Brain Teasers

1. There is one word in the English language that is always pronounced incorrectly. What is it?

2. A man gave one son 10 cents and another son was given 15 cents. What time is it?

3. A boat has a ladder that has six rungs, each rung is one foot apart. The bottom rung is one foot from the water. The tide rises at 12 inches every 15 minutes. High tide peaks in one hour. When the tide is at it's highest, how many rungs are under water?

4. There is a house with four walls. Each wall faces south. There is a window in each wall. A bear walks by one of the windows. What color is the bear?

5. Is half of two plus two equal to two or three?

6. There is a room. The shutters are blowing in. There is broken glass on the floor. There is water on the floor. You find Sloppy dead on the floor. How did sloppy die?

7. How much dirt would be in a hole 6 feet deep and 6 feet wide that has been dug with a square edged shovel?

8. If I were in Hawaii and dropped a bowling ball in a bucket of water which is 45 degrees F, and dropped another ball of the same weight, mass, and size in a bucket at 30 degrees F, them at the same time, which ball would hit the bottom of the bucket first? Same question, but the location is in Canada?

9. What is the significance of the following: The year is 1978, thirty-four minutes past noon on May 6th.

10. What can go up a chimney down, but can't go down a chimney up?

11. If a farmer has 5 haystacks in one field and 4 haystacks in the other field, how many haystacks would he have if he combined them all in the center field?

12. What is it that goes up and goes down but does not move?

Answers To Brain Teasers

1. Incorrectly.

2. 1:45. The man gave away a total of 25 cents. He divided it between two
people. Therefore, he gave a quarter to two.

3. None, the boat rises with the tide.

4. White. If all the walls face south, the house is at the north pole, and
the bear, therefore, is a polar bear.

5. Three. Well, it seems that it could almost be either, but if you follow
the mathematical orders of operation, division is performed before addition.
So... half of two is one. Then add two, and the answer is three.

6. Sloppy is a goldfish. The wind blew the shutters in, which knocked his
goldfish-bowl off the table, and it broke, killing him.

7. None. No matter how big a hole is, it's still a hole: the absence of
dirt. (And those of you who said 36 cubic feet are wrong for another
reason, too. You would have needed the length measurement too. So you
don't even know how much air is in the hole.)

8. Both questions, same answer: the ball in the bucket of 45 degree F water
hits the bottom of the bucket last. Did you think that the water in the 30
degree F bucket is frozen? Think again. The question said nothing about
that bucket having anything in it. Therefore, there is no water (or ice) to
slow the ball down.

9. The time and month/date/year are 12:34, 5/6/78.

10. An umbrella.

11. One. If he combines all of his haystacks, they all become one big
stack.

12. The temperature.

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