Math riddles

mathtricky

As I was going to the mall I met a man with seven wives. Each wive held two bags, each bag held a mother cat, each mother cat had six babies, How many people were going to the mall?
Just one.
72.05 %
64 votes
logicmath

Think of a number. Double it. Add ten. Half it. Take away the number you started with. What is your number?
Your number is 5.
71.88 %
55 votes
logicmathstorycleanclever

In the land of Brainopia, there are three races of people: Mikkos, who tell the truth all the time, Kikkos, who always tell lies, and Zikkos, who tell alternate false and true statements, in which the order is not known (i.e. true, false, true or false, true, false). When interviewing three Brainopians, a foreigner received the following statements: Person 1: I am a Mikko. Person 2: I am a Kikko. Person 3: a. They are both lying. b. I am a Zikko. Can you help the very confused foreigner determine who is who, assuming each person represents a different race?
Person 1 is a Miko. Person 2 is a Ziko. Person 3 is a Kikko.
71.85 %
105 votes
logicmathsimpleclever

We all know that square root of number 121 is 11. But do you know what si the square root of the number "12345678987654321" ?
111111111 Explanation: It's a maths magical square root series as : Square root of number 121 is 11 Square root of number 12321 is 111 Square root of number 1234321 is 1111 Square root of number 123454321 is 11111 Square root of number 12345654321 is 111111 Square root of number 1234567654321 is 1111111 Square root of number 123456787654321 is 11111111 Square root of number 12345678987654321 is 111111111 (answer)
71.74 %
80 votes
logicmathcleancleversimple

If you're 8 feet away from a door and with each move you advance half the distance to the door. How many moves will it take to reach the door?
You will never reach the door! If you only move half the distance, then you will always have half the distance remaining no matter, how small is the number.
71.67 %
88 votes
logiccleanclevermath

At a dinner party, many of the guests exchange greetings by shaking hands with each other while they wait for the host to finish cooking. After all this handshaking, the host, who didn't take part in or see any of the handshaking, gets everybody's attention and says: "I know for a fact that at least two people at this party shook the same number of other people's hands." How could the host know this? Note that nobody shakes his or her own hand.
Assume there are N people at the party. Note that the least number of people that someone could shake hands with is 0, and the most someone could shake hands with is N-1 (which would mean that they shook hands with every other person). Now, if everyone at the party really were to have shaken hands with a different number of people, then that means somone must have shaken hands with 0 people, someone must have shaken hands with 1 person, and so on, all the way up to someone who must have shaken hands with N-1 people. This is the only possible scenario, since there are N people at the party and N different numbers of possible people to shake hands with (all the numbers between 0 and N-1 inclusive). But this situation isn't possible, because there can't be both a person who shook hands with 0 people (call him Person 0) and a person who shook hands with N-1 people (call him Person N-1). This is because Person 0 shook hands with nobody (and thus didn't shake hands with Person N-1), but Person N-1 shook hands with everybody (and thus did shake hands with Person 0). This is clearly a contradiction, and thus two of the people at the party must have shaken hands with the same number of people. Pretend there were only 2 guests at the party. Then try 3, and 4, and so on. This should help you think about the problem. Search: Pigeonhole principle
71.64 %
63 votes