You’ll have to edit this one for the children, but it’s good. Tell them to write the answer to the question “Does God exist?” on a piece of paper such that every English speaker will agree the correct answer is written on the paper regardless of their religious beliefs.
Ask each how they interpret this: Woman without her man is nothing.
Woman, without her man, is nothing.
Woman? Without her, man is nothing.
Or try this one. I’ve never seen it posted anywhere because an acquaintance of mine made it up:
A man with no eyes
Sees apples on a tree
He neither takes them
Nor leaves them
Now how can that be?
The man had the hiccups. He asked for a glass of water to cure them. Instead, the bartender “scared” them away.
I recommend a game called Mind Trap. You can dispense with the board part and just read the questions.
If the riddle were “What’s the only question you can never honestly answer ‘yes’?”, I’d know the answer. I wonder if it was misprinted, or you’re misremembering.
My dad used to love these on long car trips. I’ve always especially enjoyed the ones like “When the Music Stops”, where there’s an enormous backstory that has to be figured out. I used to lord these over people in study hall back in high school, too.
- “If Frank had seen the sawdust under the rug, he wouldn’t have killed himself.”
Frank is a sideshow act, billed as the Smallest Man In The World. His wife, who wants him dead to collect his insurance money, has been slowly sanding the legs of all their furniture down, so Frank thinks he’s growing and therefore losing his livelihood.
- “Nine men travel to New York. They look inside a box, are satisfied, and go home.”
Ten men were shipwrecked on a small island. As food became scarce, each man allowed the others to cut off his left arm for meat. They were rescued before the tenth man lost his arm, and he swore he’d have it removed when they got home safe. I don’t know why he did this, but that’s not part of the riddle. 
- “A man walks into a restaurant and orders Albatross Soup. As soon as he tastes it, he leaves the restaurant and kills himself.” (Wow, most of these do involve dead people, huh?)
Another shipwreck/cannibalism story. The man, his wife, and a second man were shipwrecked. The man and his wife took ill, and the wife died. The second man made albatross soup to help nurse the first man back to health, and they were rescued. Upon tasting albatross soup in a restaurant, the man discovers it tastes nothing like he remembers it, and must in fact have been eating soup made from his dead wife. Man, these are really gross, aren’t they?
“A man lives in an apartment building. Every morning, he leaves his apartment, rides the elevator down to the street, and leaves the building. When he returns in the evening, he always walks up the stairs to his apartment, unless it’s raining, or his wife is with him.” Why?
The man is a midget. He can reach the elevator button for the building lobby, but he’s too short to reach the button for his upper-floor apartment. If it’s raining, he can push the button with his umbrella, and if his normal-sized wife is with him, she can reach the button.
In the same situation as if he had planned to go home, only to change his mind after seeing a man with a mask holding something.
The man attempting to go home (whether succeeding in his quest or not) is playing baseball. The man with the mask is the opposing catcher, who’s at home plate holding the ball that can be used to tag the first man out.
Here are a couple others:
- One hundred and one full-grown Dalmatians, and none was ever a puppy.
Dalmatian dogs are named after the coastal area of Croatia known as Dalmatia, and people from that region are also Dalmatians.
- You come upon an abandoned cabin in the woods. It is equipped with a candle, a gas stove, and a fireplace. You havew only one match to light all three. What do you light first?
The match, of course.
Along the same lines as the “she died she died she died, is she dead?”
One person says “click click bang bang click click bang who’s dead” while pointing at various people in turn, using thier finger as a gun. (as many or few clicks and bangs as the pointer desires)
First person to speak after that is dead.
We did that at brunch in college at least once. Some of us had heard it before, some figured it out quickly, and some were baffled for a long time as to how we all knew who was dead–I think one would have almost preferred mindreading to the truth. We even let him do the clicks and the bangs.
Alternate version. “I shot So and So. Who’s dead?”
This is one of my favorites because there is no “play on words” type gimmic. You could actually physically set up this riddle to see if anyone could solve it:
On the wall in front of you are three identical switches labeled 1, 2, and 3. They are all in the “off” (down) position. Each switch controls one of three lightbulbs in the adjoining room labeled A, B, and C. The adjoining room is completely sealed off from the first and has a solid door which is closed. Your job is to determine which switch controls which lightbulb. You may flip the switches on/off as much as you like and leave them in either “on” or “off” position. Here’s the catch- Once you’re done flipping switches how you like them and open the door to the second room to observe the lightbulbs you may not touch the switches again! You must enter the second room with the bulbs, make any observations, and declare which switch controls which lightbulb (one switch per bulb).
You put switch 1 and 2 in the “on” position. Leave switch 3 in the “off” position. Wait a couple of minutes. Put switch 2 in the “off” position. Immeidately enter the second room. The bulb that is lit is controlled by switch 1. The unlit bulb that is still hot to the touch is controlled by switch 2. The cold unlit bulb is controlled by switch 3.
