A QUIZZICAL COLLECTION OF CURIOUS CONUNDRUMS, ENIGMATICALLY PERPLEXING BRAINTEASERS, MYSTERIOUS RIDDLES AND PUZZLINGLY PROBLEMATICAL POSERS

These puzzles drive you mad. Look for the REALLY EASY answer.

1. Why can't a man living in California be buried in Canada?

2. A Doctor in Birmingham had a brother who was a Doctor in London, why did the Doctor in London not have a brother who was a Doctor in Birmingham?

3. A woman called May once gave birth to non-identical twins and called them Peter and April, a brother and sister for June. If they were born in March, why did they celebrate their birthday on the 25th of July?

4. My neighbour keeps peacocks. If one flew over the fence, laid an egg on my lawn and flew back again, to whom would the egg legally belong?

5. How many birthdays does the average person have?

6. Some months have 31 days, but how many have 28 days?

7. Divide 30 by a half and add 10 - what is the answer?

8. If there are 3 apples in a tub and you take away two, how many do you have?

9. I have two coins whose total value is 55 pence. If one is not a 5 pence piece, what are the coins?

10. A farmer has 17 sheep, and all but 9 die. How many are left?

11. Our local butcher is five feet ten inches tall. What does he weigh?

12. What was the United States of America's President's name in 1950?

13. A doctor gives you three pills and tells you take one every half an hour. How long will the pills last?

14. How many animals of each sex did Moses take on the ark?

15. A German-based Lufthansa flight once took off from London Heathrow, bound for Vienna in Austria. During the journey, the plane crashed into the Alps, right on the border between France, Italy and Switzerland. Now the pilot was Danish, the co-pilot Belgian and the navigator Dutch. Most of the passengers were, of course, either British or Austrian, but there were also six Americans, two Canadians, a Hungarian, a Swede and an Argentinean. Where did they bury the survivors?

16. Henry has one, Peter has two and Steven has two, but Julia has none. How many has Fred got, and what is it?

17. In the local park there is a circular pond which is four metres in diameter and has a centrally located circular island which is one metre in diameter. If a frog is dead in the middle of the island, and can only jump two metres, can it get to the mainland?

18. Ten very fat men are trying to share one small umbrella - why don't they get wet?

19. Which is correct - the yolk of an egg is white or the yolk of an egg are white?

20. How can a man stay single all his life and legally marry his sister?

21. The other day I was passing a field of cows. Some of the cows were brown and white, and some of them were black and white. They all had calves, some of which were brown and white, some of them were black and white, and one calf was black, brown and white, what colour cow was its father?

22. If a man simultaneously drops two coins, one into each of two buckets of water, the first at 20º C and the second at 20º F, which coin hits the bottom of its bucket first?

23. Two American tourists were standing in Trafalgar Square in London, when a small boy comes running up to them. "That is my son," says the first tourist. "It is my son," says the other tourist. Whose son was he?

24. A man set out from the pub to walk 800 metres to his home. He lived in the country, where there were no streetlights and he did not have a torch. The narrow country lane had deep ditches dividing it from the unfenced fields. It did not have a pavement or path, but it did have a narrow (1/2 metre) strip of grass between the edge of the road and the deep ditches on both sides. The man walked on the grass to keep off the road, and he managed to walk all the way home without seeing a single vehicle, bike or pedestrian. How did he manage to avoid falling in the ditch?

25. What is the next symbol in this series:
    

26. Two trains left London for Birmingham at precisely the same time, travelled for the whole of the journey on parallel tracks and at identical speeds. Why did one train complete the journey in one hour and twenty minutes when the other train took only 80 minutes?

27. To toast my bread to exactly the right amount in the morning, I need to slice the bread so that it is 11/2cm thick. I always buy a brown unsliced loaf that is 30cm long. How many slices (including the crust) can I cut off a whole loaf?

28. A farmer sees 100 crows on his field. He fires his shotgun and kills 5.
    How many crows are left in the field?

29. A family consisted of a mother, a father and seven sons, each of which had a sister. How many children were there in the family?

