Best difficult riddles

logictrickycleversimple

When Manish was three years old he carved a nail into his favorite tree to mark his height. Six years later at age nine, Manish returned to see how much higher the nail was. If the tree grew by five centimeters each year, how much higher would the nail be.
The nail would be at the same height since trees grow at their tops.
72.70 %
83 votes
cleanlogicstory

100 men are in a room, each wearing either a white or black hat. Nobody knows the color of his own hat, although everyone can see everyone else's hat. The men are not allowed to communicate with each other at all (and thus nobody will ever be able to figure out the color of his own hat). The men need to line up against the wall such that all the men with black hats are next to each other, and all the men with white hats are next to each other. How can they do this without communicating? You can assume they came up with a shared strategy before coming into the room.
The men go to stand agains the wall one at a time. If a man goes to stand against the wall and all of the men already against the wall have the same color hat, then he just goes and stands at either end of the line. However, if a man goes to stand against the wall and there are men with both black and white hats already against the wall, he goes and stands between the two men with different colored hats. This will maintain the state that the line contains men with one colored hats on one side, and men with the other colored hats on the other side, and when the last man goes and stands against the wall, we'll still have the desired outcome.
72.70 %
121 votes
logiccleverstory

A monk leaves at sunrise and walks on a path from the front door of his monastery to the top of a nearby mountain. He arrives at the mountain summit exactly at sundown. The next day, he rises again at sunrise and descends down to his monastery, following the same path that he took up the mountain. Assuming sunrise and sunset occured at the same time on each of the two days, prove that the monk must have been at some spot on the path at the same exact time on both days.
Imagine that instead of the same monk walking down the mountain on the second day, that it was actually a different monk. Let's call the monk who walked up the mountain monk A, and the monk who walked down the mountain monk B. Now pretend that instead of walking down the mountain on the second day, monk B actually walked down the mountain on the first day (the same day monk A walks up the mountain). Monk A and monk B will walk past each other at some point on their walks. This moment when they cross paths is the time of day at which the actual monk was at the same point on both days. Because in the new scenario monk A and monk B MUST cross paths, this moment must exist.
72.70 %
70 votes
logicmathcleanclever

2+3=8, 3+7=27, 4+5=32, 5+8=60, 6+7=72, 7+8=? Solve it?
98 2+3=2*[3+(2-1)]=8 3+7=3*[7+(3-1)]=27 4+5=4*[5+(4-1)]=32 5+8=5*[8+(5-1)]=60 6+7=6*[7+(6-1)]=72 therefore 7+8=7*[8+(7-1)]=98 x+y=x[y+(x-1)]=x^2+xy-x
72.54 %
52 votes
cleanlogicmath

A 400 yard long train, travelling at 30 mph, enters a 4.5 mile long tunnel. How long will elapse between the moment the front of the train enters the tunnel and the moment the end of the train clears the tunnel?
9 minutes and 27.2727 seconds.
72.54 %
52 votes