A word with horizontal symmetry is one whose letters are a mirror image of themselves. If you drew a horizontal line across the word and folded it over, it would overlap on itself. For example, EXCEEDED and ICEBOX have horizontal symmetry, but VERTICAL and SIMPLE do not.
What is the longest word with horizontal symmetry?
A man gets off the bus looking for an address and approaches a couple walking in the same direction for directions. The woman says they’re going that way and take him. Along the way the man asks if they’re related. The woman grins and says, “We’re not strangers. This man’s mother is my mother’s mother-in-law.” The man is confused but doesn’t say anything. When he gets back home he tells his wife about the conversation and she can’t figure it out either. They decide to ask their lawyer and he eventually works it out with pen and paper. How are the couple related?
Four cards are placed in front of you on the table, each with a number on one side and a color on the other. The visible cards show 3, 8, red and brown. Which cards should you turn over in order to test the truth of the statement that if a card shows an even number on one face, then its opposite face is red?
You’d need to turn over only the 8 and brown card. Only a card with an even number on one face and which is not red on the other face can invalidate the stated rule. If you turn over the 3 card and it’s not red, it doesn’t invalidate the rule, nor does turning over the red card and finding it has the label 3.
This test was devised by Peter Cathcart Wason and is known as the Wason selection task. Less than 10% of test subjects got it correct in two separate studies.
Two scruffy dogs were walking down the street. The first dog turned to the other and said, “Do you realize that if one of your fleas jumped onto me we would have the same number of fleas?” The second replied, “Yes, but if one of your fleas jumped onto me I would have five times as many fleas as you.” How many fleas are on each dog to begin with?