30. A friend of mine has a small yacht with red sails. Two weeks ago he went to his boat for a day at sea. He took with him exactly one gallon of petrol in a container. There was no wind blowing and the tide was coming in at 0.4 knots. He went downriver, against the tide, for 3.7 miles and then out to sea, where it was still very calm. He wandered around the coast for three hours before dropping a sea anchor and drifting quietly whilst doing some fishing for a couple of hours. He then made a 40 minute journey back to the mouth of the river. The tide was now going out and the current was 1.3 knots against him. He found, when he got off the boat, that he had just 1/4 of a gallon of petrol left. Last Saturday he went out again. He undertook exactly the same journey, starting with a full gallon of petrol, but with the following differences: the tide was with him both times, rather than being against him, and the wind was blowing at right angles to the river at a steady 15 knots. How much petrol did he have left when he got back this time?

31. Three men went into a restaurant for a meal. Although they each ordered different food, they agreed to share the bill between them. The waiter, who was a little dishonest, brought them a bill for £60 and each man paid £20. The waiter took the money to the cashier, who noticed that they had been overcharged and returned five one pound coins as change. The waiter slipped two pounds in his pocket on the way back to the table and gave each man one pound change. Now each man had paid £19 for his meal. Three times nineteen is a total of £57 and if the two pounds in the waiter's pocket is added in, there is a total of £59, not £60. What happened to the other pound?

32. A cowboy lived all his life in a small town in the middle of the desert. One day he decided to leave the town and "see the world" so he saddled up and set off on his horse. He rode for five whole days, got off his horse and looked around. Now the desert does not really change very much, even after five days of riding, so the cowboy decided that he had seen enough of the world and that his home town was really a better place to be. He climbed back onto his horse and rode for another five days until he arrived back home. How is it possible that he arrived back on the same Sunday that he left on?

33. A ship is moored at a deep water wharf in a harbour. Dangling over the side of the ship is a rope-ladder, and at low-tide there are 27 rungs visible. Each rung of the rope ladder is 3cm thick and they are all 45cm apart. If the tide rises 55cm per hour and there is a six hour difference between high and low tide, how many rungs are visible at high tide?

34. A very cold and extremely hungry man walks into a dark log cabin. There is log fire (for warmth), a gas lamp (for light) and a stove (for cooking). He has one matchstick left. What does he light first in order to survive?

35. Stand in front of, and face, an ordinary bicycle arranged so that one of the pedals is up (maximum height) and the other is therefore at the lowest possible point. Holding the bicycle lightly so that it does not fall over, what happens if you now push the lower pedal with your foot? (To help with visualisation - the pedal you push should turn causing the bike to move forward - but the force of your foot is trying to make the bike go backwards. Which way does it go?)

36. A farmer's last will and testament specified that his estate should be divided intact amongst his three sons in the proportions one half to the eldest, one third to the middle son and one ninth to the youngest son. Unfortunately when he died his entire estate consisted of just seventeen horses. How did his sons comply with their father's wishes, without selling, killing or cutting up any of the horses?

37. Since the Norman Conquest of 1066, only one king has been crowned in England. Who was it, and why was he the only one?

38. A grandmother with her four granddaughters, and three mothers accompanied by each of their two daughters entered a restaurant and asked for a table. Why did the waiter place only seven chairs around the table?

39. If a man wants to marry his widow's sister, is there a law to prevent him?

40. What are the next three letters in this sequence: O T T F F S S

41. What is it that will grow as it is fed but will die if it is watered?

42. A man was cycling downhill towards a level crossing at 30km per hour, and at the same time a train was approaching the same level crossing at 60km per hour. If neither of them slowed down or speeded up, the train was 100 metres away and the man 50 metres away, did he get across?

43. Onomatopoeia is a very complicated word. How do you spell it?

44. A train pulled out of London Euston with two hundred and thirty-six people on board and travelled non-stop to Edinburgh, where every single passenger got out. Who was left on the train?

