What Letter Comes Next?

The letters in this series are ones that don’t begin something. Figure out what that something is, and what letter comes next.

B E J ?

Q. The thing they don’t begin is states in the United States of America. The final three letters in the series are X, Y and Z.

Posted in Brain Teasers

A Big Family Photo

A family photo has the following:
1 grandfather, 1 grandmother
2 fathers, 2 mothers
6 children, 4 grandchildren
2 brothers, 2 sisters
3 sons, 3 daughters
1 father-in-law, 1 mother-in-law
1 daughter-in-law

It could show 29 different people, but what is the smallest number of people if could have?

Eight. 4 children, their mother and father and one set of grandparents.

Posted in Brain Teasers

Turning the Years Upside Down

What years from the 1900s and 1800s are the same year when read upside down?

1961 and 1881.

Posted in Brain Teasers

A Big Pizza Pie

To get the most pizza, should you order two 12″ pizzas or one 18″ pie?

One 18″, with ~255 sumptuous square inches. Two 12″ pizzas would only give you ~226 square inches.

Note: The area of a circle is = πr2.

Posted in Brain Teasers

Lying On Certain Days of the Week

Angel lies on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays but tells the truth the rest of the week.

Brenda lies on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, but tells the truth every other day.

Angel says, “Yesterday I was lying.”

Brenda replies, “So was I.”

What day was it?

Thursday.

Putting the information in a table makes it easier to solve. We’ll use A for Angie, B for Brenda, T for truth and F (false) for lying.

 SMTWThFS
ATFFFTTT
BTTTTFFF

To begin with, there aren’t any days where both of them told the truth and lied the day before, so we know one of them must be lying.

So we have two options, either Angel is lying or Brenda is.

Option 1. Angel is lying.

In order for this to be the case, she needs to be lying today and telling the truth yesterday, so we need two days in a row with T F. And if Brenda is telling the truth, she would need two days with F T. That means we’re looking for two days that have

Angie:  T F
Brenda: F T

Option 2. Brenda is lying.

This is just the reverse of the above, so we need to find:

Angie:  F T
Brenda: T F

The only day that matches either of the two options is Thursday, and it’s option 2. Brenda is the liar.

Posted in Brain Teasers

Find The Country Names

How many country names can you find in the following statements?

Don’t reach in a crack in the rocks, there might be snakes in there.
While I was on the highway called the Alcan, a daily occurrence was car breakdowns.
The top social class, as defined by many, is the upper-upper.

Three.

1. China (reaCH IN A)
2. Canada (alCAN A DAily)
3. Peru (upPER-Upper)

Posted in Brain Teasers

NOAS Rebus

What does this represent?

  P
NOASE
  Y

Pay through the nose.

Posted in Riddles
Tagged with

I Was Not Born

I was not born, but I am here.
I have no name, but I am given many.
I was made by science and life.

What am I?

A clone.

Posted in Riddles
Tagged with

Lucrezia Borgia

Lucrezia Borgia invited a prospective victim to lunch. They ate a hearty meal of roast venison, with a selection of fresh vegetables, all washed down with the finest wine imported from Bordeaux, France.

After the meal, they ate figs and freshly picked grapes.

“Just one apple left”, said Lucrezia, “I insist you have it.

“No”, said the guest, “I couldn’t”.

“Tell you what”, said Lucrezia, “we’ll share it”, and promptly sliced the apple in two with her sharpest knife. The guest and Lucrezia started to eat their respective halves when the guest’s eyes rolled towards the ceiling and he fell over, dead.

“Another victim successfully dispatched,” thought Lucrezia.

How did she do it?

She used a knife coated on just one edge with cyanide. When she sliced the apple in two, only the victim’s half was poisoned.

Posted in Brain Teasers

Two Common English Words

“H-e” starts and ends two common English words. One painful in love, one painful in everyday matters.

What are the two words?

Heartache and headache.

Posted in Riddles