Riddles
Three brothers check into a hotel. The clerk at the desk tells them that the room will be $30 for the night. Each brother takes a $10 bill out of their pocket and hand it over to the clerk. The Clerk hands them their key, and the bell hop takes the bags and the brothers up to the room.
When the bellhop returns, the clerk, being an honest clerk, tells him that he accidentally overcharged the brothers. The room should have been $25. So he tells the Bell hop to take five $1 bills back up to the brothers.
The bellhop, being of the criminal sort, realizes that there are three brothers, and if he just kept two, each would get one dollar back, and all would be even. So he does. The brothers are happy to get a dollar back, and they thoroughly enjoy their stay.
Now.
Let's do the math. If each brother had laid out ten, and gotten one back, they each spent nine. right? and the bell hop kept two, right. ok. three times nine is twentyseven.....plus two is twentynine. they started with thirty. Where's that other dollar, goddamnit?!
My philosophy teacher presented this particular 'riddle' as proof that lawyers should all be shot - as words and phrasing questions the right way can twist reality.
I'll keep my mouth shut about the answer to this, I want to see someone else tackle the question.:p
The room was $25 for the night for all three of them. The bellhop kept $2. The brothers each got $1 back.
25+2+3=30
"Please enter, my dear Aunt Sally."
Remember your order of operations.
Where's that other dollar?
What "other" dollar? Be specific :)
Did the hotel under charge by $1??
the bellhop stole $2, leaving $3 for the boys...
so it is
3 x 10 = 30
30 - 25 = 5
5 - 3 = 2
so $28 dollars have gone to the boys
if its $9 each they pay = 27
Originally posted by Beestie
What "other" dollar? Be specific :)
three times nine is twentyseven.....plus two is twentynine. they started with thirty
the dollar between 29 & 30
Originally posted by That Guy
"Please enter, my dear Aunt Sally."
Remember your order of operations.
I remember "my dear aunt Sally," but what do P & E stand for?
Originally posted by lumberjim
Let's do the math. If each brother had laid out ten, and gotten one back, they each spent nine. right? and the bell hop kept two, right. ok. three times nine is twentyseven.....plus two is twentynine. they started with thirty. Where's that other dollar, goddamnit?!
Sycamore already nailed it, but I'll rephrase it:
Three times nine is twenty-seven... MINUS (not PLUS) the two that the bellhop kept is twenty-five, which is what the actual bill was. The other three dollars from the original $30 are right where they should be, in the brothers' pockets.
Originally posted by vsp
Sycamore already nailed it, but I'll rephrase it:
Three times nine is twenty-seven... MINUS (not PLUS) the two that the bellhop kept is twenty-five, which is what the actual bill was. The other three dollars from the original $30 are right where they should be, in the brothers' pockets.
YEP, THAT'S IT
OK SOMEBODY ELSE GIVE UP A RIDDLE
A man is found dead in a field and next to him is a package. If he would have managed to open the package while he was still alive, he would have survived. The package does not contain food, water, or medicine. What's in the package?
Originally posted by novice
El Parachuto.
Yay! The lateral puzzles rule.
Close call steve.
based on the info it's impossible to rule either right or wrong IMHO
Originally posted by That Guy
"Please enter, my dear Aunt Sally."
Remember your order of operations.
not familiar with this.....what does it relate to?
A person is found hanged in a room with no ingress or egress points other than a door, locked from the inside. There is nothing in the room except for a puddle of liquid under the corpse,
Murder or suicide? What happened?
Originally posted by novice
A person is found hanged in a room with no ingress or egress points other than a door, locked from the inside. There is nothing in the room except for a puddle of liquid under the corpse,
Murder or suicide? What happened?
Suicide, but I'll let someone else figure out why. :D
vsp nailed it but I had already put this together so I'll post it anyway and thank lumberjim for clearly demonstrating why none of us has a chance in hell once we set foot into the finance manager's office :)
I'll start with a ledger (i.e., something they keep two of in car dealerships :-). Also, I'll make a simplifying assumption and think of the three brothers as one customer. The way the question is worded implies that the person asking is tallying up the dollars and is one short. Everyone's net position is shown before and after each transaction. At any point, the two sides of the ledger when added, must equal zero.
