The following puzzle consists of a proverb with all its vowels removed. The remaining letters have been broken into groups of four. Put back the vowels to find the proverb.
FLND HSMN YRSN PRTD.
Your pockets are tearing from the weight of all the coins in them. After you unload them onto the kitchen table, you discover something surprising. You have exactly the same number of pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters, totaling $6.15. How many of each coin do you have?
Three women are wearing bathing suits. Two are smiling, but they're sad; one is crying, but she's happy. Who are they?
Barbarino, Epstein, Horshack, and Washington are still in Buchanan High School, but now they have access to computers. Their Sweathog Communications System, or SCS, involves sending eMail back and forth between their computers. EMail travels from one computer directly to another computer only as follows:
From Barbarino to Epstein
From Barbarino to Horshack
From Barbarino to Washington
From Washington to Barbarino
From Epstein to Horshack
From Horshack to Epstein
From Epstein to Washington
From Washington to Horshack
1. If a piece of eMail is to travel from Horshack to Epstein with as few stops as possible, it must travel in which one of the following ways?
(A) Directly from Horshack to Epstein
(B) Via Barbarino but no other computer terminal
(C) Via Washington but no other computer terminal
(D) Via Barbarino and Washington, in that order
(E) Via Washington and Barbarino, in that order
2. Which one of the following lists all of the computers to which a piece of eMail can be sent directly from Washington?
(A) Barbarino
(B) Horshack
(C) Barbarino, Horshack
(D) Epstein, Horshack
(E) Barbarino, Epstein, Horshack
3. Which one of the following describes a way in which a piece of eMail could travel from Epstein back to Epstein?
(A) From Epstein to Barbarino, from Barbarino to Epstein
(B) From Epstein to Horshack, from Horshack to Barbarino,
from Barbarino to Washington, from Washington to Epstein
(C) From Epstein to Horshack, from Horshack to Washington,
from Washington to Barbarino, from Barbarino to Epstein
(D) From Epstein to Washington, from Washington to Barbarino,
from Barbarino to Horshack, from Horshack to Epstein
(E) From Epstein to Washington, from Washington to Horshack,
from Horshack to Barbarino, from Barbarino to Epstein
4. If all of the routes in the SCS are equal in length, and if eMail always travels along the shortest possible route, then the longest route any piece of eMail can travel in the SCS is the route from
(A) Epstein to Barbarino
(B) Horshack to Barbarino
(C) Horshack to Washington
(D) Washington to Barbarino
(E) Washington to Epstein
A cart pulled by a huffalon and loaded with decorated duplgoose eggs for the village Christmas Fair was taken by a thief while the proprietor was busy setting up his sales booth. The stolen property was subsequently recovered, and there are three suspects. They each make assertions below, but no one of them makes all true statements.
A: 1. B is innocent. 2. Everything C will say is false. 3. I am not guilty. B: 1. I did not do it. 2. C was in the village when it happened. 3. A's second statement is false. C: 1. A is the thief. 2. I was not even near the village when it happened. 3. I am innocent.
One of the three is guilty, but which one?
A woman recently hosted a political meeting to which she invited five guests. The names of the six people who sat down at the circular table were Abrams, Baxter, Clive, Dumont, Ekwall, and Fish. One of them was deaf, one was very talkative, one was terribly fat, one simply hated Dumont, one had a vitamin deficiency, and one was the hostess.
The person who hated Dumont sat directly opposite Baxter. The deaf one sat opposite Clive, who sat between the one who had a vitamin deficiency and the one who hated Dumont. The fat one sat opposite Abrams, next to the deaf person and to the left of the one who hated Dumont. The person who had a vitamin deficiency sat between Clive and the one who sat opposite the person who hated Dumont. Fish, who was a good friend of everyone, sat next to the fat person and opposite the hostess.
Identify these six people.
Farmer Sy Corncrib brought a basket of apples into his kitchen and had his six sons line up. The basket contained six apples. After he divided them equally among his sons, one apple was left in the basket. He did not cut or smash up any of the apples. How did he do it?
A farmer decided to raise turkeys and goats. Here is a conversation he had with a friend.
Friend: "How many turkeys and how many goats do you have?"
Farmer: "I have 30 heads and 100 feet."
Friend: "I can't tell from that!"
Farmer: "Oh, yes, you can!"
How many turkeys and how many goats does the farmer have?
Five letters can be rearranged for each pair of words below to match the two definitions. A different set of five letters is used for each line.
To toss; the value of
To perch; part of the human body
One who looks; feed on meadow grass, etc.
It's difficult being called on unexpectedly in class, but Professor Jones decided to do it to wake up his sleeping students. "I don't mind if you know my age," he said. "It's in all the directories, and I can assume the approximate age of one of you. No written homework tonight for the first person who can solve this: If you subtract one age from mine, you'll get 44, but if you multiply them together, you'll get 1280."
It took Tom fifteen seconds, because he tried his age in the problem, and it was right. How old were Tom and the professor?
Cressida didn't like to tell her age, so when she was asked, her mother answered for her. Her mother said, "I'm just seven times as old as she is now. In twenty years, she'll be just half the age that I will be then."
