Monthly Challenges & Solutions
July 2010
Q: What goes around the world but stays in the corner?
A: A stamp!
June 2010
Q: What, when you need it you throw it away, but when you don't need it you take it back?
A: An anchor
May 2010
Q: 1-2-3-4-5-6 - I am a 6 letter word.
Letters 6-5-2 spell out a drink. Letters 4-5-2-3 spell out a fruit. Letters 1-2-6 spell out a pet. Letters 3-2-6 spell out a pest, which often gets eaten by 1-2-6.
What am I?
A: Carpet.
6-5-2: tea.
4-5-2-3: pear.
1-2-6: cat.
3-2-6: rat
April 2010
Q: A basket contains 5 apples. Do you know how to divide them among 5 kids so that each one has an apple and one apple stays in the basket?
A: 4 kids get an apple (one apple for each one of them) and the fifth kid gets an apple with the basket still containing the apple.
March 2010
Q: There is a common English word that is nine letters long. Each time you remove a letter from it, it still remains an English word - from nine letters right down to a single letter. What is the word?
A: The word is startling - starting - staring - string - sting - sing - sin - in - I
February 2010
Q: How can you physically stand behind your friend as he physically stands behind you?
A: Easy! You're standing back-to-back.
January 2010
Q: What is so fragile that when you say its name you break it?
A: Silence
December 2009
Q 1: Most of us like to spend Christmas with our families, but sometimes we must be far away. Even then, most of us get to stay on the planet. Prior to the continuous occupation of the International Space Station in 2001, how many people actually spent Christmas Day in space?
A) None - mission planners have always worked around it
B) Just three - the Apollo-8 team
C) Twelve
D) Thirty-five
A: D) Thirty-five. The first people in space at Christmas were Borman, Lovell and Anders, who orbited the moon in Apollo-8. Since then, 32 others have spent December 25 either in Salyut 6, MIR, or the International Space Station. Russian cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev was there three times, in 1988, 1991 and 2000. Now that the ISS is continuously occupied, the number should continue to increase steadily.
Q 2: Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer made his first appearance in 1939, in a story that was written to:
A) Advertise a new brand of light-bulb
B) Be read on a Christmas radio broadcast
C) Entertain the author's sick daughter
D) Promote a department store
A: (D) Promote a department store
Q 3: A modern Christmas custom borrowed from ancient Rome's New Year's celebrations is:
A) Putting up mistletoe to make a "kissing bough"
B) Decorating a tree
C) Displaying a wreath on the front door of one's house
D) Hanging stockings by the fireplace
A: (C) Displaying a wreath on the front door of one's house. Romans wished each other "good health" by exchanging branches of evergreens. They called these gifts "strenae" after Strenia, the goddess of health. It became the custom to bend these into a ring and display them on doorways.
November 2009
Q: You are enjoying your breakfast after having put some salt on your scrambled eggs when your brother presents you with an ice cube floating in a glass of water and a short length of string. He challenges you to remove the ice cube from the glass using the string without tying any knots. What strategy do you use to remove the ice cube from the water glass?
A: Take the string and soak it in the water. Let the string rest across the ice cube. Reach across the table and get the salt that you used on your eggs; pour the salt over the string and the ice cube. The salt causes the ice to melt. However, when you stop pouring the salt, the water that formed on the top of the cube will refreeze with the string embedded in it. Now you can lift the ice cube with the string.
October 2009
Q: Mr. Brown has 12 black gloves and 12 brown gloves inhis closet. He blindly picks up some gloves from the closet. What is the minimum number of gloves Mr. Brown wil have to pick to becertain to find a pair of gloves of the same colour.
A: To find a pair, Mr. Brown must pick at least 2 gloves. But, if he picks 2 gloves blindly, then they may be different colours. If he picks 3 gloves blindly, then there are only 2 possibilities: all 3 gloves are of the same colour, or 2 gloves are of the same colour and 1 is of a different colour. Both these possibilities guarantee Mr. Brown a pair of gloves of the same colour. Thus, Mr. Brown should minimally pick 3 gloves to be certain to find a pair of gloves of the same colour. PHEW!
