Four Letters and a Fruit or Vegetable

I have four letters in my name,
I am a fruit or a vegetable,
I look like a giant green onion,
I end with the letter k.

What am I?

The leek. It has four letters, has been considered both a fruit and a vegetable, looks like a green onion and ends with the letter k.

Posted in Riddles

Which Is The Odd Word Out?

Which of the following words is the odd one out?

Chocolate
Biscuit
Lemonade
Jelly
Cake

Lemonade. It’s the only drink in the list.

Posted in Brain Teasers

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.

Posted in Brain Teasers

How Many Fs?

Read this sentence.

   Finished files are the re-
   sult of years of scientif-
   ic study combined with
   the experience of years.

How many times does the letter F appear?

Six times. Most people skip the word ‘of’ and only count three.

Posted in Brain Teasers

Word Pairs to Create a New Word

One letter can be used to replace the first letter of each word pair below to create two new English words. The new letters can then be combined to spell a word. What is that word?

MAIL ____ PINK
CART ____ SAID
GRID ____ RIMLESS
LINK ____ BOUND
ROWED ____ RIPPLE

SMART

SAIL – SINK
MART – MAID
ARID – AIMLESS
RINK – ROUND
TOWED – TIPPLE

Posted in Brain Teasers

Losing Ten Minutes An Hour

A clock loses exactly ten minutes every hour. If the clock is set correctly at noon, what is the correct time when the clock reads 3:00pm?

3:36pm. For every 60 minutes of real time, the clock moves 50 minutes. Put another way, 60/50 = 1.2 real minutes per slow-clock minute.

In order for the clock to show 3:00pm, 180 of its slow minutes have to pass. 1.2 * 180 clock minutes = 216 real minutes or 3 hours and 36 minutes.

Posted in Brain Teasers

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.

Posted in Riddles

From Cold To Warm In Four Steps

How do you get from cold to warm in four steps, changing only one letter at a time to form a new word at each step?

cold
cord
word
worm
warm

An alternative is:
cold
cord
word
ward
warm

Yet another option, thanks to Beth:
cold
cord
card
ward
warm

Posted in Brain Teasers

What’s So Funny Ethel?

Merle was checking out at the grocery store. Ethel, a friendly cashier, said the total was $63.59. He gave her a $100 bill and she began laughing as she counted out his change. Then she gave him a high five and Merle left the store chuckling.

What was so funny?

The amount of change was $36.41, which meant Ethel handed Merle one of everything in her drawer:

$20 bill
$10 bill
$5 bill
$1 bill
A quarter
A dime
A nickel
A cent
———
$36.41

Good ol’ Ethel.

Posted in Brain Teasers

Five Three Two

What is the answer to the last equation?

5 3 2 = 151012
9 2 4 = 183662
8 6 3 = 482466
5 4 5 = 202504
7 2 5 = ?

10000 × (x × y) + 100 × (x × z) + transpose_digits(x × y + y × z)

transpose_digits() just swaps the digits

Posted in Brain Teasers