How old is clever little Cressida?
A dog had three puppies, names Mopsy, Topsy, and Spot. What was the mother's name.
Stephen was about to leave the country but wanted to hand some important documents to his partner, Dave, personally on his way to the airport. When he phoned, Stephen got Dave's answering machine, but knowing Dave was in the habit of checking for messages at regular intervals he said, "Dave, this is important! I have the Duplex Corporation contract which must be exchanged this afternoon. Please meet me without fail in exactly forty minutes at the corner of 5th Avenue and 55th Street. I can only wait for five minutes, but it's all I need to hand you the papers and give you verbal instructions of a highly confidential nature. Thank you." At that moment the limousine arrived to take Stephen to JFK Airport.
The car arrived at the designated corner with three minutes to spare. Stephen had the car wait, confident that Dave would arrive at any moment. After ten minutes, when Dave did not turn up, Stephen was forced to continue to the airport even though an important deal was in jeopardy. Why did Dave, who had, incidentally, heard the message in good time and was not physically prevented, not meet his partner?
I am chasing someone who started out 10 miles ahead of me, but I am running one mile an hour faster than the fugitive. How far would my dog run if she ran back and forth between us at a rate of 10 miles an hour?
It was a warm Sunday during a long sermon in church. A man was dozing beside his wife and dreaming that he lived at the time of the French Revolution and had been sentenced to death by guillotine. As the blade was falling, his wife noticed he was asleep and touched him on the back of the neck, right at the spot where the blade would have struck. The man died instantly.
Why can.t this story be true?
A man wants to grow a tree very quickly. He buys some special seeds that double in height every day. On the tenth day, the tree is twenty feet high. On what day was it five feet high?
Which is better: One raise per year of $2,000 or a raise of $500 every six months for an indefinite time? Why?
The score of a baseball game is five to four in favor of the home team. It is the last of the seventh inning and not one man on either side has even reached second base. Can you explain why?
An explorer is in a strange land where the men always tell the truth and the women always lie. He meets three natives but cannot tell their sex by their appearance or voice, so he asks them.
The first one replies, but the explorer doesn.t hear the answer.
The second one makes the following three statements:
1. "The first person said, 'I am a man.'"
2. "The first person is a woman."
3. "I am a man."
The third one makes these two statements:
1. "The second person is a woman."
2. "I am a man."
Which are men and which are women?
Five female Mensa members--Alex, Beth, Claire, Dot, and Erin--are sitting at the bar discussing whose turn it is to buy the next round. Alex is sitting closer to Beth than Claire is to Alex. Dot is sitting between Beth and Alex but not necessarily adjacent to either of them. Claire is seated on Erin's right but Beth is not seated next to Erin.
From left to right, in what order are they seated?
You are a bus driver. As you start your route, you pick up 3 passengers on 4th Street, go 6 blocks to 10th Street and pick up 5 and drop off 2 passengers. You go 5 more blocks and drop off 4 passengers. You've lost count and think your bus is empty as you head back to the station.
What is your name?
Evaluate the expression (x-a)(x-b)(x-c)...(x-z).
The following is a sample of a long list of five-letter words with a common trait. There are also six-letter (and longer) words that share it. What is the trait?
| alone | ozone | price | space |
| braid | phone | scare | spear |
| chair | stone | scold | spill |
| crash | place | score | spray |
| crate | plaid | shall | stale |
| grant | plate | snail | start |
A train was leaving Fairbanks for Seward, on the southern coast of Alaska, at the same time as a Ford Explorer. The driver of the Explorer was unaware that both of the front tires had slow punctures, and by the time the vehicle arrived in Anchorage those tires were already completely flat. Although the driver did not change or have the tires repaired, the Explorer reached Seward at the same time as the train. Explain.
You have six identical coins arranged thusly:
| 1 |
2 |
3 |
|||
| 4 | 5 | 6 |
Move two coins so that the resultant pattern is a hexagon.
What is the next word in this series:
BUGLES UNREST GROTTO LETTER ESTEEM
See if you can make names out of the following phone numbers by using their corresponding letter equivalents. For example, "287-2265" would be BURBANK (aBc-tUv-pRs-aBc-Abc-mNo-jKl).
| American Cities | Presidents | Entertainers |
|---|---|---|
| 675-2636 | 254-6866 | 278-2473 |
| 732-8853 | 546-2656 | 687-3938 |
| 639-9675 | 536-6339 | 437-2876 |
| 244-2246 | 623-4766 | 232-8537 |
| 468-7866 | 564-6766 | 336-4553 |
| 785-6847 | 522-5766 | 242-7546 |
| 285-2682 | 427-3464 | 427-5263 |
| Artists | Science | Literature |
| 742-2776 | 728-5464 | 743-5539 |
| 826-4644 | 727-8387 | 253-6367 |
| 328-4624 | 425-4536 | 353-6464 |
See if you can decipher this statement:
When cryptography is outlawed, bayl bhgynjf jvyy unir cevinpl.
