Let's Be Less Stupid: An Attempt to Maintain My Mental Faculties (8 page)

Droodles

When I was a kid, I was intrigued by a paperback on my parents’ bookshelf called
Droodles
, written by Roger Price in 1953. It was next to a book called
Thirteen Elegant Ways to Commit Suicide
, which amused me equally. That’s for later. Droodles are simple and seemingly abstract line drawings—part doodle, part riddle—whose meanings are… you know what? It’s easier to show rather than tell you. Here’s an example of one of Price’s Droodles.

What is it?

It’s a ship arriving too late to save a drowning witch. Alternatively, it’s a mother pyramid feeding her baby. Here are three more. Can you supply a brief description of each illustration?

Give up? A tomato sandwich made by an amateur chef, unassembled sandpaper, and a box for Pinocchio, respectively. Deciphering a Droodle requires what psychologists call
divergent thinking
, or coming up with multiple solutions to a given problem. The phrase “divergent thinking” is a divergent way of saying
imagination
. This ability to think fancifully is not typically called on by standard aptitude tests such as the SAT and IQ. For this reason, Droodles can be used to test creativity.

Come up with the caption for each.