| 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. 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? 6. What do reindeer have that no other animals have? 7. How many times can you subtract 6 from 36? 8. It takes three days to go from A to B, but it takes four days to go from B to A. Why? 9. 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. 10. Which doesn't fit. Seven, Button, Which, Battery, Run, This, Bounce, Is, or That? 11. 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." (No, you can't use a Clapper©; that's a contraption.) 12. 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? 13. 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? 14. Using the words DROVES and NEWS write seven words using each letter once. 15. How many animals of each species did Moses take aboard the ark with him? (Note: It asks how many animals, not how many pairs.) 16. How is it possible to name the capital of each and every one of the United States in less than a minute? 17. Which is correct, "bigger of two halves" or "biggest of two halves"? 18. 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? 19. 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? 20. 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? 21. 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? 22. 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? Math Break (Not tricks; just math.) 23. 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? 24. A pen and a bottle of ink cost $1.10. The pen costs exactly $1.00 more than the ink. What does each cost? 25. A fish weighs 10 pounds plus half its weight. How much does it weigh? For more mental floss and
brain scramblers (and the answers*) go to BrainScramble.Com!
(*If you're a teacher.) |