Five Letters But One Left When Two Removed

What word of five letters has only one left when two letters are removed?

Any 5-letter word with the word ‘one’ somewhere in it. Examples include shone, stone, alone, money, loner, phone or ornery. Note it doesn’t say there is only one letter left, but only ‘one’ left. Tricky tricky.

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Turn Nine Into Six

Here is the Roman numeral for nine: IX

By adding only one line or symbol, how can you turn it into six?

SIX.

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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.

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Hangs Others

What hangs others yet can unintentionally hang itself?

A jury.

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Quick Mental Math

Solve this math problem in your head. Divide 30 by a half, then add 10.

70. It’s not 25 because dividing by a half is the same as multiplying by 2.

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Not Burned in Fire Nor Drowned in Water

What can’t be burned in a fire nor drowned in water?

Ice. It melts instead of burning in a fire and it floats in water.

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Fly In The Ear

One evening a man is walking home from work and an insect flies into his ear. He tries to pry it out but it doesn’t work. Shaking his head isn’t successful either. Finally he managed to get it out. How did he do it?

As soon as he got home, he shined a flashlight close to his ear and the insect, attracted by the light, flew toward it.

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After You Wake Up

You do this after you wake up,
And you get all wet,
If you didn’t you would cause,
Those nearby to fret.

What am I?

Getting dressed.

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Four Legs and a Foot

What has four legs and a foot, but can’t walk
And a head but can’t talk?

A bed. The foot of the bed can’t walk and the head of the bed can’t talk. It’s probably a good thing that beds can’t walk and talk. Just think of where they’d go and what they’d say…

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Alfred’s Tough Cash Request

Alfred is at the bank to cash his $200 check. He tells the cashier he would like some one dollar bills, ten times as many two dollar bills and the rest in fives.

How many of each denomination does the cashier need to give Alfred?

Five $1 bills, 50 $2 bills and 19 $5 bills.

We know that in order to give the rest of the amount in fives, the sum of the one and two dollar bills needs to be divisible by five (i.e. end in 0 or 5).

If we start with a single one dollar bill, we’d need ten two dollar bills to satisfy the request, making $21. But we need a sum that is divisible by 5. So we keep going up, like so:

$1 + $2 * 10 = $21
$2 + $2 * 20 = $42
$3 + $2 * 30 = $63
$4 + $2 * 40 = $84
$5 + $2 * 50 = $105 (Aha! It’s divisible by 5)
$6 + $2 * 60 = $126
$7 + $2 * 70 = $147
$8 + $2 * 80 = $168
$9 + $2 * 90 = $189

So the only option that works is 5 $1 bills and 50 $2 bills, leaving $95 (95 / 5 = 19) to be paid out in 19 fives.

Alfred is one tough customer.

Posted in Brain Teasers