Welcome to Top10Archive!
Time and time again, the internet tries to trip us up with its seemingly endless supply
of mind benders and brain teasers – then we compile our favorites and dump them on
you to figure out!
Since we’ve found success in stumping some of our Archivists previously, we thought we’d
give it another go with these 10 Riddles That Many People Can’t Seem to Solve!
10.
I have keys that have no matching locks.
I have space, but no room.
You can enter, but you can’t go outside.
Let’s start this off on the simpler side with a basic word riddle!
What could possibly have keys with no matching locks, plenty of space but room for nothing,
and offer you the ability to enter but not leave?
Well, it doesn’t sound like a home, considering one would have everything this riddle says
it doesn’t.
Think outside the box, give us a pause, and see if you can figure it out!
Need a hint?
Well, without it, there’d be no YouTube comments!
If you guessed a keyboard, you figured it out.
Keys, a spacebar, an enter key – all elements of the riddle are right in front of you.
You may have noticed the first part of the riddle was changed, having originally read
“I have keys, but no locks,” but one can make an argument for the Caps Lock key!
9.
There was a man who was born before his father, killed his mother, and married his sister,
yet all was normal.
How is this possible?
Sounds like some forgotten Greek mythological tale, but this riddle is far less scandalous
than that.
The answer is all in how you interpret the wording.
Can a man really be born before his father is, or could the riddle mean “before”
as in “in front of?”
Why not give us a pause, take that hint, and see if it helps you to a resolution.
By now you may have realized that hint was really part of the solution.
The man can’t have been born prior to his father, so his father was present at his birth,
during which his mother died.
As for marrying his sister?
Apparently, his path in life brought him to officiate weddings, and his sister simply
asked him to wed her and her beau. 8.
Murder or Suicide?
This popular riddle is going to require you to put on your deerstalker and pull out your
pipe.
It’s time for some sleuthing!
Many have taken a stab at it, so we figured: Why not us?!
It’s a grim scenario.
A young lass seems to have taken her life and, at first glance, it seems to obviously
be a suicide; but then the little details stick out.
Can you pinpoint some telling clues?
How did the blood splatter wind up on what would have been her right side when the gun
is in her right hand?
Maybe she wasn’t facing the window, that’s a possibility, but what of the cigarette?
The fact that she’s still holding the gun?
The unplugged lamp on what looks to be a dark night?
The ominous lone sandal?
Seems like something fishy is going on here!
Putting all the smaller clues together, it’s safe to say that this is a murder scene.
7.
How Many Triangles Do You See?
We tried to stump you with squares in a past Archive, but that didn’t quite work for
some of you.
Maybe changing shapes will do the trick!
So, looking at this image, how many do you see?
Go ahead, pause the video and give a count.
We’ll wait.
What’d you wind up with, somewhere in the 40’s, right?
44 seems to be a popular answer, but is the popular answer always correct?
NO!
In fact, it’s quite a ways off to the final answer of 104.
There is a mess of hidden triangles - large ones, small ones, mid-sized ones – all crammed
into this star.
6.
A Bat and Ball cost $1.10 The bat cost one dollar more than the ball
How much does the ball cost?
Who doesn’t love a little math riddle?
Well, probably a lot of you… especially math riddles that tend to have obvious answers
that, well, aren’t correct.
We’ve found that a lot of people that assume if the bat is $1.00 more, then the ball must
be $.10, and while it may look right, it’s sloppy math.
If the ball is $.10, and the bat is $1.00 more, then the bat would really cost $1.10
and the total would be $1.20.
To get to $1.10 we can’t ignore that, however much the ball is, the bat will be that plus
a dollar.
Let’s say the ball costs $.05, the bat would then be $1.05.
Add the two together and you have your magic number: $1.10.
5.
Find the Series Ah!
The first dreaded number riddle.
Let’s just dive right into it!
So, what’s the pattern and correlation from one line to the next?
One.
11.
21.
1,211… or maybe that’s not how these numbers are meant to be read.
Is each number an individual, not a part of a whole?
Let’s see if you can figure it out without any further hints!
Pause and come back when you’ve got it.
Did you get 13112221?
You see, each subsequent line describes the line before it.
The “11” line is really saying “one number one,” the next line is saying “two
number ones,” and the fourth line is stating “one number two and one number one.”
So, the solution string is saying “one number three, one number one, two number twos, and
two number ones.”
4.
Which Tank Will Fill First?
Here we have four empty tanks with equal air pressure and a tap that will pour water at
a steady rate into the top tank.
Assuming all variables remain the same, which of the tanks will fill up first?
Since tanks 1 and 2 have level openings at the bottom of the tank, the water won’t
have the chance to fill until the adjacent tank is full.
That leaves 3 and 4.
Seeing as how 3 also has an opening at the bottom, one may assume the same rule applies.
Well, does it?
Not at all!
Because the water has to move up to get from tank 3 to 4, tank 3 will be able to fill while
4 does.
In fact, the two tanks will wind up filling at the same time, giving you your answer.
3.
More maths. 1 + 4 = 5
2 + 5 = 12 3 + 6 = 21
8 + 11 = ? This looks like a pretty straightforward mathematical
equation, right?
Well, if that were the case, it wouldn’t be on a list filled with complex riddles!
As with most number riddles, it’s all about finding a pattern.
We know that 1 + 4 does equal 5, but 2 + 5 falls short of 12 by…
well…
it would appear to be 5, wouldn’t it?
And what about 3 + 6?
How far from 21 is that answer?
It appears we’ve figured out that we are to take the prior answer and add it to the
following equation, so the last equation should read 8 + 11 + 21, giving us an answer of 40.
But that’s not the only answer.
Others have figured if you change the original equations to multiplication then duplicate
and add the first number of the equation, you can still work it through to get a final
answer of 96.
2.
A Woman Steals $100… Imagine running your own grocery and, one
day, a customer walks in, unknowingly steals $100 from your register, then buys $70 worth
of groceries from you.
They give you the $100, you give them $30 in change, and they leave.
At the close of the transaction, how much money did you lose?
Don’t forget to consider all aspects, Pause the vid if you need to!
Well, did you get $70? $30?
Maybe $130?
All of these answers have been posed, but the math lands on $100.
That is, however, only if we ignore the actual cost of goods that were purchased with the
stolen money.
This mathematical riddle happens to be one that’s been dividing the internet, though
the difficulty of it is believed to be a matter of overcomplicating an otherwise easy equation.
1.
Burgers and Fries Take a very close look at this image.
Make note that each of the represented images is associated with a number.
Well, we don’t have to walk you through the easy stuff.
By now, you’ve probably figured that a soda is worth 10, a burger 5, and two sets of fries
represents 2.
With that in mind, the last part of the equation should work out to read 5 + 1 x 10 = 15, right?
Maybe not, and this is another riddle that’s been pitting people of the internet against
one another.
We know that two fries equal 2, but can we just assume that one fry equals 1 and isn’t
its own, unrelated variable?
When speaking algebra, we can't just assign a variable if it isn't given to you, which
is why few have considered this problem unsolvable.
Though if you just play along and bust out that order-of-operations method you thought
you'd never use again and your mundane 6th-grade math teacher was so adamant that you learn,
you'd come up with an answer of 15.
So, that begs the question - which side of the argument are you on?