To Make In a Burning House

I am the best thing to make if you’re in a burning house. And you’d better make me quickly before the fire’s too hot to take.

Haste.  You need to make haste to get out of the burning house as soon as possible.

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The Answer Isn’t 6

What goes in place of the question mark?

1 3 5
2 4 ?

(It’s not 6)

R. It’s a representation of a stick shift, where 1-5 are gears and R represents reverse.

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Four Legs and a Foot

What has four legs and a foot, but can’t walk
And a head but can’t talk?

A bed. The foot of the bed can’t walk and the head of the bed can’t talk. It’s probably a good thing that beds can’t walk and talk. Just think of where they’d go and what they’d say…

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Combine One-Third and Four-Fifths

How would you combine one-third of 12 and four-fifths of 7 to get 11?

Add EL (one-third of TWELVE) to EVEN (four-fifths of SEVEN) and get ELEVEN.

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What Has Four Legs and Flies?

What has four legs and flies?

A horse with bugs or two pairs of trousers. The four legs should be obvious and the flies are the zippers.

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Letters, Letters, What Comes Next?

What letter comes next letter in this series?

A E F H I ___

K. It’s the series of capital letters without curves in alphabetical order.

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Sisters and Brothers

My daughter has as many sisters as she has brothers. Each of her brothers has twice as many sisters as brothers. How many sons and daughters do I have?

Four daughters and three sons. Each daughter has 3 sisters and 3 brothers, and each brother has 2 brothers and 4 sisters.

To figure it out mathematically, you could use the following two equations where G = the number of girls and B = the number of boys:
G – 1 = B
2(B – 1) = G

Solving for G gives you 4 and plugging that in to G – 1 = B gives you a B of 3.

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The Old Man’s Book

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?

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.

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Three Cuts to Turn a Round Cake Into Eight Equal Slices

How can you cut a round cake three times to make eight equal slices?

Cut #1 – Down the center of the cake (vertically) leaving two equal halves.
Cut #2 – Across the center of the cake (horizontally) leaving four equal slices.
Cut #3 – Through the middle edge of the cake slicing all four of the pieces in equal halves, leaving eight equal slices (four equal tops and four equal bottoms).

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False Positive HIV Test

Imagine an HIV test that is 95% accurate (false positive rate of 5%) and around 2% of the tested population is infected with HIV. What is the probability that you actually have HIV when your test comes back positive?

29%

To read more about this, see the False Positive Paradox page on Wikipedia.

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