@VeryHappy, I figured that if the ball cost x and the bat cost x +$1.00, then 2x + $1.00 = $1.10 (the total spent). That means 2x = .10, so x (the cost of the ball) is .05 and the bat is $1.05.
Cost of ball is x, cost of bat is x plus dollar 
x + (x + $1.00) = $1.10
Mentally solving for x is a piece of cake.
How about quickly adding up all numbers from 1 to 100?
When job hunting in the 60s my father was given an electrical circuit quiz where all the answers were 1. He says that he was sitting in a room full of people and redid the quiz multiple times, confirming that he was right. He got a job.
Oh I know how to answer adding up all numbers from 1-100, but only because I’ve read about Gauss. I’d never have figured it out on my own. The bat and ball problem reminds me of questions my older son was expected to explain how he got the answer and he’d always wail, “I just saw it in my head.”
My thought was 10c, but that was too much. So, 2nd idea, try 5c. That worked but it took at least a minute. I don’t know f I’d be thinking so,clearly in an interview.
I applied for a job in 2005. I looked around the room and asked about her children in a photo. One was quite ill, so I felt like I was offering therapeutic support.
When my son was at a college interview, he was asked about the books in the room. He began talking about his favorites. I thought that was a good interview.
Click “show previous quotes” above to see an answer.
And there is more on the subject at http://jwilson.coe.uga.edu/EMAT6680Fa2013/Hendricks/Essay%202/Essay2.html .
A few days ago, my 25yo son was asked in an interview, “What would you do if you won the lottery?” My son said, “Retire.” (I don’t think that was the correct answer. He hasn’t heard back from them.)
Maybe they had an office pool that won and the place emptied. Haha. The terrible thing with interviewing is all the fake, but correct answers. But if there are weird questions that don’t assess the employees ability to do the job they may get a bunch of employees who know how to interview well but not be high performers.
I hear the same from people doing the on line personality tests for jobs at HD, Yaeget, etc. they want certain answers which forces people to lie.
When I was around 58 or so, I interviewed for a job. I was initially interviewed by a child interviewer from HR – really, she couldn’t have been more than 23 or so. One of her [obviously stock] questions was, “What do you want to be doing in five years?” Thankfully, I had enough sense not to give her my real answer – I want to be relaxing in a rocking chair on a porch somewhere!!
I was asked, what’s more important to you, the work or the money? I said, the work, I know the money will come (this was a position with a high starting salary, for a start-up. They’d flown me to a VP interview.) Another prospect said, the money. Not only was that true, to her, but she thought it made her seem more driven.
We both got hired, were good at our jobs. Sometimes, there’s no one right answer, but how you respond can show a lot. As I read this thread, I wonder if that’s the point, not getting the correct answer.
In general, those with better face to face sales and marketing (of themselves) skills will have an advantage and be higher rated in job interviews compared to others. For a job where face to face sales and marketing skills are important, that can match the actual skill at the job. But in jobs where that is not so important relative to other skills, there can be significant inefficiency in that the better salesperson may be hired over someone who can do the actual job better.
Was given the Wonderlic test. Thanks Northwestern.
The dollar store sells a whiffle bat - with ball - for…drumroll…a dollar 
I didn’t have to think much about the bat/ball question. Seemed obvious. I work with numbers all day long, though.
Anyone had the “wolf, goat, cabbage” brought up in their interview? ?
I was asked the tree question years ago. I answered that I would be a sequoia.
But yes these questions are ridiculous.
No, but the puzzle assumes that the wolf will not eat the cabbage. Considering the unpicky eating habits of their domesticated relatives (dogs), that may not be an accurate assumption.
^Or that the wolf poses no danger to you, the rower!
If I’m hiring for a corporate rotational program, where the new hire is expected to have four different assignments in two years, which could range from strategy and planning to production and supply chain; and might move from upstate NY to Luton, UK and then to Plano Texas (all in two years)… seeing how someone handles something out of the ordinary seems to me like a good screen (in addition to everything else). That’s holistic folks. It’s not just having a 3.8 GPA, and it’s not just having volunteer work or research for a professor on your resume. I’ve seen solid candidates fall apart when asked softball questions about a story on the front page of every newspaper in the country (err, umm, “I didn’t prepare for that”).
You can’t prepare. That’s the point. Smile, don’t use hostile body language, and answer the question any darn way you want. You wake up one day and discover that someone has tampered with your tamper proof packaging on a production line and a months worth of product has to be recalled-- and as the junior member of the production team, your signature is on the form which released the batch to ship.
You think you can “prepare” for that? No. You marshal the resources at your disposal and move into problem-solving/crisis mode. A 3.8 GPA doesn’t help you when a reporter from the WSJ is in front of your apartment building. What you all see as “ridiculous” is just one more way to cut through the overly prepped/it’s all on the internet style of interviewing that this generation favors.
And I graduated from college in the 1970’s and had these kinds of questions when I was interviewing for a job- so they are hardly new, radical, or different. I was a piece of fruit, I was a piece of furniture, I described a flower to someone who was blind. Yawn. Not new.