Only Room You Can’t Enter or Leave

What’s the only room from which no one can enter or leave?

A mushroom.

A variation of this riddle is as follows.

I am a room with no doors and no windows, what am I?

Posted in Riddles

Winning at Wimbledon

As a result of temporary magical powers, you have made it to the Wimbledon finals and are playing Roger Federer for all the marbles. However, your powers cannot last the whole match. What score do you want it to be when they disappear, to maximize your chances of hanging on for a win?

It sounds obvious that you should ask to be ahead two sets to love (it takes 3 out of 5 sets to win
the men’s), and in the third set, ahead 5-0 in games and 40-love in the sixth game. (Probably you
want to be serving, but if your serve is like mine, you might prefer Roger to be serving the sixth
game down 0-40 so that you can pray for a double fault.)

Not so fast! These solutions give you essentially 3 chances to get lucky and win, but you can
get six chances—with three services by you and three by Roger. You still want to be up two sets
to none, but let the game score be 6-6 in the third set and 6-0—in your favor, of course—in the
tiebreaker.

Credit goes to Peter Winkler for creating this.

Posted in Brain Teasers

Bowl That Can’t Be Filled

I am as round and deep as a bowl, but all the world’s water couldn’t fill me up. What am I?

A sieve.

Posted in Riddles
Tagged with

The Boat at High Tide

A boat has a ladder that has six rungs. Each rung is one foot apart. The bottom rung is one foot from the water. The tide rises at 12 inches every 15 minutes. High tide peaks in one hour.

When the tide is at its highest, how many rungs are under water?

None. The boat is floating on the water, so as the tide rises, so does the ladder.

Posted in Brain Teasers

Guess the Three Words

Think of the six-letter name of a European capital city whose starting letter falls in the last half dozen letters of the alphabet and whose last letter is a vowel.

Now think of a three-letter words that means “permit”.

Last, combine all nine letters from the two words above. Rearrange the letters to form a word that you might call someone you like.

1. Vienna
2. let
3. Valentine (Vienna + let)

Posted in Brain Teasers

Weight In My Belly

Weight in my belly;
trees on my back;
nails in my ribs;
feet I do lack.

A ship.

Posted in Riddles

Planting Trees on Arbor Day

On Arbor Day the fourth grade class began planting trees. They finished planting five trees before the fifth grade class arrived. But they accidentally planted them on the fifth grade side of the street.

The fourth-graders crossed the street to start over, and the fifth-graders planted the remaining trees. They finished first and felt bad for the fourth-graders, so they crossed the street and planted five trees. They planted another five trees at which point all of the trees had been planted.

By how many trees were the fifth-graders ahead of the fourth-graders?

Ten. The fifth-graders planted five more trees than they were assigned, and the fourth-graders planted five fewer than their assignment.

Posted in Brain Teasers

A Special-Sized Box

I have a box. The top has an area of 240 square inches, the side 300 square inches and the end 180 square inches. What are the dimensions of the box?

Length = 20
Width = 12
Depth = 15

Posted in Brain Teasers

Cowboy Corral

Two cowboys live next door to each other and both have a corral for their cows in the back. One day they meet at the back of their homes, standing next to a wall dividing their corrals. The first cowboy gets to thinking and asks his neighbor for a cow so he can double his herd. The other cowboys replies, “That’s fine by me partner, cuz then we’ll have the same number of cows?” How many cows does each cowboy own?

We’ll use A to represent the first cowboy and B for the second cowboy.

A + 1 = 2A, so A = 1.
A + 1 = B – 1, so B = 3.

Posted in Brain Teasers

Lucky Number Seven

How is 7 different from the rest of the numbers from 1-10?

7 (seven) is the only one with two syllables.

Posted in Brain Teasers