It can’t be touched, but can be felt. It can’t be opened, but can be gone into. Those who seek it always find it under something, yet it moves from place to place.
Shade. You can’t touch shade, but you can feel its coolness. You can’t open shade but you can go into it. If you’re looking for shade it always has to be underneath something to block the light and shade moves as the light does.
Three philosophers are taking a nap under a tree. While they’re asleep, a small boy smears their noses with red berries. When they awake, they each begin to laugh, thinking the other two are laughing at each other.
But then one philosopher stops laughing, realizing his nose is red too. How did he come to this conclusion?
Let’s call the philosopher’s A, B and C. A reasoned that B was confident his nose wasn’t red. If B saw A’s nose wasn’t red, he would be surprised that C was laughing, because C would have nothing to laugh at. But B wasn’t surprised, therefore, A correctly reasoned his nose was smeared.
Imagine you are in a dark room with a locked door. All you have with you is a rope and a pencil. You can hear the rain outside, but there are no windows. How do you get out?
A man dove into the water with no tank, snorkel or any other device to allow him to breathe, yet he stayed down there to live for the rest of his life. How is this possible?
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