While I was in the evil forest pondering the 3 Dot problem, the evil forest people took over this page and posted many riddles that folks sent me.
Though I would love to give full attention to all your questions, comments and whinings, the forest people have strictly forbidden it. So I humbly apologize and need to tell you now that I will not be able to respond to any mail regarding these riddles. (Maybe the paint is running down my forehead and I can see the color...)
Though surely I would love to respond to mail such as, "I don't really believe that riddle X is possible, because, you know, like, it's sooo waaay too hard and Bill isn't really a liar and..." Yes, I will surely miss reading all that thoughtful and carefully crafted mail. (Maybe there's only one can of paint in the room and it's green...)
The evil forest people want to thank the many confused individuals who sent in these riddles. And so do I. (Maybe there is green paint on the King's hand...)
thanks,
-brent
p.s.: The evil forest people claim that these are in a secret order to maximize their effect, but I don't believe them.
p.p.s: Unless this page is on fire, please do not write me regarding these riddles! It's the forest peoples' fault!
p.p.p.s: If you are thinking of writing, then repent of your evil ways!
p.p.p.p.s: Also check out Real Riddles
A farmer has one rock weighing 40 pounds. Using a balance scale and this rock, he can measure 40 pound units of wheat, which he sells at the market. One day, his neighbor comes by and borrows the rock. After a few days, the neighbor returns and tells the farmer that he has some bad news and some good news.
The bad news is that he dropped the 40 pound rock and it broke into four pieces. The good news, he says, is that the farmer can now use these four fragments to measure any amount from 1 to 40 pounds, to an accuracy of one pound. How much does each rock fragment weigh?
You are working in a dairy and have two pots to hold milk. One holds 5 gallons, and one holds 3 gallons. Two customers have ordered 4 gallons each. They will bring their own containers which hold more than 4 gallons. Can you measure out 4 gallons using your 5, and 3 gallon pots?
A man rides his horse to town on Friday. Stays for three days, and leaves on Friday. How can that be?
All the fish in this stream weight exactly 1/2 of a pound plus 1/2 of a fish; isn't that odd?? How much does an odd little fish weigh?
Think of words ending in -GRY. Angry and hungry are two of them. There are only three words in the English language. What is the third word? The word is something that everyone uses every day. If you have listened carefully, I have already told you what it is.
What is it?
There was a man who needed a haircut and he was in a small town and it was miles away from any other town and he decided he had a few hours to kill and so he figured he would use the extra time to figure out which barber was better so he went to the first barber and he saw a somewhat poorly dressed man with a shabby haircut outdated chair and he had just the bare necessities and then the man walked over to the other shop and that barber had a nice haircut and newer razers and sissors and had alot of chairs and the whole place looked A-1 ---but the man decided to go back to other shop to get his hair cut.
Why did the man go to the 1st shop?
Three men are out in a rain storm and are trying to find a place to stay. They come to a hotel and ask the clerk how much it costs for one room for one night. The clerk tell them that it is $25 a night. The three men consult with each other and decide that they can't split 25 into 3 evenly, so they tell the clerk that they will pay $30 for the room so that each person can pay $10. The clerk agrees and they go to their room.
The hotel manager was watching and when they had left he came out and told the clerk that he could not take the extra money from them and that he was to the extra five dollars back up to the people.
As the clerk was going to the room, he thought to himself that it was not possibe to split five into three evenly, so he took two dollars and gave the three remaining dollars to the men.
Each one of the men got one dollar back, so that means that each paid $9 instead of $10. Now 9 times 3 is 27, plus the two that the clerk took makes it 29. What happened to the missing dollar?
You had 100 bars of gold on a truck that you wanted moved to your warehouse. Each bar weighed a pound. You hired ten people to carry the gold into your warehouse. They carried ten bars each, one bar at a time and created their own stack in the warehouse.
One of them turned out to be a thief. That person shaved an ounce off of each bar he carried.
Now, you have a scale that you can use just once. How do you figure out who stole the gold?
What is the next number in this series?
Each number can be formed by applying a simple rule to the number before it, so what you need to do is discover that rule. You don't need to have any complex math skills to solve this puzzle.
by Liesl Hammond
100 coins lie on a table, you are allowed to take between 1 and 6 coins, then your opponent follows, and so forth. You have to take the last coin, and you start. Is there a strategy that assures you a win ?
A man wants to visit a prisoner, but is told, "Only close relatives may visit." He replies, "Brothers and sisters have I none, but that man's father is my father's son."
Should he be allowed to visit the prisoner?
One day you return to the forrest of the kind-but-not-so-bright forest people and find that they actually are bright. Apperently their new king, after you left, bought a set of 4 volumes of books on the subject of solving perplexing riddles. He read them, and placed them on his bookshelf when he was done. Now as a new rule, all who wish to enter the village must solve a riddle to gain admittance.
So you walk up to the entrance and a worm comes out to meet you. He says.. "To pass you must answer me this. Since all the forrest people became smart I thought I would learn as well by reading the four volumes of books on solving riddles. Now four volumes is alot to read, so I thought I would take it two volumes at a time. Yesterday I decided to get through the first two volumes. So I wiggled my way to the first page of volume one and ate all the way to the last page of volume 2, then wiggled out and went home.
Then today I took the next two volumes starting at the first page of volume 3 and eating through to the last page of volume 4.
I eat in a straight line and it is horizontal. Now each cover of the book is 1 cm thick and all the pages of each book are 2 cm. So each book is 4 cm thick.
So finally the question is.....What distance did I eat through?"
Note: The answer is not 12 or 16 and you didn't squash the worm and walk past.
