Weight In My Belly

Weight in my belly;
trees on my back;
nails in my ribs;
feet I do lack.

A ship.

Posted in Riddles

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

Growing Tall But Never Fat

This on this.
That on that.
Growing tall,
but never fat.

What am I?

A stack.

By Sef Daystrom

Posted in Riddles
Tagged with

The Boat at High Tide

A boat has a ladder that has six rungs. Each rung is one foot apart. The bottom rung is one foot from the water. The tide rises at 12 inches every 15 minutes. High tide peaks in one hour.

When the tide is at its highest, how many rungs are under water?

None. The boat is floating on the water, so as the tide rises, so does the ladder.

Posted in Brain Teasers

I Am Here, I Am There

I am here, I am there
I am burned into the mind of none
I walk on fire and live on ice
My words are meaningless for I talk not
I hate everyone yet fear no one
I have lived for centuries
Yet I have never existed
What am I?

Nothingness.

Posted in Riddles

A Cowboy Rides Into Town On Friday

A cowboy rides into town on Friday, stays for three days and leaves on Friday. How did he do it?

The horse’s name is Friday

Posted in Riddles

The Ages of a Prince and Princess

A princess is as old as the prince will be when the princess is twice the age that the prince was when the princess’s age was half the sum of their present ages.

What are their ages?

This one took a while to figure out and there are numerous valid ways of finding the answer.

Here is the solution I came up with

I created the following table from the riddle:

  Current Future Past
Princess x 2z (x+y)/2
Prince y x z

I then created three equations, since the difference in their age will always be the same.
d = the difference in ages
x – y = d
2z – x = d
x/2 + y/2 – z = d

I then created a matrix and solved it using row reduction.

x y z
1 -1 0 d
-1 0 2 d
.5 .5 -1 d

It reduced to:

x y z
1 0 0 4d
0 1 0 3d
0 0 1 5d/2

This means that you can pick any difference you want (an even one presumably because you want integer ages).
Princess age: 4d
Prince age: 3d

Ages that work

Princess Prince
4 3
8 6
16 12
24 18
32 24
40 30
48 36
56 42
64 48
72 54
80 60

To see other solutions check out the comments from when I posted this on my blog.

Posted in Brain Teasers

What Runs Around the Yard

What runs around the yard without moving?

A fence.

Posted in Riddles
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A Human with Five Hands

How can a human have five hands?

In addition to the two hands on the end of their arms, they also have three hands of cards. Another alternative could be handwriting, of which most people have one, but that could be added into the mix.

Posted in Riddles

Almost Catching Fire

People come and watch, from far away to see
Burning brightly, almost catching fire,
The colder it is the hotter I’ll be.
Then I die.

What am I?

Fall leaves changing colors. “Burning” with bright colors, when it’s cold outside the brighter the colors are.

Posted in Riddles
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