Take Off My Clothes, Puts Its On

When I take off my clothes, it puts on its clothes.
When I put on my clothes, it takes off its clothes.

A clothes hanger.

Posted in Riddles

Two Common English Words

“H-e” starts and ends two common English words. One painful in love, one painful in everyday matters.

What are the two words?

Heartache and headache.

Posted in Riddles

Say My Name

Say my name and I disappear. What am I?

Silence.

An alternate version is, “What is so fragile it breaks when you say its name?”

Posted in Riddles

A Creature, Part Man

This creature, part man and part tree,
hates the termite as much as the flea.
His tracks do not match,
and his limbs may detach,
but he’s not a strange creature to see.

What is it?

A man with a wooden leg.

Posted in Riddles

A Date With No Numbers

How can you write a date in 5 letters without using any numbers?

The most popular answer for this teaser is ‘today’. Of course this only works if you’re reading it on that particular date or if the date is not specified. Another option is to respond literally with ‘a date’. Lastly, certain dates could be squeezed into letters using Roman numerals if you abbreviate the year to 2 numerals. For example, January 20th, 2011 would be I XX XI.

Posted in Brain Teasers

Takeoff On a Conveyor Belt

If a plane sits on a conveyor belt whose speed matches that of the plane in the opposite direction, can the plane take off?

Yes, because a plane’s wheels roll freely and have no affect on the movement of the plane(unlike a car). The propeller or jet engine makes the plane move and the plane will be able to take off normally. If you don’t believe me, here’s proof.

Posted in Brain Teasers

Counterfeit Accounting

Early one morning Hal, the owner of a hardware store, sells a mailbox for $25 to Courtney that cost him $20 wholesale. Courtney pays with a $100 bill and Hal discovers he doesn’t have enough change. He runs to the jewelry shop next door, where Jack, the owner, gives him change in exchange for the $100. Later that afternoon, Jack discovers the $100 bill is a counterfeit and Hal pays him $100 to make it right.

What was Hal’s total loss?

The total loss was $95.
-$20 = The wholesale cost of the mailbox
$100 = The money from Jack
-$75 = The change paid to Courtney
-$100 = To pay Jack back
-$20 + $100 – $75 – $100 = -$95

It’s easy to think Hal lost $195 but that fails to account for the $100 used to make the change, which came from Jack, not Hal. Jack paid $100 in exchange for a worthless piece of paper, so the $100 was initially Jack’s loss. Hal had made a $5 profit until Jack’s discovery. If you guessed $100, that’s arguably correct, but not making $5 in profit isn’t a loss in the strictest sense of the word.

Posted in Brain Teasers

Characters In The Correct Order

Put the characters C D M L X in the correct order (not alphabetical).

X (10), L (50), C (100), D (500), M (1000). They’re Roman numerals in order from smallest to largest.

Posted in Brain Teasers

What’s Special About 854,917,632?

What is special about the number 854,917,632?

It is the numbers from one to nine in alphabetical order.

Eight, Five, Four, Nine, One, Seven, Six, Three and Two.

Posted in Brain Teasers

Leave a Grieving Wife

If you throw me from the window,
I’ll leave a grieving wife.
Bring me back, but in the door and,
You’ll see something giving life.

What am I?

The answer is the letter ‘n’. Taking ‘n’ out of window makes widow. And putting ‘n’ back into door makes donor.

Posted in Riddles
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