come fiddle with my riddle ?

Published on June 22, 2004 By mignuna In Just Hanging Out

i have the strength of sixty men, i'm over ten feet tall
i'm footed, though i never move, it's said that i can fall

in grand ballrooms i can be seen holding up affairs
and i can bring the house down if i crack up near the stairs

... what am i ?

if you know the solution to this riddle, please make me very happy by posting it

... but if you do post the answer, you must post the next riddle to be guessed by the next successful person, and so on. or so i hope.

course, the whole thing could get ignored, too. how embarrasing that would be. hehe. oh, well ... the risks one will take in order to achieve linguistic banter these days apparently know no bounds !!!. somebody guess, dammit

Comments (Page 13)

181

citahellion

on Sep 29, 2004

Glacier it is, Lengirl!

For yours, I'll guess "breath".

I've got a few more puzzlers at home that I'll try to remember to post tonight, too.

182

The Crusaders

on Sep 29, 2004

Gooden morning everyone!!

Do you know this one?

There is a common English word that is nine letters long. Each time you remove a letter from it, it still remains an English word - from nine letters right down to a single letter. What is the original word, and what are the words that it becomes after removing one letter at a time?

183

trina_p

on Sep 29, 2004

Startling

Starling

Staring

string

sting

sing

sin

in

i

184

citahellion

on Sep 29, 2004

A variation on that theme from Lewis Carroll's puzzle collection is a game called Doublets. It's not really a riddle per se, but it's interesting.

The object of the game is to convert one word into another word, changing only one letter at a time to make a valid "intermediate word", until the target word is reached.

So for instance you can turn "HEAD" into "TAIL" by going
HEAD
HEAL
TEAL
TELL
TALL
TAIL

Now an ideal doublet requires only as many steps as there are letters, so an ideal solution for the HEAD->TAIL doublet would take only 4 steps instead of the 5 that we took. Can you find an ideal doublet solution?

Also try these:
Drive "PIG" into "STY"
Raise "FOUR" to "FIVE"
Cover "EYE" with "LID"
Turn "POOR" into "RICH"
Make "BREAD" into "TOAST"
Make "WINTER" into "SUMMER"

185

trina_p

on Sep 29, 2004

Oooh they do that in the Woman's weekly magazine every month

and I usually suck

and today is no exception

(here's a riddle with no answer -- Why do they call the Australian Woman's Weekly magazine that when it comes out monthy and Why do they call the Woman's Day magazine that when it comes out weekly?!?!?! - and just so we're clear I only ever buy and read AWW)

186

mignuna

on Sep 29, 2004

Why do they call the Australian Woman's Weekly magazine that when it comes out monthy

trina, at last something i know. it does have an answer !. thw 'AWW' used to come out weekly (i'm showing my age here hehe), and when it was changed to a monthly format, they decided that calling the magazine 'the womens' monthly' sounded too much like a period !!!.

i'm working on the others. you guys are too fast for me !

mig XX

187

trina_p

on Sep 30, 2004

Arh yes I knew that (about it being previously a weekly taller, stapled and short magazine -- my Grandma had a few from the 40's and 50's - I still find it odd though

and the womans day? "I can't wait for my day?" (former ad jingle)

188

Lengirl

on Sep 30, 2004

Mignuna - Thanks for the welcome! Nice to meet you also, nice to know that even in the UK contact with fellow Aussies is plentiful!!

Citahellion - VERY VERY CLOSE, you're on the right track with breath....

Here's another little one I found.... What happened in 1961 that will not happen again for over 4000 years?

189

citahellion

on Sep 30, 2004

Lengirl, your new one is easy: The number of the year (as represented in the Gregorian calendar, at least) looks the same when you turn it over. Next time that will happen is, I believe, in the year 6119.

No new guess for your old one yet, though.... Hmm.

190

Lengirl

on Sep 30, 2004

Yeah...thought it might be a bit easy...you're close with the year, it's 6009.

