Long Riddles

Long riddles with answers test your problem solving skills. These lengthy puzzles test your ability to piece together information and find the answer.

17 Horses

A farmer wanted to divide his 17 horses among his three sons. According to the farmer, the oldest son should get half of the horses,the middle son should get one third of the horses and the youngest son should get one ninth of the horses.

When their father died they were not able to divide the horses as the result was coming in fractions. As the sons were fighting on how to divide the horses a traveling mathematician came and heard their problem. He proposed a solution with which all the sons got their share in the property without harming any animal.

What was the advice given and how the group of horses were divided?

Riddle Answer

Safe Conduct

Bumbletown had the most robbed bank in the land. The unfortunate clerk was frequently forced to open the safe, and the bank had lost so much money, that Mr Good, the bank manager, was going bald.

Then one day, Mr Good had an idea. His nephew, Fumble, should be the bank clerk. Now Fumble was the ideal man for the job. His memory was so bad, one could be sure that no robber could ever force him to remember the safe combination. Furthermore, his poor powers of recall were matched by a superb talent for puzzling things out. This meant that whenever Fumble needed to know the safe combination, all he had to do was obtain the following conundrum from Mr Good, which he could solve to reveal the five-digit safe combination.

‘The fourth digit is four greater than the second digit. There are three pairs of digits that each sum to 11. The third of the five digits is three less than the second. The first digit is three times the fifth digit.’

Of the 100,000 possible numbers, which was the correct safe combination?

Riddle Answer

Six Grave Plot

While ambling about your local cemetery, you stumble upon a grave marker situated before a six-grave plot. Glancing down, you notice an inscription upon the family stone. It reads:

Here lie…
2 Grandmothers with their 2 Granddaughters
2 Husbands with their 2 Wives
2 Fathers with their 2 Daughters
2 Mothers with their 2 Sons
2 Maidens with their 2 Mothers
2 Sisters with their 2 Brothers

Yet but 6 corpses all lie buried here. All born legitimate, from incest clear. How is this possible?

Riddle Answer

The Monk Travel

At precisely 7:00 a.m., a monk sets out to climb a tall mountain, so that he might visit a temple at its peak. The trail he walks is narrow and winding, but it is the only way to reach the summit. As he ascends the mountain, the monk walks the path at varying speeds. Though he stops occasionally to rest and eat, he never strays from the path, and he never walks backwards. At exactly 7:00 p.m., the monk reaches the temple at the summit, where he stays the night.

The following morning at 7:00 a.m. sharp, the monk departs the temple and begins his journey back to the bottom of the mountain. He descends by way of the same path, again walking slowly at times and quickly at others, stopping here and there to eat and drink and rest, but never deviating from the path and never going backwards. Twelve hours later, at 7:00 p.m. on the nose, the monk arrives back at the foot of the mountain.

Is there any point along the path that the monk occupied at precisely the same time on both days? How do you know?

Riddle Answer

Pot of Beans

A pot contains 75 white beans and 150 black ones. Next to the pot is a large pile of black beans.

A somewhat demented cook removes the beans from the pot, one at a time, according to the following strange rule: He removes two beans from the pot at random. If at least one of the beans is black, he places it on the bean-pile and drops the other bean, no matter what color, back in the pot. If both beans are white, on the other hand, he discards both of them and removes one black bean from the pile and drops it in the pot.

At each turn of this procedure, the pot has one less bean in it. Eventually, just one bean is left in the pot. What color is it?

Riddle Answer