September 2009
Q: If you take a ... at the Mad Hatter's party, you still may not get a sip of his ....
A: Seat and Teas
August 2009
Q: A bottle of wine costs $10. The wine is worth $9 more than the bottle. How much is the bottle worth?
A: A common wrong answer is $1. Now, if the bottle were really worth a $1, then the wine, being worth $9 more than the bottle, would be worth $10. Hence the wine and bottle together would be worth $11.
The correct answer is that the bottle is worth .50 cents and the wine is worth $9.50. Then the two add up to $10.
July 2009
Q: You are a prisoner sentenced to death. The Emperor offers you a chance to live by playing a simple game. He gives you 50 black marbles, 50 white marbles and 2 empty bowls. He then says, "Divide these 100 marbles into these 2 bowls. You can divide them any way you like as long as you use all the marbles. Then I will blindfold you and mix the bowls and marbles up. You can then choose one bowl and remove one marble. If the marble is white, you live, but if the marble is black...you die.
How do you divide the marbles up so that you have the greatest probability of choosing a white marble?
A: Place 1 white marble in one bowl, and place the rest of the marbles in the other bowl (49 whites, and 50 blacks).
This way you begin with a 50/50 chance of choosing the bowl with just one white marble and living. But even if you choose the other bowl, you still have an almost 50% chance of picking one of the 49 white marbles. There are no guarantees in life, but this is your best bet at surviving.
June 2009
Q: A completely black dog was strolling down Main Street during a total blackout affecting the entire town. Not a single streetlight had been on for hours. Just as the dog was crossing the middle line a car with 2 broken headlights speedily approaches his position, but manages to swerve out of the way just in time. How could the driver have possibly seen the dog to swerve in time?
A: It was during the day
May 2009
Q: Your last good table tennis ball fell down into a narrow metal pipe embedded in concrete half a meter deep. How can you get it out undamaged, if all the tools you have are your table tennis paddle, your shoe-laces, and your plastic water bottle, which does not fit into the pipe?
A: All you have to do is pour some water into the pipe so that the ball swims up on the surface.
April 2009
Q: The bongo, the nyala and the sitatunga are all types of:
a) Antelope
b) Grass hut
c) Hand-drum
d) Sumo wrestling hold
A: (a) All three animals are native to Africa, and all are “bovine” antelopes, closely related to oxen, buffalo and bison. The sitatunga is semi-aquatic.
March 2009
Q: You are a bus driver. At the first stop of the day, eight people get on board. At the second stop, four get off, and eleven get on. At the third stop, two get off, and six get on. At the fourth stop, thirteen get off, and one gets on. At the fifth stop, five get off, and three get on. At the sixth stop, three get off, and two get on. What color are the bus driver's eyes?
A: What ever colour your eyes are...You are the bus driver! (yes, our worst one yet!)
February 2009
Q: There are 14 punctuation marks in English grammar. Can you name at least half of them?
A: Fourteen punctuation marks in English grammar: period, comma, colon, semicolon, dash, hyphen, apostrophe, question mark, exclamation point, quotation marks, brackets, parenthesis, braces, and ellipses.
January 2009
Q: One snowy night, Sherlock Holmes was in his house sitting by a fire. All of a sudden a snowball came crashing through his window, breaking it.
Holmes got up and looked out the window just in time to see three neighborhood kids who were brothers run around a corner. Their names were John Crimson, Mark Crimson and Paul Crimson.
The next day Holmes got a note on his door that read: “? Crimson. He broke your window.”
Which of the three Crimson brothers should Sherlock Holmes question about the incident?
A: Mark Crimson: "?" = question MARK, so the note on the door reads "Question Mark Crimson. He broke your window."
December 2008
Here is one for the holidays... Einstein supposedly wrote the following riddle. At the time he said that 98% of the world could not solve it.
There are no tricks, just pure logic, so good luck and don't give up.
There are 5 houses in 5 different colors in a row. In each house lives a person with a different nationality. The 5 owners drink a certain type of beverage, smoke a certain brand of cigar, and keep a certain pet. No owners have the same pet, smoke the same brand of cigar, or drink the same beverage.
