Here’s another one I always liked:
Tea is out, but coffee is in.
Glasses are in, but contacts are out.
Paper is out, but books are in.
Yellow is in, blue is out. But combine them together? Green is definitely in!
cheating is out. Looking? In.
The key is double-lettered words.
Unless you can carry on full conversations in your sleep, like I apparently can. I can look awake and sound awake, but in fact be asleep.
I know a varient on that called “Good is, Bad isn’t”–it helps if you can spell, and one of my friends who introduced it can’t.
[spoiler]doubled VOWELS are, non-doubled vowels aren’t**
Another friend had fun with homophones, “Beets are, beats aren’t, meet is, meat isn’t, too is, two isn’t, to isn’t” (yes, that was after we all knew what the rule was).
I fixed the first half of the spoiler tag, but not the second half. Should have previewed.
Hey, we did a whole thread like that years ago, In the Valley of the Green Glass Doors. Fun times, fun times.
Here’s one I came across on another board, and I’ve always liked the logic:
In the middle of the ocean is an island with a mountain. On the island are six magic wells, numbered 1 to 6 based on their order from the coast to the mountain peak (where the sixth well sits). Each well contains an undetectable poison and will kill the drinker in an hour, but the poison can be negated by drinking water from any higher-numbered well. Water from the sixth well has no antidote. A dragon lives on the mountain and guards the sixth well, allowing no one to approach.
A brave knight decides to challenge the dragon to a duel. They agree to meet the next day, each with a glass of water. They will switch glasses, drink the water, and whoever lives will be the winner (if both live or both die, they’ll call it a draw).
They meet at the appointed time, switch glasses, and drink. An hour later, the knight declares that the dragon is dead.
[spoiler] 1) The knight lived because he drank from one of the other wells just before coming to the duel. Since the dragon is presumably coming with a glass of water from well #6, drinking that glass negates the poison the knight took prior to the duel.
One I got last weekend, it’s bad but probably works well on kids. Translating from Spanish so you may want to rephrase the baby’s line, I’m not sure it sounds right.
The Papa elephant, Mama elephant and Baby elephant reach a river. They swim across the river and when they reach the other side, Baby elephant says “cool, all four of us crossed just fine!”
Why did Baby elephant say “all four of us”?
He hadn’t learned to count yet.
I love these sorts of riddles!
My favorite one, which may not work in all places:
A man has just found out his wife is having an affair, so he goes to visit some mutual friends of theirs. They know that he likes the bedroom with the old-fashioned gas fireplace, so they set him up in there and say goodnight.
The next morning he doesn’t come down to breakfast. They knock and knock, and when he doesn’t answer, they bust down the locked door–and are overwhelmed by the odor of gas. Their friend lies dead in bed, while the gas fireplace, turned on but unlit, merrily pumps gas into the room.
The coroner rules the death an accident. Two weeks later, his widow, having gotten away with murder, gets the life insurance policy and moves with her boyfriend to the Bahamas.
How did she kill him?
The room was locked, but the basement was not. During the night, the wife, knowing of her husband’s love for that room, sneaked into the basement, turned off the house’s gas for thirty seconds, then turned it back on.