Something to Think About
Struggling through a brain teaser first thing in the morning? That’s right! Before you reach for another cup of coffee, why not give yourself a little mental exercise? Starting your day with a few riddles is a great way to practice memory and problem-solving—and a good way to stump all your friends once you figure out the answers. Let’s see how many of these 20 head-scratchers you can make it through before the rooster crows. Fair warning: the answers are included below the riddle, so no cheating!
1. The Three Generations
Two mothers and two daughters sit down for a hearty breakfast together. Each person eats exactly one pancake, but only three pancakes are served altogether. How is that possible?
Answer: There are actually only three people at the table: a grandmother, her daughter, and her granddaughter.
2. The Missing Number
Pay close attention to this sequence: 2, 6, 12, 20, 30. Each number follows a particular pattern, but the differences between them keep getting larger. What number should come next?
Answer: 42. The reason why is that the differences increase by two each time: 4, 6, 8, 10, and 12.
Susan Holt Simpson on Unsplash
3. The Strange Photograph
A woman is going through some old photos before remembering she has no siblings. But she then says that the father of the person in a photograph is her father's son. Assuming she's telling the truth, who’s actually in the photograph?
Answer: It's her son! Her father's son was actually her.
Fiona Murray-deGraaff on Unsplash
4. The Two Clocks
One clock loses five minutes every hour. Another gains five minutes every hour. Both are set to the correct time at exactly 6:00 a.m., and neither is adjusted afterward. How many hours will pass before their displayed times are exactly one hour apart?
Answer: Six hours. The clocks drift apart by a combined 10 minutes every hour.
5. The Unusual Word
The English language is filled with crazy words, but there’s only one five-letter word that sounds the same when you remove its last four letters. In fact, you can remove those letters and still pronounce the remaining letter the same way. What word are we thinking of?
Answer: Queue, which sounds exactly like the letter Q. (Who decided to add all those extra letters anyway?)
6. The Breakfast Eggs
This one’s easy, but you deserve a little break! Okay, here it is: you have six eggs in a carton. You crack two of them, cook them, and eat both for breakfast. How many eggs are still left in the carton?
Answer: Four eggs.
7. The Three-Digit Mystery
We’re thinking of a three-digit number whose hundreds digit is 2. The tens digit is twice the hundreds digit, and the ones digit equals the sum of the other two digits. What number are we thinking of?
Answer: 246.
8. The Family Gathering
A man has four daughters, and each daughter has exactly one brother. All the children are sitting together around the kitchen table, waiting for breakfast. How many kids does the man have?
Answer: Five children, because all four daughters share the same brother.
Kateryna Hliznitsova on Unsplash
9. The Three Light Switches
You're standing outside a closed room with three light bulbs, each controlled by one of three switches beside you. You're allowed to flip the switches as often as you like, but you can enter the room only once. You can't see inside beforehand. How can you determine which switch controls each bulb?
Answer: So, you'd need to turn on the first switch for a few minutes, then turn it off and turn on the second switch before going in. The glowing bulb belongs to the second switch, the warm but unlit bulb belongs to the first, and the cold bulb is the third.
10. The Letter Challenge
This only appears once in the word "minute" and twice in the word "moment." However, you won't find it anywhere in the word "thousand." What letter is it?
Answer: The letter M.
11. The Mysterious Elevator
A woman lives on the tenth floor of an apartment building and takes the elevator downstairs every morning. When she gets back home, she rides only to the seventh floor and walks up the remaining stairs. However, on rainy days, she rides straight to the tenth. Why does the weather matter so much?
Answer: She's too short to reach the tenth-floor button normally, but on rainy days, she has her umbrella to help her!
12. The Five Machines
Five identical machines can make five identical products in exactly five minutes. A factory owner decides to increase production by purchasing enough machines to have 100 working simultaneously. Assuming every machine operates at the same speed, how long will it take those machines to produce 100 products?
Answer: Five minutes—each machine makes one product in that time.
13. The Morning Appointment
You have a doctor's appointment scheduled for 10:20 in the morning, and the drive takes exactly 35 minutes. Before leaving, you need 15 more minutes to gather your stuff and get ready. What's the latest time you can begin preparing if you want to get there on time?
Answer: 9:30 a.m.
14. The Two Doors
You're standing in front of two doors, one leading outside and the other leading into a locked room. Two guards know which door is which, but one always tells the truth while the other always lies. You don't know who's who. What question could you ask either guard to identify the exit?
Answer: Ask, "Which door would the other guard say leads outside?" Then choose the opposite door.
15. The Secret Number
A number gets larger when you turn it upside down. It's a single digit, so you won't need any complicated calculations to figure it out. Which number are we talking about?
Answer: The number six—turning it upside down makes nine.
16. The River Crossing
A farmer needs to transport a wolf, a goat, and a cabbage across a river using a small boat. The boat can carry only the farmer and one passenger or item at a time, but leaving the wolf alone with the goat or the goat alone with the cabbage would be disastrous. How can the farmer get all three safely across the river?
Answer: Take the goat across first, return alone, and take the wolf across. Bring the goat back, take the cabbage across, return alone, and finally take the goat across again. (It’s a big day for the goat, but he’ll live.)
17. The Three Boxes
You have three boxes labeled Apples, Oranges, and Mixed. However, every label is wrong. You're allowed to reach into just one box and remove one piece of fruit without looking inside. Which box should you choose to figure out what’s inside all three boxes?
Answer: Choose the box labeled Mixed. It must contain only apples or only oranges; the fruit you pull out reveals its contents, and the other two boxes can then be identified through elimination.
18. The Unusual Visit
This contains cities, but nobody lives inside them. You'll also find roads, rivers, and mountains, even though you can't travel along or climb any of them. What is it?
Answer: A map.
19. The Clock That Strikes Six
An old grandfather clock takes exactly 25 seconds to strike six, counting from its first chime to its last. Each chime is separated by an equal amount of time, and the clock never changes its rhythm. How long will it take to strike twelve?
Answer: 55 seconds. The reason why is that six strikes have five intervals of five seconds, while twelve strikes have eleven.
20. The Strange Restaurant Bill
Three friends pay $30 at a diner, but the waiter realizes their meal should have cost only $25. He returns $1 to each friend and secretly keeps the other $2, so each friend has now paid $9, for a total of $27. Adding the waiter's $2 only makes $29, so where did the missing dollar go?
Answer: There's actually no missing dollar! The $27 already includes the $25 meal and the $2 the waiter kept, so you don’t actually have to add another $2. The original $30 is accounted for: $25 for the meal, $2 kept by the waiter, and $3 returned to the friends.
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