Three Letter Word Completion

What three letter word can complete the below words?

B___
D___
M___ET
P___ING
SH___

Ark, which produces: bark, dark, market, parking, shark.

Posted in Brain Teasers

Insect Shipments

There once was a strange man who loved wordplay, he had a very important and successful business that would take insect shipments from all across the world and distribute them to zoos across the US.

What was the name of his company?

ImportANT

Posted in Riddles

From Cold To Warm In Four Steps

How do you get from cold to warm in four steps, changing only one letter at a time to form a new word at each step?

cold
cord
word
worm
warm

An alternative is:
cold
cord
word
ward
warm

Yet another option, thanks to Beth:
cold
cord
card
ward
warm

Posted in Brain Teasers

Do Not Begrudge This

Do not begrude this,
For it is the fate of every man.
Yet it is feared,
And shunned in many lands.
Causes problems, and sometimes gaps,
Can hobble the strongest, and make memory laps.
What is this danger we all face?
For being a part – of the human race.

Growing old.

Posted in Riddles

The Truck and the Plane

A delivery truck from the post office is sent to the airport to meet a cargo plane at its planned arrival time. The plane lands ahead of schedule and its contents are brought toward the post office by bicycle. After a half hour, the bicycle meets the truck and the mail is transferred.

The truck returns from the post office 20 minutes early. How early did the plane arrive? (Assume all transactions are instantaneous)

The delivery truck arrived back 20 minutes early, so it would have taken 20 minutes to go from where it met the bicycle to get to the airport and back. Therefore, the bicycle and truck met when the truck was 10 minutes from the airport. Adding those 10 minutes to the 30 minutes the truck had already driven to meet the bicycle means the plane arrived 40 minutes ahead of schedule.

Posted in Brain Teasers

Black Coat Rebus

What does this represent?

 black
-------
 coat

Black overcoat.

Posted in Riddles
Tagged with

A Woman in a Boat

There’s a woman in a boat, on a lake, wearing a coat.
If you want to know her name, it’s in the riddle I just wrote.

What’s the woman’s name?

“Theresa” is the woman’s name. (There’s a = Theresa)

An alternative answer is “There”.

Posted in Riddles

Flora Not Fauna

I am flora, not fauna,
I am foliage, not trees,
I am shrubbery, not grass,

What am I?

A bush.

Posted in Riddles

Standing World

What does this represent?

Standing
World

Standing on top of the world

Posted in Riddles
Tagged with

Rebellious Randall

You’re waiting to board your flight at the airport with 99 other passengers, each with an assigned seat. All but one of the passengers will gladly sit in their designated seat. The only exception is Randall, a scoundrel who refuses to follow the rules. When he boards, he will choose a random, unoccupied seat.

If a rule-following passenger finds someone in their spot, they will choose another one at a random from the remaining unoccupied seats.

What is the probability that the last person to board the plane will sit in their proper seat?

The randomness stops as soon as someone else sits in Randall’s assigned seat. The chances of this happening range from 1 out of 99 to 1 out of 1 (when only one seat remains).

Thus, the probability of the last person sitting in their own seat can be calculated as 1/99 plus the sum of 2 to 98 of the formula 1 / n × (n + 1), which works out to 0.5, or 50%.

So there’s a 50% chance the last passenger will sit in their own seat thanks to Randall for screwing up order and procedure when boarding an aircraft.

Posted in Brain Teasers