Three Children’s Names

Tom’s mother has three children. One is named April, one is named May. What is the third one named?

Tom

Posted in Brain Teasers

Words Ending in GRY

Think of words ending in -GRY. Angry and hungry are two of them. There are only three words in the English language. What is the third word? The word is something that everyone uses every day. If you have listened carefully, I have already told you what it is.

The riddle states, “There are only three words in the English language. What is the third word?” The third word of the phrase “the English language” is of course “language.” Don’t get angry at me, I didn’t make it up :)

xkcd’s take on this riddle

Posted in Riddles

Julian and Penelope’s Marriage Ages

When Julian and Penelope met, one was half the others age plus seven years. Ten years later when they married, Penelope was thirty, but this time one was nine tenths the age of the other. How old was Julian? (No fractions or partial years, whole numbers only).

Julian was 27 when Penelope was 30.

Posted in Brain Teasers

What is the secret to this?

What is the secret to this?

A1
C1
E3
H3

What comes next?

I2.

Each entry is a letter, in alphabetical order starting with A, followed by the number of occurrences of that letter in the phrase “What is the secret to this”.

There’s one ‘a’, thus we get A1. There are no ‘b’s so it doesn’t appear, then there’s one ‘c’, and so on.

Posted in Brain Teasers

What Has Hair and Leaks?

What has hair and leaks when something bad happens?

Your eye. Your eyelashes are the hair and when something bad happens, your cry.

Posted in Riddles
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Lennie’s List of Names

Lennie was cleaning up some old papers in his office and found a list with the following names:

Washington
Jefferson
Lincoln
Hamilton
Jackson
Grant

The last name on the list was mostly worn away and he couldn’t make it out. What was the last name and why?

Franklin. It’s a list of the men on U.S. currency, $1, $2, $5, $10, $20 and $50. The $100 bill has Franklin. And an interesting tidbit is that Hamilton, along with Franklin, are the only two men in the list who did not serve as president.

Posted in Riddles

A Lady’s Delight

Lovely and round,
I shine with pale light,
Grown in the darkness,
A lady’s delight.

What am I?

A pearl. They’re formed in clams, which are of course dark.

Posted in Riddles

Numbers Map

Arrange the numbers from 1 to 8 in the following sequence.

     a
  b  c  d
  e  f  g
     h

Each number must not be diagonally or directly adjacent to any number directly before or after it.

For example, 2 can only be placed in one spot.

     2
  x  x  x
  x  1  x
     x

Here are two solutions (there might be more).

    7
3   1   4
5   8   6
    2

    2
5   8   6
3   1   4
    7
Posted in Brain Teasers

Cats Catching Mice

5 cats can catch 5 mice in 5 minutes. How many cats does it take to catch 100 mice in 100 minutes?

5 cats. The same five could keep catching 5 mice every 5 minutes for 100 minutes.

Posted in Brain Teasers

Death By Marbles

You are a prisoner sentenced to death. The Emperor offers you a chance to live by playing a simple game. He gives you 50 black marbles, 50 white marbles and 2 empty bowls and instructs you to divide the 100 marbles into the two bowls. You can divide them however you want as long as all the marbles are in the bowls. You will be blindfolded and the bowls and marbles will be thoroughly mixed. You will then choose a single marble from one of the bowls. If the marble is white, you live. Black and you will be put to death.

How do you divide the marbles up so that you have the greatest probability of choosing a white marble?

Place one white marble in one bowl and place the rest of the marbles in the other bowl (49 whites, and 50 blacks).

This way you begin with a 50/50 chance of choosing the bowl with one white marble and living. Even if you choose the other bowl, you still have an almost 50% chance of picking one of the 49 white marbles. There are no guarantees in life, but this gives you the best change of surviving.

Posted in Brain Teasers