What’s So Funny Ethel?

Merle was checking out at the grocery store. Ethel, a friendly cashier, said the total was $63.59. He gave her a $100 bill and she began laughing as she counted out his change. Then she gave him a high five and Merle left the store chuckling.

What was so funny?

The amount of change was $36.41, which meant Ethel handed Merle one of everything in her drawer:

$20 bill
$10 bill
$5 bill
$1 bill
A quarter
A dime
A nickel
A cent
———
$36.41

Good ol’ Ethel.

Posted in Brain Teasers

What Comes Next I S I T

What comes next in this series?

I S I T P N A A D L I I Y N ___

The letter A.

There are three separate series

1. Starting with the first letter and taking every third letter you get ITALY.
2. Starting with the second letter and taking every third letter you get SPAIN.
3. Starting with the third letter and taking every third letter you get INDIA.

Posted in Brain Teasers

Nearly Hanging

A prisoner is told, “If you tell a lie we will hang you; if you tell the truth we will shoot you.”

What can he say to save himself?

You will hang me. If they hang him, then the statement was true and they could only hang him for telling a lie. If they shoot him, then it makes the statement a lie and they were only to shoot him for telling the truth. An alternate solution is to say, “You will not shoot me,” leading to the same quandary for the killers.

Posted in Brain Teasers

Represent The Alphabet

What word or expression does this represent?

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTVWXYZ

Missing you (U).

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White, Round Not Always Around

I’m white, I’m round, but not always around. Sometimes you see me, sometimes you don’t. What am I?

The moon.

Posted in Riddles

Rainbow Neighborhood

There was a neighborhood of one-story houses.
One was red and everything in the house was red.
Another was purple and everything in the house was purple.
Yet another was yellow and everything in the house was yellow.
Still another was blue and everything in the house was blue.
In the green house everything was green,
and in the gray house everything was grey.

What color were the stairs in the yellow house?

There are no stairs in any of the houses because they only have one story.

Posted in Brain Teasers

TOWN Rebus

What does this represent?

T
O
W
N

Downtown.

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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

The Cost of Household Hardware

A man went to the hardware store to buy items for his house.

1 would cost $.25
12 would cost $.50
122 would cost $.75

When he left the store he had spent $.75, what did he buy?

House numbers.

Posted in Riddles

Aft to Fore and Fore to Aft

I run fore to aft on one side of a ship and aft to fore on the other. What am I?

The name of the ship.

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