Try this one -- You approach two talking doors. One door leads to the City of Truth, while the other door leads to the City of Liars. You do not know which door is which. You are able to ask only one question to determine which door is which. The door that leads to the City of Liars always speaks lies, while the door that leads to the City of Truth always speaks the truth. You want to go to the City of Truth. What question do you ask to determine which door leads to the City of Truth

191

citahellion

on Sep 30, 2004

Argh! Can't believe I skipped the 0's.

I know your next one too, but I'll give somebody else a crack at it first.

Here's one from Lewis Carroll:

A monument--men all agree--
Am I in all sincerity,
half cat, half hindrance made.
If head and tail removed should be,
Then most of all you strengthen me;
Replace my head, the stand you see
On which my tail is laid.

192

Lengirl

on Oct 01, 2004

Citahellion -- the answer to above... Tablet??

193

citahellion

on Oct 01, 2004

You got it, Lengirl!

So I guess I want to guess a couple more for your older one ("a part of us, and then replaced")... air? oxygen? spit? a fart?

And since nobody's taken a whack at the City of Truth, let me see if I can walk through the construction of the question, with the further restriction that you can only ask YES/NO questions.

Obviously you can't just ask "Is this the door to the City of Truth?" If you ask the truthful door that, it'll say yes. If you ask the lying door that, it'll also say yes (since it lies). In fact, no matter what question you ask them about themselves (or each other) directly, both doors are going to answer the same thing. e.g. "Does the other door lie?" Truthful door truthfully says yes; lying door lies and also says yes. So you need a question about them that they will answer differently.
Now if you ask the truthful door about what the lying door will answer to a question, you know that the door will answer truthfully with the lying door's lie. Whereas if you ask the lying door about the truthful door's answer to a question, you know that the door will lie about the truthful door's truthful answer. So in either case you'll get a lie back. "Would the other door say that it tells the truth?", for example: the truthful door will say Yes, because it knows the lying door would claim to be the truthful door. The lying door, on the other hand, would say No, because it knows the truthful door would correctly claim to be truthful. So that question would identify which door told the truth; If you get a YES answer, you're speaking to the truthful door. And therefore you can open it to go to the City of Truth.

Now if the city planners were bastards and occasionally swapped the doors around, you'd still be SOL because you only know what door is which, not which road is which. In that case, you'd have to get slightly more devious. Fortunately the previous question is easily adapted: "If I asked the other door if its road led to the City of Truth, would it say YES?"

Let's walk through this:

If the truthful door leads to the city of truth and you ask it this question, then the lying door would claim to lead to the city, so the door will say YES.
If the lying door leads to the city of truth and you ask the truthful door this question, then the lying door would not claim to lead to the city, so the door will say NO.
If the truthful door leads to the city of truth and you ask the lying door this question, the lying door will lie about the truthful door's truthful Yes answer and say NO.
If the lying door leads to the city of truth and you ask it this question, it will lie about the truthful door's truthful No answer and say YES.

That may look pretty unhelpful, but what it comes down to is this: If the door you ask leads to the city of truth, it will answer YES to your question. If the other door leads to the city of truth, the door you asked will answer NO. Thus you can divine which door to take to get to the City of Truth.

194

Lengirl

on Oct 03, 2004

Brilliant!!! I've heard it explained before but never quite so eloquently!!

You're pretty close, think more about what you also put into your body.... (clue:- You should have a prescribed amount every day.....)

195

citahellion

on Oct 04, 2004

Okay, I'm gonna go with:

Water.

And if you like logic puzzles such as the City of Truth one there, I should break out my Raymond Smullyan books and post a few real posers....

Welcome Guest! Please take the time to register with us.
There are many great features available to you once you register, including:

Richer content, access to many features that are disabled for guests like commenting on the forums.
Access to a great community, with a massive database of many, many areas of interest.
Access to contests & subscription offers like exclusive emails.
It's simple, and FREE!