Hold In Your Left Hand

What can you hold in your left hand and not in your right?

Your right elbow. You can try it yourself if you’re not convinced, but unless you have a broken arm or an incredibly flexible ulna, you won’t reach it.

Posted in Brain Teasers

What Does He Weigh?

The owner of the butcher shop is five foot ten inches tall, has brown hair and wears size 11 1/2 shoes. He is married and has two children, one boy and one girl. What does he weigh?

Meat. The rest of the details were merely distractions. Butchers weigh meat at a butcher shop.

Posted in Brain Teasers

amid eerie nighed won spawn

What phrase do these words sound like when rearranged?

amid eerie nighed won spawn

“Won spawn amid nighed eerie” sounds like, “Once upon a midnight dreary”, from The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe.

Posted in Brain Teasers

It Scares Animals

A seven letter word that has T as the second letter, A as the fourth letter and S as the sixth letter. Girls love it, boys use it, parents hate it and it scares animals. Hint: It’s a German word.

A persistent puzzle solver will discover that no English word satisfies the letter requirements, to say nothing of the loving, using, hating or being scared requirements. I found three German words that work:

1) strafst
2) strapse
3) strauss

1 and 3 mean punish and bouquet respectively. I couldn’t find a definition for strapse. Punish is the likely answer. Girls love to punish boys, boys use punishment as well, a good parent hates to use punishment and animals are scared of it. I don’t know of any animals that are scared of a bouquet, though a bouquet fits as something girls love and boys use.

Posted in Riddles

A Silent Z

What word in the English dictionary has a silent z?

The word rendezvous. Even though it’s a French word, it’s in the English dictionary and is pronounced [rahn-duh-voo].

Turns out rendezvous isn’t the only one. Another word is oyez.

Posted in Brain Teasers

Against the Rules for You to Play Fair

It’s against the rules for you to play fair,
I always win but you don’t care,
I’ve ruined lives and crushed dreams,
But the allure is too much it seems.

What am I?

A casino. If you use methods to make the odds more fair to you, they kick you out. The house always wins, yet people continue to play. Gambling has ruined countless lives and crushed dreams of making millions, but the hope of winning continues to draw people in.

Posted in Riddles
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Alter By a Single Stroke

How can you alter the following equation by a single stroke to make it correct?

5 + 5 + 5 = 550

5 4 5 + 5 = 550

Add a diagonal line on the top left of the first plus sign to convert + into a 4. You could also put a slash through the equal sign to make ≠ (not equal) but that’s not as cool.

Posted in Brain Teasers

Flowers, Families and Streets

Five kinds of flowers grow in separate gardens on five different streets. Here is what you know:

1. The Smiths do not grow violets.
2. The Morgans grow peonies and do not live on 2nd street.
3. The Parks live on 3rd street.
4. Begonias bloom on 4th street.
5. Roses do not grow on 5th street.
6. The Johnsons do not live on 1st street.
7. The Rosens do not grow daffodils
8. The Johnsons grow roses
9. Daffodils grow on 1st street

Which flowers grow on in whose gardens on what streets?

1st street: Smiths, daffodils.
2nd street: Johnsons, roses.
3rd street: Parks, violets
4th street: Rosens, begonias
5th street: Morgans, peonies.

Posted in Brain Teasers

Stars Awash in a Sheen of Light

Stars awash in a sheen of light
It calls out loud in vile delight.
Listeners endure in fright.
Vicious brute that reigns at night,
Evil whelped of heinous bite,
Renewed by wax, it regains might.
A leading way to slay the beast,
Get the hidden weapon thus released.

What is this describing?
Hint: The first letter of each line has a clue

A werewolf (vulnerable to silver bullets).

Posted in Riddles

If You Break Me, I Don’t Stop Working

If you break me
I do not stop working,
If you touch me
I may be snared,
If you lose me
Nothing will matter.

Your heart.

Posted in Riddles