Pile-Up Reality

One of the exciting things about lateral-thinking problems is that it challenges our preconception notion of reality. Usually, we are faced with a bizarre situation, but once we know the answer, everything makes sense.

An excellent example of this in action is the following write-up:

At the bottom of a hill, more than 40 cars are involved in an accident. Some cars are overturned, and others are resting on top of others. The pile-up is so large that a few military vehicles and fire trucks are involved in the crash. What happened to cause this big wreck?

Many things could answer this problem, but none seem satisfying enough to justify such a crash. And all we need is to shift the reality of the situation with one simple question: what if the cars were not real?

Soon after, an answer emerges: the cars, fire trucks, military vehicles, and others are simply toys played with by a small child in the middle of a miniature city with fake hills. All you need is to consider different realities in which all the puzzle pieces make sense.