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.
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.
A man worked for a high-security institution, and one day he went in to work only to find that he could not log in to his computer terminal. His password wouldn't work. Then he remembered that the passwords are reset every month for security purposes. So he went to his boss and they had this conversation:
Man: "Hey boss, my password is out of date."
Boss: "Yes, that's right. The password is different, but if you listen carefully you should be able to figure out the new one: It has the same amount of letters as your old password, but only four of the letters are the same."
Man: "Thanks boss."
With that, he went and correctly logged into his station.
What was the new password?
BONUS: What was his old password?
HINT: It is nine letters long. Also, a "password" can be more than one word...
The old one was: Out of date
The new one is: Different
He said: My password is "Out of date." And the boss told him the new one when he said: "The password is different."
Note: This riddle must be done IN YOUR HEAD ONLY and NOT using paper and a pen.
Take 1000 and add 40 to it.
Now add another 1000.
Now add 30.
Another 1000.
Now add 20.
Now add another 1000.
Now add 10.
What is the total?
The answer is 4100, check it out on a calculator. Did you think it was 5000? Most people add the 100 as 1000 by mistake.
A girl lives in a house with her parents. There is a cellar door in the house, and her parents warn her to never, ever, open it because she's not ready to see what's behind it.
What is on the other side of the door that her parents don't want her to see?
The girl is locked in the cellar. Her parents are both crazed people who thought the best way to protect their daughter would be by locking her in the cellar since she was born. On the other side of the door is the rest of the house, and the outside world.
You overhear a man talking to a clerk in a hardware store. The clerk says "One will cost you 12 cents, ten will cost your 24 cents, and one hundred will cost you 36 cents."
What is the man buying?
The man is buying physical numbers to nail to the front of his house. Each number costs 12 cents, and so "1" will cost 12 cents, "10" will cost 24 cents, and "100" will cost 36 cents.
