How Do You Fight a Horse-Sized Duck? Secrets to Succeeding at Interview Mind Games and Getting the Job You Want

by Poundstone, William

• ISBN13: 9780316494588
• ISBN10: 0316494585
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2026-03-01
• Publisher: Little, Brown Spark

Summary

Learn how to succeed at interview mind games and win job offers at A‑list companies, with more than eighty difficult and devious questions, puzzles, and brain teasers

Each year about 28 million Americans begin a search for a new job. Many more live in the age of the permanent job search, their online profiles eternally awaiting a better offer. Job seekers are more mobile and better informed than ever, aspiring to work for employers offering an appealing culture, a robust menu of perks, and opportunities for personal fulfillment and advancement. The result is that millions of applications stream to the handful of companies that regularly top listings of the best companies to work for: Apple, Netflix, Amazon, Alphabet, Disney, SpaceX, Oracle, Pricewaterhouse-Coopers, and others. Tesla has received as many as 200 applications for each open position. How do selective employers choose which people to hire? It’s through interviews asking uniquely demanding questions testing imagination, persistence, and creativity, like:

•    Can an astronaut throw a baseball so it hits Earth?
•    If you had $2,000, how would you double it in 24 hours?
•    How is a milk carton like a plane seat?
•    Chicken McNuggets come in boxes of 6, 9, and 20. What’s the largest number of McNuggets that McDonald’s can’t sell you?
•    How many dogs in the world have the exact same number of hairs?

How Do You Fight a Horse-Sized Duck? explores the new world of interviewing at A-list employers. It reveals more than eighty notoriously challenging interview questions and supplies both answers and a general strategy for creative problem-solving.

Author Biography

William Poundstone is the author of seventeen books, including Rock Breaks Scissors, Are You Smart Enough to Work at Google?, How Would You Move Mount Fuji?, and Fortune's Formula. He has written for the Believer, the Economist, Esquire, Harper's, Harvard Business Review, and the New York Times op-ed page and Book Review. Follow Poundstone on Twitter (@WPoundstone) and learn more at his website, home.williampoundstone.net