Shortest Word With All the Vowels

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

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.

Posted in Brain Teasers

The Quirky Fruit Stand

At a quirky fruit stand, an orange costs 18 cents, a pineapple costs 27 cents and a grape costs 15 cents. Using the same logic, how much does a mango cost?

A mango costs 15 cents. The logic is 3 cents per letter.

Posted in Brain Teasers

If My Hand Is Forced I Can Sink Ships

I move quickly with hurried steps,
If my hand is forced I can sink ships,
I’ll cause you to shudder when driving your car,
And haul your fuel to where you are,
I’ll watch you bleed from a cut,
Add a rear and I’ll tell you what’s what.

What am I?

Scuttle. To scuttle is to scurry or run hurriedly. Scuttling is the deliberate sinking of your own ship. Scuttle shake is felt in convertibles where the passengers feel a distinct shudder. A coal scuttle is a bucket-like container to haul coal. A shaving scuttle holds hot water when you’re shaving. And adding a “rear” forms scuttlebutt, or rumors and gossip.

Posted in Riddles

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

Born in 1946, Died in 1947

A man is born in 1946 and dies in 1947, yet he was 86 years old. How is that possible?

He was born in room #1946 of the hospital when he was born, and died in room #1947 86 years later.

Posted in Riddles

Sixteen, Twenty-six, Then What?

Fill in the missing numbers in this number series.

16, 26, ?, 43, 50, ?, 61, 65, ?, 70, 71

The method to create the series is start by adding 10, then decrease the addend by 1 for each new number in the sequence. That gives us:

16 + 10 = 26
26 + 9 = 35
35 + 8 = 43
43 + 7 = 50
50 + 6 = 56
56 + 5 = 61
61 + 4 = 65
65 + 3 = 68
68 + 2 = 70
70 + 1 = 71

Posted in Brain Teasers

The More You Have, The Less You See

The more you have of it, the less you see. What is it?

Darkness.

Posted in Riddles

Buried Alive and Dug Up Dead

You bury me when I’m alive, and dig me up when I’m dead. What am I?

A plant.

Posted in Riddles
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Flora Not Fauna

I am flora, not fauna,
I am foliage, not trees,
I am shrubbery, not grass,

What am I?

A bush.

Posted in Riddles

B C D E I K O X Series

What other letter fits in the following series

B C D E I K O X ?

The letter H. It completes the list of letters that are vertically symmetrical. In other words, you can fold the top half of the letter over the bottom half and everything lines up.

Posted in Riddles