Three Burning Rooms

Three rooms contain:
1) Gold coins
2) Currency notes
3) Cotton bags

If all three rooms catch fire, which room will the ambulance pour water on first?

An ambulance doesn’t pour water.

Posted in Brain Teasers

A Circular Island

A circular island with a diameter of 30 feet has a 30 foot tree stands at the center. A man cuts the tree down with his chainsaw, making the cut a foot up from the ground. The tree comes crashing down and hits the water but doesn’t splash. Why not?

It’s winter and the water is frozen.

Posted in Brain Teasers

Shortest Word With All the Vowels

What is the shortest word in the English language to contain all of the vowels?

Sequoia, eulogia or miaoued are all good options, but there’s an even shorter (and more obscure) word with all the vowels and not a single consonant: Iouea. It’s not the kind of word you’d use at the dinner table, but it’s listed in the Wikipedia dictionary as a genus of Cretaceous fossil sponges.

If you got really tricky and tried to find a word that contained the letters in the phrase ‘all of the vowels’, you probably found, like I did, that there isn’t one. But it was still worth checking.

Posted in Brain Teasers

Up and Down and Round About

I’m up and down and round about,
yet all the world can’t find me out.
Though thousands have employed their leisure,
they never yet could find my measure.
I’m found in almost every garden,
In a compass or a farden.
There’s neither chariot coach nor mill
may move one inch except I will.

What am I?

A circle.

Posted in Riddles

A Vowel-less Proverb

FLND HSMN YRSN PRTD

This is a well known proverb that has had all of its vowels removed. In addition, the letters have been broken up into groups of four while maintaining their correct order.

What is the proverb?

A fool and his money are soon parted.

Posted in Brain Teasers

Painting a Bigger Room

A painter needed 3 days to paint a room. How long would it take him, working at the same rate, to paint a room twice as large (twice the width and twice the height)?

12 days because the walls would be four times as big as the first room.

If the walls are 10 ft x 10 ft, then each wall has 100 square feet. Adding the four walls makes 400 square feet to paint. Doubling the width and height of the walls to 20 ft x 20 ft means each wall is now 400 square feet, for a total of 1600 square feet to paint. 1600 ft is four times 400 square feet, thus if it took him 3 days to paint 400 square feet, it will take 12 days (or four times as much) to paint 1600 square feet.

Posted in Brain Teasers

Three Eyes But One Leg

I have three eyes but only one leg.
I still close one even if you beg.

What am I?

A traffic light. It has three “eyes” (the red, orange and green lights) and the leg is the pole holding it up. Many people beg the light to stay green as they’re approaching.

Posted in Riddles

A Date With No Numbers

How can you write a date in 5 letters without using any numbers?

The most popular answer for this teaser is ‘today’. Of course this only works if you’re reading it on that particular date or if the date is not specified. Another option is to respond literally with ‘a date’. Lastly, certain dates could be squeezed into letters using Roman numerals if you abbreviate the year to 2 numerals. For example, January 20th, 2011 would be I XX XI.

Posted in Brain Teasers

Six One Seven and Nine to Make Twenty Four

How can the numbers 6, 1, 7 and 9 be arranged to make 24?

91 – 67 = 24
(9 – 6) × (1 + 7) = 3 × 8 = 24

Posted in Brain Teasers

The Tortoise, Onion and Tomato

What is three-eighths tortoise, two-fifths onion and two-sixths tomato?

Toronto

3/8 tortoise = TOR (the first three letters)
2/5 onion = ON (the first two letters)
2/6 tomato = TO (the first two letters)

Posted in Riddles
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