What's your favorite Enigma / Riddle / Sentence Puzzle?
What's your favorite Enigma / Riddle / Sentence Puzzle?
Tomorrow is a big event at my university. I'd like to make a fun thing where the people of the Board Game society I am in can try to find me for a riddle, kind of a Where is Waldo in a place where there is a crap tone of people to find the NPC that'll give them a Riddle (Maybe something to win? No idea how I could do that detail)
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'Tis a silly one, but it's hilarious when it stumps people. Best used verbally:
There are thirty cows in a field, and twenty-eight chickens. How many didn't?
Answer
Ten. Ten didn't eat chickens!
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My 8 year old daughter got me with this one just yesterday. She was so proud of herself.
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We have similar one in Czechia. John Doe bought twenty mice. The next day, he bought twenty-one mice. How many mice does he have? The solution is zero, because in czech, you can say twenty-one mice the same way as poison for twenty mice (jednadvacet myší - jed na dvacet myší). Just thought it's interesting that this works in other languages too.
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In French we have "Vingt cent mille ânes dans un pré et cent vingt dans l'autre. Combien de pattes au total ?" = "Twenty hundred thousand donkeys in a meadow and a hundred twenty in the other. How many legs total ?" Answer is six, because it can also be read as "Vincent mit l'âne dans un pré et s'en vint dans l'autre" = "Vincent put the donkey in the meadow and went to the other." So two legs for Vincent and four for the donkey.
We also have "The wheat, or the sheep ?" Answer is "at the mill", because "or the sheep" is pronounced the same as "where does one mill it" (ou le mouton - où le moud-on).
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You're in a square room with a window in each wall. All the windows face south. Thru one of the windows you can see a bear. What colour is the bear?
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White!
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Wow makes so much sense!
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Red?
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Here's a slightly more subtle version:
An explorer leaves his camp and walks 1km south until his path is blocked by a huge bear. He makes a 90° turn to his left and sprints 1km east. After checking the bear is nowhere in sight, he turns another 90° to his left and walks 1km north, arriving back at his camp. What colour was the bear?
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What is the beginning of eternity, the end of time, the beginning of every end, and the end of every place?
E, it's a really mean one when delivered verbally
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Reminds me of a line from the sphinx riddle in harry potter.
Tell me what is the last thing to mend, the middle of middle and the end of end.
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Now that's a spicy one!
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Time Flies like an Arrow
Fruit Flies like Banana
But there is not like an Answer to find in that
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That’s called a “garden path sentence”. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden-path_sentence Has more examples.
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There is a riddles sublemmy, just fyi!
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Oh? Could you send a link, I could not seem to find it
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What usually has 4 letters, sometimes 9 letters, but never 5 letters.
!It's not a question, it's a statement: "what"=4, "sometimes"=9, "never"=5!<
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An ancient device for looking through walls?
Window.
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It doesn't lead to a destination, and maybe isn't even a riddle, but a sentence I like is:
Is your answer to this question the same as if I had asked you to give me a dollar?
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For me, unless I'm missing something, that's an easy "Yes".
If someone randomly asks me for a single dollar they probably need it more urgently than I do. And if it's some kind of weird scam? I'm still only out $1.
(No, I will not be sending $1 to people that reply to this, but I pre-acknowlege that you're very clever for thinking of that)
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This is a fun one that can be adapted to all sorts of questions where you want a yes answer.
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Undecidable
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yes,no, maybe, I don't know, can you repeat the question? -
Exactly. The correct way to answer is to not "yes" or "no".
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What can run but never walks,
Has a mouth but never talks,
Has a bed but never sleeps,
Has a head but never weeps?
spoiler
A river
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I fly without wings, I cry without eyes, whenever I go, darkness flies.
Edit: Another one: The more you take the more you leave behind.
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When is a door not a door?
!when it's ajar!<
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You are in a room with two doors. Each door has one guard. One door leads to heaven and the other leads to hell. You have to choose one door and once you choose it, you have to go there. Before you choose, you can ask one of the guards one question. One of them always lie and the other always tell the truth. You don't know which guard is the liar/truth teller and you don't know which door leads to hell/heaven. What's the question you ask the guard?
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Dammit, I was actually rethinking about this one a few days ago. The Video that made me rethink about it
If I'm not wrong the answer is something a bit twisted lie "If I where to ask you if you are guarding the right door, would you say you are?" Which because it's a double lie, there is a way where they cross each other
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You answer is right. I heard the solution as follows: Would the other guard say that you are guarding the right door? And then you revert it. Yours solution is better. The XKCD and the video made me laugh, thanks.
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Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
The Video that made me rethink about it
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
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What's 2+2?
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The guard replies either four or something else. You now know which of the guards is the liar and who is the truth teller. You used your one question and still have no clue which door leads to hell and which leads to heaven. You have to guess 😕.
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That will deduce the liar and truth-teller, but won't give you any information about which door leads where.
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What runs faster uphill than down?
