Perform this calculation in your head, mentally adding the numbers as quickly as you can. Start with 1000 and add 40. Now add 1000. Add 30 to that, then add another 1000. Now add 20 to that result. Add another 1000 and finally, add 10 to that. What is the total?
You have two buckets. One holds exactly five gallons and the other three gallons. How can you measure exactly four gallons of water into the five gallon bucket?
Assume you have an unlimited supply of water and that there are no measurement markings of any kind on the buckets.
I am a five-letter word and am feared by most but experienced by all. If you remove my first and last letters I bring life. If you add an ‘r’ between the third and fourth letters I am almost nothing and if you remove the first letter from this new word, I am your home.
Death (eat, dearth, earth). No one can escape death, but many fear it. Removing the first and last letters leaves eat, and we must eat to stay alive. Adding the ‘r’ turns death into dearth, which is scarcity and removing the first letter of dearth leaves earth, where you live, assuming this riddle hasn’t reached extraterrestrials.
A nine-letter word, common as air,
When each letter’s cut, a new word to pare,
Take a letter each round and continue to one.
Name the word and the path and then you’ll be done.
Surprisingly, there are several nine-letter words that can have one letter removed in each round to make a new word all the way to one letter, which must be ‘a’ or ‘i’. Startling is the most common answer, but I’ve included the other words I’m aware of. I don’t include plural words, like cleansers, drownings, splatters, starvings, trappings and wrappings because it’s kind of cheating.
startling
Remove the l to make starting (or remove the t to make starling)
Remove the t to make staring
Remove the a to make string
Remove the r to make sting
Remove the t to make sing
Remove the g to make sin
Remove the s to make in
Remove the n to make I
splitting
Remove the l to make spitting
Remove the p to make sitting
Remove a t to make siting
Remove the first i to make sting
Remove the s to make ting
Remove the g to make tin
Remove the t to make in
Remove the n to make I
stringier
Remove the r to make stingier
Remove the i to make stinger
Remove the t to make singer
Remove the r to make singe
Remove the g to make sine
Remove the e to make sin
Remove the s to make in
Remove the n to make I
strapping
Remove the s to make trapping
Remove the t to make rapping
Remove the p to make raping
Remove the r to make aping
Remove the a to make ping
Remove the g to make pin
Remove the p to make in
Remove the n to make I
Your back. You have one and it’s easy to touch but hard to look it. A common phrase is to “watch your back” and it’s common to “have your friend’s back.” When apologizing, you often want to take back what you said. You can throw out your back, but you can’t throw it away. And back pain causes people pain every day.