When we were kids we called this “Black Magic”. When you were with another group of kids you would ask “Does anyone know Black Magic?” Whomever said yes you would know that they knew how it was done and you’d use them as your assistant. (the item that is “the one” is the first object the assistant mentions after a black object)
The search term you want is “lateral thinking puzzles.” There are books full of these things in the games section of any bookstore. I have several myself.
Okay one more. Again no gimmicks. Straight forward as stated.
A family of 4 needs to cross an old foot bridge that is about to be hit by a storm.
It’s dark, they only have 1 lantern, and you need the lantern to see your way across. Only two people can cross at a time, but a single person can cross by themselves. It takes Dad 1 minute to make the crossing, the Boy it takes 2 minutes, Mom it takes 5 minutes, and Grandma it takes 10 minutes.
Get them all across in less than 18 minutes or else the storm will take out the bridge.
Dad and Boy cross (2 min.), Dad returns (1 min.), Mom and Grandma cross (10 min.), Boy returns (2 min.), Dad and Boy cross (2 min). (2+1+10+2+2 = 17 minutes)
I’ve heard one similar to this, but it’s: Two men go to a restaurant and order a bowl of albatross soup. After they each take a bite, one man pulls out a gun and shoots the other. Why?
The two men were on a deserted island with a third man. The third man died of natural causes, and since meat was pretty scarce, the two remaining men decided to butcher the dead man and eat him. Around this time they also found a recently deceased albatross, and decided to butcher that as well. Since the thought of eating a human weighed heavily on their minds, they decided to keep the human meat and bird meat seperate, and cook them seperately. One man would eat the bird meat, the other would eat the human, but neither would know which was which. They vowed if they were ever rescued, they would meet at a restaurant and order a bowl of albatross soup, and which ever one of them had tasted it before would shoot the other one for crimes against humanity
Huh. I think I like the inherent tragedy of mine better.
Yours actually makes a little more sense. Mine’s just completely full of holes; granted I first heard it when I was in middle school.
Unlikely. Do a google search on it and hundreds of sites show up. It is done with apples, pears, plums and any number of other fruits.
Ruffian - Go take a look at rec.puzzles FAQ. There are many good puzzles in there to share with your class. Also, I’ve found the puzzles on cartalk.com to be good as well. They have them archived on their site and I’ve used many of those on my kids.
We did it slightly differently and didn’t call it “Black Magic,” but you’re right; it was the same kind of idea. Ideally, you wanted an assistant who knew how it worked–gotta keep the secret safe, eh?
Here’s one I cribbed from a Piers Anthony book:
You have twelve facially identical coins, and a balance scale. You know that eleven of the coins are genuine, but one (and only one) is a counterfeit. The counterfeit might be heavier than a real coin, but it may also be lighter; you only know that its weight is different.
With only three weighings on the balance scale, find the counterfeit.
There may be more than one method, but here’s the one I know:
[spoiler] First weighing, always: 1 2 3 4 against 5 6 7 8. Note which side is heavier.
Second weighing: 1 2 3 5 against 4 9 10 11. If the same side as before is heavier, you know that 1, 2, or 3 is the counterfeit, and you know whether the counterfeit is heavy or light. Weigh 1 against 2 to find the counterfeit.
If the scale reverses and the opposite side is now heavier, then you know that one of the coins that switched places (4 or 5) is the counterfeit. Weigh one of them against any known good coin for the third weighing to find the counterfeit.
If the scale balances for the second weighing, you know that one of the coins you removed (6 7 8) is the counterfeit, and you know whether it’s heavy or light. Weigh 6 against 7 to find the counterfeit.
If the scales balance on the first weighing, you know that the counterfeit is one of the remaining four (9 10 11 12). Weigh 9 against 10. If those balance, weigh 9 against 11. If those balance, you know the counterfeit is 12. If 9 against 11 unbalances, you know that the counterfeit is 11. Now, if 9 against 10 unbalances, weigh 9 against 11. If there’s a balance, the counterfeit is 10. If they still unbalance, the counterfeit is 9.
The “trick” to the solution is the reversal of coins 4 and 5 in the second weighing. Creative.[/spoiler]
A man walks into a restaurant and orders albatross soup. The waiter tells him he needs to get over his tragic island experience and concentrate on the here and now. The man agrees, and settles for a cheeseburger instead.
Then he dies of E. coli poisoning.
My dad told me a similar one when I was a kid:
Every day, a woman called Midge would leave her 10th floor apartment, take the elevator to the lobby and go to work. When she returned home, she would get on the elevator, press 5, then get off and walk the rest of the way up to her apartment. Why?