Cats and Kittens But No Mittens

Six men are carrying boxes holding six cats and each cat has 6 kittens. How many legs are there in total?

1020. There are 6 men with 2 legs each, for a total of 12 legs.
There are 36 cats with 4 legs each for a total of 144 legs.
There are 216 kittens with 4 legs each for a total of 864 legs
12 + 144 + 864 = 1020.

Posted in Brain Teasers

Subtracting Ten From A Hundred

How many times can you subtract 10 from 100?

Only once. The next time you’d be subtracting 10 from 90.

Posted in Brain Teasers

Probability That Both Children Are Girls

Walking down the street one day, I met a woman strolling with her daughter. “What a lovely child,” I remarked. “In fact, I have a younger child as well,” she replied.

What is the probability that both of her children are girls?

1/2 probability. This has been know to cause raging debates and is known as one of the variations of the Boy or Girl paradox. This variation is more straightforward because knowing the position of the child leaves only two possibilities – the other child is a boy or a girl, each of which have a 1/2 probability.

Another variation of this can be found here.

Posted in Brain Teasers

New Door

Rearrange the letters in the words “new door” to make one word.

“new door” can be rearranged into “one word”

Posted in Brain Teasers

Money Is Right Above My Reach

Money is right above my reach, I’m barely staying out of The Emergency Room (It is right below me), Room #3 is to my left, Room #5 is to my right with a 5% interest rate.

What am I?

The number 4 key on a QWERTY keyboard. $ is money, ER (an abbreviation for Emergency Room) are the two letters immediately below the number 4 key, the #/3 key is to the left and the 5/% key is to the right.

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Three Lives Have I

Three lives have I.
Gentle enough to soothe the skin,
Light enough to caress the sky,
Hard enough to crack rocks.

Water.

Posted in Riddles

Which Switch?

You are standing outside a closed door. On the other side of the door is a room that has three light bulbs in it. The room is completely sealed off from the outside. It has no windows and nothing can get in or out except through the door. On the outside of the room there are three light switches that control each of the respective light bulbs on the other side of the door.

Your assignment is to determine which light switch controls which light bulb. You are allowed to enter the room only once, and once you come out, you must be able to state with 100% certainty which light switch controls which light bulb.

Turn one light switch on, wait a few minutes, then turn it off and turn another light switch on. Go into the room and feel the light bulbs. The one that’s still warm is connected to the switch that you first turned on, the one that is on was the second switch you turned on, and the last bulb is controlled by the switch that you didn’t touch.

Posted in Brain Teasers

Insect Shipments

There once was a strange man who loved wordplay, he had a very important and successful business that would take insect shipments from all across the world and distribute them to zoos across the US.

What was the name of his company?

ImportANT

Posted in Riddles

Everyone Has It

Everyone has it.
Those who have it least don’t know that they have it.
Those who have it most wish they had less of it,
but not too little or none at all.

Age. Young children don’t even know their age and extremely old folks wish they could turn back the hands of time, but not so much that they’re too young or they no longer have an age at all.

By Sef Daystrom

Posted in Riddles

I Wear You Down

I wear you down, yet you will mourn me once I fly.
You can kill me, but I will never die.

Time.

(found in The Copper Gauntlet by Holly Black and Cassandra Clare)

Posted in Riddles