Riddles and 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

What Kind of Nut Has a Hole?

What kind of a nut has a hole?

A donut (or a nut as in a nut and bolt). Here’s a fun fact. Another riddle with donut as the answer is, “What has no beginning, end or middle?”

Posted in Riddles

Milton shuffled slowly along the shelves browsing books. He finally walked up to the counter and handed the girl a book. She looked at the inside cover and told him it would be $3.75. Milton handed her the money and walked away without the book. The girl watched him leave empty-handed but didn’t try to stop him. Why?

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Milton was a forgetful and naughty fellow. He was summoning his courage to approach the counter to return his overdue book. The kindly lass at the counter saw the book was 15 days overdue and had accrued the egregious late fee of $3.75 (25 cents a day). Lesson learned, Milton never returned a book late again.

Posted in Brain Teasers

I Live In A Busy Place In The City

I live in a busy place in the city,
I’ll let you stay with me for awhile,
If you don’t feed me, I can get you into trouble.

What am I?

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A parking meter.

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Shortest Word With All the Vowels

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

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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.

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

A Smiling Guard

Two guards were on duty outside a barracks. One faced up the road to watch for anyone approaching from the North. The other looked down the road to see if anyone approached from the South. Suddenly one of them said to the other, “Why are you smiling?”

How did he know his companion was smiling?

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They were facing each other. As to why his companion was smiling, the world may never know.

Posted in Brain Teasers

Thin, Bold, Sick And Cold

One thin, one bold,
One sick, one cold.
The earth we span,
To prey upon man.

Who are we?

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The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

Posted in Riddles

Goes With a Car

What goes with a car, comes with a car, is of no use to a car, but the car can’t move without it?

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Noise. The engine is usually the main culprit, but even electric cars make some noise from the tires on the road.

Posted in Riddles

A Mile Long Train

A mile-long train is moving at sixty miles an hour when it reaches a mile-long tunnel. How long does it take the entire train to pass through the tunnel?

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Two minutes. The back of the train would be at the beginning of the tunnel after 1 minute, and would leave the end of the tunnel at the 2 minute mark.

Posted in Brain Teasers

The Letters of Man

Using only the letters in MAN to fill in the blanks, make normal, uncapitalized words.

1. _ _ O _ G
2. R _ _ D O _
3. _ _ R I _ _
4. E _ P _ _ _ D _
5. C I _ _ _ _ O _
6. P _ _ O R _ _ _
7. _ _ I _ L _ _ D
8. _ R _ _ _ E _ T

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1. AMONG
2. RANDOM
3. MARINA
4. EMPANADA
5. CINNAMON
6. PANORAMA
7. MAINLAND
8. ARMAMENT

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