John Davis' Home Page ->Free games,eye teasers, quiz, mathemagic,.. ©2003
Brain teasers
Home Games Mathemagic Brain Teasers Jokes Maths Search E-mail Htm Squisher Eye Teasers Quiz Guest Book More

1) Tarun collected a total of 16 spiders and beetles in a box. Total number of legs was 108. How many spiders and beetles did he collect ?

2) Deepu bought a hat & coat for Rs.250. The coat cost Rs.200 more than the hat. What are their costs ?

3) Insert mathematical signs (+ - x /) each once so that result is 1000 ?

[a] 568 ( ) 71 ( ) 4 ( ) 103 ( ) 236 = 1000
[b] 24 ( ) 618 ( ) 15 ( ) 9 ( ) 70 = 1000

4) Interchange any number from upper row with any no. from lower row so that one row is double the other ?
49067
58132

5) Who is the Engineer ?
Study the 6 clues given below and logically find out who is the engineer.

On a train, Smith Robinson and Jones are the fireman, brakeman and engineer, but not respectively. Also aboard the train are three businessmen who have the same names: a Mr. Smith, a Mr. Robinson and a Mr. Jones.

  1. Mr. Robinson lives in Detroit.
  2. The brakeman lives exactly halfway between Chicago and Detroit.
  3. Mr. Jones earns exactly $20,000 per year.
  4. The brakeman's nearest nearest neighbour, one of the passengers, earns exactly three times as much as the brakeman.
  5. Smith beats the fireman at billiards.
  6. The passenger whose name is the same as the brakeman's lives in Chicago.

6) By inserting the same letter 16 times in appropriate places this jumble of letters will be transformedinto a sentence of some sense :
VRYVNINGRNSTARNDIGHTNCNTSXCDINGLYASILY.

7) A man had a clock that struck the hours, and also struck once to mark the half hours. He came home one night late. As he opened the door, he heard the clock strike once. Half an hour later, it struck once. Again, a half hour after that, it struck once, and a half hour after that it struck once again. What time was it when he came in ?

8) A hunter left camp and walked 5 miles due south. At that point he shot a bear. He then walked 3 miles due west, and found he was at the same distance from the camp as when he shot the bear. What colour was the bear ?

9) Add the missing vowels to these well-known proverbs:
[a] BRDNTHHNDSWRTHTWNTHBSH
[b] LKBFRYLP
[c] STTCHNTMSVSNN

10) In a certain African village there live 800 women. Three percent of them are wearing one earring. Of the other 97 percent, half are wearing two earrings, half are wearing none. How many earrings all together are being worn by the women ?

11) "I guarantee," said the pet-shop salesman, "that this parrot will repeat every word it hears." A customer bought the parrot but found it would not speak a single word. Nevertheless, the salesman had told the truth. Can you explain ?

12) Their are three errers in this item. Study it carefully and see if you can find all of them.

13) How much dirt is there in a hole 1ft by 1ft by 1ft?

14) You wake up in a pitch black room. You have a bag containing 6 black and 6 white socks all mixed together. You want to pick out a matching pair. What is the minimum number of socks you have to pick to get a matching pair ?

15) A deep-sea fishing boat is lying in the harbour. Over its side hangs a rope ladder, with its end just touching the water. The rungs of the ladder are one foot apart. The tide rises at the rate of 8 inches an hour. At the end of six hours how many of the rungs will be covered?

16) A camp cook wanted to measure 4 litres of soup out of a jug but he had only a 5-litre and 3-litre bottle. How did he manage it ?

17) A logician vacationing in the South Seas finds himself on an island inhabited by two tribes - one of liars and the other of truth-tellers. He comes to a fork in the road and has to ask a native which branch he should take to reach a village. He has no way of telling whether the native is a liar or truth-teller. The logician thinks for a moment and asks one question only. From the reply he knows which road to take. What question does he ask ?

18) Three boxes - one containing two black marbles, one containing two white marbles, the other containing one black and one white marble - are put before you. The boxes are labelled to indicate their contents - BB, WW and BW - but the labels have been switched so that every box is now incorrectly labelled. You are asked to take one marble at a time out of any box, without looking inside, and putit back , and in this way determine the contents of all three boxes. What is the smallest number of drawings you will need to determine the contents of each box ?

19) You have ten stacks of coins, each consisting of ten 1-rupee coins. One entire stack is counterfeit, but you do not know which stack. You know that the weight of a counterfeit 1-rupee is one gram more than the genuine coin. You may weigh the coins on a scale. What is the smallest number of weighings necessary to determine which stack is counterfeit ?