[FONT=courier new]
Customer [COLOR=red]-30[/COLOR], Bellhop ±0 || Hotel +30 (Initial transaction)
Customer_ +3, Bellhop +2 || Hotel_ [COLOR=red]-5[/COLOR] (The refund)
--------------------------------------------------------
Customer [COLOR=red]-27[/COLOR], Bellhop +2 || Hotel +25 (The end result)
[/FONT]
vsp's answer is now clear - the sign on the 2 and the 27 are not the same so the "29" never existed anywhere but in the question.
It most assuredly is not urine!
why not? if you kill yourself, you lose control of your bowels, you'd pee, there would be a puddle.
Fuck shit damn piss hell quite right, but wrong, for the purposes of THIS riddle
incidentally, wasn't that Indigo Montoya?
yeah, but as dave so eloquently pointed out, it's actually "inyego"
i love the princess bride...right up there with the holy grail in it's quotablility
Originally posted by novice
Close call steve.
based on the info it's impossible to rule either right or wrong IMHO
Yeah if the question had said "dead apparently due to having slammed into the ground at high speed" the parachute would look like a better answer!
As for the urine/suicide issue, wouldn't the bladder release issue be equally true if somebody else hanged you?
I'm shithouse as far as literal quotes go but I remember many of the scenes, in particular the poisoned goblet switcheroo. Definitely a classic. Had it in my hand at the video store two nights ago but it's so memorable I don't need to watch it again yet.
Incidentally, riddle wise, the liquid was water. The person stood on a block of ice to get in the noose then 'melted' to death.
Originally posted by lumberjim
not familiar with this.....what does it relate to?
I'm surprised... all that math you do at work... tho I guess they have computers to handle all the heavy lifting!
My Dear Aunt Sally
Multiplication Division Addition Subtraction
This is the order in which you perform math operations in a situation where you have mixed operations and no parentheses to group things. (So 3 + 4 x 7 is always evaluated as 31, not 49.)
But I don't know what P and E are for... I guess P is Parentheses?
yeah, but the door is locked from the inside.
ok, if it;s not pee, then i give. what is it?
It's a big puddle of REFRESH
Originally posted by SteveDallas
I'm surprised... all that math you do at work... tho I guess they have computers to handle all the heavy lifting!
My Dear Aunt Sally
Multiplication Division Addition Subtraction
This is the order in which you perform math operations in a situation where you have mixed operations and no parentheses to group things. (So 3 + 4 x 7 is always evaluated as 31, not 49.)
But I don't know what P and E are for... I guess P is Parentheses?
yeah. i'd be fucked without my computer. i never heard that particular anagram, but i knew the rules. i was always good at solving word problems, but my teachers always got pissed cuz i rarely showed my work. i kind of sort shit out logically, then apply the results to check accuracy.
It's water. From the ice s/he stood on to hang him/herself.
Originally posted by lumberjim
yeah, but the door is locked from the inside.
ok, if it;s not pee, then i give. what is it?
A melted block of ice.
ok , it's water, but it's pissy water. :)
This riddle comes in the form of a cryptic e-mail.
"Subject: c7362210/828 645 393
Message: please read discrep correct ord & re release i routed to qs que
-renee"
My office -- where people are so lazy with their typing their e-mails become riddles. The meaning? Your guess is as good as mine.
There are 5 houses in a row on a street, all of different colors. In each house lives a person with a different nationality. These 5 owners each drink a certain drink, smoke a certain brand of cigar, and keep a certain pet. No two owners have the same pet, smoke the same brand of cigar, or drink the same drink.
The riddle is -- WHO OWNS THE FISH?
Here is all the information you have to figure it out:
<ul>
<li>the Brit lives in the red house
<li>the Swede keeps dogs as pets
<li>the Dane drinks tea
<li>the green house is on the left of the white house
<li>the green house owner drinks coffee
<li>the person who smokes Pall Mall rears birds
<li>the owner of the yellow house smokes Dunhill
<li>the man living in the house right in the center drinks milk
<li>the Norwegian lives in the first house
<li>the man who smokes blends lives next to the one who keeps cats
<li>the man who keeps horses lives next to the one who smokes Dunhill
<li>the owner who smokes Bluemaster drinks beer
<li>the German smokes prince
<li>the Norwegian lives next to the blue house
<li>the man who smokes blends has a neighbor who drinks water.
</ul>
Edit: I forgot to say... the "first" house in the clue above refers to the left-most house.
OH CHRIST
i dont have that kind of time! i'll tell you tomorrow!
