players are dismissed in consecutive balls, batsmen 1 to 7 will be dismissed in the first over, as batsman 2 will be on the other end. Then the batsmen will switch places at the end of the over, with batsman 2 on strike and batsman 8 on the other end. So, batsman 8 will remain not out, while the rest of the team gets dismissed in consecutive deliveries.
2. You have 12 identical coins. One of them is a counterfeit and weighs less than the others. How can you identify the counterfeit in three weighings while using a two-pan balance scale without weights?
Answer and explanation
For the first weighing, compare six coins, with three on each side of the scale. If these weigh equal, perform the second weighing, comparing the second six coins in the same manner. Upon finding the group of three coins that weighs less, you will know that the counterfeit is in that group. Then you can weigh any two of these three coins to identify the counterfeit. If one of these two coins is lighter, it’s the counterfeit. If the two selected coins weigh equal, then the third coin is the counterfeit. This way, you can determine which coin is counterfeit in two or three weighings.
3. You have a 5-litre jug and a 3-litre jug. How will you measure exactly 4 litres without using any other equipment?
Answer and explanation
First, fill the 3-litre jug and pour it into the 5-litre jug. Now, fill the 3-litre jug once more, tipping it slowly into the 5-litre jug till it’s filled up completely. As the 5-litre jug already had 3 litres from before, your 3-litre jug will have 1 litre remaining. Empty the 5-litre jug, then pour the remaining 1 litre in the 3-litre jug into the 5-litre jug.
Then, fill up the 3-litre jug again and pour it into the 5-litre jug. The 5-litre jug finally has 4 litres in it.
4. You’re about to board a train from Delhi to Dehradun. You want to know whether it’s raining in Dehradun, so you call three friends who live there. Each friend has a 2/3 chance of telling the truth and a 1/3 chance of lying. All 3 friends say that it’s raining in Dehradun. What is the probability that it is actually raining in Dehradun?
Answer and explanation
There is a 96% chance that it is raining in Dehradun.
You only need one friend to tell the truth. If you calculate the odds of all of them lying, then it’s 1/3 multiplied thrice together.
1/3 x 1/3 x 1/3 = 1/27
There’s a 1 in 27 chance that all of your 3 friends are lying. So, there’s a 26/27 chance that one of them is telling the truth, which amounts to 96%.
5. How can you place 10 oranges in 5 straight lines, so each line has 4 oranges?
Answer and explanation
You can arrange the oranges in the shape of a 5-point star with 4 oranges in each line. Each orange is now used in 2 of the 5 lines.
These interview puzzles with answers should give you a fair idea of the kind of puzzle questions to use in your next interview. There are hundreds of other similar questions that you can add to your interview questionnaire to test your candidates.
While puzzle interview questions have pros and cons, they are an interesting approach to conduct interviews in the modern era. Recruitment can be a game of fine margins in the highly competitive Indian job market, with many qualified candidates competing for the same role. In this context, puzzle questions can prove handy to help you identify your ideal employee.
