A BRAIN TEASER for you and your students to try

Let me share with you a brain teaser I got from Readers' Digest More Tests and Teasers.

Use it in your class as either a day starter or an enrichment activity. You can even have it as a group game to make it more exciting for the students. Use it in any way you like and I'm sure the kids will love it.


SO YOU THINK YOU'RE CLEVER by John Henry Cutler

Here's a quiz that is likely to tie you up in mental knots for an hour or so. Afterwards, you can repair your shattered ego by trying some of these teasers on your students.

1. If 3 cats can kill 3 rats in 3 minutes, how long will it take 100 cats to kill 100 rats?

2. A little Indian and a big Indian are walking down a path. The little Indian is the big Indian's son. The big Indian is not the little Indian's father. Who is it?

3. Which is correct: 8 and 8 are 15 or 8 and 8 is 15?

4. Is it legal for a man to marry his widow's sister?

5. Take two apples from three apples and what have you got?

6. A shepherd had 17 sheep. All but nine died. How many did he have left?

7. A boat will carry only 200 pounds. How may a man weighing 200 pounds and his two sons, each of whom weighs 100 pounds, use it to cross a river?

8. The number of eggs in a basket doubles every minute. The basket is full of eggs in an hour. When was the basket half full?

9. What is the smallest number of ducks that could sim in this formation: two ducks in front of a duck, two ducks behind a duck, and a duck between two ducks?

10. In which book of the Bible does it tell about Abel's slaying cain?

Answers: 1. Three minutes 2.Mother 3. Neither 4. Only dead men have widows 5. Two apples of course 6. Nine 7. Two sons go first. One brings back the boat, and Father rows over. Then the other sons returns for his brother. 8. In 59 minutes. If the basket is full in 60 minutes, it was half full a minute later, or at the end of 59 minutes. 9. Three ducks in a row, one after the other 10. None. Cain slew Abel.