Brain Teaser
The Brain Teaser is a feature of The Balboa Beat. Readers who submit the correct answer to the puzzle will be entered to win a prize at the monthly Balboa Spirit Club meeting. Only one entry per person. You don't have to be present to win.
Stumped? Check back here for the answer after the drawing. May 15 Teaser:
Question: A hand of cards consists of one Queen, two Diamonds, three Aces, and four Spades. What is the minimum number of cards the hand could contain? Answer: Seven. Two Diamonds and four Spades account for six of the cards, but you must add one for the third Ace because it would have to be of a different suit! There were four correct answers submitted. The winner was chosen at random and was Jenn Lopez. Congratulations! May 1 Teaser:
Question: What nine-letter English word is still a word each time you take away a letter? Answer: startling starting starting staring string sting sing sin in I There were two correct answers submitted. The winner was chosen at random and was Jacob Gilliam. Congratulations! April 1 Teaser:
Question: You throw away the outside and cook the inside. You eat the outside and throw away the inside. What did you eat? Answer: An ear of corn. There were 5 correct answers submitted. The winner was chosen at random and was Ryan Marangattu. Congratulations! March 15 Teaser:
Question: Rearrange these letters to make a single word: DRAGON LEWIS Answer: A SINGLE WORD There were 5 correct answers submitted. The winner was chosen at random and was Raymond Wang. Congratulations! March 1 Teaser:
Question: A traveler comes to a fork in the road which leads to two villages. In one village the people always tell lies, and in the other village the people always tell the truth. The traveler needs to conduct business in the village where everyone tells the truth. A man from one of the villages is standing in the middle of the fork, but there is no indication of which village he is from. The traveler approaches the man and asks him one question. From the villager's answer, he knows which road to follow. What did the traveler ask? Answer: Ask the man which village he is from. If he is a liar, he will point to the village where everyone tells the truth. If he is telling the truth, he will point to the same village. Either way, the traveller will be directed to his destination. There were 2 correct answers submitted. The winner was chosen at random and was Laura Silverman. Congratulations! February 15 Teaser:
Question: What is the only word in the English language that has 6 letters, all in alphabetical order? Answer: Well, we found out that there's more than one! We received CHIMPS, BEGINS, ALMOST, ACCESS, and ACCENT. There are probably more! There were 11 correct answers submitted. The winner was chosen at random and was Sean DeHaessler. Congratulations! February 1 Teaser:
Question: A teacher asked his students whether they could find the sum of the first 50 odd numbers. As everyone settled down to their addition, Sofia ran to him and said, "The sum is 2,500." The teacher thought, 'Lucky guess,' and gave her the task of finding the sum of the first 75 odd numbers. Within 20 seconds, she was back with the correct answer. How does Sofia find the sum so quickly, and what is the answer? Answer: The sum equals the first odd number plus the last odd number times the number of pairs. Therefore: (1 + 99)(25) = 2500 (1 + 149)(37.5) = 5625 There were 3 correct answers submitted. The winner was chosen at random and was Raymond Wang. Congratulations! January 15 Teaser:
Question: How many times can you subtract 10 from 100? Answer: Once. After the first time, you would be taking 10 from 90, 80, 70, etc. There were 8 correct answers submitted. The winner was chosen at random and was Andrea Tartagliano. Congratulations! December 15 Teaser:
Question: How can you take 9 toothpicks and make ten without breaking the toothpicks? Answer: Use the toothpicks to spell TEN. There were 6 correct answers submitted. The winner was chosen at random and was Andrew Shousha. Congratulations! |
December 1 Teaser:
Question: What falls but never breaks? What breaks but never falls? Answer: Night falls, but doesn't break. Dawn breaks, but never falls. There were 8 correct answers submitted. The winner was chosen at random and was Crissy Thomas-Taylor. Congratulations! November 15 Teaser:
Question: I have five letters and five addressed envelopes. If I place the letters in the envelopes at random, what are the chances that only four letters are in the correct envelopes? Answer: Zero! If four letters are in their correct envelopes, then they all are. There were 6 correct answers submitted. The winner was chosen at random and was John Rocha. Congratulations! November 1 Teaser:
Question: What is the next number in the series: 5, 25, 61, 113, 181, ? Answer: 265. Each number is the sum of the squares of two numbers: 1 and 2, 3 and 4, 5 and 6, etc. There were 12 correct answers submitted. The winner was chosen at random and was Nathanial Timbol. Congratulations! October 15 Teaser:
Question: What do the following words have in common?
There were 5 correct answers submitted. The winner was chosen at random and was Hrach Nersisyan. Congratulations! October 1 Teaser:
Question: When can you add 2 to 11 and get 1 as the correct answer?
Answer: Time! When you add two hours to 11 o'clock, it is 1 o'clock. There were 14 correct answers submitted. The winner was Balboa student Jackson Tillotson. His name was selected at random from the list of correct submissions. Congratulations! September 15 Teaser:
Question: A Petri dish hosts a healthy colony of bacteria. Once a minute every bacterium divides into two. The colony was founded by a single cell at noon. At exactly 12:43 (43 minutes later) the Petri dish was half full. At what time will the dish be full?
Answer: The Petri dish will be full at 12:44. (If the colony doubles every minute, and the dish is half-full at 12:43, it will be full one minute later.) There were 14 correct answers. The winning entry was drawn at the October 2 BSC Meeting and was sent in by Leo Sun. Congratulations! September 1 Teaser:
Question: How can you throw a ball as hard as you can and have it come back to you, even if it doesn't bounce off anything? There is nothing attached to it, and no one else catches or throws it back to you.
Answer: Throw it straight up in the air, and gravity will return it to you! There were 23 correct answers. The winning entry was picked at the BSC Meeting on October 2, and was sent in by Phyllis Wang. Congratulations! August 11 Teaser:
Question: How many squares are there on an 8x8 chessboard? (Hint: The answer is not 64.)
Answer: 1 8x8 square + 4 7x7 squares + 9 6x6 squares + 16 5x5 squares + 25 4x4 squares + 36 3x3 squares+ 49 2x2 squares + 64 1x1 squares = 204 total squares. There were 10 correct answers. The winning entry was picked by a random number generator and was made by Stacy Soendker. Congratulations! |