As I was going to St. Ives I met a man with seven wives. Every wife had seven sacks. Every sack had seven cats. Every cat had seven kits. Kits, cats, sacks and wives, how many were going to Altoona?
There are five houses.
Each house has its own unique color.
All house owners are of different nationalities.
They all have different pets.
They all drink different drinks.
They all smoke different cigarettes.
The English man lives in the red house.
The Swede has a dog.
The Dane drinks tea.
The green house is on the left side of the white house.
They drink coffee in the green house.
The man who smokes Pall Mall has birds.
In the yellow house they smoke Dunhill.
In the middle house they drink milk.
The Norwegian lives in the first house.
The man who smokes Blend lives in the house next to the house with cats.
In the house next to the house where they have a horse, they smoke Dunhill.
The man who smokes Blue Master drinks beer.
The German smokes Prince.
The Norwegian lives next to the blue house.
They drink water in the house next to the house where they smoke Blend.
So, which one gets cancer first?
Steve works to repair non-functioning alarm clocks. Currently he has one in the shop that runs too slow (but at a dependable rate), and/or is several hours off. He uses this one to wake up.
Steve works on a superfast airplane. He sleeps on the plane, but knows that he must get up in 3 hours because it’ll be eight in the morning at that time.
Steve works at a proverbial brain teaser lighthouse. He gets up at eight PM to turn on the light, then goes back to bed after setting the clock again.
Steve sets the clock to wake someone else, and then goes to sleep himself. The other person, at the end of their shift, resets the clock for Steve when he/she goes to bed. Perhaps they are part of a security team somewhere.
If it takes half a chicken half a day to lay half an egg, then how long does it take a monkey with a wooden leg to kick all the seeds out of a dill pickle?
When the snail dies due to malnutrition, it will fall off the side of the well into the water. Therefore, the BLACK STRIPED snail will simply disintegrate, as opposed to turning a shade of grey, as a dry snail might. Now, the color of the snail shell, (if indeed there is a shell) is not relevant because the snail is not the shell and the shell is not the snail. That’s how these brain teasers work, they get you thinking along one train of thought, while really you should be focusing on something else. Here, focus on the snail—not the shell! The shell would be red…as in RED HERRING!
Let’s see what we can figure out. From clue 5 we know the diver is Karl and (clue 3) he has a birthday. The crook is not a complete heel (clue 4), as he donates money to the cake fund and he is not John. Nor is John the actor (clue 4), therefore he is the baker. Mike is also not the crook, (clue 2), but unless he and Mike are together trying to rob the diver (Karl), we can assume they were going to deliver the cake (clue 3). Therefore (clues 1, 2) Mike must be the actor. Now why would an actor and a crook be friends? We know that they are friends because of the pastry fund (clue 4), and we can assume that the baker (John) is not as close to the diver (Karl) as the Actor (Mike) and the crook because he, (John) did not go to visit Karl with Mike and the crook (clue 2). But because John also chipped in money instead of just simply making the cake (clue 4), we can assume he is also not a crook. Because the crook accompanies the actor (clue 2), and does not seem to have any other job (clue 1) we can deduce that the crook is an agent for the actor. Because the actor (Mike) is paying so much attention to his agent (the crook) thus preventing him from robbing Karl (the diver) in the trip to his house (clue 2), we can identify the actor as a detective (clues 1, 3) Therefore the actor is Mike Conners, who played Mannix. A quick google search tells us that Mike Conners agent is named Paul. Paul is the crook.
Lee walks into a restaurant. He orders a bowl of albatross soup. He swallows one spoonful, then immediately departs the restaurant. He goes into an alley, puts a gun to his head, and commits suicide. Why is this all perfectly legal?
That’s how these work, but you’re utterly wrong. You missed the fact that the snail crawls up the wall each day, after dying the previous night.
The snail is, therefore, either the Phoenix or is Jesus, and is therefore either flame-orange or swarthily tanned. HOWEVER! We know that Jesus only rises after three days, and the Phoenix rises again just about immediately. Therefore I’m going with flame orange.
No, Left Hand of Dorkness. I think you missed the point. The snail only symbolically climbs up the wall each night. Because if the snail actually resurrects itself, eventually, it will escape the well (dependent on how much water is in the well). That clearly is illogical, because then our poor gastropod will not be able to fall into the well and repeat its Sisyphusian struggle. However, if we accept (as we must) that it is the intention, and only the intention of the snail to escape the well (and it’s own infinite futility) then I stand by my answer.
Note: We must preclude the possibility that the snail falls into the water and merely repeats exactly its daily climb (beginning always at the waterline) and fall thereby never achieving the opening of the well. Obviously a snail dying and falling into the well cannot be expected to be able to swim to the side of the well and climb two feet and fall. Again, we must look at only the idea of snail without actually theorizing an existing supernatural one.
A plane crashes on the border between Canada and Mexico. Where does the airline bury the evidence of the crash so they don’t get sued?
You must cross a river with a in a boat wolf, a goat, and a head of lettuce. If the goat and the wolf are left alone, the goat will eat the wolf. If the goat and the lettuce are left alone the boat will eat the wolf. You can only carry two of these items in the boat at the same time. Damn, that’s one big head of lettuce, isn’t it?
Brothers and sisters I have none,
But this man’s father is my father’s son.
What was the bear’s name?
Oops, I just realized that one is insoluble. Here, try this:
You must cross a river in a boat with a wolf, a goat, and a head of lettuce. If the goat and the wolf are left alone, the goat will eat the wolf. If the goat and the lettuce are left alone the wolf will eat the boat. You can only carry two of these items in the boat at the same time. Why didn’t you take the bridge instead?
Three men check into a hotel and pay ten dollars each for a total of thirty dollars. The clerk realizes he overcharged them five dollars and gives it to the bellboy to return to the three men. The bellboy decides to give each man a dollar and pockets the other two. What kind of hotel only charges ten dollars for a room in the first place?
If man is given a prescription of three pills, and told he must take one every half hour, how long before he begins to see yellow polka dots in the sky?
A king wishes to choose a top advisor. The three candidates are blindfolded and hats are put on their heads. When the blindfolds are removed, everyone can see the color of the other candidate’s hats, but not their own. The king then tells everyone that they have either a red or a blue hat on. He then asks the candidates to raise their hand if they know the color of the hat that the candidate on his/her right thinks that the candidate on their left is wearing, but then to drop their hands if they know the color of the hat that the other two candidates surmise that the third candidate believes that the first candidate is wearing. All candidates raise their hands, and after a while the third candidate drops his hand and says “My hat is yellow.” How should he advise a king who selects his creative team based on their ability to discern hat color? Was his hat yellow on the back side as well?
This is the worst kind of brain teaser. We are not told where the road is, whether the man was a truth teller or a liar, whether the temperature was cold enough for ice, the names of the fish in the fishbowl…or if there even was a fishbowl! Sadly, too often lateral thinking puzzles leave too much for the solver to have to figure out, and multiple solutions are possible. Trillionaire, please remember that the key to a really good example in the genre is to give enough information to give the puzzlee a chance!
Here, try this: