A riddle problem is a question or statement intentionally phrased so as to require ingenuity in ascertaining its answer or meaning, typically presented as a game. Below are a list of the past problem of the week riddles in descending chronological order.
An officer wishing to arrange his men in a solid square found by his first arrangement that he had 39 men left over. He then started increasing the number of men on a side by one, but found that 50 additional men would be needed to complete a new square.
How many men did the officer have?
Answer:
The officer had 1975 men. When he formed a square measuring 44 by 44, he had 39 men over. When he tried to form a square 45 x 45, he was 50 men short.
Ben walked into a hardware store and asked the price of some items. The salesman said: One costs $1, Eight costs $1, Seventeen cost $2, One hundred four costs $3 and One thousand seventy two costs $4. What was Ben buying?
Answer:
Ben was buying home address numbers and they cost $1 per digit.
Lily is a lillypad in a small pond. Lilly doubles her size each day, On the 20th day she cover the whole pond. On what day was Lily half the size of the pond?
Answer:
Day 19, it's not 10 because on day 20 she doubled from day 19, so 19 must be half the size of the pond.
Find four numbers, the sum of which is 45, so that if 2 is added to the first number, 2 is subtracted from the second number, the third number is multiplied by 2 and the fourth number is divided by 2, then the four numbers so produced are all the same. What are the four numbers?
Two fathers and two sons went fishing one day. They were there the whole day and only caught 3 fish. One father said, that is enough for all of us, we will have one each. How can this be possible?
Answer:
There was the father, his son, and his son's son. This equals 2 fathers and 2 sons for a total of 3!
