Mental Floss
  1. You have two coins that total 15 cents, but one of them is not a nickel. How is that possible?
  2. Which is correct:  "18 plus 19 is 36", or "18 plus 19 are 36"?
  3. What is the volume of dirt in a hole 6 feet long, 8 feet deep, and 4 feet wide?
  4. A farmer had seventeen sheep; all but nine died. How many are left?
  5. A man walked into Sam and Ellas's Cafe and sat down at a table exactly two and one quarter feet from the window. The first waitress with straight hair came over to take his order, but he sent her away and asked for the waitress with curly hair to take his order.  He ordered a cucumber and cheddar cheese sandwich, a cup of Cuban coffee, and a chocolate chelsea bun.  After taking the order, the curly haired waitress immediately said,  "You must be in the army."  She was right, but how did she know?
  6. You are locked in the back of a car with a baseball bat. How do you get out without breaking anything?
  7. Which doesn't fit. Seven, Which, Button, Battery, Run, This, Bounce, Is, or That?
  8. Jason decided to give his bike 3 coats of paint. Which coat would go on the first?
  9. A man is trapped in a room. The room has only two possible exits: two doors. Through the first door there is a room constructed from magnifying glass. The blazing hot sun instantly fries anything or anyone that enters. Through the second door there is a fire-breathing dragon. How does the man escape?
  10. It takes three days to go from A to B, but it takes four days to go from B to A. Why?
  11. A man is holding a bucket of water (not ice) with no lid. He turns the bucket upside down, but the bucket remains full of water. How come? He is not spinning the bucket, nor is he in space.
  12. If you have an important letter to write, is it better to write it on a full stomach, a settled stomach, or an empty stomach?
  13. What do reindeer have that no other animals have?
  14. A house painter paints numbers on all the new houses in a neighborhood from 1-100. How many times does he have to paint the digit 9? (Not a trick.)
  15. Explain the following true boast: "In my bedroom, the nearest lamp that I  usually keep turned on is 12 feet away from my bed. Alone in the room, without using wires, strings, or any other aids or contraptions, I can turn out the light on that lamp and get into bed before the room is dark."
  16. In a certain city, 5% of all persons in town have unlisted phone numbers. If you select 100 names at random from the city's phone directory, how many of the people selected will have unlisted phone numbers?
  17. You are in a mountain cabin, and it is freezing and dark. The cabin has an old kerosene lamp, an oil burning heater, and a wood burning stove. You have only one match. Which do you light first?
  18. Using the words DROVES and NEWS write seven words using each letter once.
  19. How many times can you subtract 6 from 36?
  20. A woman's sons are all blue-eyed but two, all brown-eyed but two, and all green-eyed but two. How many sons does she have?
  21. A man hears a woman call out a number and then almost immediately drops unconsious. What number did he hear?
  22. How can you make a positive whole number using just 2 zeros?
  23. The possible scores in a darts match are 16, 17, 23, 24, 39, or 40 points. How many darts must be thrown to score exactly 100 points?
  24. How many times can you subtract 6 from 36?
  25. What is one half of 2 plus 2?
  26. A pen and a bottle of ink cost $1.10. The pen costs exactly $1.00 more than the ink. What does each cost?
  27. How many animals of each species did Moses take aboard the ark with  him? (Note: It asks how many animals, not how many pairs.)
  28. How is it possible to name the capital of each and every one of the United States in less than a minute?
  29. Here is a question on international law: If an international airliner crashed exactly on the U.S.-Mexican border, where would they be required to bury the survivors?
  30. If you thought that half of 8 = 3 was too easy, how can half of 9 = 4?
  31. A man walks into a room, turns around and walks out the same door he went in. When he gets out he is in a different room than when he started. How is this possible?
  32. What is the next thing in this sequence. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, ____
  33. Which is correct, "bigger of two halves" or "biggest of two halves"?
  34. When the day after tomorrow is yesterday, this day will be as far from Friday as this day was from Friday when the day before yesterday was tomorrow. What day is it?
  35. Johnny's mother had four children. The first was April, the second was May, and the third was June. What was the name of her fourth child?
  36. Rearrange the following letters to form a single word: S N E W G A L R D O I
  37. You have a ring made of metal that expands as it is heated. As you heat the ring, does the hole in the middle get smaller, bigger, or stay the same size?
  38. If a daddy bull weighs 1,200 pounds and eats twelve bales of hay each day, and a baby bull, who weighs 300 pounds eats three bales of hay each day, how much hay then should a mommy bull eat if she weighs 800 pounds?
  39. A boat has a ladder hanging off the side that has six rungs. Each rung is one foot apart. The bottom rung is one foot from the water. The tide rises at 12 inches every 15 minutes. High tide peaks in one hour. When the tide is at its highest, how many rungs are under water?
  40. While riding in the car I saw a license plate that read like this: IXMNIZ. What occupation did the man in the car have?
  41. True or False: California starts with a c, and ends, with an e. (Explain.)
  42. What do you get when you cross a river and a creek?
  43. The moon is about 250,000 miles from Earth. Sound travels at about 1100 miles per hour. If a meteor hit the moon, how long would it take for the sound to reach Earth?
  44. You have a ring made of metal that expands as it is heated. As you heat the ring, does the hole in the middle get smaller, bigger, or stay the same size?
  45. What is 3/7 chicken + 2/3 cat + 1/2 goat?
  46. Massachusetts is a difficult word to spell. Can you spell it correctly?
  47. A farmer has 3 fields. He has 5 haystacks in the left field and 4 haystacks in the right field, how many haystacks would he have if he combined them all in the center field?
  48. From what five letter word can you take two letters away and have one left?
  49. A fish weighs 10 pounds plus half its weight. How much does it weigh?
  50. If everybody in the world jumped off a cliff, would you? Why or why not?
  51. Take five pennies from 100 pennies, and what do you have?
  52. (3 different answers) How many letters are there in the correct answer to this question?
  53. Merle patched all the holes in his boat using the proper materials, and tested his repair by filling his boat with water. It didn't leak. Yet, his friend knew it would sink anyway when he saw Merle's repair job. Why?
  54. How many F's are in the following sentence? See if you can get it right with only one reading. Finished files are the result of years of scientific study combined with the experience of years.
  55. What's at the end of infinity?
  56. Make the matchstick dawg (see the white board) face the other way by moving only 2 matches. His tail must still point up!
  57. Which is smallest? nobis, nettikt, wrothag, useom, irgafef
  58. What number comes next? 1, 2, 2, 4, 8, ____
  59. How many seconds are there in a month? (Hint: This is not a math problem.)
  60. What state has the greatest percentage of its border in shoreline, including rivers?
  61. There are ten sheep walking in a straight line across a field. What numbered sheep can look back and say he is the third from the last in line?
  62. I have keys, but no locks. I have space, but no room. You can enter, but you can't come in. What am I?
  63.  I live above a star, and yet I never burn,

