Riddles and Brain Teasers

Thin Barn Word Ladder

Get from the word THIN to BARN by changing one letter at a time and forming another English word in each step.

1. THIN
2. _ _ _ _
3. _ _ _ _
4. _ _ _ _
5. _ _ _ _
6. BARN

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1. THIN
2. CHIN
3. COIN
4. CORN
5. BORN
6. BARN

Posted in Brain Teasers

Beach Vogue

What word can be made from three letters of beach and another three from vogue?

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Gauche. The letters “ach” from beach and “gue” from vogue.

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Sum of Consecutives

What is the sum of the numbers in the following list which are consecutive?

15  5 10 28
24  7 18 26
11 21 17 13
22  9  1 20

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The consecutive numbers are: 9, 10, 11; 17, 18; and 20, 21, 22.

The sum of those numbers is 128.

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Hold In Your Left Hand

What can you hold in your left hand and not in your right?

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Your right elbow. You can try it yourself if you’re not convinced, but unless you have a broken arm or an incredibly flexible ulna, you won’t reach it.

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Made of Five Letters and Seven Letters

I’m made out of five letters,
And I’m made out of seven letters;
I have keys but I don’t have locks,
I’m concerned with time, but not with clocks.

What am I?

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A piano. The word piano has five letters, and the scale on the piano is A through G, seven letters. The piano keys don’t have locks and playing piano requires you to keep time (but with a metronome, not a clock).

Posted in Riddles

Tagged with What am I?

What Has Wheels and Flies?

What has wheels and flies, but is not an aircraft?

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A trash truck. I heard this one when I was a kid. Still a classic!

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Longest Word Without Repeating Letters

What is the longest word without any repeated letters?

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Uncopyrightable, with 15 letters and not a single one repeated. Dermatoglyphics, the study of fingerprints, works too.

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After the Tenth One

After the tenth one it didn’t matter that he came from an ethnic minority. Who was it?

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Moses from the Bible. The Pharaoh wouldn’t release the ill-treated Israelites (an ethnic minority) from slavery until being visited by ten plagues.

Posted in Riddles

$63 Exactly

A man owed his friend $63 and repaid him the exact amount in cash without using coins or $1 bills (no online transfers, checks, credit cards or any other tricks) and without requiring change. How did he do it?

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A $50 bill, a $5 bill and four $2 bills.

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Twice As Many Women As Children

At a party of thirty-five people there are twice as many women as children and twice as many children as men. How many of each are there?

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20 women, 10 children and 5 men.To figure it out, let m be the number of men and you get this equation:4m + 2m + m = 35
7m = 35
m = 35 ÷ 7
m = 5

20 women, 10 children and 5 men.

To figure it out, let m be the number of men and you get this equation:

4m + 2m + m = 35
7m = 35
m = 35 ÷ 7
m = 5

Posted in Brain Teasers

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