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More Puzzles
Kickself Puzzles (If you don't get the answers you'll kick yourself when you see them.)
WHICH FIRST?
You have only one match and you enter a room in which there is a kerosene lamp, a candle and a fireplace. Which should you light first?
MULTINATIONAL
If an Australian-registered ship sailing from Singapore to Hong Kong sinks in international waters, where will the survivors be buried?
DUCK
If a duck came floating down the Mekong River, where would it have come from?
RICE
Why do Chinese men eat more rice than Japanese men?
FINGERS
What word describes a woman who does not have all her fingers on one hand?
CRITTERS
Which of the "critters" is the odd one out and why?
RED AND BLACK
Five red and five black playing cards are shuffled and dealt face-down. If you draw two cards, what are your chances of getting two of the same colour?
RELATIVE SQUARES
Mr Lee once had a birthday in a year (4 digits) that was the square of his age on that birthday. His granddaughter expects to do likewise one day. What were their ages on their birthdays in 1996?
MESHING AROUND
Two gear wheels marked with arrows mesh as shown. The teeth are the same size on each wheel. Starting from the position shown, the smaller wheel turns clockwise, the bigger one anticlockwise, until the arrows point directly towards each other again. If the bigger wheel has 73 teeth, how many times will the smaller wheel have rotated?
REGULAR EVENT
What common event occurs regularly every 65 minutes 27.3 seconds?
SHEAR MAGIC
The plain carpet was 8m long by 5m wide. A 4m by 1m rectangular piece had been cut out of the centre as shown, to remove a damaged portion. Then someone worked out a clever way to cut the carpet into two pieces which could be fitted together differently to make a carpet 6m square with no hole. What did the two pieces look like?
ESCALATOR
I once walked up the "down" escalator at my local shopping centre and it took me a minute and a half. When the escalator was out of order it took me half a minute to walk down it at the same pace. If again I walk at the same pace, how long will it take me to walk down the escalator while it is operating normally?
CATERPILLAR AND LIZARD (Lewis Carroll)
The caterpillar believes that both he and the lizard are mad. If every belief of the sane is correct and every belief of the insane is incorrect (taken as a whole), is the lizard sane?
LIARS
In Mendavera City the people are of two types - liars and truthtellers. Any statement by a liar is false, taken as a whole. Any statement by a truthteller is true. Xerxes, Yancy and Zach, three Mendaveran citizens, make the following statements about each other:
Xerxes: "Yancy is a liar."
Yancy: "Zach is a liar."
Zach: "Those two are both liars."
How many of the three are liars?
EVERY WHICH WAY
The arrow is missing from the centre square. Which way should it point?
SINGULAR GOAT
Looking at a certain field, a Mensan farmer reckons that he could graze three goats there for three days before all the grass was eaten up, or two goats for six days. All his goats graze at the same rate. For how long could he graze a single goat in the field?
CAKE WHOLES
When Winston and his wife sat down to tea with his sister-in-law and daughter-in-law, each person ate a different whole number of scones (nobody went without) and eleven scones were eaten in all. Winston's wife ate two and his sister-in-law ate four. How many scones did Winston eat?
HARDWARE
She walks into a hardware store, looks around for a bit, then asks: "How much for one?" The shopkeeper replies "Eighty cents". She then asks, "How much for thirteen?" and the shopkeeper replies "A dollar sixty". She then tells him "I'll take one hundred and thirty five" and the shopkeeper says "That'll be two dollars forty". What is she buying?
EXCESS WORD
The following were three entries in a Mensa competition:
1) Shark, white and jumping
2) Humour saves army medicos
3) Gambler (nasty) is taken in spectacularly, ensuring hoaxers' triumph
Entries 1) and 2) were judged apt and won prizes. Entry 3) was also clever, but was disqualified because of one excess word. Which word?
BIRTHDAY WEATHER
Lucy was born on a sunny Summer Sunday in Hong Kong and turned seven years old on a grey, rainy Sunday in Macau. What age did she reach on her birthday in 1996?
ODD WORDS
There's a logical system to this sequence of words:
Competence, Just, Deciduous, Internationalism, Perceptible, Kickboxing, Jurisprudence, Mob, Charisma,Historiography, ...
Which of the following words could come next in the sequence?
Household Freedoms Mumble Nincompoop Juicer Invincibility
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