Four Colored Balls in Gym Class

Four different-colored balls are being used in a gym class activity – blue, red, yellow and orange. Each student must hold two different-colored balls, but no two students can have the same two colors (for example, only one student can hold the blue and red ball).

How many students can play the game?

Six. If you prefer math, you can calculate it as 4 combination 2

4! / (2!)^2
24 / 4 = 6

Or you can work it out manually:

1. Blue Red
2. Blue Yellow
3. Blue Orange
4. Red Yellow
5. Red Orange
6. Yellow Orange

Posted in Brain Teasers

The Tail of a Dragon

What animal can be created from the head of a lamb, the body of a pig, the hind quarters of a buffalo and the tail of a dragon?

A lion.

Head of a lamb = L
Body of a pig = I
Hind quarters of a buffalo = O
Tail of a dragon = N

Posted in Brain Teasers

Company, Congregation or Convocation

Some form a parliament,
Others a company, congregation or convocation,
The mob can see a murder, or clamor and wake,
A bouquet is presented when flushed.

What are we?

Birds. These are collective nouns for groups of birds.
parliament – owls
company – parrots
congregation – plovers
convocation – eagles
mob – emus
murder – crows clamor – rooks
wake – buzzards
bouquet – pheasants (when flushed)

Posted in Riddles

$500 For Basketball

500 people attended a high school basketball game and raised $500 for the school.

The prices were as follows:
Mothers $3.00
Fathers: $2.00
Children $0.48

More mothers than fathers turned up. How many children were there?

375 children (70 mothers and 55 fathers)

Posted in Brain Teasers

What Has Feet But No Legs?

What has feet but no legs?

A snail or a measuring device (like a yard stick or tape measure). A snail’s foot is a muscle that allows it to move, and measuring devices have feet on them to measure distance.

Posted in Riddles
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Six Glasses In a Row

There are six glasses in a row. The first three are full of water, and the next three are empty. By moving only one glass how can you make them alternate between full and empty?

Pour the water from the 2nd glass into the 5th glass.

Posted in Brain Teasers

B C D E I K O X Series

What other letter fits in the following series

B C D E I K O X ?

The letter H. It completes the list of letters that are vertically symmetrical. In other words, you can fold the top half of the letter over the bottom half and everything lines up.

Posted in Riddles

I Sleep By Day

I sleep by day, I fly by night. I have no feathers to aid my flight. What am I?

A bat.

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I Drift Forever With The Current

I drift forever with the current
down these long canals they’ve made
Tame, yet wild, I run elusive
Multitasking to your aid.
Before I came, the world was darker
Colder, sometimes, rougher, true
But though I might make living easy,
I’m good at killing people too.

Electricity (or lightning).

Posted in Riddles

NDOLA

What does “NDOLA, PAMODZI” mean?

Thanks to the comments, it doesn’t mean anything per se, but it’s a location in Zambia. If that’s all it is, it’s not really a brain teaser, but since we’ve already worked on it, I’m marking it as solved leaving it up for posterity.

Below are former attempts to solve it.

I have yet to figure this one out. NDOLA could mean And lo, or An old, among other things. Pamodzi on the other hand didn’t have any particularly meaningful anagrams. Both words together had over 1,000 anagrams.

I haven’t come up with any other possible meanings.

Posted in Brain Teasers