A collection of Math, Chess, Detective, Lateral, Insight, Science, Practical, and Deduction puzzles, carefully curated by Puzzle Prime.
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Two friends made a bet whose horse is slower. After wondering for days what is the fastest and fairest way to figure out who wins the bet, they finally decided to ask a famous wise hermit for help. Upon giving them his advice, the two friends jumped on the horses and started racing back to the city as fast as they could. What did the hermit say?
He told them to switch their horses and whoever gets to the city first will win the bet.
In one family there are 6 sisters and each of them has one brother. How many children are there in the family?
There is just one brother and therefore there are 7 children in the family.
Here’s a little maze puzzle I originally built a couple of years ago, that seems apropos to reprise now:
Can you make it from the A in the top left of this grid to the Z in the bottom right, always going either up one letter (for instance, A to B or G to H) or down one letter (for instance, N to M)? The alphabet wraps around, so you can go from Z up to A or A down to Z too. Try as hard as you can (and remember that you can always work backward if you get stuck forwards), and see where you get!
Remark: Solving the maze is not the same thing as solving the puzzle. Read those instructions carefully!
Notice this puzzle is published on April 1st. Actually, it doesn’t have a standard solution. If you connect every two consecutive letters which appear next to each other in the grid, you will get two disconnected components, one of which contains the START and the other contains the END. The first component has 5 dead-ends – at letters A, P, R, I, L, and the second component has 5 dead-ends – at letters F, O, O, L, S. These two spell out “April Fools”, which is the real solution of the maze.
How many letters does the correct answer to this puzzle contain?
Four – the only number which has the same number of letters as the number itself.
This is a map of old-time Kongsberg. The green shapes are bridges which connect the different parts of the city. Can you find a path through the city which goes through every bridge exactly once?
No, you cannot. Notice that, except for the first city and the last city section you finish, the number of bridges used in every other section is even. However, there are three sections with an odd number of bridges, and therefore you cannot use all bridges exactly once.
Place only 2 rooks and 1 knight on the board, so that the Black player is mated.
You can place the rooks on c5 and e5, and the knight on f5.
What is heavier – 1 pound of apples or 1 pound of strawberries?
They are equally heavy – 1 pound each.
White to play and mate in 4 moves.
Remark: The position on the diagram is one which occurs in actual play.
Notice that the black queen and the black king have switched positions. However, this can happen only if some pawns have been moved. Therefore, we can conclude that the bottom row on the diagram is actually the 8th row of the chessboard. All black and all white pieces have reached their respective opposite sides of the board.
Now, White’s first move is Kb8-d7. The only moves black can play are with the knights. If Black plays Kb1-a3, Kb1-c3 or Kg1-h3, white mates in 2 more moves – Kd7-c5 and Kc5-d3. If Black moves Kg1-f3, then after Kd7-c5 Black can delay the mate by playing Kf3-e5. However, after the white queen takes it with Qxe5, Kc5-d3 is unavoidable.
You are running a marathon and right at the finish line, you pass the runner in the 2nd position. In which place do you finish the marathon?
You finish 2nd. Before passing the runner you were at 3rd place.
A snail is trying to climb a
Seven days only. After the sixth day, the snail would have climbed 6 meters. During the seventh day, it will climb 4 more meters and will get to the top.
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