Brain teaser interview questions: what the research says, and job-related questions to ask instead
On this page
- What counts as a brain teaser interview question?
- What did Google's people-operations leaders say about brain teasers?
- What does the research say?
- Why do interviewers still use them, and what works better?
- What are the fairness, accommodation and adverse-impact risks?
- What should you ask instead of a brain teaser?
- When is an estimation question job-related?
- How do you score the replacement questions on a 1–4 scale?
- Questions people ask
For most jobs, no: brain teaser interview questions do not predict how well someone will do the job, and they make candidates see the process as less fair. Laszlo Bock, then Google's senior vice president of people operations, wrote in 2015 that case interviews and brainteasers "have little if any ability to predict how candidates will perform in a job," and a 2019 study by Scott Highhouse, Christopher Nye and Don Zhang found that working adults who were more willing to use them scored higher on narcissism and sadism. Replace each one with a job-related question or a short work sample, asked the same way of every candidate and scored against anchors. Below: what counts as a brain teaser, what Google's people-operations leaders and the research said, the fairness and accommodation risks, and a job-related replacement for each well-known puzzle.
Our guides to interviewing for problem solving and critical thinking mention brain teasers in passing. This page is the full case, with sources, for anyone who has to persuade a colleague to drop their favorite riddle.
What counts as a brain teaser interview question?
| Type | Well-known example | What it mostly measures |
|---|---|---|
| Trick puzzle | "Why are manhole covers round?" | Whether the candidate has heard it before |
| Estimation with no data | "How many golf balls would fit inside a 747?" | Practice with a known technique |
| Logic riddle | "Find the one heavier ball among eight using a balance twice." | Puzzle practice and composure under scrutiny |
| Oddball question | "If you were an animal, which would you be?" | Nothing job-related; invites the interviewer's own bias |
| General-knowledge quiz | "Is Australia larger than Greenland?" | Trivia recall |
The last example is a century old. Highhouse and colleagues open their paper with Thomas Edison's 1921 questionnaire for job applicants, which drew strongly negative public reaction at the time, and they describe today's brain teasers as history repeating itself.
What did Google's people-operations leaders say about brain teasers?
Two statements by Laszlo Bock are the ones usually cited:
- 2013, The New York Times. In an interview with Adam Bryant published in June 2013, Bock said Google's data showed brainteasers did not predict anything and served mainly to make interviewers feel smart. We could not open the original Times article to check the wording; we rely on the version reproduced at the start of the Highhouse, Nye and Zhang paper, which cites "Bryant, A. (2013). In head-hunting, big data may not be such a big deal. New York Times, 19 June."
- 2015, Wired. In an excerpt from his book Work Rules! published by Wired on April 7, 2015, Bock grouped case interviews and brainteasers together, with examples such as estimating the gas stations in Manhattan. He wrote that performance on them is at best a skill that improves with practice and at worst depends on a trick withheld from the candidate. He also acknowledged that some Google interviewers had used and probably still used such questions, said the company discouraged them, and said senior leaders reviewing candidates ignored the answers. In their place he described structured behavioral and situational interviews, work samples, and assessments of cognitive ability, conscientiousness and leadership.
We could not confirm whether any Google interviewers still use brain teasers as of October 2026.
What does the research say?
There is little direct research on whether brain teasers predict job performance, which is itself a reason not to rely on them. The most cited study is about the interviewers who choose them:
- Highhouse, Nye and Zhang (2019). "Dark Motives and Elective Use of Brainteaser Interview Questions," Applied Psychology 68(2), 311–340, published online in September 2018. In a representative sample of 736 working adults, narcissism and sadism predicted how likely people were to use brain teasers, after controlling for interviewing experience and sex, and the two traits shared a general callousness factor. A second, longitudinal study of employed adults with hiring experience found that perspective-taking partly explained the link between that factor and seeing brain teasers as helpful. The authors say they did not test whether brain teasers are valid and treat that as an open question, and they recommend limiting individual interviewers' latitude over questions and training interviewers on the effect of brain teasers.
- Wright, Sablynski, Manson and Oshiro (2012). As summarized by Highhouse and colleagues, this laboratory study found that people rated brain teaser interviews as less procedurally fair than behavioral ones, while the two did not differ in perceived validity. We could not open the original paper.
By contrast, the same paper notes considerable evidence that interviews add value when both the questions and the scoring are standardized, and when they use behavioral and situational questions. That is the case for a structured interview, not for a riddle.
Why do interviewers still use them, and what works better?
| The reason given | The problem | What works better |
|---|---|---|
| "I want to see how they think." | You see how they handle that puzzle, which may be one they have practiced. | A case built from the real work, with information supplied. |
| "It shows composure under stress." | The job rarely involves riddles under a stranger's gaze; anxiety in the interview is not the same as stress on the job. | A question about a real time a plan fell apart. |
| "It finds creative people." | Creativity with no constraints says little about creativity with the job's constraints. | A real constraint the team faced, and the options the candidate would consider. |
| "Famous companies did it." | Google's own head of people operations said publicly that it did not work. | The structured approach he described instead. |
| "It's fun." | Fun for the interviewer; Highhouse and colleagues link it to callousness and low perspective-taking. | Ask yourself what job-related evidence the question produces. |
What are the fairness, accommodation and adverse-impact risks?
