July ’23: The Brain Teasers (and Bonuses) below (from Summer ’19) will be re-available through September ’23 Answers will be shared in early October.
NOTE: Newest BTs in red, Bonuses in blue, comments in green, updates in purple.
- A man is walking his three dogs when he meets his brother who is walking his two dogs. How many feet are there in total when they meet?
- What do female elephants have that no other animals have?
- Sammy was a real bookworm who spent all his time in the local library. In just one month he worked his way through three volumes of an encyclopedia, and two volumes of a dictionary, yet he could not remember one word that they contained. Why was that?
- (Partial repeat) T or F? A) If the sum of two numbers is even, then both numbers are even. B) If the product of two numbers is even, then both numbers are even. C) A number with 5 factors is always bigger than a number with 4 factors.
- Many of you are familiar with my love of palindromes, especially when they appear on the odometer. Very recently, I ran into an interesting situation. I saw TWO palindromes two miles apart, and then realized that I wouldn’t see another one for 1100 miles!! I just saw it last week! Given those circumstances, what are the three palindromes?
- What makes the number 8,549,176,320 unique? Hint 1: Don’t look for anything terribly ‘mathematical’ here. Hint 2: The answer might be different in other countries.
- (Via Cherry Hinderberger). In the classic “Twelve Days of Christmas” song (swans, geese, pear tree, etc.) how many total gifts are given over the twelve days?
- A club containing 10 members decides to elect a President and a VP. a) How many slates of officers are possible? b) How does that number change if they also elect a Sec/Treas (one office)?
- Let’s suppose your heart beats 70 times/minute. How many times will it beat in August?
- The average (mean) of 3 tests is 74. What score is required on the 4th test to raise the test average to 78?
- Find the sum of the reciprocals of whole-number factors of 24. (Remember ‘reciprocals’? For example, the reciprocal of 7 is 1/7.)
- In any given leap year, what date marks the 2/3 point of the year?
- Miss Korn collected coins and referred to her collections with interesting nicknames. Her penny collection she called Cu, and her nickels collection, she called Ni. What do you think she called her collection of silver dollars?
- In a recent column (Twain, Teams, and Turf) we referred to five different entities (schools, parents, religion, society, and government) involved in our broader education and looked more closely at at the four (4) pairs of those teams involving schools. Out of those 5 entities, however, how many total pairs (teams 0f 2) are there?
- I open my mathematics book, and the page numbers that face me have a product of 1806. What are the two page numbers?
- The sum of the ages of Al and Bill is 25. The sum of the ages of Al and Carl is 20. The sum of the ages of Bill and Carl is 31. Who is the oldest of the three and how old is he?
- A recent Crossword Puzzle indirectly led to this Brain Teaser: What do the following phrases all have in common: “Goldwyn Pictures”, “folding brackets”, “tumbledown shack”, “crazy stupid love”, and “rhyming couplets”
- See Pic below. (The two figures are 170 and 130 cm, left to right.)
BONUS 1: I have seven billiard balls, one of which weighs less than the other six. Otherwise, they all look exactly the same. How can I identify the one that weighs less on a balance scale, using that scale no more than two times?
BONUS 2: Exactly the same situation as Bonus 1, only now you have A) 8, and B) 9 billiard balls. Can you do either/both parts?
BONUS 3: See B1 and B2 above, with same conditions except that you now get THREE weighings. Is it possible to achieve the same goal if there are 18 billiard balls? Make your argument either way.(Demonstrate for, or argue against.)
BONUS 4: See #14 above. Of the five entities there, how many TOTAL teams of any number (pairs and teams of 3, 4, or 5) are there?
CREATIVITY BONUS A: Make as long a sentence as you can (at least 5 words?) where every word starts with the same letter. (LOTS of ‘right’ answers, of course!!)
CREATIVITY BONUS B: The Herman cartoon below has had the caption (temporarily) removed. Submit your own caption and get us laughing!! (Later we may decide we like some of these submissions better than the original!) (added July ’23: Indeed, I’m not sure I can re-find the original caption. :-))
CREATIVITY BONUS C: Submit a good Creativity Bonus idea for this section!!
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