Difficult math riddles

logicmathclever

A deliveryman comes to a house to drop off a package. He asks the woman who lives there how many children she has. "Three," she says. "And I bet you can't guess their ages." "Ok, give me a hint," the deliveryman says. "Well, if you multiply their ages together, you get 36," she says. "And if you add their ages together, the sum is equal to our house number." The deliveryman looks at the house number nailed to the front of her house. "I need another hint," he says. The woman thinks for a moment. "My youngest son will have a lot to learn from his older brothers," she says. The deliveryman's eyes light up and he tells her the ages of her three children. What are their ages?
Their ages are 1, 6, and 6. We can figure this out as follows: Given that their ages multiply out to 36, the possible ages for the children are: 1, 1, 36 (sum = 38) 1, 2, 18 (sum = 21) 1, 3, 12 (sum = 16) 1, 4, 9 (sum = 14) 1, 6, 6 (sum = 13) 2, 2, 9 (sum = 13) 2, 3, 6 (sum = 11) 3, 3, 4 (sum = 10) When the woman tells the deliveryman that the children's ages add up to her street number, he still doesn't know their ages. The only way this could happen is that there is more than one possible way for the children's ages to add up to the number on the house (or else he would have known their ages when he looked at the house number). Looking back at the possible values for the children's ages, you can see that there is only one situation in which there are multiple possible values for the children's ages that add up to the same sum, and that is if their ages are either 1, 6, and 6 (sums up to 13), or 2, 2, and 9 (also sums up to 13). So these are now the only possible values for their ages. When the woman then tells him that her youngest son has two older brothers (who we can tell are clearly a number of years older), the only possible situation is that their ages are 1, 6, and 6.
65.70 %
95 votes
logicmath

You have two sand hourglasses, one that measures exactly 4 minutes and one that measures exactly 7 minutes. You need to measure out exactly 2 minutes to boil an egg. Using only these two hourglasses, how can you measure out exactly 2 minutes to boil your egg?
Flip over both hourglasses at the same time. 1. After 4 minutes, the 4-minute hourglass will be done, and there will be 3 minutes left in the 7-minute hourglass. Immediately flip the 4-minute hourglass over again. 2. After 3 more minutes, the 7-minute hourglass will be done, and there will be exactly 1 minute left in the 4-minute hourglass. Immediately flip the 7-minute hourglass over again. 3. After 1 more minute, the 4-minute hourglass will be done again, and there will be exactly 6 minutes left in the 7-minute hourglass. Immediately flip over the 4-minute hourglass. 4. After 4 more minutes, the 4-minute hourglass will be done again, and there will be exactly 2 minutes left in the 7-minute hourglass. At this point, put your egg in the boiling water. When the 7-minute hourglass is done, it will have been exactly 2 more minutes, and your egg will have boiled just right. Or after step 2 just flip 7-minute hourglass for second minute.
64.60 %
136 votes
logicmathcleansimple

In a supermarket, the first 25 customers of the day purchased an average of two items each. After a further 15 customers, the average number of items purchased by each customer rose to eight. What was the average number of items purchased by the last 15 customers only?
((15+25) x 8 - (25 x 2))/15 = 18
62.91 %
47 votes
logicmathstorymystery

A witch owns a field containing many gold mines. She hires one man at a time to mine this gold for her. She promises 10% of what a man mines in a day, and he gives her the rest. Because she is blind, she has three magic bags who can talk. They report how much gold they held each day, and this is how she finds out if men are cheating her. Upon getting the job, each man agrees that if he isn't honest, then he will be turned into stone. So around the witch's mines, many statues lay! Now comes an honest man named Garry. He accepts the job gladly. The witch, who didn't trust him said, "If I wrongly accuse you of cheating me, then I'll be turned into stone." That night, Garry, having honestly done his first day's job, overheard the bags talking to the witch. He then formulated a plan... The next night, he submitted his gold, and kept 1.6 pounds of gold. Later, the witch talked with her bags. The first bag said it held 16 pounds that day. The second one said it held 5 pounds. The third one said it held 2 pounds. Beaming, the witch confronted Garry. "You scoundrel, you think you could fool me. Now you shall turn into stone!" the witch cried. One second later, the witch was hard as a rock, and very grey-looking. How did Garry brilliantly deceive the witch?
Garry put 2 lbs. in bag #1. 3 lbs. were put in bag #2. 11 lb. were put into bag #3. He then put bag #2 into bag #3, and bag #1 into bag #2. The bags only felt the weight of the gold above it. Thus they inadvertently gave the message that 23 lbs. were taken.
62.73 %
167 votes
logicmath

1 11 21 1211 111221 312211 What is the next number in the sequence?
The next number it: 13112221. Each number describes the previous number. Starting with 1, the second line describes it 11 (one 1). Then the third line describes 11 as 21 (two 1's). Then the fourth line describes 21 as 1211 (one 2, one 1). This is the pattern.
62.59 %
178 votes
logicmathclever

