24. If you said 12 for January 2nd, February 2nd, etc that’s close, but you forgot about January 22nd, February 22nd and so on. If you are a math whiz and didn’t need a calculator to perform 60 x 60 x 24 x 365, then 31,536,000 works too. If you used 365.25 to account for leap year, then you are a human calculator, but even that’s not entirely accurate due to the leap second. And even accounting for that, it’s only an approximation that there are 365.2422 days in a year.
This is becomes a self-referential paradox. Both A and D would be correct if there were four unique answers, but since A and D are the same answer, the chance that you would choose a correct answer is 50%, which makes B correct. But if there’s only one correct answer, the odds of choosing the correct one at random goes back to 25%. And around and round you go.
A nine-letter word, common as air, When each letter’s cut, a new word to pare, Take a letter each round and continue to one. Name the word and the path and then you’ll be done.
Surprisingly, there are several nine-letter words that can have one letter removed in each round to make a new word all the way to one letter, which must be ‘a’ or ‘i’. Startling is the most common answer, but I’ve included the other words I’m aware of. I don’t include plural words, like cleansers, drownings, splatters, starvings, trappings and wrappings because it’s kind of cheating.
startling Remove the l to make starting (or remove the t to make starling) Remove the t to make staring Remove the a to make string Remove the r to make sting Remove the t to make sing Remove the g to make sin Remove the s to make in Remove the n to make I
splitting Remove the l to make spitting Remove the p to make sitting Remove a t to make siting Remove the first i to make sting Remove the s to make ting Remove the g to make tin Remove the t to make in Remove the n to make I
stringier Remove the r to make stingier Remove the i to make stinger Remove the t to make singer Remove the r to make singe Remove the g to make sine Remove the e to make sin Remove the s to make in Remove the n to make I
strapping Remove the s to make trapping Remove the t to make rapping Remove the p to make raping Remove the r to make aping Remove the a to make ping Remove the g to make pin Remove the p to make in Remove the n to make I
This problem can be solved by preschool children in five to ten minutes, by programmers in an hour and by people with higher education…well, check it yourself.
Emily passed away and it was a celebration of her life. Of course you don’t invite the deceased. Her body was in the casket, but Emily the person wasn’t there.
Someone bowled a strike. The ten white men are the pins, the dirt road is the bowling alley (it’s not dirt, but it’s the color of dirt, and if it said a smooth wooden alley it wouldn’t be much of a riddle). Three eyes as black as night are the finger holes in the bowling ball.
A scent or smell. A scent is important to both humans and animals and both search for scents (for different reasons). A scent travels through the air to benefit humans and animals, again, for different reasons.
Special thanks to Vavessa for the answer to this one.
