Four Chains in One Loop

You have four chains. Each chain has three links in it. Although it is difficult to cut the links, you wish to make a single loop with all 12 links. What is the fewest number of cuts you must make to accomplish this task?

Three cuts. Cut each link in one chain. Separate them, and use the links to join the ends of the three intact chains.

Posted in Brain Teasers

Mixed Animals for $100

At the market you can buy a cow for $10, a pig for $1 and 8 hens for $1. How many animals would you need to buy to get 100 mixed animals for exactly $100?

7 cows, 21 pigs and 72 hens. The trick to this is finding the combination of cows and hens with the same cost and quantity since pigs are already equal. The magic combination is 7 cows and 72 hens, giving you 79 animals that cost $79 ($70 + $9). Then you just add 21 pigs to get to 100 animals.

Posted in Brain Teasers

A Great Woman

The first two letters of this English word refer to a male, the first three refer to a female, the first four to a great man and the whole word is a great woman.

What is the word?

Heroine (he, her, hero)

Posted in Riddles

If I Can I Can

If I can, I can,
If I can’t, I freeze.

What am I?

Someone preserving food. The two most common ways of preserving food are canning and freezing. So when you preserve food, if you can can it, you do, otherwise you freeze it.

Posted in Riddles

Answer This Honestly

What question can you never honestly answer yes to?

Are you asleep? (or dead, or conscious, or being silent).

Posted in Riddles

The Potato Paradox

Fred brings home 100 pounds of potatoes, which (being purely mathematical potatoes) consist of 99 percent water. He then leaves them outside overnight so that they consist of 98 percent water. What is their new weight?

50 pounds.

100 lb of potatoes with 99% water weight means there’s 99 lb of water and 1 lb of solids, a 1:99 ratio.

If the water decreases to 98%, then the solids account for 2% of the weight. The 2:98 ratio reduces to 1:49. Since the solids still weigh 1 lb, the water must weigh 49 lb for a total of 50 lbs for the answer.

Read more at the Potato Paradox wikipedia page.

Posted in Brain Teasers

Greater Than God

It is greater than God and more evil than the devil. The poor have it, the rich need it and if you eat it you’ll die. What is it?

Nothing. Nothing is greater than God, nothing is more evil than the devil, the poor have nothing, the rich need nothing and if you eat nothing you’ll die.

Posted in Riddles

Whelming Rebus

What does this represent?

 1 3 5 7 9
-----------
 WHELMING

Overwhelming odds.

Posted in Riddles
Tagged with

Letter Missing From a Series

What letter is missing from this series?
B C D G P T V Z

The letter E. The series contains all of the letters that rhyme with bee (apologies to any English speakers who pronounce Z as zed instead of zee if this confused you).

Posted in Brain Teasers

Crazy Taxi Driver

A taxi driver runs through four red lights, two stop signs and goes through a house. A police officer witnesses this but doesn’t do anything. Why not?

The taxi driver is not in his cab, he’s out for a run. The house he went through was his own because he was done running.

Posted in Brain Teasers