The question: Who owns the fish?
Here are the other clues...
1. The Brit lives in the red house.
2. The Swede keeps dogs as pets.
3. The Dane drinks tea.
4. The green house is on the immediate left of the white house.
5. The green house's owner drinks coffee.
6. The owner who smokes Pall Mall rears birds.
7. The owner of the yellow house smokes Dunhill.
8. The owner living in the center house drinks milk.
9. The Norwegian lives in the first house.
10. The owner who smokes Blends lives next to the one who keeps cats.
11. The owner who keeps the horse lives next to the one who smokes Dunhill.
12. The owner who smokes Bluemasters drinks beer.
13. The German smokes Prince.
14. The Norwegian lives next to the blue house.
15. The owner who smokes Blends lives next to the one who drinks water.
A:The German owns the fish.
| Norwegian |
yellow |
Dunhill |
water |
cat |
| Dane |
blue |
Blend |
tea |
horse |
| Briton |
red |
Pall Mall |
milk |
bird |
| German |
green |
Prince |
coffee |
fish |
| Swedish |
white |
Blue Master |
beer |
dog |
November 2008
Q: A rich man's son was kidnapped. The ransom note told him to bring a valuable diamond to a phone booth in the middle of a public park. Plainclothes police officers surrounded the park, intending to follow the criminal or his messenger. The rich man arrived at the phone booth and followed instructions but the police were powerless to prevent the diamond from leaving the park and reaching the crafty villain. What did he do?
A: This is a true story from Taiwan. When the rich man reached the phone booth he found a carrier pigeon in a cage. It had a message attached telling the man to put the diamond in a small bag which was around the pigeon's neck and to release the bird.
When the man did this the police were powerless to follow the bird as it returned across the city to its owner.
October 2008
Q: Name, in order, three consecutive days of the week without naming Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday!
A: Yesterday, today and tomorrow.
September 2008
Q: A man builds a house rectangular in shape. All sides have southern exposure. A big bear walks by, what colour is the bear? Why?
A: The bear is white since the house is built in the North Pole.
August 2008
Q: Name 6 or more things that you can wear on your feet beginning with the letter "S"
A: shoes, socks, sandals, sneakers, slippers, skis, skates, snowshoes, stockings, stilts, scuffs....
July 2008
1
11
21
1211
111221
312211
...
Q : What is the next sequence?
A: 13112221 (Read the preceeding line : One 3, Two 1, three 2,)
June 2008
Q: There are only three words in Standard English begin with the letters "dw" and they are all common words. Can you name them?
A: dwindle, dwell, dwarf
May 2008
Q: A man is sitting in a pub feeling rather poor. He sees the man next to him pull a wad of $50 notes out of his wallet. He turns to the rich man and says to him, "I have an amazing talent: I know almost every song that has ever existed."
The rich man laughs. The poor man says, "I am willing to bet you all the money you have in your wallet that I can sing a genuine song with a lady's name of your choice in it."
The rich man laughs again and says, "OK, how about my daughter's name, Joanna Armstrong-Miller?"
The rich man goes home poor. The poor man goes home rich. What song did he sing?
A: Happy Birthday
April 2008
Q: Quick! Count the number of times that the letter F appears in the following sentence: “Finished files are the result of years of scientific study combined with the experience of years"
A: 6
"FINISHED FILES ARE THE RESULT OF YEARS OF SCIENTIFIC STUDY COMBINED WITH THE EXPERIENCE OF YEARS"
Almost everyone guesses three. Why? It seems that the brain cannot correctly process the word "OF". The letter F usually makes the "f" sound, like in "fox". However, in the word "of", it makes a "v" sound. Somehow, your brain overlooks the word "of" as it scans for the sound of "f".
March 2008
Q: What occurs once in every minute, twice in every moment, yet never in a thousand years?
A: The letter m.
February 2008
Q: 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?
A: A surname.
January 2008
Q: How can you throw a ball as hard as you can and have it come back to you, even if it does not hit anything, there is nothing attached to it and no one else catches or throws it?
A: Throw the Ball straight up in the air.
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