Two fathers and two sons go fishing together in the same boat. They all catch a fish but the total catch for the day is three fish. How is this possible?
“Life’s funny”, said an old friend when I bumped into him the other day. “Listen to this, I was born in March, yet I celebrate my birthday in August, and last February I married my mother”.
He was born in the month of August in a town named March, became a priest and married his widowed mother to her second husband in February (the month).
Each entry is a letter, in alphabetical order starting with A, followed by the number of occurrences of that letter in the phrase “What is the secret to this”.
There’s one ‘a’, thus we get A1. There are no ‘b’s so it doesn’t appear, then there’s one ‘c’, and so on.
Alan fires a bullet from his hand gun and his friend Wade catches the bullet with his bare hands. The gun shoots actual, deadly bullets. The bullet does not touch anything but air after it leaves the gun and until it reaches Wade’s hand. Wade is uninjured. How does he do it?
Alan fires his bullet from a .25 ACP (Automatic Colt Pistol), which will reach a maximum height of 2,287 feet. He shoots directly upward while standing at the base of Burj Khalifa, a 2,722 foot tall building.
Wade is a window cleaner at that building, waiting at 2,287 feet. When the bullet reaches that height and is about to go back down again, he reaches out with his bare hands and catches it.
Jim and Wanda both have some apples. If Jim gives Wanda an apple, they will both have the same number of apples. However, if Wanda gives Jim an apple, Jim will have twice as many as Wanda. How many apples do Jim and Wanda each have?
A nine-letter word, common as air, When each letter’s cut, a new word to pare, Take a letter each round and continue to one. Name the word and the path and then you’ll be done.
Surprisingly, there are several nine-letter words that can have one letter removed in each round to make a new word all the way to one letter, which must be ‘a’ or ‘i’. Startling is the most common answer, but I’ve included the other words I’m aware of. I don’t include plural words, like cleansers, drownings, splatters, starvings, trappings and wrappings because it’s kind of cheating.
startling Remove the l to make starting (or remove the t to make starling) Remove the t to make staring Remove the a to make string Remove the r to make sting Remove the t to make sing Remove the g to make sin Remove the s to make in Remove the n to make I
splitting Remove the l to make spitting Remove the p to make sitting Remove a t to make siting Remove the first i to make sting Remove the s to make ting Remove the g to make tin Remove the t to make in Remove the n to make I
stringier Remove the r to make stingier Remove the i to make stinger Remove the t to make singer Remove the r to make singe Remove the g to make sine Remove the e to make sin Remove the s to make in Remove the n to make I
strapping Remove the s to make trapping Remove the t to make rapping Remove the p to make raping Remove the r to make aping Remove the a to make ping Remove the g to make pin Remove the p to make in Remove the n to make I