Riddles
- You're riding a horse. To the right of you is a cliff and in front of you is an elephant going the same pace as you and you can't overtake it. To the left of you is a hippo running at the same speed and behind you is a lion chasing you. How do you get to safety?
- You have two buckets - one holds exactly 5 gallons and the other 3 gallons. How can you measure 4 gallons of water into the 5 gallon bucket?
(Assume you have an unlimited supply of water and that there are no measurement markings of any kind on the buckets.)
- If you had a ton of feathers and a ton of stones which would be heavier?
- What is it?
The Pope has it but he does not use it.
Your father has it but your mother uses it.
Nuns do not need it.
Arnold Schwarzenegger has a big one,
Michael J. Fox’s is quite small.
What is it?
- My daughter has many sisters. She has as many sisters as she has brothers. Each of her brothers has twice as many sisters as brothers. How many sons and daughters do I have?
- You are a cook in a remote area with no clocks or other way of keeping time other than a four minute sandglass timer and a seven minute sandglass timer. (The kind you turn over - hourglass shaped) You do have a stove, however, with water in a pot already boiling. Somebody asks you for a nine-minute egg, and you know this person is a perfectionist and will be able to tell if you undercook or overcook the eggs by even a few seconds. What is the least amount of time it will take to prepare the egg? And how will you prepare it so that it is neither undercooked nor overcooked?
- A man is looking at a picture of a man on the wall and states: Brothers and sisters I have none, but this man's father is my father's son. Who is the man in the picture in relation to the man looking at the picture?
- Three travelers register at a hotel and are told that their rooms will cost $10 each so they pay $30. Later the clerk realizes that he made a mistake and should have only charged them $25. He gives a bellboy $5 to return to them but the bellboy is dishonest and gives them each only $1, keeping $2 for himself. So the men actually spent $27 and the bellboy kept $2 - what happened to the other dollar of the original $30?
- In a small cabin in the woods, two men lay dead. The cabin itself is not burned, but the forest all around is burned to cinders. How did the men die?
- A wise king devised a contest to see who would receive the Princess' hand in marriage. The Princess was put in a 50x50 foot carpeted room. Each of her four suitors were put in one corner of the room with a small box to stand on. The first one to touch the Princess hand would be the winner and become the new King. The rules of the test were that the contestants could not walk over the carpet, cross the plane of the carpet, or hang from anything; nor could they use anything but their body and wits (i.e. no magic or telepathy, nor any items such as ladders, block and tackles etc). One suitor figured out a way and married the Princess and became the new King. What did he do?