Testing exercises

Yesterday evening we had puzzle night and I got few good puzzle ideas for practicing testing. If you don't know the answers and want to solve them, don't google. instead contact me either by skype olivervilson or email oliver.vilson@hannas.ee and I'll help you solve them. Satisfaction of solving them is worth not googling for the answers.

1) A naked man is lying dead in the middle of the desert with a small wooden stick in his hand.

2) A man wakes up one night to get some water. After finishing his class of water, he turns off the light and goes back to sleep. The next morning he looks out the window, screams, and kills himself.

You have to find out what happened by only asking yes/no questions and I answer either yes, no or not relevant.

3) Businessman wearing expensive suit is on one side of the river. There is a trainstation on another side. He has to get to a train that leaves in 15 minutes. He lights up a cigarette and is not worried about missing his train. There are no bridges or boats nearby and he can't jump across the river. Why isn't he worried?

I posted them was because I consider that to evaluate whether or not person is smart, you can't use mathematical questions. Math is just one skill and if you posess this skill you can solve most of mathematical questions with ease. But real life doesn't tend to be filled with mathematical solutions. These puzzles demand you to ask questions and create more questions from answers you get. I see it as more closer to real life situations.

I consider testing as asking questions. Sometimes you get reasonable answer but often (especially if logs don't give enough answers) you might have to settle with yes/no replies (works/crashes/some data is wrong) from system. And then you have to know how to ask more questions in order to move forward.

So if you want to solve some puzzles (don't google ;)) then feel free to contact me.
Hopefully I find more puzzles to post here.