20) What is it that occurs once in a second, once in a month, once in a century, yet not at all in a year or week ?

21) A bookkeeper noticed there were two consecutive double letters in the word balloon. Also in woolly and spittoon. Then she tried to think of a word with three consecutive pairs of double letters. She couldn't think of any. Can you ?

22) In the following string of letters, a logical sentence may be obtained by removing all unnecessary letters: AALLLOUGNINCEACELSSSEANRYTELNETCTEERS

23) How quickly can you find out what's unusual about this paragraph ? It looks so ordinary you'd think nothing was wrong with it at all - and, in fact, nothing is. But it is unusual. Why ? Study it, think about it, and you may find out. But you must do it without coaching: I'm not going to assist you in any way. No doubt, if you work at it for a bit, it will dawn on you. Who knows until you try? So hop to it, try your skill and pray for luck. Par is about half an hour.

24) What five letter-word contains four personal pronuons, with the letters in the correct order?

25) Make a single common word from the following letters: pnlleeeessss.

26) Add one vowel to the letters wtthfl, then unscramble them and make a word.

27) What word is made shorter by adding a syllable to it?

28) An eccentric chap named Turner recently began singing his name Phtholognyrrh. Can you identify his bizzare orthography.

29) Another fellow spells the name of a homely vegetable in this formidable way:ghoughphtheightteeaau. Can you respell it to be more recognizable?

30) Are you observant enough to detect the common characteristics of these six words: deft,sighing, calmness, canopy, first, stun?

31) Rearrange these letters-OOUSWTDNERJ-to spell just one word.

32) My watch is ten minutes slow, though I'm under the impression it's five minutes fast. Your watch is five minutes fast, though you think it's ten minutes slow. We both plan to catch a four o'clock train. Who gets there first ?

33) I once asked a zookeeper how many birds and animals they had in the zoo. He smiled and said, "There are 30 heads and 100 feet. Figure it out from that." Can you ?

34) Mr. Brown, Mr. Green and Mr. Black were lunching together. One wore a brown necktie, one a green necktie, one a black necktie. "Have you noticed," said the man with the green tie, "that although our ties have colours that match our names, not one of us has on a tie that matches his own name ?"
"Yes, you're right!" exclaimed Mr. Brown. What colour tie was each man wearing ?

35) What is the five-letter word whose pronunciation isn't changed by removal of four of the five letters. Actually there are two words - one where last 4 letters can be removed and another where first 4 letters can be removed.

36) "How canyou throw a baesball with all your might, and have it stop and come right back to you...without hitting any wall ,or obstruction of any kind?"

38) "How could you head your automobile south on an ordinary road, drive it for one mile, and without turning, find yourself a mile north of where you started to turn."

39) "If sneakers are used in tennis, cleats in football and spikes in baseball...in what sport are all-metal shoes used ?"

40) Suppose you wanted a log cut up. You called a farmer who said he would charge 50 cents to cut it into two pieces. How much would the farmer charge ?"

41) Two fathers and two sons shot three rabbits. Yet each took one rabbit for himself. How is that possible ?

42) Two Red Indians were walking down a path. Little bull was the son of Big bear (those are their names) but Big bear was not the father of Little bull. How is it possible ?

43) Can you turn the following string of numbers into a meaningful English sentence: 100204180

44) Can you change this number to 6 ? IX

45) A 4-digit number reverses itself when multiplied by 4 (eg 1234 becomes 4321). Find the number.

46) We know that 18 + 18 + 3 + 3 + 9 = 51
EIGHTEEN +
EIGHTEEN +
***THREE +
***THREE +
****NINE
________
FIFTYONE


Here 9 letters - E,I,G,H,T,N,F,O,R - are used. By replacing each letter by 9 different digits make the addition correct.

47) Using eight 8's and math symbols we can make 1000 in this way 888 + 88 + 8 + 8 + 8 = 1000. Find out another way to get 1000 using eight 8's.

48) Using four 7's and math symbols make 100.

49) Using two 3's and math symbols make 20.

50) Multiply 123456789 with a number other than 1 to get another number with all the digits but with places changed.

51) Find two 6-digit numbers such that if we remove the first digit and place it after the last digit, we get thrice the original number.

52) A farmer had three sons. When he died, he left a will saying that his 34 cows shuld be divided among his sons in this way. "Eldest son gets 1/2, second son gets 1/3 & third son gets 1/9." This meant they had to cut some cows. But after thinking for a while and lending a few cows which they later returned, they managed it. How ?