Well, ok... here's an easier one in the meantime. This one works better when asked verbally, because it's cool to watch how long it takes someone to think of a solution:
[color=blue]There are three light bulbs in a room with no windows, and a closed door. In front of you are three on-off switches. You know that each switch controls one of the light bulbs inside the room, but you don't know which switch matches which bulb, and they are not wired in any particular order.
Your job is to match each switch to it's bulb. You may only enter the room once, and you may not leave the door open. How do you accomplish your task?[/color]
I heard this one from a client of mine... he's a site manager for a Microsoft call center. Apparently, this is one of the questions an interviewer at Microsoft will ask potential employees during an interview, to test their reasoning skills.
He told me about how he was sitting in a management meeting at Microsoft with about twenty other managers when someone posed this very question of the group... he bragged that he was he only one to come up with the answer, and it only took him about twenty minutes. So he put the riddle to my friend and I, and I figured it out almost immediately. I think I stole the pride he'd had in answering it in "only" twenty minutes. Heheh.
Incidentally, my friend later came up with a different answer than I did, which is still a valid solution, but not nearly as elegant.
Edit: I added "on-off" to the description of the switches, to clarify the fact that you know which position will turn the bulb on, and which will turn it off.
maybe this is the easy way out, but just flip all the switches and go in the room. they'll all be on. or open the door before you go in and match the switches to the bulbs.
The German owns the fish.
Yeah, the coffe-drinking, prince-smoking German in the green house! :)
Originally posted by plthijinx
maybe this is the easy way out, but just flip all the switches and go in the room. they'll all be on. or open the door before you go in and match the switches to the bulbs.
"you may not leave the door open"
Also, flipping ALL the switches on does not indicate which switch goes to which bulb, it just shows that they all work.
Originally posted by hot_pastrami
[color=blue]There are three light bulbs in a room with no windows, and a closed door. In front of you are three switches. You know that each switch controls one of the light bulbs inside the room, but you don't know which switch matches which bulb, and they are not wired in any particular order.
Your job is to match each switch to it's bulb. You may only enter the room once, and you may not leave the door open. How do you accomplish your task?[/color]
Flip the first switch. Wait about 2 minutes. Turn it off, flip the second switch. enter the room. The lit light is controlled by switch 2. The off, but warm light is connected to switch 1. The last light is controlled by 3. :)
Originally posted by perth
Flip the first switch. Wait about 2 minutes. Turn it off, flip the second switch. enter the room. The lit light is controlled by switch 2. The off, but warm light is connected to switch 1. The last light is controlled by 3. :)
He's good. That's the right answer.
My friend's answer was this: Turn on a switch, then leave it on for a few years, enough time that it burns out. Turn on another switch, then enter the room. The burned-out light is switch #1, the light that is on is switch #2, and the light which is off is switch #3. Sloppy, but technically ok.
A man lies dead in a dark alley. Police find him surrounded by 52 bicycles. What happened?
Originally posted by Radar
The German owns the fish.
Yup. Knowing the answer in advance doesn't ruin the fun of solving the riddle, though, so anybody who hasn't tried to reason it out yet ought to. It's an interesting exercise in logic.
This riddle is often attributed to Einstein, which is most likely untrue, but I don't know for certain.
Originally posted by perth
A man lies dead in a dark alley. Police find him surrounded by 52 bicycles. What happened?
Exploding deck of cards?
Originally posted by Kitsune
Exploding deck of cards?
Close enough. :) Should have mentioned a stab or bullet wound, hunh?
Close enough. Should have mentioned a stab or bullet wound, hunh?
Shows you how broken my brain is, huh? 52 is the number of cards in a deck! Bicycles are a brand of cards! How'd they get everywhere, though? Surely it must have exploded.
He cheated at cards, the table was upended, and he was killed.
Originally posted by hot_pastrami
My friend's answer was this: Turn on a switch, then leave it on for a few years, enough time that it burns out. Turn on another switch, then enter the room. The burned-out light is switch #1, the light that is on is switch #2, and the light which is off is switch #3. Sloppy, but technically ok.
You can speed it up by flipping switch one on and off for a few months, instead of leaving it on for years.
And I guess both solutions would be complicated if a bulb was bad to begin with.
Okay, here is one riddle I heard, I think it is from some card game called mindtrap or something like that.
You are locked in a room, only one exit. To get out there is a combination
lock.
There is a circular hole in the ground about two inches in diameter and about five inches deep. At the bottom of the hole is a ping pong ball, with the combination to the lock written on the side.
