Dave is put in a cell with a dirt floor and only one window.
The window is too high for him to reach.
The only thing in the cell is a shovel.
He won't be able to get any food or water and only has two days to escape or he'll die.
Dave can't dig a tunnel because it will take him much longer than two days to do it.
How will Dave escape from the cell?
Dave has to use the shovel to create a pile of dirt under the window so he can climb up onto it and escape from the cell.
A dead body is found at the bottom of a multistory building. Seeing the position of the body, it is evident that the person jumped from one of the floors, committing suicide.
A homicide detective is called to look after the case. He goes to the first floor and walks in the room facing the direction in which the body was found.
He opens the window in that direction and flips a coin towards the floor. Then he goes to the second floor and repeats the process. He keeps on doing this until he reaches the last floor. Then, when he climbs down he tells the team that it is a murder not suicide.
How did he come to know that it was a murder?
None of the windows were left open. If the person jumped, who closed the window?
Emperor Akbar once ruled over India. He was a wise and intelligent ruler; and he had in his court the Nine Gems, his nine advisors, who were each known for a particular skill. One of these Gems was Birbal, known for his wit and wisdom. The story below is one of the examples of his wit. Do you have it in you to find the answer?
One day the Emperor Akbar stumbled on a small rock in the royal gardens and momentarily went off balance. He was in a bad mood that day and the incident only served to make him more angry. Finding a target for his mood of the day, he ordered the gardener's arrest and execution. Birbal heard of this and visited the gardener in the cell where he was being held awaiting execution. Birbal had known the gardener for many years and also knew of the gardener's immense respect and sense of loyalty for the king. He decided to help the gardener escape the death sentence and explained his plan to the gardener, who reluctantly agreed to go along.
The next day the gardener was asked what his last wish was before he was hanged, as was custom. The gardener requested an audience with the emperor. This wish was granted, but when the man neared the throne he tried to attack the emperor. The emperor was shocked and demanded an explanation. The gardener looked at Birbal, who stepped forward and explained why the gardener had attacked the emperor. The emperor immediately realised how unjust he had been and ordered the release of the gardener. How did Birbal manage this?
"Your Majesty," said Birbal, "there is probably no person more loyal to you than this unfortunate gardener. Fearing that people would say you hanged him for a silly reason and question your sense of justice, he went out of his way to give you a genuine reason for hanging him."
A man is found dead in the desert. He is wearing only his underwear. Half of a straw is found nearby.
How did this man die?
The man was flying in a hot-air balloon with another man over the desert. The balloon started to go down because of excess weight. Both men would die if they ended up stranded in the desert, so they stripped down to their underwear and threw their clothes off the balloon to try to reduce the weight. Unfortunately, that didn't work well enough. So they drew straws to decide who would jump. The dead man pulled the short straw and jumped out of the balloon.
A couple went on holiday for three weeks. They carefully locked their house, and had a neighbor check on the place while they were gone. When they returned, the wife was distressed to lean that because of a power failure she had lost all her fine jewelry. She had hidden the jewelry in what she thought was a very safe place. She was not robbed. Her jewelry was lost by accident. Why?
In this true incident, the wife had hidden her best jewelry inside her freezer in a bag among all the frozen food. Because of a general power failure the freezer had gone off. A friendly neighbour (who had a key in order to water the plants) had tried to be helpful by throwing out all the bad food - and with it went the jewelry.
Three people check into a hotel room. The bill is $30 so they each pay $10. After they go to the room, the hotel's cashier realizes that the bill should have only been $25. So he gives $5 to the bellhop and tells him to return the money to the guests. The bellhop notices that $5 can't be split evenly between the three guests, so he keeps $2 for himself and then gives the other $3 to the guests.
Now the guests, with their dollars back, have each paid $9 for a total of $27. And the bellhop has pocketed $2. So there is $27 + $2 = $29 accounted for. But the guests originally paid $30. What happened to the other dollar?
This riddle is just an example of misdirection. It is actually nonsensical to add $27 + $2, because the $27 that has been paid includes the $2 the bellhop made.
The correct math is to say that the guests paid $27, and the bellhop took $2, which, if given back to the guests, would bring them to their correct payment of $27 - $2 = $25.
A man murders his wife with a knife in their car. Nobody is around to see this. He throws her out of the car being careful not to leave any fingerprints on her body. Next he throws the knife off of a cliff into a gorge where it will never be found and he goes home. An hour later the police call him and tell him that his wife has been murdered and he needs to come to the scene of the crime immediately. As soon as he arrives, he is arrested.
He never ask the cop where the scene of the crime was so they knew that he had murdered his wife.
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.
You are walking down a path when you come to two doors. Opening one of the doors will lead you to a life of prosperity and happiness, while opening the other door will lead to a life of misery and sorrow. You don't know which door leads to which life.
In front of the doors are two twin brothers who know which door leads where. One of the brothers always lies, and the other always tells the truth. You don't know which brother is the liar and which is the truth-teller.
You are allowed to ask one single question to one of the brothers (not both) to figure out which door to open.
What question should you ask?
Ask "If I asked your brother what the good door is, what would he say?"
If you ask the truth-telling brother, he will point to the bad door, because this is what the lying brother would point to.
Alternatively, if you ask the lying brother, he will also point to the bad door, because this is NOT what the truth-telling brother would point to.
So whichever door is pointed to, you should go through the other one.
The Smith family is a very wealthy family that lives in a big, circular home. One morning, Mr. Smith woke up and found his gardener's body. He knew it was one of his employees who had killed him. So he asked them what they were doing in the morning and he got these replies.
Driver: "I was outside washing the car."
Maid: "I was dusting the corners of the house."
Cook: "I was starting to make lunch for later."
From the replies he knew who the killer was. Can you guess who it was?
The maid, because they lived in a circular house and she was apparently "dusting the corners" of the house at the time of the murder - the house is round, therefore it has no corners.
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.
