I'm not sure the author understands the difference between a riddle and a logic problem, a riddle typically uses misdirection and veiled meanings to hide an answer while a logic problem is one that can be solve by applying logical analysis.
So for example "What has two heads, four eyes, six legs and a tail?" is a riddle because it's so open ended and relies upon linguistic trickery. On the other hand most bridge crossing problems are logic problems, you typically have a finite number of options and by deduction and logical analysis you can arrive at the correct answer (i.e the answer is not a trick answer).
The advantage of logic problems as opposed to domain specific problems is that they let you separate an individuals logical reasoning ability from their experience. When you're hiring you want to make sure that the person you're hiring can deal not only with more general problems of the type they've seen before, but also that they can deal with esoteric problems that are very specific to the nature of your product. And that's when the ability to reason logically becomes much more important.
Obviously if the candidate you're interviewing is already familiar with the logic problem you're presenting then you probably won't get much value from the candidates answer and you need to ask alternative questions to ascertain the same information.
So for example "What has two heads, four eyes, six legs and a tail?" is a riddle because it's so open ended and relies upon linguistic trickery. On the other hand most bridge crossing problems are logic problems, you typically have a finite number of options and by deduction and logical analysis you can arrive at the correct answer (i.e the answer is not a trick answer).
The advantage of logic problems as opposed to domain specific problems is that they let you separate an individuals logical reasoning ability from their experience. When you're hiring you want to make sure that the person you're hiring can deal not only with more general problems of the type they've seen before, but also that they can deal with esoteric problems that are very specific to the nature of your product. And that's when the ability to reason logically becomes much more important.
Obviously if the candidate you're interviewing is already familiar with the logic problem you're presenting then you probably won't get much value from the candidates answer and you need to ask alternative questions to ascertain the same information.