How do you get out of the room?
Some points of clarifications.
You can't manage to read the combination without getting the ping pong ball into your hands and looking at it real close.
You have no tools. Heck, let's even say you have no clothes either.
Your fingers can't reach in and pluck the ping pong ball out, it's too far in, and your whole hand doesn't fit in the hole.
The room has no resources for you to use. It's an empty bank vault or something equally inhospitable.
Originally posted by Slartibartfast
How do you get out of the room?
Can you pee in the hole to make the ball float up?
Originally posted by hot_pastrami
Can you pee in the hole to make the ball float up?
Okay, you answered that way too fast!
That's the answer.
Originally posted by Slartibartfast
Okay, you answered that way too fast!
That's the answer.
I just know the answer because that exact scenario actually happened to me once... and I swore I'd never touch tequila again!
Something about the riddle's explanation made the answer obvious to me for some reason... first I thought maybe you'd put your mouth over the hole and suck it out, but that wouldn't work unless there was an air hole on the bottom, and you had the sucking power of a five-dollar hooker. Then I turned to the universal solution... urine!
Can you pee in the hole to make the ball float up?
Hopefully, the pee won't dissolve the ink :)
Here's one for you math folks.
Escherland has a really cool hotel - it has an infinite number of rooms!
A VIP guest arrives and asks for a room.
Sadly, there is a porn convention going on, and all the rooms are occupied. However, with some room shuffling, the manager does succede in making a room available to provide for the VIP. Oh, and noone was made to share rooms with anyone else either.
How did he do it?
Originally posted by hot_pastrami
Then I turned to the universal solution... urine!
I wonder if there ever was a real life situation where urine was used to accomplish something through its intrinsic properties - aside from writing in snow.
Then again, forget I asked that, that's a stupid question
Originally posted by Slartibartfast
Here's one for you math folks.
Escherland has a really cool hotel - it has an infinite number of rooms!
A VIP guest arrives and asks for a room.
Sadly, there is a porn convention going on, and all the rooms are occupied. However, with some room shuffling, the manager does succede in making a room available to provide for the VIP. Oh, and noone was made to share rooms with anyone else either.
How did he do it?
Well, a hotel with infinite rooms can never be full... there will
always be rooms available.
Originally posted by Slartibartfast
I wonder if there ever was a real life situation where urine was used to accomplish something through its intrinsic properties - aside from writing in snow.n
One jumps to mind... It's been used to cool hot mortar tubes in the absence of water.
Saw this in an outdoorsman book - never tried it myself. The author claimed that you can turn eyeglasses into a magnifying glass by filling in the near side with urine. And then use them to start a fire.
Originally posted by hot_pastrami
Well, a hotel with infinite rooms can never be full... there will always be rooms available.
There was an infinite amount of people to each fill every of the infinite number of rooms.
or in mathspeak - there was a one to one relationship established between two infinite sets.
Maybe I'm not seeing the concept exactly, but math was never my thing. I know that infinity plus one is still infinity, so they are still a one-to-one ratio even if you add another person...
I guess the problem is that if the VIP customer were to say, try every door until he found the first unoccupied room, he'd be trying doors into infinity, never finding the vacant room. So you'd have to do something like tell all the other guest to move up one room, and the VIP could take the first room, since it's occupant just moved up one. Since there are infinite rooms, every guest would have a room to to move up to.
If that's not the answer, then I'll have to think about it a bit longer.
Originally posted by hot_pastrami
So you'd have to do something like tell all the other guest to move up one room, and the VIP could take the first room, since it's occupant just moved up one. Since there are infinite rooms, every guest would have a room to to move up to.
For someone that claims math is not his thing, you explained the answer very well.
We started off with...
ROOM 1 matching up with PERSON 1
ROOM 2 matching up with PERSON 2
ROOM N matching up with PERSON N
ROOM N+1 matching up with PERSON N+1
and we went to...
Room 2 matching up with person 1
Room 3 matching up with person 2
Room N matching up with person N+1
Room N+1 matching up with person N+2
which leaves us room 1 free for somebody else.
Okay, I'll quit with the math, regular riddles are usually more fun anyway.
Originally posted by Slartibartfast
I wonder if there ever was a real life situation where urine was used to accomplish something through its intrinsic properties - aside from writing in snow.