There are 4 men who want to cross a bridge. They all begin on the same side. You have 17 minutes to get all of them across to the other side.
It is night. There is one flashlight. A maximum of two people can cross at one time. Any party who crosses, either 1 or 2 people, must have the flashlight with them. The flashlight must be walked back and forth, it cannot be thrown, etc. Each man walks at a different speed. A pair must walk together at a rate of the slower man's pace.
Man 1: 1 minute to cross. Man 2: 2 minutes to cross. Man 3: 5 minutes to cross. Man 4: 10 minutes to cross.
For example, if Man 1 and Man 4 walk across first, 10 minutes have elapsed when they get to the other side of the bridge. If Man 4 returns with the flashlight, a total of 20 minutes have passed, and you have failed the mission.
You have two jars. One holds 7 qts. and one holds 3 qts. (no graduations on jars). Describe a sequence of fillings and emptyings that would result in one jar holding 5 qts. of water.
If it takes a man one hour to dig a hole two meters long, two meters wide, and two meters deep, how long would it take the same man to dig a hole four meters long, four meters wide, and four meters deep, assuming he digs at the same rate of speed?
Bob leaves New York city by car, and travels to Washington at 60mph. Tom leaves Washington by car, and travels to New York city at 30mph. When they meet, who is closest to New York City?
Dot likes pots and pans but not cooks. She likes straw but not hay; she likes sagas but not poems. Does she like a star or a planet?
(Extra help: She also likes to gulp but not to swallow; she likes ten but not eleven. She likes things that are bad, but not naughty.)
Alice, Betty, Carol, and Dorothy were a lifeguard, a lawyer, a pilot, or a professor. Each wore a white, yellow, pink, or blue dress.
The lifeguard beat Betty at canasta, and Carol and the pilot often played bridge with the women in pink and blue dresses. Alice and the professor envied the woman in the blue dress, but this was not the lawyer, as she always wore a white dress.
What was each woman's occupation and dress color?
Doug was putting up a fence at the end of the yard.
"You planned to have the posts five feet apart, so you told me," said Linda, coming out to watch. "But you've got them more than that."
"I didn't think you'd notice," Doug chuckled. "But I found I was four posts short, so they had to be seven feet apart to do the same job."
How long was his fence to be?
The U.S.S. Extravagantic celebrated its maiden voyage in 1922 by taking a three-month cruise around the world. The lucky passengers visited dozens of famous cities along the way. We've scrambled the names of twelve of them to give you the opportunity to join in the fun. Let's see if you can unscramble them before it's time to disembark.
Name the offspring of:
A man hires a taxi to meet him at the railroad station at 3 p.m. to take him to an appointment. He catches an earlier train and arrives at 2 p.m. He decides to start walking, and is picked up en route by the taxi. He arrives twenty minutes early for his appointment. How long did he walk?
A hiker, during a vacation, discovered the bodies of a middle-aged couple,
holding hands, in a remote field near the Austrian village of St. Anton.
Suicide was ruled out, there was no visible evidence of cause of death that
would indicate murder, nor was any poison found on medical examination.
How did the couple die?
"Let's have some!" The kids crowded around Betty as she checked the candies. "Okay, but I'll have a few myself," she told them. "It's by age. A third of them for Bill, a quarter for Eve, a fifth for Linda, and a sixth for Bruce. That leaves just six for me." How many were there in all? (Note: Based on a problem written 1,400 years ago by the great Indian mathematician Brahmagupta.)
Can you decipher these famous nursery rhymes?
1. A female of the Homo sapiens species was the possessor of a small immature ruminant of the genus Ovis, whose outermost covering reflected all wavelengths of visible light with a luminosity equal to that of a mass of naturally occurring microscopically crystalline water. Regardless of the translational pathway chosen by the Homo sapiens female, there was a 100% probability that the aforementioned ruminant would select the same pathway.
2. A research team proceeded toward the apex of a natural geologic protuberance, the purpose of their expedition being the procurement of a sample of fluid hydride of oxygen in a vessel, the exact size of which was unspecified. One member of the team precipitously descended, sustaining severe damage to the upper cranial portion of his anatomical structure; subsequently the second member of the team performed a self-rotational translation oriented in the direction taken by the first team member.
3. A geriatric female proceeded to a storage compartment for the purpose of procuring a fragment of osseous tissue from an unidentified deceased specimen to transfer to an indigent carnivorous domesticated mammal, Canis familiaris, family Canidae. Upon arrival at her destination, she found the storage compartment in denuded condition, with the consequence that the indigent carnivore was deprived of the intended donation.
1. A strong box
2. Two baby cows
3. A shellfish
4. Two measures
5. Two places of worship
6. Scholars
7. Part of a shoe
8. What every builder must have
9. Something made by whips
10. What the soldier carries
One day, a woman doing a market survey phoned all the tenants and
asked each:
1) Is the pizza parlor your favorite?
2) Is the hamburger joint your favorite?
3) Is the barbecue place your favorite?
She tallied the following results:
1) 45 people answered "yes."
2) 67 people answered "yes."
3) 89 people answered "yes."
Of the 123 tenants, how many were liars?