Debbie’s Dragster

Debbie starts driving her dragster from rest and constantly accelerates to 60 mph in 10 seconds. How far does she travel in those 10 seconds?

1/12 mile

Ten seconds is 1/6 of a minute and 1 minute is 1/60 of an hour, so 10 seconds is 1/360 of an hour.

If you graph her trip with the speed on the y-axis and the time on the x-axis, you get a triangle with height of 60 mph and width of 1/360 of an hour. To calculate the area of the triangle, you multiply 1/2 × 1/360 × 60 = 1/12.

Posted in Brain Teasers

The Longest Pregnancy

A baby was born four years after its parents died in a car crash. How was this possible?

Amazingly, this actually happened. The parents died in a crash crash and their parents fought for the rights to the four frozen embryos left by their late children. After a surrogate pregnancy, the baby was born with DNA matching their deceased parents.

Posted in Brain Teasers

For Our Ambrosia

For our ambrosia we were blessed,
By Jupiter, with a sting of death.
Though our might, to some is jest,
We have quelled the dragon’s breath.

Who are we?

Bees.

Posted in Riddles

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.

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Soft And Fragile Is My Skin

Soft and fragile is my skin
I get my growth in mud
I’m dangerous as much as pretty
For if not careful, I draw blood.

A thorn.

Posted in Riddles

That That Is Is

Add punctuation to these words to make a grammatically correct series of phrases.

That that is is that that is not is not is not that it it is

That that is, is; that that is not, is not. Is not that it? It is.

There are almost assuredly other grammatically correct variations. Feel free to add ones you can think of in the comments.

Posted in Brain Teasers

A Game of Cards

In a game of cards, GEORGE partnered with MARY, while TED had to choose a partner. He could have chosen ANN, EDNA, JOAN or ANGELA. Whom did he choose and why?

ANN. If you give each letter a number according to its position in the alphabet:
TED = 20 + 5 + 4 = 29
ANN = 1 + 14 + 14 = 29

(George and Mary each add to 57)

Posted in Brain Teasers

The Pattern of Numbers

These series follow a pattern.
2 4 8
1 17 476
65 20987 3571890

This series does not follow the pattern
18 79 45

What is the pattern?

The numbers must be in ascending order. This can be a fun one to have people work out in person, as they test out three-number series and you can tell them whether or not they satisfy the pattern.

Thanks to Patrick for sending this in and thanks to this video from Veritasium for inspiring Patrick.

Posted in Brain Teasers

Highest Product Using All Digits

What is the highest product that can be generated by multiplying two numbers while only using each digit once (1 through 9)?
For example, 12345678 * 9 = 111,111,102

9642 * 87531 = 843,973,902

Posted in Brain Teasers

I Am Worthless

I am worthless, yet when added to others I add worth.
I confounded the ancient Greeks, yet I changed men’s understanding.

What am I?

0 (Zero).

Zero is nothing, yet when you add zeroes to a number like 1, it becomes 10, 100 or 1,000.

The ancient Greeks did not have a name for zero and did not use a placeholder. They seemed unsure about the status of zero as a number, philosophizing about how nothing could be something. Once zero was added, it allowed for more mathematical understanding.

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