5 Riddles to Sharpen Your Thinking Skills

My good friend and colleague Alan Headbloom (www.headbloom.com) specializes in helping foriegn-born professionals communicate with more comfort and accuracy. Every month or two, Alan sends me thought-provoking articles that always cause me to stretch my thinking. This month, one of Alan’s articles included 5 riddles for sharpening our thinking skills. See if you can solve these riddles before looking at the answers.

1. A murderer is condemned to death. He has to choose between three rooms. The first is full of raging fires, the second is full of assassins with loaded guns, and the third is full of lions that haven’t eaten in 3 years. Which room is safest for him?

2. A woman shoots her husband. Then she holds him under water for over 5 minutes. Finally, she hangs him. Five minutes later, they go out and enjoy a wonderful dinner together. How can this be?

3. What is black when you buy it, red when you use it, and gray when you throw it away ?

4. Can you name three consecutive days without using the words Wednesday, Friday, or Sunday?

5. This is an unusual paragraph. I’m curious as to just how quickly you can find out what is so unusual about it. It looks so ordinary and plain that you would think nothing was wrong with it. In fact, nothing is wrong with it! It is highly 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!

The answers to all five riddles are below.

1. The third room. Lions that haven’t eaten in three years are dead.

2. The woman was a photographer. She shot a picture of her husband, developed it, and hung it up to dry.

3. Charcoal.

4. Yesterday, today, and tomorrow. (Also: Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Boxing Day)

5. The letter e, the most common letter in the English language, does not appear once in the paragraph.

How many of these riddles did you get?  Know that the process of working through them, even if you weren’t able to solve all of them, serves to maintain your mental acuity and alertness.  Be on the lookout for other ways to stretch and strengthen your overall clarity and ability to think out of the box.