You and a friend are standing in front of two houses. In each house lives a family with two children. "The family on the left has a boy who loves history, but their other child prefers math," your friend tells you. "The family on the right has a 7-year old boy, and they just had a new baby," he explains. "Does either family have a girl?" you ask. "I'm not sure," your friend says. "But pick the family that you think is more likely to have a girl. If they do have a girl, I'll give you $100." Which family should you pick, or does it not matter?
You should pick the house on the left. Specifically, there is a 2/3 chance that the family on the left has a girl, whereas there's only a 1/2 chance that the house on the right has a girl. This is a very counterintuitive riddle. It seems like there should always be a 1/2 chance that a given child is a girl. And in fact there is. The key word there is "given". Because we are not asking about a "given" child for the house on the left. We are asking about what could be either child. Whereas for the house on the right, we are asking about a "given" child...specifically, we're asking about the younger child. There are 3 possibilities for the children in the first house: Younger Older Girl Boy Boy Girl Boy Boy There is no "Girl, Girl" option because we know the house on the left has at least one boy. Since each of these 3 options is equally likely, and 2 of them have one girl, there is a 2/3 chance of there being a girl in the house on the left. For the house on the right, because we already know the older child is a boy, there are only two possibilities: Younger Older Girl Boy Boy Boy And as we can see, there is a 1/2 chance for the house on the right having a girl. Search for: Boy or Girl paradox
61.91 %
67 votes
logicmath

An intelligent trader travels from one place to another with 3 sacks having 30 coconuts each. No sack can hold more than 30 coconuts. On the way, he passes 30 check points. At each check point, he has to give one coconut for every sack he is carrying. What is the maximum number of coconuts that he can have with him at the end of his journey?
He will have 25 coconuts with him at the end. The trick is to reduce the number of sacks as you pass checkpoints. The first 10 checkpoints require 3 coconuts each, which empties his first sack. The next 15 checkpoints require 2 coconuts each, which will empty his second stack. Now, he is left with 1 sack and 5 more checkpoints. So, the 5 checkpoints will take 1 coconut each. Therefore, he will be left with 25 coconuts.
60.54 %
296 votes
logicstorymath

A man puts on a clean shirt every night before bed. On the first nigh he puts on a blue shirt. He than sleeps for 5 hours. Every one hour more he sleeps than the night before he put on a different color shirt the next night according to this scale: blue, black, red, green, white, pink, orange, brown, purple, yellow, grey, neon green, tan, and teal. Every one hour less he sleeps than the last night he put on a different color shirt the next night going backwards on his scale. If he were to wear a blue shirt because he slept more hours than the last night he does. If it was because he slept less hours than the night before he skips it and wears a teal shirt instead. If he goes backwards on the scale and goes to blue but would not wear a blue shirt he still counts blue in his going backwards on his scale. The second night the man wears a blue shirt because he did not sleep any more or less hours than the last night. The man sleeps for six hours that night. The next night he sleeps for five hours. Night number four he sleeps for eight hours. The next night he sleeps for seven hours. The next night he sleeps so well he sleeps for 11 hours. Night number seven he stays up so late he only sleeps for four hours. The next night he is so tired he sleeps for eight hours. The next night he sleeps for eight hours again. Night number ten he sleeps for 14 hours because he is sick. Since he slept so long the last night he only sleeps for seven hours. The next night he is a little bit tired so he sleeps for eight hours. The night after that he had to do so much work he only slept five hours. The next night at work they let him out early and he slept for nine hours. The next night he slept for eight hours. And the last night the man did he slept for ten hours. The next night he put on a different color shirt according to his scale, but the next night he randomly picked a shirt. At what night will the man wear a blue shirt again?
12th Night.
56.40 %
81 votes
logicmathsimpleclean

What is the next number in the sequence: 32 35 40 44 52 112 ?
Each number in the sequence is a representation of the number 32 in different bases, starting with base 10.
46.29 %
125 votes
logicmathmysterydetective

100 people are standing in a circle. The person standing at number 1 is having a sword. He kills the person next to him with the sword and then gives the sword to the third person. This process is carried out till there is just one person left. Which number survives at the last?
73rd person will survive at last. If the number of players is the power of 2, the last person to survive will be the one who started it. But since the number here is not the power of 2, we will take the greatest power of 2 that is less than the number of players (100) which is 64. So when starting with 100 players - we need to kill 36 of them to get down to a power of 2 (64). Since we kill every other person starting at player 2 the last person we need to die is player 72, they will be killed by player 71 and the first person in the effective power of 2 game, who will win is player 73. It's worth noting that this process of reducing to a power of 2 will always be completed in the first round regardless of the number of players. Consider X players, let Y be the highest power of 2 that is less than or equal to Y The winning player is 2 * (X - Y) + 1
39.56 %
232 votes