Lateral Thinking Puzzles

6. The Power Of Zero

Assume there are approximately 5,000,000,000 (5 billion) people on Earth. What would you estimate to be the result, if you multiply together the number of fingers on every person's left-hands? (For the purposes of this exercise, thumbs count as fingers.) If you cannot estimate the number then try to guess how long the number would be.

Added 1 January 2007 · Updated 2 August 2026

Solution:

The product of the number of fingers on the left-hands of every person is zero. It only takes one person to have no fingers on their left hand for the product to be zero, because anything multiplied by zero equals zero.


Comments (4)

Anonymous 13 January 2010

Listen its me again this is for lateral thinking, in the fact category. Number 6 clearly suggest that a human being only has nine fingers. That's untrue, you are born with ten fingers and ten toes wether you like it or not, ask a doctor. If this suggestion was correct, then the pinky should not be a finger as well. Just because something is a different name doesn't make it different, consider the human race... blacks...whites... asians... mexicans. Different names same race.

Anonymous 16 December 2012

The wording in the lateral thinking problem could be clearer. It should specify that 'thumb and pinky each count as a finger' instead of assuming five fingers per hand.

Anonymous 19 December 2012

For clarity on question six, I suggest eliminating the last part of the parenthetical text. It would read 'For the purposes of this exercise, thumbs count as fingers,' which would make your explanation clearer.

Anonymous 7 May 2013

The puzzle about the fingers on the left hand is misleading. The statement that thumbs are considered fingers creates confusion about the assumptions regarding the number of fingers.

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