Mislabeled Boxes of Marbles

Three closed boxes have either white marbles, black marbles or both, and they are labeled white, black and both. However, you’re told that each of the labels are wrong. You may reach into one of the boxes and pull out only one marble. Which box should you remove a marble from to determine the contents of all three boxes?

The one labeled both. Since you know it’s labeled incorrectly, it must have all black marbles or all white marbles. After you determine what it contains, you can identify the other two boxes by the process of elimination.

Posted in Brain Teasers

Apples, Ice and Flowers

Apples, ice, and flowers can do it.
Pears, stones, and coins can’t.

Float.

By Sef Daystrom

Posted in Riddles

What Do These Dates Have In Common?

What do these dates have in common?

15 February 1984
2 July 1983
16 December 1983

They all fall in the middle.
15 February was the middle of February (1984 being a leap year).
2 July was the middle day of the year 1983.
And 16 December was the middle of December.

Posted in Brain Teasers

Which Are True and Which Are False?

A. When a car is driven forwards the wheels rotate counter-clockwise.
B. If a clock is put forward 1 1/4 hours the minute hand moves through 450°
C. When a clock reads 4.10 the acute angle between the hands is exactly 60°

A. False – The near-side wheels rotate counter-clockwise, but the far-side wheels rotate clockwise.
B. True
C. False – The acute angle is a little more than 60° because by the time the minute hand reaches 10, the hour hand will have moved slightly past the 4.

Posted in Brain Teasers

Wear Black

What does this represent?

Wear
Black

Black underwear.

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

A Headless Kiss

What do you kiss that has a neck but no head?

A bottle.

Posted in Riddles

A Neighborly Argument

Two of your neighbors were arguing about if the first man’s peacock laid an egg in the seconds man’s garden, who would own the egg. They asked you to solve their dilemma. What would you tell them?

Peahens lay eggs. Peacocks are males.

Posted in Brain Teasers

Two In A Whole And Four In A Pair

Two in a whole and four in a pair
And six in a trio you see
And eight’s a quartet but what you must get
Is the name that fits just one of me?

A half.

Posted in Riddles

Longest Words With Letters in Alphabetical Order

What is the longest, non-scientific word to have all of its letters in alphabetical order?

Billowy.

Posted in Brain Teasers