Glassdoor.com, a web community offering an insider's view of some of America's top businesses and corporations, published an interesting article at the end of last year compiling the years "Top 25 Oddball Interview Questions".

Here are the questions, and my answers. Feel free to respond with some of you answers to these quirky queries.


1. What was your best McGuyver moment? – Asked at Schlumberger.



2. How many tennis balls are in this room and why? – Asked at Yahoo.

Not one. I haven't got a dog, none of the furniture needs foot cushioning for easy mobility, I don't use them for physical therapy, and I can't stand the color.


3. If you were a brick in a wall which brick would you be and why? – Asked at Nestle USA.



4. How would you move Mount Fuji? – Asked at Microsoft.

Mount Fiji is constantly moving, as we are all in orbit. [Insert canned laughter] But really, it would so much depend on the reason. I think I would blow up a series of photographs of it to scale and construct them in another location.


5. If two cars are traveling in a two lap race on a track of any length, one going 60 mph and the other going 30mph, how fast will the slower car have to go to finish at the same car to finish at the same time? – Asked at Morgan Stanley.

[There is something wrong with the wording, here...]

It would depend how far the faster car was ahead of the slower car.


6. Are your parents disappointed with your career aspirations? – Asked at Fisher Investments.

[I don't find this to be a particularly oddball question. Nosey, for sure.]

[Assuming that in answering this question I would be interviewing with Fisher Investments and qualified for the position.] No, although I think my dad would have been, in his youth.


7. Tell me how you would determine how many house painters there are in the United States? – Asked at Acquity Group.

I would use some version of the yellow pages to compare how many painters are in each major metropolitan area per capita and find the average, then do the same with a two dozen geographically diverse rural communities, then take the average of all the findings. [This doesn't seem like a particularly accurate way to go about things, but it's an idea.]


8. What should it cost to rent Central Park for commercial purposes? – Asked at Bain & Co.

Central Park in it's entirety should never be rented out for commercial purposes. Portions of it should be rented commercially for $100,000 per acre per day. But should it be rented commercially at all? No.

9. If I put you in a sealed room with a phone that had no dial tone, how would you fix it? – Asked at Apple.

This assumes that because the phone does not have a dial tone that it is broken. The dial tone plays no actual function in the use of a phone. So, first I would dial the operator to see if it went through. If it didn't, then I would try dialing my own phone number. If it still didn't work, I would check all the telephone's connections. If the connections were set and the phone still did not work, I would knock on the door to leave.

10. If you could be any animal, what would you be and why? – Asked at Pacific Sunwear.

I'd like to be a dolphin, because they're smart but they also seem happy.

11. How many hair salons are there in Japan? – Asked at Boston Consulting.

This is a question I never have any intention of knowing the answer to. [Interview fail!]

12. If both a taxi and a limo were priced the exact same, which one would you choose? – Asked at Best Buy.

If the price was exorbitant, I would take the limo to get my money's worth. If it were reasonable, I would take the cab because I enjoy riding in taxis and would prefer it to a limo.

13. How to measure 9 minutes using only a 4 minute and 7 minute hourglass? –
Asked at Bank of America.

I would turn the 7 minute hour glass and while it was running I would determine the point at which the 4 minute hour glass was half poured. Once the 7 minutes was up I would turn the 4 minute hour glass and wait until it was at half poured. Or, I would not use the 7 minute hour glass at all, I would turn the 4 minute hour glass twice then count the final 60 seconds.

14. What are 5 uncommon uses of a brick, not including building, layering, or a paper-weight? –
Asked at Kaplan High Education.

15. What is the probability of throwing 11 and over with 2 dices – Asked at American Airlines.

There is a 5% probability. [Even if I'm right, this is still a boring question.]

16. What is your favorite food? – Asked at Apple Store.

This raw chocolate parfait the way my mom makes it, with avocados and raw cacao, strawberries and cashew cream.

17. Say you are dead- what do you think your eulogy would say about you. –
Asked at Nationwide.

I think it would say something about how there was so much that I wanted to do, so much I good I could have brought into the world. [However, were I applying to work at Nationwide it would go something like this...] "Although she was at one time an idealist, unwilling to compromise herself and striving to make a real difference, towards the end of her life she compromised herself greatly and this no doubt led to her suicide."

18. Given a dictionary of words, how do you calculate the anagrams for a new word? – Asked at Amazon.

The anagrams for a word that does not yet exist? This cannot be calculated...

19. How many lightbulbs are in this building? – Asked at Monitor Group.

I am going to estimate 25, not counting the individual bulbs on the Christmas lights, which would bring the number up to 125. [I promise, no cheating was involved, I did not get up to count.]

20. Given a square grid of numbers, considering all the numbers at the boundary as one layer and numbers just inside as another layer and so on how would you rotate each of the layers of the numbers by a given amount. – Asked at Microsoft.

21. How would you sell me eggnog in Florida in the summer? – Asked at Expedia.

I would ask you to close your eyes and paint me a verbal picture of your favorite things about Christmas, what it looks like and smells like and tastes like. Once you're mouth is watering, I'd say, "It's crazy, I just happen to have some eggnog! Want some?"

That or I'd bet you that you couldn't convince me to drink eggnog in summer in Florida.

22. Develop an algorithm for finding the shortest distance between two words in a document. After the phone interview is over, take a few hours to develop a working example in C++ and send it to the manager. – Asked at Google.

[Sure, out of context this seems weird, but it seems just like asking an interviewing cashier to do basic math. That said, I'm not going to try to bullshit my way through this question.]

23. Given a fleet of 50 trucks, each with a full fuel tank and a range of 100 miles, how far can you deliver a payload? You can transfer the payload from truck to truck, and you can transfer fuel from truck to truck. Extend your answer for n trucks. – Asked at Palantir.

[Gee... Nope.]

24. You are in a room with 3 switches which correspond to 3 bulbs in another room and you don’t know which switch corresponds to which bulb. You can only enter the room with the bulbs once. You can NOT use any external equipment (power supplies, resistors, etc.). How do you find out which bulb corresponds to which switch? – Asked at Goldman Sachs.

[This one's my favorite.]

25. If you saw someone steal a quarter. Would you report it? – Asked at Amazon.

No, and if you, the interviewer, answered this question with a yes, I would have to say Good Day.