Penny, Cork and A Bottle

Given a corked bottle with only a penny inside, how can you remove the penny without pulling out the cork, breaking the bottle and leaving the cork intact?

Push the cork into the bottle, then shake the penny out.

Posted in Brain Teasers

Midway Numbers

Select the number that is midway between the lowest number and the highest number.
Which number is midway between that number and the number that is nearest the highest number?

35  5 52 36 67
69  4 51 37 71
55 68  3 53 39

53.

37 is midway between 3 (the lowest number) and 71 (the highest number).
53 is midway between 37 and 69 (nearest to the highest number).

Posted in Brain Teasers

Plum Taking

A man without eyes saw plums on a tree.
He neither took them nor left them, how can this be?

The man had only one eye and took one plum. (note singular versus plural)

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I Go In Hard

I go in hard.
I come out soft.
You blow me hard.
What am I?

Note: This may not be appropriate for younger ages.

Gum. What? You had another guess?

Posted in Riddles
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I Belong To Everyone

I belong to everyone. Sometimes I make you happy, sometimes I make you sad. I will never end until the day you do.

Your thoughts.

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Picking Red Balls

A bag contains 64 balls of eight different colors. There are eight of each color (including red).
What is the smallest number you would have to pick, without looking, to be sure of selecting 3 red balls?

59. The first 56 balls could all be non-red colors. If that happened, you’d have to choose from the 8 remaining balls, all of which would be red.

Posted in Brain Teasers

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.

Posted in Brain Teasers

Rainbow Neighborhood

There was a neighborhood of one-story houses.
One was red and everything in the house was red.
Another was purple and everything in the house was purple.
Yet another was yellow and everything in the house was yellow.
Still another was blue and everything in the house was blue.
In the green house everything was green,
and in the gray house everything was grey.

What color were the stairs in the yellow house?

There are no stairs in any of the houses because they only have one story.

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Books By Charles Dickens

Pair these words to make nine titles of books by Charles Dickens:

A LITTLE    1 RUDGE
B PICKWICK  2 COPPERFIELD
C EDWIN     3 TIMES
D BARNABY   4 CHUZZLEWIT
E NICHOLAS  5 PAPERS
F HARD      6 HOUSE
G BLEAK     7 DROOD
H DAVID     8 DORRIT
I MARTIN    9 NICKLEBY

A 8 = LITTLE DORRIT
B 5 = PICKWICK PAPERS
C 7 = EDWIN DROOD
D 1 = BARNABY RUDGE
E 9 = NICHOLAS NICKLEBY
F 3 = HARD TIMES
G 6 = BLEAK HOUSE
H 2 = DAVID COPPERFIELD
I 4 = MARTIN CHUZZLEWIT

Posted in Brain Teasers

2 + 2 = 5

What is the similarity between “2 + 2 = 5” and your left hand?

Neither is right. Two plus two equals five isn’t right, or correct and your left hand is not your right hand.

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