Timeline for Coffee-break Puzzle: Where does the Driver Sit?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
16 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jun 27, 2016 at 19:37 | comment | added | John | I declare the question ambiguous enough to upvote this answer. | |
| Jun 27, 2016 at 18:06 | comment | added | David Schwartz | @jpmc26 The question is not talking about which side "of the car" the steering wheel is on. It seems to go out of its way not to use that common phrase with a well understood meaning. When there's a common, obvious expression for something and someone chooses to use a different expression, you have to consider that they did so deliberately. | |
| Jun 27, 2016 at 18:05 | comment | added | jpmc26 | @DavidSchwartz It is an obvious reference to the fact that this differs between countries and depends on which side of the road the country drives on. That is pretty much the only normal context for talking about which side of the car a steering wheel is on. | |
| Jun 27, 2016 at 17:47 | comment | added | David Schwartz | @jpmc26 There is no typical usage for "Find out on which side is the steering wheel - left or right". That appears to be someone going out of their way to avoid typical usage. And as for which version is more interesting, that's pretty subjective. Making a lot of the slight difference in mirror angles seems uninteresting to me. | |
| Jun 27, 2016 at 17:41 | comment | added | jpmc26 | @DavidSchwartz For two reasons: 1) Not taking it in the usual sense makes this question uninteresting. 2) Since the question isn't overly specific about it, the typical usage is a safer assumption. | |
| Jun 27, 2016 at 17:14 | comment | added | David Schwartz | @jpmc26 It doesn't say "side of the car". In fact, it seems to go out of its way to avoid saying that. So why does the usual sense of "side of the car" matter? | |
| Jun 27, 2016 at 16:30 | comment | added | Ryan | the puzzle is not about where in the image the steering wheel is, its about where in the car the steering wheel is. No matter how much you rotate anything, the left side of that thing will always be the same half of the object. Your left side does not change to your right side just because you turned around. If your assumption was correct, then the question itself would indeed be impossible, but Occams razor strikes again because its much simpler to assume Left and right are relative to the CAR, and not you. | |
| Jun 27, 2016 at 13:20 | comment | added | jpmc26 | @DavidSchwartz and Pé de Leão: That would only make sense if the question was tagged with lateral-thinking. It makes more sense to take the question in the usual sense one speaks about the side of the car a steering wheel is on. | |
| Jun 27, 2016 at 12:50 | comment | added | User4407 | @njzk2. Exactly. It can be said to be on the right in two different senses. Therefore, there are no grounds to reject either answer without appealing to unfounded assumptions. | |
| Jun 27, 2016 at 12:40 | comment | added | njzk2 | the same argument can be made: the question does not ask which side of the image. | |
| Jun 27, 2016 at 9:48 | comment | added | User4407 | @jpmc26. No, rotated was exactly what I meant to say. After rotating, the wheel would be on the left side of the image. It would remain near the front of the car, so if the front were to the left, the steering wheel would be toward the left. | |
| Jun 27, 2016 at 9:19 | comment | added | David Schwartz | @jpmc26 The question doesn't ask which side of the car the steering wheel is on. If you rotate it, the steering wheel would still be on the same side of the car, but it would also be on the left side since the front of the car would then be on the left side and the steering wheel is in the front of the car. | |
| Jun 27, 2016 at 8:13 | comment | added | jpmc26 | I think you mean reflected the image. If you rotated it, the steering wheel would remain on the same side of the car, just as it would if you spun a car around physically. (A reflection isn't something we can perform with an actual object; we can only do it with a mirror.) | |
| Jun 27, 2016 at 4:33 | comment | added | User4407 | @njzk2. The steering wheel is closer to the front of the car than to the rear. Since the front of the car is on the right, the steering wheel must be on the right. If you rotated the car so the front was on the left, the steering wheel would have to be on the left as well. | |
| Jun 27, 2016 at 2:46 | comment | added | njzk2 | how would rotating the car change where the wheel is? | |
| Jun 26, 2016 at 15:09 | history | answered | User4407 | CC BY-SA 3.0 |