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“Trick questions” can be a pain and a bothersome annoyance of the kind that you would expect from small children. There are still, nevertheless those adults who like to have a little fun, even when the second party is bad mood. For the few times that you will have to deal with people in such circumstances, here is a little philosophical remedy to your annoyed self.
“What color is this car?” would ask the first party with nefarious intent to make you have the wrong answer every time. Your answer would be “blue” seeing logically that the car is predominately blue. The car however has silver handles and black tires and the asker laughingly tells you the answer is, “blue, silver, and black.” They are wrong for an number of reasons. The first obvious one is that there are probably more colors of the car: for example the numbers on the speedometer could be white, the digital clock teal, and the car’s make logo could be red. The real reason they are wrong is because they asked for the color, singular, of the car. So this means that you were right since you listed one color, singular, right? Not a chance.
This is where the entire question falls apart. The question must match the answer. If there are 15 shirts in your closet, and someone asks you, “what is the color of the shirt in your closet?” one day, you would ask intently, “which shirt?” Same goes for, “what is the color of your car?”… “Which color?”, you should say, “there are many colors on this vehicle which include,” and then list some of the colors. Or if they have no business knowing about your shirts, you can call them a stalker and walk away.
While the car example, which is used throughout this article was specific, it can be translated to a variety of applications. One of the keys to being victorious in a “trick” question situation is reversing the roles by being the asker yourself, essentially answering a question with a question. If you cannot find a way to do this or are put in a position in which you must answer, be very specific and use phrases such as, “predominantly,” “for the most part,” and “if there is an answer.” Lastly remember that the most common type of “trick” question has no answer, for example: “what is the third album of the band so-and-so,” to which the answer is, “so-and-so did not have a third album,” so be wary of those. We realize that this article will not come in handy very often, but when it does, you will certainly embarrass the person who thinks they’ve got you in a trap… which is usually fun. We also apologize to our readers in the United Kingdom for spelling it “color,” as opposed to “colour” as they, we know, do there.