(Fire)
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Seeing the Proposition from RagnarokOnline@reddthat.com I've got a similar one I know in French that can be translated:
I am a king, taking presents from strangers to get into my kingdom. Propose me Gifts and I will tell you if you can enter my Kingdom
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So would a Balloon work?
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A Balloon would not work
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Do you accept my balloon? ;)
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I do accept your Balloon! Such a Wonderful Balloon wow!
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I only have some creamy nougat chocolate. Are you interested?
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I do accept Creamy Nougat Chocolate, if it is Creamy
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How easy should it be to solve?
My favorite longer puzzle is “there’s a naked man lying dead in a field with a stick in his hand. Asking me only yes/no questions, tell me why he is in the field and how did he die?”
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Did he die right where he's lying now0?
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Yes, he did!
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I love Black Stories, this was the first one I have solved/played years ago.
I won't give away the answer, that would not be f air
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I love them as well! I only know a couple, but I first heard them at a summer camp and they’re a great way to pass time with new friends while traveling.
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Lighting strike?
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Good guess! but no :)
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Shall I give a hint? ;)
*Edit 1: I did not enter the field by land.
*Edit 2: I fell into the field and this caused my death. Why did I fall, and from where?
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Okay, so if I build a bridge from X to Y, it's a great bridge.
If I build a bridge from A to B it's a terrible bridge.
Do you want to build a bridge?
(If the person says Okay as a part of their bridge proposal, it is good. If not, then the bridge is bad)
This is a great way to make everyone at a gathering hate you.
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I don't get it. What's happening here?
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It's a prank riddle. Basically you make two statements about building bridges. They can be from anywhere and to anywhere else. My nose to your forehead, Baltimore to Seattle, it makes no difference. In one sentence, you use the word "okay" and in the other you don't. The sentence with "okay" in it produces a good bridge. The sentence that doesn't, doesn't.
When you ask a person to build their own bridge, if they say "okay" in the sentence, it's a good bridge. If they don't, it's a bad bridge and it falls down. This setup is built to make people frustrated because "okay" is one of those filler words that people don't really pay attention to in sentences.
I've also heard of a similar setup where a person hands an object to another person (again, the object doesn't matter) and says "This is a bean, okay?" And if the recipient says "okay" then they have done the task correctly and can pass it along to another person, declaring the object is something else. If the receiver doesn't say "okay," then something went wrong and one of the people who is in on the joke interrupts and starts the process again. with a new object.
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Okay, so the correctness of the bridge is there because there is okay at the beginning of the sentence am I right?
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I know a similar one where you say some kind of finger counting verse, in the end you put your arms akimbo and request the other person(s) repeat it. It doesn't matter if they get the finger counting right, because it only counts if they also get the akimbo correct.
It's fun to do in a group of slightly drunk people, until all got it but one. Then it feels like bullying... :/
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My sister drives me crazy with these kind of "riddles"!
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This one is kinda hard to describe, so I'm including an image. Four people are standing in a row and all are looking to the right (EDIT: On the image, the fourthperson is looking left. That doesn't matter, because nobody can see through the wall). First and third person have blue hat, second and fourth have red hat. There's a wall between third and fourth person. Nobody knows what color is their hat. Everybody can only see hats of people on their right side (left/right sides are from the perspective of us, seeing them from the side). Nobody can see through the wall. For example first person can see the second and the third person. The second can only see the third person. They know that two of them have red hat and two of them have blue hat. They are told that if anybody says aloud the color of their hat, they are free to go. (They are captives or something). If anybody says the wrong color, they are all gonna be killed. They can't obviously turn around, talk to each other or something like that. They can't guess. Are any of them going to tell his hat's color?
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Let's number the dudes in your image form left to right: 1, 2, 3 and 4.
Dudes 3 and 4 have no useful information. They stay silent.
Dude 1 can see one of each hat colour on the dudes in front, but cannot determine their own colour without knowing the hat colour of dude 4. They stay silent.
Dude 2 can see the hat colour of dude 3. They can determine that either they themself or the dude behind must have a different hat colour. The dude behind - dude 1 - can see both of the hat colours in front, but stays silent. This lets dude 2 know that they and dude 3 must be different colours (otherwise dude 1 would have known their own hat colour).
Therefore, dude 2 knows their own hat colour must be different to the dude in front and announces the colour of their own hat.
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That's correct!
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-I cannot allow you before Théoden-King so armed, Gandalf Greyhame. By order of Gríma Wormtongue. Your staff.
-Hmm? Oh. You would not part an old man from his walking stick?
-It is not by my choosing. Your staff I judge to be five feet, yet no object greater than four feet in length may be brought before the King.
-Then I must speak with the town carpenter.
Later that day, Gandalf brings his staff to the meeting with Théoden. He has not broken any rules, and the staff is unaltered. How did he manage it?
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put it diagonally into a 3.6x3.6 case?
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Winner winner chicken dinner! The 'official' answer is 4x3, but who says wizards prefer Pythagorean triples to squares?
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Pythagondalf
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The Carpenter made the door bigger?
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He got it measured and the other guy's judgement was simply wrong
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Guys will tell you this is five feet
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They couldn't do this in Rome
Today I'm working from Home