Match your wits against these vexing questions
1. What do the Avon River, the hoi polloi, Mount Fujiyama, and pizza pie have in common?
2. 1961 reads the same upside down. What is the next year that this will occur?
3. Where were tulips first cultivated, and what does the word mean?
4. Which two precious gems are exactly the same stone except for their color?
5. What was remarkable about Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu?
6. Which father-and-son team won Oscars in 1948 for what picture?
7. If he wished to travel incognito, who could call himself the Earl of Merioneth or Baron Greenwich?
8. The 1979 Nobel Prize for physiology and medicine went to two men who are neither physicians nor doctors. One recipient never went to university. What was the award for?
9. Where did Beethoven first hear a performance of his Ninth Symphony?
10. If you sailed due east from Cape Horn, what would be your next landfall?
11. Why does a whip emit a cracking sound when snapped?
12. What is the body's largest organ?
13. What famous event started at Pudding and ended at Pie?
14. If Japan is the land of the rising sun, what is the Land of the Morning Calm?
15. Almost everyone knows that St. Peter's in Rome is the largest Christian church in the world, but do you know the second largest?
1. Two cars depart from the same place at the same time. The first takes a minute to go around the course; the second takes a minute and five seconds. After how many laps will the second car catch up to the first?
2. Two travellers heading towards each other on a straight road are moving at 5 km/h. They are ten kilometres apart when they start.
3. A king wants to oust his prime minister. He calls him into the throne room, holds out two slips of paper and says: "On one of these I have written 'Leave,' and on the other I have put 'Stay.' The slip you draw will decide your fate."
4. Three friends share their meals. The first contribute five dishes, the second three dishes and the third pays $8.
5. A sultan locks a captive in a room with two servants, one of whom always tells the truth. The other servant always lies. The room has two doors: the door to freedom and the door to slavery. The captive will decide his own fate by choosing an exit. He has the right to ask one question of one of the servants, but he does not know which is the liar.
Take this infuriating test and see how logical you are.
SLEIGHT OF MIND: A MATHEMATICAL QUIZ
"Mathematical Games" a column by Martin Gardner, has appeared in Scientific American for 20 years. Among his latest colleaction of puzzles and games are these ten "ridiculous questions." None requires advanced math. Most have "catch" answers.
1. In an African village live 800 women. Three percent of them are wearing one earring. Of the other 97 percent, half are wearing two earrings, half are wearing none. How many earrings all together are being worn by the women?
2. A logician with some time to kill in a small town decided to get a haircut. The town had only two barbers, each with his own shop. The logician glanced into one shop and saw that it was extremely untidy. The barber needed a shave, his clothes were unkempt, his hair was badly cut. The other shop was neat. The barber was freshly shaved, and spotlessly dressed, his hair neatly trimmed. The logician returned to the first shop for his haircut. Why?
3. A secretary types four letters to four people and addresses the four envelopes. If she inserts the letters at random, each in a different envelope, what is the probability that exactly three letters will go into the right envelopes?
4. If you took three apples from a basket that held 13 apples, how many apples would you have?
5. If nine thousand nine hundred and nine dollars is written $9909, how should twelve thousand twelve hundred and twelve dollars be written?
6. A chemist discovered that a certain reaction took 80 minutes when he wore a jacket. When he was not wearing a jacket, the same reaction always took an hour and 20 minutes. Can you explain?
7. A customer in a restaurant found a dead fly in his coffee. He sent the waiter back for a fresh cup. After taking one sip he shouted, "This is the same cup of coffee i had before!" How did he know?
8. "I guarantee," said the petshop salesman, "that this parrot will repeat every word it hears." A customer bought the parrot but found it would not speak a single word. Nevertheless, the salesman told the truth. Explain.
9. Give at least two ways a barometer can be used to determine the height of a tall building.
10 Smith gave a hotel clerk $15 for his room for the night. When the clerk discovered that he had overcharged by $5, he sent a bellboy to Smith's room with five one dollar bills. The dishonest bellboy gave only three to Smith, keeping the other two for himself. Smith has now paid $12. The bellboy has acquired $2. This accounts for $14. What has happened to the missing dollar bill?