How clever are you?

The brain is like a pencil: it must be constantly sharpened to keep it from being dull and unclear.

Reading is one of the best exercises to keep the brain healthy but solving puzzles and trick questions is its best aerobic workout.

Try these fun riddles and brainteasers (some old, some from the Net) to stimulate those lethargic cells within your cerebral cortex!

Resist the temptation to look at the answers at the end of the article.

Riddles

1. What bell doesn’t ring?

2. If yesterday had been Wednesday’s tomorrow and tomorrow is Sunday’s yesterday, what day would today be?

3. What seven-letter word becomes longer when the third letter is removed?

4. How can you say rabbit without the letter R?

5. What kind of jokes did Einstein make?

6. What has four eyes but can’t see?

7. What kind of clock is crazy?

8. What never gets any wetter no matter how hard it rains?

9. What has a neck, but no head?

10. What has one foot on each side and one in the middle?

11. Here on earth it is true, yesterday is always before today; but there is a place where yesterday always follows today. Where?

12. What do people make that nobody can ever see?

Word War

1. What English word can have 4 of its 5 letters removed and still retain its original pronunciation?

2. How, besides NME, can you spell enemy with 3 letters?

3. Why are A, E and U the prettiest vowels?

4. There is an 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 the single letter. What is the original word and what are the words it becomes after removing a letter at a time? (Hint: the single letter it ends with is I.)

5. What word of eight letters can you subtract five and leave ten?

6. What do mechanics charge to fix tires?

7. Why did the moron toss a glass of water and a slice of butter out the window?

8. What did one wall say to the other?

9. What did the wrapper say to the sandwich?

10. If solving word puzzles is one of the things at which you are proficient, see if you can think of a nine-letter word that contains only one vowel. (The clue in the wording of the puzzle).

11. What kind of table has no legs?

12. What do the following words have in common? Childhood, hand, nature, wind, fiddle.

Math Fun

1. A man, when asked by his niece how old he is, replied, "My age is now four times yours, but five years ago it was five times yours." How old is he?

2. Seven men arrive at a meeting, and each of them shakes hands once with each of the others. How many handshakes does that make?

3. A man died, leaving $10,000,000 to his widow, five sons and four daughters. Each daughter received an equal amount, each son received twice as much as a daughter, and the widow received three times as much as a son. How much did the widow receive?

4. What do the following numbers have in common? 3, 7, 10, 11, 12

5. The time is twenty-six minutes to one in the afternoon. The year is 1978, and the date is May 6th. What is the significance of this?

6. What should the tenth number in this series be? 3, 3, 5, 4, 4, 3, 5, 5, 4, ?

7. How can you measure 1 gallon of juice out of a barrel, if all you have available is a 3-gallon and a 5-gallon pitcher?

Brain Twisters

1. An old-fashioned bike wheel has 21 spokes. How many spaces are between the spokes – 20, 21, or 22?

2. There is a purple house. The purple house is one story and everything in it is purple. The doors are purple, the sofa is purple, the refrigerator is purple (go on as long as you like). What color are the stairs?

3. Mountain climbers found a dead climber frozen halfway up one of the world’s tallest mountains. In a diary found on the climber, he claimed to have reached the summit and was on his way down. How did they know he was lying?

4. The defendant in a costly court case asked his lawyer if he should send the judge a gift in the hope of influencing him. The lawyer said that would make the judge prejudiced against him. So he sent the gift and won the case. Explain why. (This does not work in all countries or with all judges!)

5. A woman in a very fine restaurant ordered some soup. She started to enjoy the soup and then asked the waiter to bring her a straw. She then finished her soup with the straw. She took the soup with the straw for a good reason. What was it?

Answers

Riddles:

1) dumbbell

2) Friday

3) lounger

4) bunny

5) wisecracks

6) Mississippi

7) a cuckoo clock

8) the ocean

9) a bottle

10) a yardstick

11) the dictionary

12) noise

Word War:

1) queue

2) foe

3) You cannot have beauty without them.

4) Startling, starting, staring, string, sting, sing, sin, in, i.

5) tendency

6) a flat rate

7) He wanted to see a waterfall and a butterfly.

8) Meet you at the corner.

9) See you at the exit.

10) strengths

11) the multiplication table

12) Each may be preceded by the word "second" to form a common phrase.

Math fun:

1) 80

2) 21

3) $3,000,000

4) The only vowel they contain, when written out fully, is the letter E.

5) The time and date may be written as 12:34 5.6.78.

6) 3. (The series shows the number of letters in the words one, two, three, etc.)

7) Fill up the 3-gallon pitcher and pour it into the 5-gallon pitcher. Now fill up the 3-gallon pitcher again and fill the 5-gallon pitcher to capacity. What remains in the 3-gallon pitcher is one gallon of juice.

Brain twisters:

1) 21 – draw them and count!

2) Since the purple house is one story, there are no stairs!

3) The dead climber still had his nation’s flag in his backpack which he would have left at the summit.

4) He sent the gift with the plaintiff’s name on a card with it.

5) She lost a contact lens in the soup so she used the straw to retrieve her lens!

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