    64.     I have eleven neighbors, and yet none of them turn,
        I am visited in sequence, first, last or in between,
        PRS  are my initials,
        now tell me what I mean.
  64. If the Vice President of the United States should die, who would be President?
  65. How many 3-cent stamps are there in a dozen?
  66. A man rode into town on Friday, stayed for three days and three nights and then rode out, again on Friday. How could this be possible?
  67. I am so fragile that when you say my name you break me. What am I?
  68. A baker can roll the dough left over from 4 cookies into 1 cookie. He started out with 4 balls of dough; enough for 16 cookies. How many cookies is he ultimately able to bake?
  69. In which six-letter country can the following capitals be found? Athens, Delhi, London, Nassau, Oslo, and Peking.
  70. Natives on a strange island are either Truth-sayers or Liars. You come across three of them and ask the first, "Are you a Truth-sayer or a Liar?" He mumbles something that you don't understand. The second one says (about the first one) "He says that he's a Truth-sayer." The third one says (about the second one) "He's lying." Who's lying and who's telling the truth?
  71. A heavyset man who works in the butcher's shop is 6'2" tall. He has a 42" chest and a 34" waist. What does he weigh?
  72. A rooster lays an egg which rolls down a ramp with a 45-degree incline. How far will the egg roll after thirty seconds? Assume that the weight of the egg doesn't matter.
  73. Two men got lost while exploring in the desert. Each man had a compass. One headed due East, and the other headed due West. Two hours later, they met. How?
  74. I am a rock group that has 4 members, all of whom are dead, one of which was assassinated. What am I?
  75. The more you take away, the bigger it gets; the more you add, the smaller it becomes. What is it?
  76. A woman is less than 100 years old. Her age divided by 7 leaves 2 for a remainder. Her age divided by 5 leaves 4 for a remainder, and her age divided by 3 leaves 2 for a remainder. How old is she?
  77. How far can you walk into the woods?
  78. This is an unusual paragraph. I'm curious how quickly you can find out what is so unusual about it. It looks so plain you would think nothing was wrong with it. In fact, nothing is wrong with it! It is unusual though. Study it, and think about it, but you still may not find anything odd. But if you work at it a bit, you might find out. Try to do so without any coaching!
  79. Why is it against the law for a man living in North Carolina to be buried in South Carolina?
  80. A farmer in California own a beautiful pear tree. He supplies the fruit to a nearby grocery store. The store owner has called the farmer to see how much fruit is available for him to purchase. The farmer knows that the main trunk has 24 branches. Each branch has exactly 12 boughs and each bough has exactly 6 twigs. Since each twig bears one piece of fruit, how many plums will the farmer be able to deliver?
  81. What word is GHOTI an alternative spelling for? (Hint: Rough women lotion.)
  82. There was a road around a circular lake. A man and his brother each started in the same place and drove around the lake at exactly the same speed, but in opposite directions. The first brother went clockwise around the lake at 40 mph, and the trip took him an hour and 20 minutes. The second brother went counterclockwise around the lake--also at exactly 40 mph--but his trip only took him 80 minutes. Each traveled exactly the same distance: 53.33 miles. How is that possible?
  83. Mom bakes a cake. Dad ate 1/6 of the cake. Brother ate 1/5 of what was left. Then sister had 1/4 of the remaining cake. After that the dog ate 1/3 of the remaining cake, and finally another kid ate 1/2 of what was left after the dog was finished. What fraction of the whole cake is left for mom to eat?
  84. The man was so upset about being _ _ _ _ that he regularly _ _ _ _ _ _ himself up on the bed and  _ _ _ _ _ _ his eyes out.  (All three words are homonyms.)
  85. I couldn't _ _ _ _ _ any of the _ _ _ _ _ _ in the flower shop, because for some strange reason I had 50 _ _ _ _ _ crammed up my nose. (All three words are homonyms.)
  86. Can you name a sport in which the participants do not know the score, the spectators do not know the score, and no one knows the winner until the contest is over?
  87. Using the words DROVES and NEWS write seven words using each letter once.
  88. How do you spell Boston backwards?
  89. AALLLOUGNINCEACELSSSEANRYTELNETCTEERS If you cross out all unnecessary letters in the above string of letters, a logical sentence will remain. Can you read it?
  90. A man dressed entirely in black and wearing a black mask, is standing in the middle of a crossroad. All of the streetlights at the intersection are broken. A car speeds down the road, heading straight for  the man, yet it turns in time and doesn't hit him. The lights of the car were not on. How does the car manage to miss him?
  91. If the word three starts with t and ends with e, what's its third letter?
  92. Which number should come next? 144, 121, 100, 81, 64,  _____
  93. On a clock, the big and small hand are exactly between 1 and 2. Both hands lay on top of each other.  What time is it exactly?
  94. A tennis player is ranked number 200. He moved up 87, went down 28, and went up 117 places. What is he ranked?
  95. Two girls caught 25 frogs. Lisa caught four times as many as Jen did. How many frogs did Jen catch?
  96. Sue is both the 50th best and the 50th worst student at her school. How many students attend her school?
  97. What's full of holes but still holds water?
  98. While walking across a bridge I saw a boat full of people. Yet on the boat there wasn't a single person. Why?
  99. Find the English word that can be formed from all these letters: PNLLEEEESSSSS
  100. Which building in San Luis has the most stories?
  101. Even if they are starving, natives living in the Arctic will never eat a penguin's egg. Why not?
  102.  What is this?

