In 2014, Howard returned from his football game later than normal and Trudy, his Mom, was concerned. She asked what position he played, and he said he was a lineman. She asked what team they played and he said the Bears. She asked if anything strange had happened, and he said no. She asked what the score was and he said their team won, 14-1. Satisfied, Trudy sent Howard up to bed. The next morning Trudy told her husband Mick about her conversation with Howard. Mick’s face turned red and he stormed up to Howard’s room.
Mick knew Howard was lying about being at the football game because in American football it’s impossible to score just 1 point (before the 2015 one-point safety rule). A score of 2 is the lowest possible score (awarded for a safety). In fact, 1 is the only impossible score in football. You can score 2 points for a safety, 3 points for a field goal and 6 points for a touchdown, with an extra point for the field goal. You also have the option to go for another touchdown for a 2-point conversion. With 2, 3, 6 and 7 you can generate any other number except for 1.
For example, here are ways a team could score from 2 to 10 points.
2 = safety
3 = field goal
4 = 2 + 2
5 = 3 + 2
6 = touchdown
7 = touchdown and extra point attempt
8 = touchdown and two point conversion
9 = touchdown and field goal
10 = touchdown, extra point attempt and field goal
More precious than gold, but cannot be bought,
Can never be sold, only earned if it’s sought,
If it is broken it can still can be mended,
At birth it can’t start nor by death is it ended.
Friendship. It is more precious than gold to have a genuine friend, and true friendship cannot be bought or sold, only earned. When a friendship is broken it can be fixed and infants aren’t able to make friends until they’re older, but death can’t end it. Love doesn’t work as an answer because a friendship requires two people to interact, while parents love their children as soon as they’re born.
A variation of this brain teaser includes laser printers (they were invented by Gary Starkweather) and bulletproof vests (invented by Casimir Zeglen using silk, though modern vests use Kevlar, so it’s halfway right).
Aiden and Sofia were debating a major purchase of candy. They calculated that they could get three bags of jelly beans and two bags of chocolate for 24 cents, which was just under their limit of 25 cents. They found they could also get four bags of chocolate and two bags of jelly beans for the same 24 cents. How much did each bag of candy cost?
It’s true I bring serenity,
And hang around the stars
But yet I live in misery;
You’ll find me behind bars
With thieves and villains I consort
In prison I’ll be found
But I would never go to court,
Unless there’s more than one
Four cards are placed in front of you on the table, each with a number on one side and a color on the other. The visible cards show 3, 8, red and brown. Which cards should you turn over in order to test the truth of the statement that if a card shows an even number on one face, then its opposite face is red?
You’d need to turn over only the 8 and brown card. Only a card with an even number on one face and which is not red on the other face can invalidate the stated rule. If you turn over the 3 card and it’s not red, it doesn’t invalidate the rule, nor does turning over the red card and finding it has the label 3.
This test was devised by Peter Cathcart Wason and is known as the Wason selection task. Less than 10% of test subjects got it correct in two separate studies.
24. If you said 12 for January 2nd, February 2nd, etc that’s close, but you forgot about January 22nd, February 22nd and so on. If you are a math whiz and didn’t need a calculator to perform 60 x 60 x 24 x 365, then 31,536,000 works too. If you used 365.25 to account for leap year, then you are a human calculator, but even that’s not entirely accurate due to the leap second. And even accounting for that, it’s only an approximation that there are 365.2422 days in a year.