There was a man who lived on the 30th floor of a building. On rainy days he took the elevator all the way up to his room. On sunny days he went to the 20th floor and walked the rest. Why?
by Joselito S. Watiwat
A lowland people was held captured by the cannivals in the forest but it is their tradition to give a chance to ther captive by asking question, if the captive answers it correctly then he'll be allowed to be free. The leader of the tribe asks: okay, in that pit are the heads of all the lowland people we have killed, all you have to do is determine its count but i will give you a hint.
Please help the lowland people determine the total people killed or his head will be added into the pit.
What is this word? If it's spelled right, it's spelled wrong, and if spelled wrong is spelled right.
What object am I talking about? It's as light as a feather, can be seen by the human eye, and if you put it in a bucket it will make the bucket litter?
by: Michael Saunders
Three men and a monkey live in a treehouse on an island. The men find a nice ripe bunch of bananas but it takes them all day to get up the tree and bring them down. So they decide to go to sleep and divide up the bananas in the morning.
During the night the first man wakes up while the others sleep, looks at the bananas, and decides to take his 1/3 of the bunch. Since the bunch didn't divide evenly he gave the extra banana to the monkey. After he fell asleep the second man woke up in the same way and took his third, giving the extra banana to the monkey. Finally the third man woke up and did the same, taking a third of the bananas in the bunch and since it didn't divide evenly into three's he gave the extra banana to the monkey.
The next morning the men woke up and divided up what was left into three piles, giving the extra banana to the monkey.
What is the least number of bananas that could be in this bunch?
You are in an island with a sheep, grass, and a wolf. And you need to bring all of them to shore. The problem is that you can only take one item at a time (Sheep/Wolf/Grass). How do you get to the island without a problem, considering that if you took the wolf first, the sheep would eat the grass?
by Jonathan B
6 People are seated on the outside of a cicle facing in towards each other. Every one of them has a green or red disk stuck to their backs. There are three red and three green disks. Each person has the ability to know the color of the disk on the person on his left and the color of the 2 people to his right. You also know that the person on your left is cheating and knows the color of one person on his left and the color of three people to his right and that only those sitting next to this cheater know he is cheating. You see green to your left, green on your right and red second on your right.
You are told you must determine...... What color you have? (in doing so you can figure out everyones colors)
Everybody is quiet. What color do you have?
by Kevin Williams
Forest Hotel Accounting
Each individual rooms costs the forest hotel manager $1000 dollars per night to maintain whether it is occupied or night. This is a really nice hotel! Yet the manager always charges the same price: $1 dollar. His accountant flips out at this unbeleiveable price and and committs suicide when he sees the accounting books. The books reflect that the hotel breaks even every night. How is this possible?
Doubletree INN
A new hotel opens with the same amount of rooms as all of the natural numbers. An infinite amount of guests the size of the natural numbers shows up and the hotel is filled. The next day, an infinite amount of guests show up the size of the real numbers. Can the hotel accomodate these new guests and how?
What we
What runs but never walks,
has a bed but never sleeps,
has a mouth but never talks,
has a face but never weeps?
Heavy Load. You have a load of 7 bricks. One of the bricks is slightly heavier than the rest. Using a balance how do you find the heavy brick with only 2 weighings?
A truck is weighed shortly before passing over a suspension bridge and is found to have a gross weight of precisely 25,000 lbs. The bridge has a structural capacity of precisely 25,000 lbs.
Just before the 50 ft. truck passes over the 200 ft. long bridge, a small bird lands on the truck and rides all the way across. The bridge does not collapse. Explain.
You are on an island. It is a complete circle. You must save yourself and your children. It is a totally dry island, just forest, i.e. no rivers, streams puddles etc.
The island is totally surrounded by straight faced cliffs and the water below them is shark infested (i.e. no going in the water). You have no tools and therfore cannot cut down any trees or dig a hole etc... Lightning strikes at the other end of the island and it will slowly, but evenly, burn the whole island (i.e it may take hours but everything on the island will go up in flames). How do you save yourself and your family?
While exploring the wilds of Canada, Wild Man Dave was captured by hostile wood fairies. Brad, the powerful chief of the fairies told him he could make one final statement which would determine how he would die. If the statement he made was false, he would be boiled in water. If the statement were true, he would be fried in oil.
Wild Man Dave found neither of this options too his liking, so he made a statement that got him out of this seemingly impossible situation.
What did he say?
A sultan calls his two sons to meet him and tells them that he'll leave all his kingdom to the son who owns the slowest camel. They are to have a race immediately to determine which is the slowest camel. The sultan sends his sons out into the desert with their camels and they find a man waiting by a starting line drawn in the sand. The sons wait behind the line, and when the man shouts, "Go" they just look at each other. The sons wander around in the desert, not making for the finish line, for several hours, when they come upon a wise man.
They go into the small hut with the wise man, tell him their story, and the wise man wispers something quietly into their ears. The two boys then run out of the hut, jump onto the camels and rush towards the finish line.
What did the wise man say?
There is a king who wants to rid his kingdom of adulterous women. Instead of going after the women himself, he posts a proclaimation that any man who is married to an adulterous wife must kill her the day that he finds out.
In this town there are 40 adulterous women. Everyone in the town knows everyone else and everyone talks about the affairs. Therefore everyone in the town, men and women, knows who the adulterous women are, except of course, the husbands don't know if their own wives are adulterous.
Once the proclaimation is posted, the women become scared, and no further adutery is committed. The men who have cheating wives are never told by anyone that their wives were cheating. Everyone in the town is assumed to be intelligent and obediant to the king. Everyone goes home after they've read the proclaimation. The next morning, nothing has happened, nor the next.
In fact, no woman is killed until 40 days after the proclamaition. On that day, all 40 women are killed by their husbands as originally directed by the king 40 days ago. No faithful women were harmed.
The king knew that all the women would by killed on the 40th day. How did he know?
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