53) Two bikers - Tom & Jerry - wanted to go from Delhi to Agra. They both started at the same time. Tom went at 50 km/h for the whole journey. Jerry went at 40 km/h for the first half of the trip and at 60km/h for the next half. Who will reach first ?

54) Hari had currency notes of denominations Rs.10, Rs.50, Rs.100 - a total of 7 notes. The number of Rs.10, Rs.50, Rs.100 notes was in increasing series (e.g. 3 Rs.10, 6 Rs.50, 7 Rs.100). After spending some money, he found that the order of the number of notes was reversed (e.g. 7 Rs.10, 6 Rs.50, 3 Rs.100). How much did he spend ?

55) Figure out these tricky words. They form their plural by adding 's'; but if you add another 's', it becomes another singular noun. Letters in the word are given in brackets.
concern(4)
royal title(6)
undergarment(3)
schedule of events(8)

Graphical

1) Can you cut this pie into eight pieces, by making only 3 straight cuts. You are not allowed to move the pieces after you start cutting.

2) Charlie wouldn't receive his allowance for another week yet. He had to pay his landlady so he decided to give his 7 - link chain, one link at a time. But his landlady wanted him to break only one link of the chain and still have the links one per day. Which link and how ?

3) Place three glasses in a row, the middle one upside down. Pick up two at a time and turn them over. Make three of these moves - never turning the same two glasses in consecutive moves - and end with all three upside down.

4) Arrange 20 matchsticks as shown. Move only three of the matchsticks so as to form a figure of only five squares - all the same size, and touching atleast one other square at some point.

5) A triangle of ten coins points away from you. Moving only three coins, make the triangle point towards you.

6) Arrange ten matches so that they form an equation in Roman numerals: XI + I = X. This equation is, of course, incorrect. Make the equation read correctly without touching anything.

7) Place 4 rectangular cards of identical size in the positions shown. Now form a square by moving only one card.

8) Twelve matches are placed to form four squares. Remove two matches and leava only two squares.

9) If it costs Rs.5 to break a link, and Rs.10 to weld it again - what is the least it would cost to join in a single length of chain th five segments shown here. (Hint - Less than Rs.60)

10) Find the total number of dots hidden to you.

11) Correct the equation by moving one matchstick.

12) By moving only one glass make a half-full glass in each pair.

More

1) Put these restated proverbs back in their original form :

  1. Individuals who perforce are constrained to be domiciled in vitreous structures of patent frangibility should on no account employ petrous formations as projectiles.
  2. That prudent avis which matutinally deserts the coziness of its abode will ensnare a vermiculate creature.
  3. Everything that coruscates with effulgence is not ipso facto aurous.
  4. Do not dissipate your competence by hebetudinous prodigality lest you subsequently lament an exiguous inadequacy.
  5. An addlepated beetlehead and his specie divaricate with startling prematurity.
  6. It can be no other than a maleficent horizontally propelled current of gaseous matter whose portentous advent is not the harbinger of a modicum of beneficence.
  7. One should hyperesthically exercise macrography upon that situs which one will eventually tenant if one propels oneself into the troposphere.
  8. Aberration is the hallmark of homo sapiens, while longanimous placability and condonation are the indicia of supramundane omniscience.

2) What is your wife's name ? Find out with this quiz.(for males only)

  1. Write down the number corresponding to the month of your birth from Table 1.
  2. Add the no corresponding to your favourite dish from Table 2.
  3. Multiply the answer by ten. Then add three if you want to know the name of your future wife, two for your present wife, one for your last wife.
  4. Reverse thie order of the figures, and subtract the result from the number you had before reversing. (Thus, 521 becomes 125 on reversing, which is subtracted from 521 - leaving 396)
  5. Reverse this answer and add the result to the number it was before reversing.
  6. Add 52,205,197 if you are a British Lord; otherwise add 423,571.
  7. Look up the number corresponding to the first letter of your surname in Table 3, and place it on the right-hand side of the previous answer.
  8. Repeat this with the next letter of your surname, and continue for all the letters of your surname, in order.
  9. Halve the answer.
  10. Divide the answer into groups of two figures. Each group represents a letter of your wife's name, when referred to Table 4. Find her name.






Home Games Mathemagic Brain Teasers Jokes Maths Search E-mail Htm Squisher Eye Teasers Quiz Guest Book More