    103. "The beginning of eternity
    The end of time and space
    The beginning of every end,
  103. And the end of every place."
  104. What do you get when you add 1 and 11 four times?
  105. Five lizards are sitting on a log. One decides to jump to the ground, two decide to jump to a nearby leaf, and two decide to stay. How many lizards are now on the log?
  106. Change RIDER to HOPES by changing one letter at a time in the least possible number of steps. Example: GLASS --> CLASS  --> CRASS --> CROSS --> CROWS --> CROWN
  107. Maxwell Smart (Agent 86) was trying to get a coded message to his girlfriend (Agent 99). He had to type into his shoe phone, her agent number 99 as the sum of two prime numbers. How many different ways could Max do this?
  108. If you and your friends have 5 bananas each, and a monkey comes along and takes 3 bananas from each of you, how many bananas will you have left?
  109. What do you always take off last before you get into bed?
  110. What is the difference between a crisp new $10 bill and a dirty old torn one?
  111. A man has three kids already. By July 8th, his wife will give birth to a new baby girl.  How many children will he have? (2)
  112. Go from BREAD to WHEAT in 7 steps, changing only one letter at a time.
  113. Assuming that you are paying, is it cheaper to take one friend to the movies twice, or two friends to the movie at the same time, or is it the same?
  114. Many many years ago when I was twenty three,

