Two of the Same Along the Way

This word starts with the same letter it ends with and there are two of the same along the way. There is another pair and one each of two more, just to make you smile. What is the word?

Giggling. It starts and ends with ‘g’ and there are two more ‘g’s in the middle. It also has a pair of ‘i’s and one ‘l’ and ‘n’. Plus, giggling makes you smile ;)

Posted in Riddles

Tabitha and Ronan’s Age

Tabitha is 13 years old. Her father Ronan is 40 years old. How many years ago was Ronan four times as old as Tabitha?

Four years ago, when Tabitha was 9 and Ronan was 36 (9 × 4 = 36)

Posted in Brain Teasers

A Shorter Word

What word becomes shorter when you add letters to it?

Short. Adding ‘er’ to short gives you shorter.

Posted in Riddles

Rope Around The Earth

If a piece of rope was tightly wrapped around the earth and you added 3 feet to its length, how high could you uniformly raise it from the earth’s surface?

Just short of 6 inches.

Thanks to Nigel Coldwell for this one.

Posted in Brain Teasers

The Longest Double Letter Word

What is the longest unscientific English word that uses every letter in the word exactly twice? For example, noon has two Ns and two Os, but it’s not nearly long enough.

Happenchance. There are two Hs, two As, and so on for all the letters in the word. The longest scientific word with the same property is probably esophagographers.

Posted in Brain Teasers

I Have Wings But Cannot Fly

I have wings but cannot fly.
I can do the twist but can’t move around.
People enjoy relaxing in my company.

What am I?

A ceiling fan.

Posted in Riddles
Tagged with

A Game of Cards

In a game of cards, GEORGE partnered with MARY, while TED had to choose a partner. He could have chosen ANN, EDNA, JOAN or ANGELA. Whom did he choose and why?

ANN. If you give each letter a number according to its position in the alphabet:
TED = 20 + 5 + 4 = 29
ANN = 1 + 14 + 14 = 29

(George and Mary each add to 57)

Posted in Brain Teasers

A Synonym of Drag

I’m a five letter word. Remove my last two letters and I’m a synonym of drag. My second and third letters form an exclamation and my first and second letters are a homophone with a number. What am I?

Towel. Tow is a synonym of drag, ow is an exclamation when you’re hurt (and far more appropriate in mixed company than the four-letter alternatives) and to is a homophone of two.

Posted in Riddles

The Ages of a Prince and Princess

A princess is as old as the prince will be when the princess is twice the age that the prince was when the princess’s age was half the sum of their present ages.

What are their ages?

This one took a while to figure out and there are numerous valid ways of finding the answer.

Here is the solution I came up with

I created the following table from the riddle:

  Current Future Past
Princess x 2z (x+y)/2
Prince y x z

I then created three equations, since the difference in their age will always be the same.
d = the difference in ages
x – y = d
2z – x = d
x/2 + y/2 – z = d

I then created a matrix and solved it using row reduction.

x y z
1 -1 0 d
-1 0 2 d
.5 .5 -1 d

It reduced to:

x y z
1 0 0 4d
0 1 0 3d
0 0 1 5d/2

This means that you can pick any difference you want (an even one presumably because you want integer ages).
Princess age: 4d
Prince age: 3d

Ages that work

Princess Prince
4 3
8 6
16 12
24 18
32 24
40 30
48 36
56 42
64 48
72 54
80 60

To see other solutions check out the comments from when I posted this on my blog.

Posted in Brain Teasers

What Are The Next Three Numbers in the Series?

What are the next three numbers in this series?

4
6
12
18
30
42
60
72
102
108
?
?
?

Each number is surrounded by a prime number.

4 – 3 and 5 are prime
6 – 5 and 7 are prime
etc.

The next three numbers after 108 that have primes before and after them are:

138, 150 and 180.

Posted in Brain Teasers