A man is found dead at the end of an alley. A detective who enters the scene sees the letter X and immediately knows who killed the man and why. What did the detective conclude?
The alley is a bowling alley. The man who was killed was a pin spotter (an old profession where they would reset the pins by hand). The X was the marking on the score sheet for a strike. The detective saw the letter X and knew that the person bowled last, got a strike, and was due to bowl again. But they bowled before the pin spotter could get out of the way.
Eat (8) flush (plus) to (2) my nose (minus) tree (3) times (times) for (4) they buy dead by (divided by) too (2).
There are two answers depending on whether you calculate as you read or calculate the entire solution at the end.
8 + 2 = 10, – 3 = 7, x 4 = 28, / 2 = 14
or
8 + 2 – 3 x 4 / 2 = 10 – 6 = 4
The word vex. “v” is Roman numeral 5, which is odd. “x” is Roman numeral 10, which is even. “e” is the base of the natural logarithm and is irrational (e = 2.718281828…). Its mantissa (the part to the right of the decimal point) is infinitely long.
Augustus loves candy and much to his delight, his three favorites are on sale. One each of gum, chocolate and caramel cost 40 cents. A caramel is over three times the price of gum. Six gums are worth more than chocolate. A caramel plus two gums cost less than chocolate. What is the price of each candy?
I’m built from anything you don’t like,
You’re using me right now in fact,
I am one but represent many,
When attacked I’m easily cracked,
I’m created in seconds but live forever
And though you may not understand,
I’ll help you do well but be careful my friend,
Hurt me and you won’t withstand.
Kids are often told, when dealing with unpleasant things, that it builds character. You’re reading the characters this riddle is written with. In computer science a char is often represented by one byte and can store any character you want.
When politicians have their character besmirched it can swiftly change the voting public’s mind about them. Characters in novels are created with a few lines but live on in our memories. And if your character or reputation is damaged, you may find it hard to deal with the aftermath.
And here’s a great quote from Warren Buffet on your character.
“It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.” — Warren Buffet
I am eight letters long and am kept a secret from everyone. Letters two through four spell an animal, letters four to the end make a weapon, letters one, two and eight make what you use in an exam and my third and fourth letters are the same.
A password. You should keep your password a secret from everyone, letters two through four spell ass, an animal also known as a donkey. Letters four to the end spell sword, which is a deadly weapon and the letters one, two and eight make pad, which is used for writing during an exam. Lastly, the third and fourth letters are both ‘s’