Can I Google It?

They'll ask you crazy questions on job interviews: How many golf balls would it take to fill a school bus?  How much would you charge to wash every window in Seattle? What would you do if you were an inch tall and thrown into a blender about to start in sixty seconds?  How would you plan the evacuation of San Francisco?  Could you fit a stack of pennies as tall as the Empire State Building into a room in the Empire State Building?*

I've never faced anything like this, but according to William Poundstone's book Are You Smart Enough To Work At Google?, these kinds of challenges are becoming more and more common  And not just at Google--in a tough economy, lots of companies want to test your knowledge, your originality, your thought process and your performance under pressure.

The book goes into the history of such testing (which is of questionable value) but is as much a puzzle book as anything else, each chapter ending with a series of questions with answers at the back.  In fact, the Answers section is half the book.

As a fan of puzzles, and Poundstone, I highly recommend the book.  I don't necessarily recommend trying to get a job at Google though, if this is the sort of stuff they put your through.

PS  Poundstone mentions the famous Missionaries and Cannibals puzzle (which has been updated to the more politically correct People and Lions).  I was taught it as a kid, and I guess I learned a more complex variation, since Poundstone's version, where you can dump a lion on the shore from your boat where there's already another lion there, and they won't eat you, seems like cheating to me.

*Sorry, I'm not giving the answers. Either figure them out yourself of buy/borrow Poundstone's book. Okay, I'll answer the last, since it's pretty easy. There can't be many more than 100 stories in the Empire State Building, and let's say even a small room in the building has a ceiling half the height of one of the floors. That would mean you'd have to put at most around 200 stacks of pennies, which is barely more than 14x14 stacks.  Even a closet would fit a stack of 14x14 pennies.