As I went through the garden gap, Who should I meet but Dick Red-cap! A stick in his hand, a stone in his throat, If you’ll tell me this riddle, I’ll give you a groat. (Said to be the lyrics to A Cherry)
I slipped down a slippery gap, Found a man with a red cap, He had a stick in his back and a stone in his belly, Riddle me this and I’ll give you a penny.
Your back. You have one and it’s easy to touch but hard to look it. A common phrase is to “watch your back” and it’s common to “have your friend’s back.” When apologizing, you often want to take back what you said. You can throw out your back, but you can’t throw it away. And back pain causes people pain every day.
Last winter I found myself locked out of my house because I couldn’t remember the 5-digit code to open the garage door. I used the following facts to get inside.
1. The second and third digits add up to 9. 2. The first digit is equal to the second digit cubed. 3. The sum of the third and fifth digits is the smallest number with exactly five divisors. 4. The fourth digit is equal to 6 times the second-to-last digit. 5. None of the digits repeat.
If we label each digit a, b, c, d and e, we get the following equations. 1. b + c = 9 2. a = b3 3. c + e = 16 (since 16 is the smallest number with five divisors – 1, 2, 4, 8 and 16). 4. d = 6 * d (The fourth and second-to-last digits are the same number, meaning d must be zero to satisfy the equation) 5. b must be zero, one or two (b can’t be three because that makes a=27, which isn’t a single digit). Zero and one result in duplicate digits (00907 and 11808 respectively) so the only remaining value for b is 2, giving us 82709 and warmth.
The four suits in a deck of standard playing cards
The Spade is a gardener’s tool.
The Diamond is the hardest gem to break. “Little Girl and Queen” is a Mother Goose rhyme, in which the Queen gave the girl a large diamond for picking the Queen some roses.
The Heart bonds with the mind to form love. Absence makes the heart grow fonder.
The Club, or Clover, is three dots connected around a stem.
Two cowboys live next door to each other and both have a corral for their cows in the back. One day they meet at the back of their homes, standing next to a wall dividing their corrals. The first cowboy gets to thinking and asks his neighbor for a cow so he can double his herd. The other cowboys replies, “That’s fine by me partner, cuz then we’ll have the same number of cows?” How many cows does each cowboy own?
