2 + 2 = 5

What is the similarity between “2 + 2 = 5” and your left hand?

Neither is right. Two plus two equals five isn’t right, or correct and your left hand is not your right hand.

Posted in Brain Teasers

What Comes Next I S I T

What comes next in this series?

I S I T P N A A D L I I Y N ___

The letter A.

There are three separate series

1. Starting with the first letter and taking every third letter you get ITALY.
2. Starting with the second letter and taking every third letter you get SPAIN.
3. Starting with the third letter and taking every third letter you get INDIA.

Posted in Brain Teasers

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

Sweet or Bitter and Sometimes Free

I often fall from up above,
Sweet or bitter and sometimes free,
Use me to declare your love,
I’m worth more than most any.

An apple. They fall off trees and can be sweet or bitter depending on the type of apple. Most people buy apples, but you can get a free one if you have an apple tree. In olden days apples were used to throw at a person you loved, and in 2013 the company, Apple, pushed past Exxon Mobile to have the largest market capitalization in the United States.

Posted in Riddles

NDOLA

What does “NDOLA, PAMODZI” mean?

Thanks to the comments, it doesn’t mean anything per se, but it’s a location in Zambia. If that’s all it is, it’s not really a brain teaser, but since we’ve already worked on it, I’m marking it as solved leaving it up for posterity.

Below are former attempts to solve it.

I have yet to figure this one out. NDOLA could mean And lo, or An old, among other things. Pamodzi on the other hand didn’t have any particularly meaningful anagrams. Both words together had over 1,000 anagrams.

I haven’t come up with any other possible meanings.

Posted in Brain Teasers

How Many Legs?

You walk into a room and see a bed. On the bed there are two dogs, four cats, a giraffe, five cows and a duck. There are also three chickens flying above the bed. How many legs are on the floor?

Since all of the animals are on the bed and no other furniture is mentioned in the room, there are six legs on the floor. Four legs from the bed and your own two legs as you stand in the room, amazed that someone managed to get so many animals onto a bed. And the ceiling must be vaulted to fit a giraffe. Also, who’s on cleanup duty?

Posted in Brain Teasers

Walk On the Living

Walk on the living, they don’t even mumble,
Walk on the dead, they mutter and grumble.

What are they?

Leaves. They’re soft and silent when they’re alive but crunchy when dead.

Posted in Riddles
Tagged with

One Hundred Point Words

The answer to each clue is a single, 100-point word, or a word whose letters add up to 100, with a = 1, b = 2. I wrote this word value calculator so you can easily check your guesses.

i. Peanut butter tastes like this.
ii. The hat a Dad wears.
iii. To fire a chef,
iv. A smart timepiece.
v. Figured it out again.
vi. Where a kid can sleep.
vii. The magical fruit leaves you doing this.
viii. Betrayed for this much silver.
ix. A baked good that is height challenged.
x. A sticky way to neaten your hair.

i. nutty
ii. fatherhood
iii. cookout
iv. clockwise
v. resolved
vi. boycott
vii. tooting
viii. thirty
ix. shortcake
x. honeycomb

Posted in Riddles

Whoever makes it, tells it not.

Whoever makes it, tells it not.
Whoever takes it, knows it not.
Whoever knows it, wants it not

Counterfeit money or poison.

Posted in Riddles

How Far Does a Dog Walk?

How far can a blind dog walk into a forest?

Halfway. After he gets halfway, he’s walking out of the forest.

Posted in Riddles