Five Tough Riddles
Some of the tough riddles in my collection. Five in all, with
the solutions further down. For more, see the riddles and puzzles
index using the link on the navigation bar above. Good luck!
1. What are the only English words with three consecutive
repeated letters. For example, sweet-toothed would be one (ee,tt,oo)
if it weren't for the hyphen.
2. A man is six feet tall, is a clerk at a butcher shop, and
wears size 11 shoes. What does he weigh?
3. 75% can be written as 3/4. How would 58 1/3% be written
as a fraction (when reduced to the lowest denominator)?
4. How can you arrange four ordinary wineglasses on an ordinary
table so that "foot" (center of the bottom of the stem)
of each is the same distance from all the others?
5. If measured from the center of the planet, which mountain
on Earth is the highest?
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Solutions to the Tough Riddles
1. Bookkeeper and the related forms of the word, such as bookkeeping.
2. He weighs meat. (These word play riddles and jokes are
the toughest sometimes - especially for those who don't speak
English as their first language.)
3. 7/12. The easiest way to do this? 58 1/3% is 58.333.. out
of 100. Multiply both the denominator and numerator by three
to make them both whole numbers, and you have 175/300. Now just
reduce this.
4. Place the first three in an equilateral triangle so that
the foot of each is the same distance from the others as the
height of a wineglass. Then place the fourth wineglass in the
middle of the triangle, upside down.
Correction: A brainpower newsletter subscriber pointed out
that this isn't correct. The correct answer: Place the first
three in an equilateral triangle so that the foot of each is
spaced approximately 1.1547 times the height of a wineglass from
each other. the same distance from Then place the fourth wineglass
in the middle of the triangle, upside down.
Further explanation: The 4 foots have to form a regular tetrahedron.
Therefore the areas of the triangles have to be the same.
Area of triangle = (1/2)*b*h
Area of equilateral triangle = 0.433*b^2
h = 1 (the height of 1 wineglass)
Therefore: 0.5*b*1 = 0.433*b^2
b = 1.1547 ( 1.1547 times the height of 1 wineglass)
5. Mount Chimborazo, in Ecuador. Everest is the highest above
sea level, but because of the way the Earth bulges at the center,
Chimborazo (6010 meters, or 20,600 feet above sea level) is the
highest when measured from the center of the planet. To put it
another way, it is the furthest out into space or the closest
to the sun (which was one of the reasons I climbed it).
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