As of October 2026, U.S. rules treat interview questions like any other selection step. This is a summary for interviewers, not legal advice.
- Interviews are selection procedures. The Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures define a selection procedure to include informal or casual interviews, and define adverse impact as a substantially different rate of selection that works to the disadvantage of a race, sex or ethnic group (29 CFR 1607.16). Our page on the four-fifths rule explains how adverse impact is usually checked.
- Job-related and consistent with business necessity. The EEOC's fact sheet on employment tests and selection procedures says Title VII prohibits neutral tests that disproportionately exclude people on a protected basis unless they are job-related and consistent with business necessity. A puzzle with no connection to the work is hard to defend on that standard.
- Accommodations. The same EEOC fact sheet says employers must provide reasonable accommodations in how tests are given, unless that would be an undue hardship. Timed riddles answered aloud can disadvantage candidates with anxiety disorders, some neurodivergent candidates and people working in a second language, where wordplay and idioms carry the trick. See ADA accommodations in interviews.
What should you ask instead of a brain teaser?
Each replacement below aims at what the interviewer hoped the puzzle would show, using the job's own material. Fill in the brackets from the role.
| Instead of | Ask | A strong answer shows | Follow-up probe |
|---|---|---|---|
| "Why are manhole covers round?" | "Here is a recurring fault in our [process] and three facts about it. What would you check first, and why?" | Clarifying questions, a few hypotheses and a sensible order of checks. | "What would make you drop your first idea?" |
| "How many golf balls fit in a 747?" | For roles that estimate: "Using these figures, estimate next quarter's [orders or tickets]. Talk me through it." | Stated assumptions, a sanity check and a range rather than false precision. | "Which assumption matters most?" |
| The eight-ball balance puzzle | "Here is a short table from our work with one odd value. What do you notice, and what would you do?" | Spots the anomaly, questions the data before concluding, says who they would tell. | "What would you check before reporting it?" |
| "How would you move Mount Fuji?" | "A supplier pulled out a week before a launch last year. What options would you have considered?" | Several options with trade-offs and a recommendation. | "Which would you choose, and what is the risk?" |
| "You are shrunk and dropped in a blender..." | "Tell me about a time a plan fell apart at the last minute. What did you do in the first hour?" | Calm triage, clear communication, a specific example. | "Who did you tell first, and why?" |
| "If you were an animal, which would you be?" | "Tell me about feedback that changed how you work." | A specific change and evidence it stuck. | "What did you do differently afterward?" |
When is an estimation question job-related?
Estimation is a genuine part of some jobs, such as pricing, capacity planning, forecasting and some consulting work. An estimation question is fair for those roles when:
- it uses the job's own context, not airplanes and golf balls;
- it supplies the data a person in the role would have;
- every candidate gets the same question and materials, including paper or a calculator;
- the reasoning is scored against anchors written in advance, not the final number; and
- adjustments such as extra time are offered on request.
At that point it is a work sample, not a brain teaser. The situational interview questions rubric shows how to write and anchor job-based scenarios, and our page on types of pre-employment assessments covers formal tests.
How do you score the replacement questions on a 1–4 scale?
| Score | Anchor |
|---|---|
| 1 — No evidence | Jumps to an answer without clarifying, cannot explain the reasoning, or ignores the information supplied. |
| 2 — Limited | Some structure, but misses an obvious check or relies on one assumption without testing it. |
| 3 — Solid | Clarifies the problem, states assumptions, works through it in a sensible order and reaches a defensible answer. |
| 4 — Strong | Everything at 3, plus tests their own answer, adjusts cleanly to new information, and says what they would do next and who they would involve. |
Score the process, not whether the final answer matches yours. If a colleague still wants to add a riddle, point them to the briefing in our peer interview questions guide, which asks every interviewer to stick to the agreed questions.
Questions people ask
Does Google still ask brain teaser interview questions?
We cannot confirm Google's current practice as of October 2026. What is on record is that Laszlo Bock, then Google's senior vice president of people operations, told The New York Times in 2013 that the company had found brainteasers did not predict anything, and wrote in a 2015 excerpt from his book Work Rules! that such questions had little if any ability to predict job performance. In the same excerpt he admitted some interviewers still asked them and said senior reviewers ignored the answers.
Are brain teaser interview questions illegal?
Not in themselves. The risk is that an interview question is a selection procedure under the U.S. Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures, and a procedure that screens out a protected group at a substantially different rate must be shown to be job-related and consistent with business necessity. A puzzle with no link to the job is hard to defend on that standard, and the ADA requires reasonable accommodations in how tests are given. This is not legal advice.
Are estimation questions like 'how many golf balls fit in a plane' brain teasers?
Yes, when they have nothing to do with the job. An estimation question becomes a fair work sample only when estimating is a real part of the role, the question uses the job's own context and supplies the data, every candidate gets the same question, and answers are scored on the reasoning against anchors written in advance.
Why do interviewers ask brain teasers?
Interviewers usually say they want to see how a candidate thinks, test composure under stress or find creative people. Job-related cases and structured questions do each of those things better. Research by Highhouse, Nye and Zhang (2019) also found that people more willing to use brain teasers tended to score higher on narcissism and sadism, which suggests the questions sometimes serve the interviewer more than the hiring decision.