I Am Worthless

I am worthless, yet when added to others I add worth.
I confounded the ancient Greeks, yet I changed men’s understanding.

What am I?

0 (Zero).

Zero is nothing, yet when you add zeroes to a number like 1, it becomes 10, 100 or 1,000.

The ancient Greeks did not have a name for zero and did not use a placeholder. They seemed unsure about the status of zero as a number, philosophizing about how nothing could be something. Once zero was added, it allowed for more mathematical understanding.

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Reading in the Dark

Jim and his wife Patty were sitting in bed together one evening while a thunderstorm raged outside. After a bolt of lightning followed by a loud clap of thunder, the lights went out. Jim stopped reading and went to sleep, but Patty continued reading in the dark. How did she do it?

Darkness

Patty is blind and was reading a Braille book so she didn’t need the light to begin with. Of course this also meant she didn’t know Jim snuck downstairs to get some cookies, but we’ll just keep that quiet.

Posted in Brain Teasers

A Neighborly Argument

Two of your neighbors were arguing about if the first man’s peacock laid an egg in the seconds man’s garden, who would own the egg. They asked you to solve their dilemma. What would you tell them?

Peahens lay eggs. Peacocks are males.

Posted in Brain Teasers

On My Own I’m Twenty-Fourth

On my own I’m 24th,
Two of us and I’m 20,
Three of us and I’m 18.

What am I?

The letter X. It is the 24th letter of the alphabet, two Xs in Roman numerals equals twenty and triple x represents adult content, and adulthood is eighteen by law in most countries.

Posted in Riddles

How Many Letters In the Alphabet

How many letters are there in the alphabet?

Hint: Not 26

11. The phrase “the alphabet” has 11 letters.

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Losing Ten Minutes An Hour

A clock loses exactly ten minutes every hour. If the clock is set correctly at noon, what is the correct time when the clock reads 3:00pm?

3:36pm. For every 60 minutes of real time, the clock moves 50 minutes. Put another way, 60/50 = 1.2 real minutes per slow-clock minute.

In order for the clock to show 3:00pm, 180 of its slow minutes have to pass. 1.2 * 180 clock minutes = 216 real minutes or 3 hours and 36 minutes.

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Coat Best Put On Wet

What kind of coat is best put on wet?

A coat of paint.

Posted in Riddles

Next Month In the Sequence

What month comes next in this sequence?
July June March May ???

November, the next month in alphabetical order starting with July.

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Spell check

Which word is always spelled wrong?

The word “wrong”.

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Complete This GPPAP Series

What are the next four letters in this series?

GPPAP KTGAMTC WTBCOTP ????

GPRA – Georgie Porgie ran away.

Here’s the whole nursery rhyme:

Georgie Porgie, pudding, and pie,
Kissed the girls, and made them cry.
When the boys came out to play,
Georgie Porgie ran away.

Posted in Brain Teasers