Riddle:
Place three piles of matches on a table, one with 11 matches, the second with 7, and the third with 6. You are to move matches so that each pile holds 8 matches. You may add to any pile only as many matches as it already contains. All the matches must come from one other pile. For example, if a pile holds 6 matches, you may add 6 to it, no more or less.
You have three moves. How can you do it?
Answer: First pile to second; second to third; third to first:
Riddle:
How many cats are in a small room if in each of the four corners a cat is sitting, and opposite each cat there sit three cats, and a each cat's tail another is sitting?
Answer: Four cats, each near a tail of a cat in an adjacent corner.
Riddle:
A boy presses a side of a blue pencil to a side of a yellow pencil, holding both pencils vertically. One inch of the pressed side of the blue pencil, measuring from its lower end, is smeared with paint. The yellow pencil is held steady while the boy slides the blue pencil down 1 inch, continueing to press it against the yellow one. He returns the blue pencil to its former position, then again it slides down 1 inch. He continues until he has lowered the blue pencil 5 times and raised it 5 times- 10 moves in all.
Supposed that during this time the paint neither dries nor diminishes in quantity. How many inches of each pencil will be sneared with paint after the tenth move?
Answer: At the start, 1inch of the yellow pencil gets smeared with wet paint. As the blue pencil is moved downward, a second inch of the blue pencils smears a second inch of the yellow pencil.
Each pair of down and up movesof the blue pencil smears 1 more inch of each pencil. 5 pairs of moves will smear 5 inches. This together with the initial inch, makes 6 inches for each pencil.
Riddle:
A detachment of soldiers must cross a river. The bridge is broken, the river is deep. What to do?
Suddenly the officer in charge spots two boys playing in a row boat by the shore.
The boat is so tiny however, that is could only hold two boys or one soldier.
Still all the soldiers make it across the river in the boat. How?
Answer: First the boys cross the river and 1 boy comes back and gets a soldier and keeps going back until all the soldiers have made it across safetly.
Riddle:
Three matches are sitting on a table. Without adding another make for three matches four. You are not allowed to break any of the matches. How can this be done?
Answer: Shape the 3 matches into a roman numeral four.
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