Thursday, July 19, 2012

What Was The Name Of The President In 1991?

Here's something fun I found at Forbes.  The magazine calls them brainteasers, but I'd say they're more trick questions.  I think our readers are smart enough to figure them out without clicking on the link to get the answers.

1. Johnny’s mother had three children. The first child was named April. The second child was named May. What was the third child’s name?

2. A clerk at a butcher shop stands five feet ten inches tall and wears size 13 sneakers. What does he weigh?

3. Before Mt. Everest was discovered, what was the highest mountain in the world?

4. How much dirt is there in a hole that measures two feet by three feet by four feet?

5. What word in the English language is always spelled incorrectly?

6. Billie was born on December 28th, yet her birthday always falls in the summer. How is this possible?

7. In British Columbia you cannot take a picture of a man with a wooden leg. Why not?

8. If you were running a race and you passed the person in 2nd place, what place would you be in now?

9. Which is correct to say, “The yolk of the egg is white” or “The yolk of the egg are white?”

10. A farmer has five haystacks in one field and four haystacks in another. How many haystacks would he have if he combined them all in one field?

PS  The answer to the title of this post is "Barack Obama."

4 Comments:

Blogger New England Guy said...

Obliviously missed the obvious clue in #1 but got the gist & answered "whatever his or her parents named it" so I give myself a 9.5

5:51 AM, July 19, 2012  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The trick of having an incorrect assumption built in to the form of the question- a famous example being -"Have you stopped beating your wife?"

5:53 AM, July 19, 2012  
Anonymous Lawrence King said...

Nice. #7 took some thought. Also, I'm not sure I agree with your title question. I think the journalistic "then-" prefix is overused: I prefer "After the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, President Roosevelt asked Congress to declare war" -- there is no need to call him "then-President Roosevelt". By this rule, there are two valid answers to your title question.

9:04 PM, July 20, 2012  
Blogger LAGuy said...

Question #7 and the title question are both based on how slippery English can be. I guess knowing it's a trick question would get you the right answer for the President's name, and understanding context when there's ambiguity is a part of good test-taking.

12:23 AM, July 21, 2012  

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