Two Backbones

I have two backbones and thousands of ribs and I stretch across the land. What am I?

Train tracks.

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Related Strangers

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?

The couple is either a man and his daughter or an uncle and his niece.

Posted in Brain Teasers

What Toby Likes

Toby likes indigo but not red. He likes onions but not turnips. He likes forms but not shapes.

According to the same rule, does he like tomatoes or avocados?

Toby only likes words that start with prepositions, like his name. Thus he likes tomatoes, not avocados.

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A Special Group of Words

These words all fall into a special group. Your challenge is to nominate one of the words below and determine why it fits into the special group.

RING
TOPS
MANATEE
WINDLESS
EARTH
ANGER

Choose the word that also falls into the above group

a. MATTER
b. TUNES
c. OUGHT
d. HEARTH

c. OUGHT

Each of these words forms a different word when the last letter is moved to the front.

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Always Runs, Never Walks

What always runs but never walks, often murmurs, never talks, has a bed but never sleeps, has a mouth but never eats?

A river.

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The Bookworm

A bookworm eats from the first page of an encyclopedia to the last page in a straight line. The encyclopedia consists of ten 1000-page volumes and is sitting on a bookshelf in the usual order. Not counting covers, title pages, etc., how many pages does the bookworm eat through?

        __                             __
      B|  |                           |  |F
      A|1 |...........................|10|R
      C|  |                           |  |O
      K|  |                           |  |N
       |__|                           |__|T
      -------------------------------------

On a book shelf the first page of the first volume is on the “inside”, so the bookworm eats only through the cover of the first volume, then 8 times 1000 pages of Volumes 2 – 9, then through the cover to the 1st page of Vol 10 for a total of 8,000 pages.

Note: The question asks how many pages, not how many sheets of paper.

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Evianna’s New Love Interest

Evianna meets a man while attending her mother’s funeral. She becomes infatuated with him and he reciprocates the interest, but he leaves the funeral without giving her any contact information. She tries to locate him but is unsuccessful. Several days later she kills her sister.

Why did she do it?

Because she’s a psychopath. She killed her sister because she hoped the man would attend the funeral and she would get to see him again. This is one brain teaser that is probably best that you don’t get the correct answer. If you knew the answer right away and thought it was obvious, you may want to talk to someone.

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ABCDE and What?

What comes next in this series?

A B C D E

Hint: It’s not F.

K. The letters represent vitamins, and there is currently no Vitamin F, G, H, I or J.

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Where do the Numbers Belong?

Three numbers, 16, 14 and 38, need to be assigned to one of the rows of numbers below. Where do the numbers belong?

A06893
B1527211019
C71471117

Hint: This is not a mathematical problem. The numerical values are irrelevant.

The rows indicate the shape of the number. Row A is rounded, B is mixed and C is linear. Thus, 16 belongs in row B, 14 in row C and 38 in row A.

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Tear One Off And Scratch My Head

Tear one off and scratch my head. What once was red is black instead. What am I?

A match.

This is a duplicate of red black instead, but I’m leaving them both to avoid broken links.

Posted in Riddles