If This Site Had a Phone Number

If this site had a phone number, I would want it to be 743-3537. Why?

Because the numbers on a phone would spell the word RIDDLES.

Posted in Brain Teasers

Thirty White Horses On A Red Hill

Thirty white horses on a red hill,
first champ, then stamp, and then stand still

Your teeth.

Posted in Riddles

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

Many and One

They are many and one,
They wave and they drum,
Used to cover a stare,
They go with you everywhere.

Your hands.

Posted in Riddles

False Positive HIV Test

Imagine an HIV test that is 95% accurate (false positive rate of 5%) and around 2% of the tested population is infected with HIV. What is the probability that you actually have HIV when your test comes back positive?

29%

To read more about this, see the False Positive Paradox page on Wikipedia.

Posted in Brain Teasers

A Harvest Sown and Reaped

A harvest sown and reaped on the same day
In an unplowed field,
Which increases without growing,
Remains whole though it is eaten
Within and without,
Is useless and yet
The staple of nations.

A war.

Posted in Riddles

I Cannot Speak

I cannot speak but I have great knowledge,
I’m not a tree but I have leaves.
I have hinges but I am neither a door nor a window.

What am I?

A book.

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To Make In a Burning House

I am the best thing to make if you’re in a burning house. And you’d better make me quickly before the fire’s too hot to take.

Haste.  You need to make haste to get out of the burning house as soon as possible.

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Strip Ground Fan

What one word goes with each of these to make a new phrase?

Strip
Ground
Fan

Out. Strip out is to remove parts from a machine. Ground out is when you hit a ground ball in baseball and are thrown out at first. Fan out is when something, such as cards, are spread out like a fan.

Thanks to Jeremy for solving this.

Posted in Brain Teasers

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?

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