Then again, forget I asked that, that's a stupid question
the "do you pee in the shower" thread comes to mind:D
Apparently it's good for jellyfish stings, as well.
and athlete's foot.....but only if you're one of those who pee in the shower.
With the light switch problem, I thought of entering the room once and substituting the bulbs with coloured ones then observing the individual glows under the door but then again there was a strong point made about the door being shut so I guess nothing is meant to be seen with the door closed.
The real answer is much better anyway. Can't wait to test the folks at work with all these.
Originally posted by Kitsune
This riddle comes in the form of a cryptic e-mail.
"Subject: c7362210/828 645 393
Message: please read discrep correct ord & re release i routed to qs que
Wow ... newspeak!
(I think she's saying that what had been identified as an error is actually correct, needs to be re-added and routed to the quality service to-do list.)
There are three men dead in a cabin.
The cabin is surrounded by snow.
There is a hole in the roof of the cabin.
How did the men die?
they fell out of a plane and landed on the cabin?
I was thinking small meteor.
Originally posted by Beestie
I was thinking small meteor.
That would be
meteorite... heheh. And I was thinking the same thing when I read it last night, but it doesn't seem like an interesting enough answer to be correct. Now, if the riddle said "The cabin is surrounded by snow
which is unmarked with any bootprints besides those of the three men," then I'd be pretty confident on the meterite answer. As it is, I'm not sure.
Originally posted by wolf
There are three men dead in a cabin.
The cabin is surrounded by snow.
There is a hole in the roof of the cabin.
How did the men die?
Maybe an airplane crash? The "cabin" is the cabin of the plane, and it crashed in snowy mountains or something?
[QUOTE]Originally posted by hot_pastrami
[color=blue][b]There are three light bulbs in a room with no windows, and a closed door. In front of you are three on-off switches. You know that each switch controls one of the light bulbs inside the room, but you don't know which switch matches which bulb, and they are not wired in any particular order.
Your job is to match each switch to it's bulb. You may only enter the room once, and you may not leave the door open. How do you accomplish your task?[/color]
Since the riddle doesn't say you're not inside the room, can't you just flip the switches one by one?
That would be meteorite... heheh.
Did I say meteor?
I meant huge jass chunk of
ice
:eek:
I'm late to this thread. So, firstly, lumberjim you bastard you poisoned the order of my thoughts. I was surprised by how difficult it was to discipline my mind to actually think that one through without going through it like the question did. That was cool.
PEMDAS: The P is for Parentheses, the E is for Exponents.
With the ping-pong ball question, my immediate first thought was: "water!". When I heard that the room had no resources, I resorted to urine. The practical uses of urine that I know are: when dragging sleds with metal skates (I can't remember the proper word here) through snow, pee on the skates. I believe that the goal is to form a regular coating of ice. Urine is also a sterilizer, so you can use it to clean clothes, assuming that you have something to cover the smell. The Romans used bay leaves for this purpose.
My cheating solution to the three light bulbs question would be to watch the light under the door; but that is probably eliminated by the question.
"I have two ends, I have two rings, and a nail through the middle" -- I've been trying to figure out what this one is for the past week, rather halfheartedly.
As for the guys in the cabin, one possibility is that the hole is the chimney. They entered the cabin during the snowstorm, started a fire, and that either poisoned them, burned the cabin, or they froze to death. A simple possibility is that during the snowstorm, the roof caved in. However, I like the airplane answer better.
Aware of the baleful weather predicted by forecasters, we decided the _____ would be the best place for our company picnic.
(A) roof
(B) cafeteria
(C) beach
(D) park
(E) lake
Originally posted by Torrere
"I have two ends, I have two rings, and a nail through the middle" -- I've been trying to figure out what this one is for the past week, rather halfheartedly.
A double eight domino - the eight dots on each side are in in a circular pattern, and there is a spinner in the middle that is basically a nail with a rounded head.
The one thing that doesn't quite perfectly match is that the dots are in a square, but then again a boxing ring is square...
Originally posted by Undertoad
Aware of the baleful weather predicted by forecasters, we decided the _____ would be the best place for our company picnic.
(A) roof
(B) cafeteria
(C) beach
(D) park
(E) lake
I'm guessing cafeteria... as far as I know, "baleful" means "ominously cloudy" when referring to weather...
There is a common 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 a single letter. What is the original word, and what are the words that it becomes after removing one letter at a time?
I am the beginning of eternity
The end of time and space
The beginning of every end,
And the end of every place.
what am I?
