1020. There are 6 men with 2 legs each, for a total of 12 legs. There are 36 cats with 4 legs each for a total of 144 legs. There are 216 kittens with 4 legs each for a total of 864 legs 12 + 144 + 864 = 1020.
Noon and midnight are both 12 o’clock and the Twelve Days of Christmas is a popular Christmas carol.
There are twelve face cards in a standard 52-card deck and twelve is the largest number with one syllable.
There are twelve steps in Alcoholics Anonymous, a troy pound is 12 ounces, there were 12 tribes of Israel and a popular movie was called, “Twelve Angry Men” (12 members of the jury). There are twelve function keys on your keyboard. F1 often shows a help screen and F5 reloads pages in your browser.
Many recipes measure items by the dozen, adding one more for a baker’s dozen. There are twelve months in a year.
It’s surprising how many times the number twelve shows up in our culture.
In 2012 a class was divided into 2 groups. Their assignment was to find the names of at least 3 children who were born on the same day from 5 different months of 2011. These were the results:
Group 1 August 20: Oliver, William, and Adam. January 3: John, Alice, and Ken. September 7: Bruce, Shane, and Peter. June 11: April, Patrick, and Bobby. July 19: Trent, Julie, and Charles.
Group 2 March 1: Karl, Willie, and Patty. February 29: Blake, Kobe, and Wayne. December 24: Kyle, Chad, and Zoe. May 12: Matthew, Manny, and Adrian. November 20: Greg, Fiona, and Elizabeth.
The members of group 2 got an F on the assignment. Why?
A fish shop with odd pricing sells fish for the following prices: A trout costs $20, a salmon is $19, and a plaice comes in at $16. Using their pricing logic, how much would they charge for a mackerel?
$13. The price is calculated by using the position in the alphabet of the first letter of the name of the fish. An Albacore would be $1, a Bandfish would be $2. Note, I do not recommend using this pricing strategy unless you find yourself with an assortment of cheap Zebrafish.
A man is found dead at the end of an alley. A detective who enters the scene sees the letter X and immediately knows who killed the man and why. What did the detective conclude?
The alley is a bowling alley. The man who was killed was a pin spotter (an old profession where they would reset the pins by hand). The X was the marking on the score sheet for a strike. The detective saw the letter X and knew that the person bowled last, got a strike, and was due to bowl again. But they bowled before the pin spotter could get out of the way.
The moon. The moon has a long association with being crazy (lunar being the basis for a lunatic). It shines at night, when you go to bed. The moon’s gravity creates the ocean tides and when the moon is different colors it can mean bad weather is on its way.