45. How far can a dog run into a forest?

46. Four people of diverse athletic ability were faced with the contrived problem of making their way through an unlit tunnel of finite length. The tunnel was so full of pit holes and other logical dangers, that they had to use a torch to safely traverse the tunnel. Only two people could safely see by the torch's light to travel through the tunnel at a time, and the only torch they possessed had sufficient batteries to last exactly 61 minutes (one hour and one minute). The people were able to walk at various speeds so that it would take them the following times to get safely through the tunnel: 5 minutes, ten minutes, twenty minutes and twenty-five minutes. Can you work out the correct order that the people have to walk through the tunnel together (and, of course, to carry the torch back) so that they can traverse the tunnel safely. (There are no tricks to this, just use logic and maths).

47. A man was shipwrecked on to a small desert island. Remarkably, the only possessions to survive the shipwreck was a dog (for company), a chicken (that laid him eggs), and some corn seed (to plant and grow). Unfortunately there was no fertile soil on his island, but there was another island nearby that was larger and had fertile soil. He managed to construct a makeshift raft out of driftwood but it would only carry him and one possession. His dilemma was to transport all of his possessions intact to the other island. Unfortunately the dog would eat the chicken and the chicken would eat all the corn, if left alone. How did he transport everything without any of his possessions being eaten?

48. A man lived upon the top floor of a thirty-four floor block of flats. Every morning he would go to the shop across the road to buy a paper and a pint of milk. He always got in the lift, pressed the button and proceeded to the ground floor. When he returned from the shop he would take the lift to the nineteenth floor and get out and walk up the stairs to his flat, except if it was raining when he would go all the way to the top floor. If the climb was not for exercise, why did he have to use the stairs?

49. A visitor to a house saw a photograph of a man, and asked the owner who it was. He replied with the following rhyme:
    "Uncles and brothers have I none,
    But that man's father, is my fathers son"

    Who is in the photograph?

50. An explorer left his shelter and travelled 500 metres due south, before turning due west. After travelling 500 metres in this direction he saw a bear. He was so frightened that he ran 500 metres due north and ended up back at his shelter, where he had started from. What colour was the bear?

51. An express train left London for Ipswich at exactly the same time that a stopping train left Ipswich for London. The express train travels at a constant 130km/h, while the stopping train averages 80km/h. If the distance from Ipswich to London by train is 144 km, which train is further from Ipswich when they meet?

52. I always buy exactly the same types of socks from the same shop. I have ten pairs of blue socks and ten pairs of black socks. Last week I had to get up early in the morning and leave the house over an hour before the sun rose. In order to ensure that I did not wake my wife by turning on the light, how many socks should I take out of the drawer so that when I get downstairs I will have a pair to wear to work?

53. In a biology experiment, there were two identical jars that were filled with exactly the same volume of liquid. In the first jar, one amoeba was placed, and in the second jar, there were two amoebas. As everyone knows, amoebas reproduce themselves every five minutes by splitting in half. It takes the amoebas in jar two exactly five hours to fill the jar. How long does it take to fill jar one?

54. An old hippie was looking at his favourite vinyl long playing record. The record was 30 centimetres in diameter and the unplayable circle in the middle (the label area) was 10 centimetres in diameter. One side of the record took 19 minutes and 20 seconds from the time the needle was dropped at the outer edge until it lifted automatically near the label. The other side took 21 minutes and 40 seconds, so if long playing records rotate at 33 revolutions per minute, how many grooves were on the record?

55. The hippie mentioned in number 54 decided that it would also be interesting to calculate how far the needle would travel when playing each side of his favourite record. How far will it travel?

56. What goes up but never comes down?

57. A farmer has four haystacks in one small field, and five haystacks in a larger field. How many will he have if he combines them in the centre of the larger field?

58. There is one word in the English language that is always pronounced incorrectly. Which word is it?

59. A hole is 6 feet deep and 6 feet wide. if it has been dug with a square-edged shovel, how much soil is there left in?

60. How could Christmas Day fall on Easter Monday?

61. What goes up a chimney down, but cannot go down a chimney up?

62. There is not, as yet a number 62

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