Baleful means "gloomy" but if you didn't know that --
(this is an SAT question BTW)
Originally posted by lumberjim
what am I?
[SIZE=4]e[/SIZE]
Originally posted by Undertoad
Aware of the baleful weather predicted by forecasters, we decided the _____ would be the best place for our company picnic.
(D) Park - Nicer than a roof, you don't have to deal with the sand of a beach, and forecasters are always wrong.
Answer is B
Explanation of why the question is culturally biased:
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/seipp200401210937.aspI'm gonna go out on a limb and say that HP is one of the smartest motherfuckers on here.
hey, alan, what'd you get on that emode iq test?
Whoa! Thank you mouse! I had thought it had something to do with your old project (you know, the one you one an award for).
Originally posted by lumberjim
I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that HP is one of the smartest motherfuckers on here.
hey, alan, what'd you get on that emode iq test?
Don't be fooled, I'm not as smart as I like people to think I am.
I hadn't seen any link to an emode IQ test, but a Google search brought me
this, so I'm guessing that's the one. Cellar searches for "emode" and "iq test" didn't reveal the thread where the test must have popped up.
I should mention that I think IQ tests are worth their weight in dead slugs, if even that. They are a vain attempt to scientifically measure the scientifically unmeasurable (say THAT ten times fast (Hell, say it ONE time fast (Shit, I'm three levels deep in parenthetical staements!))).
Congratulations, Hot!
Your IQ score is 133
This number is the result of a formula based on how many questions you answered correctly on Emode's Classic IQ test. Your IQ score is scientifically accurate; to read more about the science behind our IQ test, click here.
During the test, you answered four different types of questions — mathematical, visual-spatial, linguistic and logical. We analyzed how you did on those questions, which reveals the way your brain uniquely works.
We also compared your answers with others who have taken the test, and according to the sorts of questions you got correct, we can tell your Intellectual Type is an Insightful Linguist.
This means you are highly intelligent and have the natural fluency of a writer and the visual and spatial strengths of an artist. Those skills contribute to your creative and expressive mind. And that's just some of what we know about you from your test results.
That last bit is awfully goddamned cryptic.
well you must be right, cuz i got a 135......and i'm also, coincidentally, worth my weight in dead slugs. ( that's a lot of slugs, btw)
and that might even be without considering the graphs which show the dramatic increase in average IQ scores over the past 100 years.
(edit: toned down... hehehe)
hey, gotta a link to those graphs? what's the explanatoin for it? better education? diet? information technology?
What a fantastic coincidence that this is posted in a thread of Riddles!
this bit is interesting:
Such a result has unexpected implications for the relation between intelligence and age. Older people tend to have lower scores on IQ tests than younger people. Until now, it was always assumed that this means that intelligence diminishes with age. However, this observation can be explained as well by noting that older people were raised in a period when the general level of intelligence was lower. Flynn showed that if people's IQ is evaluated with tests calibrated for the period during which they grew up, an old person scores as well as a young one. The reason that older people do less well on IQ tests is not that they have become more stupid with age, but that the younger generation simply got a head start.
no wonder all my teachers were such idiots.
and i can look forward to dealing with a bunch of smart-ass kids.
HP rocks ... he got the cabin one ... "The plane crashed" is the answer.
Originally posted by lumberjim
no wonder all my teachers were such idiots.
and i can look forward to dealing with a bunch of smart-ass kids.
No - but this should be discussed in a different thread.
I met my sister Jenny on London Bridge; I broke her neck and drank her blood and left her out to dry.
Originally posted by hot_pastrami
[color=blue]There are three light bulbs in a room with no windows, and a closed door. In front of you are three on-off switches. You know that each switch controls one of the light bulbs inside the room, but you don't know which switch matches which bulb, and they are not wired in any particular order.
Your job is to match each switch to it's bulb. You may only enter the room once, and you may not leave the door open. How do you accomplish your task?[/color] [/B]
I posed this question to my roommate.
His quick response was: "That'd be really easy! You rig up a servo and attach it to a computer and program it to turn the lights on one by one. It turns on one light at the beginning, at ten seconds it turns on a second light, and at twenty seconds it turns on the third light."
Riddle me this: what is his occupation?
Originally posted by Torrere
I met my sister Jenny on London Bridge; I broke her neck and drank her blood and left her out to dry.
Is Jenny a wierd name for a liquor?
I'm still trying to figure out the sister part, maybe its some silly British colloquialism or something.