    115. I got married to a widow who was pretty as could be.

    This widow had a grown-up daughter Who had hair of red.
    My father fell in love with her, And soon the two were wed.

    This made my dad my son-in-law And changed my very life.
    My daughter was my mother, For she was my father's wife.

    To complicate the matters worse, Although it brought me joy.
    I soon became the father Of a bouncing baby boy.

    My little baby then became A brother-in-law to dad.
    And so became my uncle, Though it made me very sad.

    For if he was my uncle, Then that also made him brother to the widow's grown-up daughter Who, of course, was my step-mother.

    Father's wife then had a son, Who kept them on the run.
    And he became my grandson, For he was my daughter's son.

    Who is my Grandpa?
     

  115. I appear to be moving but for the most part I'm not,

    116. It's you who are spinning and moving a lot.
    I share my name with a male child,
    And under me on the beach people go wild!
     
        What am I?
  1. What is the weight of a fish if it weighs 10 pounds, plus half its weight?
  2. Following are groups of three words. Can you figure out the common link within each group? Example: Hurricane, potato, needle, (answer: eyes)
  1. Three men pay $10 apiece for separate rooms in a hotel. Then the clerk realizes that they are entitled to a $5 discount, and gives $5 to the bellboy to return to the 3 men. The dishonest bellboy gives each one a dollar, and keeps $2 for himself. Now, each man, after receiving the $1 rebate, paid only $9 for his room. That makes $27 for all three. The bellboy kept the other $2, which makes $29. What happened to the other dollar?
    1. What number gives the same result when it is added to 5 as when it is multiplied by 5?
    2. Fill in the blanks below with three 4-letter words that are anagrams of each other (they all contain the same four letters):  "The man ____ ____ of money because he couldn't walk away from the ____ machines."
    3. Following are groups of three words. Can you figure out the common link within each group? Example: Hurricane, potato, needle, (answer: eyes)
  2. What sort of story begins with a limb and ends with a finish?
  3. Which three numbers give the same result when they are multiplied as when they are added?
  4. From these 5 words, can you change a single letter in each, to produce 5 new words? The new letters used make a fruit.

    5. DATE / __ATE
    NUT / N__T
    LIME / ___IME
    PEACH / P__ACH
  5. PEAR  / __EAR
  6. Five lizards are sitting on a log. Two decides to jump to the ground, one decides to jump to a nearby leaf, and the rest decide to stay. How many lizards are now on the log?  This time, all DO carry out their decisions.
  7. Placed above it makes greater things small.

    8. Placed beside it makes small things greater.
    In matters that counts it always comes first.
    Where others increase it keeps all things the same.
    What is it? (Hint: It's just math.)
  8. A person goes into the post office to mail a letter. She purchases two stamps and then asks the next person in line to put the stamps on the envelope. Why didn't she put the stamps on herself?
  9. Bob says, "I'll bet you I can do two to three thousand push ups in 5 minutes."  Jon says, "Fine, let's see it." How does Bob do it?
  10. What a pair we are,

    11.      Our sum is 100,
         Our product tells you more,
         For it is our sum times 24.
  11.      What are the numbers?
  12. Below are clues to two homonyms (to, too, and two are homonyms). Figure out what pair of words the clues are describing Example: Rabbit fur = hare hair.
  13. In each of the groups of letters below, there are two 6-letter words with their letters in the correct order. The words are antonyms of each other. (Example: D F E A T S A T E C N H (DfEaTsAteCnH) = DETACH, FASTEN )
  14. An Archaeologist uncovers an ancient tomb, between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.  Two, unclothed, long-dead bodies are found in the tomb.  One is an adult male, the other an adult female.  Both bodies are perfectly preserved, although dry and leathery with age.  The archaeologist takes one look and exclaims: "It's a miracle! I have found Adam and Eve".  How did the archaeologist know this? (hint: it has nothing to do with ribs).