Riddles & Brain Teasers

[MrKaplansGlasses]

Does anyone know any good ones? DH and I live an exciting life and have been trying some brainteasers out on each other. I appear to have run out now but I want some really tricky ones to get him with tomorrow if anyone can help!

It's not that I don't like the albatross or bungalow ones, it's just they are not riddles in the sense of you can just think about it and have that "aha!" moment of the perfect solution (which I think you get with the bus stop one, correctly solved by skippy).

They are problems where the fun is being able to ask lots of questions to gradually work out what false assumptions you have made and converge on the solution. So, I hope Angelo sticks around!

Did the pogo man saw the bed's legs off?

Were the pogo man and the dead man related?

Was the dead man very short?

These are great! I have a good one:

Imagine a country where boys are prized above girls. All couples want to have one boy. Once they have a boy, they stop having children. If they have a girl, they'll try again for a boy. So the possible family arrangements are: B, GB, GGB, GGGB and so on. No family will ever have two boys.

The question is, what ratio of girls to boys will there be in this country?

Assume a 50:50 chance of having a girl or a boy, and assume that there a no divorces, untimely deaths or anything like that. Also no accidental pregnancies!

For some reason, I have snow white and the 7 dwarves in my head. Was the man literally Happy?

can't get the pogo stick one at all!

Oh I got it! I think.

The dead man was the shortest man in the world and the pogo man was the second shortest.

Pogo man sawed the legs off the furniture to make the dead man think he was growing. Dead man killed himself. Pogo man wins title of shortest man.

Psammead pretty much has it, except the dead man died of natural causes bed legs were sawn off so the dead man could get in bed more easily.

Psammead - ooh, I think you have the solution! I'll console myself that I did ask whether the dead man was very short...

Ooh. I went to a much darker place, sorry

But soup can taste different depending who made it?
Like my chicken noodle soup is very different to a chefs version. It doesn't mean one of us is a cannibal.

He must have had some serious mental health problems after being shipwrecked, it was nothing to do with the soup.

You all probably know the lightswitch one, right?

You have 3 light switches outside a house and three rooms inside the house with a light in. One switch for each light. You have to figure out which switch controls which light. There is no way of seeing into the rooms from the outside of the house. You are only allowed to enter the house once. How do you figure out which switch controls each light?

The answer to the boy / girl problem is that the ratio is still 50:50. The parental decisions can do nothing to change the ratio.

To see it mathematically, in 1/2 of families, the first child will be a boy with 0 sisters. In the other 1/2, the first child will be a girl. So in 1/4 of families the second child will be a boy, so have 1 sister. In 1/8, the third child will be a boy with 2 sisters.

So the average number of sisters is S = 1/2 x 0 + 1/4 x 1 + 1/8 x 2 + 1/16 x 3 + ... which can proved to get closer and closer to 1, ie one girl on average for every boy.

3luckystars I think you would be able to tell the difference in taste between albatross and human flesh.

Psammead - does that still work with modern energy efficient lightbulbs (massive hint)?

Psammead. Switch on two switches and leave them both on for a minute or so, then switch one off. Go in to the house and you can immediately identify which light the switch you left on controls. Touch the other two and the one that is warm is controlled by the switch you turned on and then off again.

Psammead I think I know this one- you turn one on and leave it on, turn on for a few minutes then turn it off, leave the third one off. The room with the light on is the one that is switched on, the room with a hot lightbulb is the one that was switched on then switched off, the room with the cold lightbulb is the one that was always switched off?

Dad It does, but you would need to have them on for a longer time, and it would be the plastic on the base on the light bulb, not the glass.

Angelogen - yup! Oldie but goldie.

OK, so can you explain about the man whose car stopped outside a hotel and at that moment he knew he was bankrupt?

Re the lightbulbs: leave one off and turn two on for a few mins, then turn one of these off just before going into the house. You will be able to identify the room with a light on, the room which has never had a light on, and the one that recently had a light on with a warm bulb.

I'm working my way through a good puzzle book called Journal 29 at the moment which I'd recommend.

And name change too! Sorry I didn't see your reply at first.

Oops, beaten to the answer while I was typing.

Stompy, it's good, right? After you are done, I recommend The Librarian's Almanaq.

I’m loving this thread, it’s making my brain hurt though!

I’ve got one:
What can go up the chimney down but not down the chimney up?