Originally posted by xoxoxoBruce
140:rolleyes:
wow. i think that makes you a genius.
I'm a "facts curator". Interestingly enough the score is lower than what I got in 6th grade when I was tested by a psychologist. Don't know if that's due to differences in the test, or me--not that I'll lie awake worrying about it. (I also am not very convinced of the value of such tests.)
Originally posted by lumberjim
and i can look forward to dealing with a bunch of smart-ass kids.
Look forward to??? I don't know about you, but I'm already there! :cool:
I'm sticking to my 6th grade score because it indicated that I was a fucking genius and I would be really really saddened if a subsequent test told me that I was not.
That's the actual score, "fucking genius".
I have never found it to have any worth whatsoever in the real world. Most people value what you actually do, not what you're capable of, and rightly so. (If you can find someone who values you based on what you're capable of, hang onto them with both hands.)
I must have drank too much at some point. As a youth I scored a 181, but now it is 154.
I'm thinking Sister Jenny is a bottle of gin?
Originally posted by lumberjim
well you must be right, cuz i got a 135......and i'm also, coincidentally, worth my weight in dead slugs. ( that's a lot of slugs, btw)
Once previously a link to an online IQ test was posted to a community I frequented, and like this one, it provided a score, but one had to pay to access the detailed score. Everyone posted their results, and I noticed an unlikely score trend... everyone, even the morons, were receiving above-average IQ scores. There was a spread of perhaps 10 points between the truly stupid and the certifiably genius.
I didn't have to strain my think-muscle too hard to realize that the test was intentionally flattering the testee (heheh... testee) to make them more likely to purchase the detailed results. Few people would care to purchase the details if they got a low score.
In that community, in carefully examining the scores compared to my knowledge of who received them, I concluded that either some people had been
very skillfully concealing their intelligence, or the test's IQ measuring abilities were about as reliable as a 90 year old dick. There were a handful of people whom I was confident were smarter than I, and many got lower scores than I did. Also, there were some obvious cement-heads who did as well, or better, as I. Not that I'm belittling your score on this test Jimbo, I wouldn't be surprised if you really were smarter than I am.
In the end, even accurate IQ tests only measure one's ability to solve cute puzzles in a controlled environment, and a high score only proves that the one being tested thinks simlarly to those who created the test. Hence the wide variations of scores one can get on different IQ tests. IQ tests can't possibly test the truly valuable intelligence, such as practical problem-solving, because tests are inherently impractical.
Or maybe I'm just a moron. :D
no, you're obviously not a moron. and it wasn;t my intent to say i was smarter cuz i tested higher. i wsa saying you're prolly right about the innacuracy of the scores. Jinx also got a 133, and we go back and forth about who's smarter. We've decided that there are different types of intelligence. I am good with abstract, intuitive thinking, she has a damn near perfect memory etc....
none of it really matters, though, cuz tw is the only smart person in the cellar. just ask him.
Originally posted by wolf
I'm thinking Sister Jenny is a bottle of gin?
Quite right.
I've been trying to figure out if that's what Bruce answered, but... I don't know.
An Arab sheikh is old and must will his fortune to one of his two sons. He makes a proposition. His two sons will ride their camels in a race, and whichever camel crosses the finish line last will win the fortune for its owner. During the race, the two brothers wander aimlessly for days, neither willing to cross the finish line. In desperation, they ask a wise man for advice. He tells them something; then the brothers leap onto the camels and charge toward the finish line. What did the wise man say?
Originally posted by Torrere
An Arab sheikh is old and must will his fortune to one of his two sons. He makes a proposition. His two sons will ride their camels in a race, and whichever camel crosses the finish line last will win the fortune for its owner. During the race, the two brothers wander aimlessly for days, neither willing to cross the finish line. In desperation, they ask a wise man for advice. He tells them something; then the brothers leap onto the camels and charge toward the finish line. What did the wise man say?
"Swap camels."
Or maybe I'm just a moron.
Clearly, your post shows you're not. :)
Originally posted by Undertoad
snip... Most people value what you actually do, not what you're capable of, and rightly so. (If you can find someone who values you based on what you're capable of, hang onto them with both hands.)
My experience is, people value you by how comfortable you make them feel around you, how good you make them feel about themselves.
My life can be measured in hours
I serve by being devoured
thin I am quick
thick I am slow
wind is my foe
What am I?
Originally posted by Happy Monkey
A candle!
/me gives monkey a banana
Whoever makes it doesn't use it,
whoever buys it doesn't want it,
and whoever uses it doesn't know they are using it.
What is it?
and apostrophies in the above quote go before the 'n' in all the above cases.
Ain't that not the truth?:)
Originally posted by Slartibartfast
Whoever makes it doesn't use it,
whoever buys it doesn't want it,
and whoever uses it doesn't know they are using it.
What is it?
A coffin.
Originally posted by Slartibartfast
and apostrophies in the above quote go before the 'n' in all the above cases.
Ain't that not the truth?:)
Yes, it ain't the truth. You had it right the first time - apostrophes take the place of the 'o' in 'not'.
Originally posted by Grizzly
A coffin.
indeed
Not being one to let a good thread die, here is another riddle... well actually a conundrum.
Two twins are born. The YOUNGER twin celebrates his birthday two days earlier than the OLDER twin. How could this be true?
This may not be the answer you want, but... maybe they're not one anothers' twins? Meaning, each is a twin from separate pairs?
Originally posted by hot_pastrami
This may not be the answer you want, but... maybe they're not one anothers' twins? Meaning, each is a twin from separate pairs?
Good point... clarification: the twins were begat from the same mum.
They are twins of each other.
a Golden Prize do I hide but neither do I have hinges, lock or side. What am I?
Hmm. Probably something to do with being born at midnight, leap year, and/or the International Date line then....
I'd say either one was born just before midnight, and the other just after, on leap year. If not that, then the same birth times, also on leap year, but they crossed the International Date Line after the first was born (on a plane, or something).
Edit: Of course, both on Feb 28th of a leap year.
There might be two sets of twins. One set of twins was born a year or years later than the other set, minus two days.
Oct 11 1980
Oct 13 1975
HP has the kernel of the idea, but can someone set up the exact scenario that would cause the event to happen?
And Beastie, I had a couple of those today for lunch!
Originally posted by Beestie
a Golden Prize do I hide but neither do I have hinges, lock or side. What am I?
Eggses, my Precious!
Originally posted by Beestie
a Golden Prize do I hide but neither do I have hinges, lock or side. What am I?
The night.
Originally posted by Slartibartfast
HP has the kernel of the idea, but can someone set up the exact scenario that would cause the event to happen?
One was born on feb 29th the other on March 1st.
Originally posted by xoxoxoBruce
One was born on feb 29th the other on March 1st.
That's true, but that is still not the whole story.
That would explain how one twin celebrates his birthday two days after the other, but what about the younger one having his birthday before the older?
Mom had to roll across the internation dateline somewhere in there ... and New Years eve needs to play a part ... like if the older twin were born on 12/30 near midnight, then mom's hospital gurney, which is set right on the international date line, rolls over it, and just past midnight the "next" day, the younger twin could be born on 1/1 ... AND the younger twin's birthday would be earlier in the year than the older twin's.
If a plane crashes on the US/Canadian border where are the survivors buried?
depends on where they eventually die...nice try
what's the quickest way to cook a rooster egg?
Originally posted by wolf
Mom had to roll across the internation dateline somewhere in there ... and New Years eve needs to play a part ...
Date line yes, new years day no.
It works like this,
it's about 00:15 on March 1st on a non-leapyear year, and a cruise ship in the Pacific has a lady about to pop out a young'un. She gives birth to a bawlin baby #1. A few minutes later, the ship crosses the international date line. It's now about 23:40 of Feb 28th, and out pops screamer #2.
End result is that on a leap year, baby number 1 celebrates his birthday on the usual March 1st, but baby number 2 celebrates his birthday two days earlier.
But that's only on leap years.
Originally posted by xoxoxoBruce
But that's only on leap years.
I never said it happens every year:D
Ok here's one:
There is a common English word which is nine letters long. Each time you remove a letter from it, it still remains an English word - from nine letters right down to one letter. What is the original word, and what are the words that it becomes after removing one letter at a time?
I though 'deja-vu' was only six letters long...
anyone know the answer to trillian's riddle?
http://www.snopes.com/language/puzzlers/9letters.asp
did not know before, but Google is God.
that's cheating, I suppose.
Google has money and in America money is worshiped as a god.
what's the quickest way to cook a rooster egg?
The quickest way is a raw egg in a glass rocky style.
For a rooster's egg is a chicken egg the same way a child is both the mother's and the father's.
