by Kaitlyn Shepanski

Created on: December 23, 2011

Riddles, puzzles and paradoxes can be a fun and productive use of your time. They help with problem solving and there’s not a much more satisfying feeling than finding the long-awaited solution to a problem. There are many types of riddles; here I’ll show you a few of my favorite conundrums to try out. While it’s arguable these aren’t the best riddles, I believe they’re a good mix, they’ll get you started in the world of riddling.

 Winter Garden

It has been slowing heavily. A man goes out to his garden and notices there is twice as much snow in his garden as in his neighbor’s, He’s not surprised in the least! Why not?

The answer is simple; his garden is twice as big as his neighbor’s!

 It’s a mixed feeling at the end of a riddle when you see a simple answer staring you in the face. On one hand you think you would have never thought of that simple answer, and on the other you can’t seem to figure out just why you never would have thought of it. Riddles of course will range to more difficult ones, such as this next puzzle.

What am I?

I am the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the cesium 133 atom. What am I?

The answer? I am a second! Since 1967 a second has been defined in relation of a property of matter instead of in relation to a year.

It’s easy to see why this one is more difficult to solve. It relies less on practical thinking and more on prior knowledge, if you didn’t know the second is defined in relation to a property of matter then you would have never guessed the answer. In my experience, riddles are either something one can love or hate, there’s little room for in between. You’ll either find being stumped for days on end rewarding in the end, or not worth your time and sanity.

In the hole

One of my personal favorites-

A man digs a hole exactly one meter deep, by thirty cm wide and, and thirty cm long. How much earth is contained in the entire hole?

How simple, right? Just use the formula for volume (Length times width times height) to plug and chug the correct answer, 90,000 cm! Wrong, riddles can require more than just logical thinking, and can often require thinking outside the box. Usually, after a hole has been dug, there’s no earth left in it, so the answer 90,000 cm would be incorrect, the right answer would be 9 cm.

As you can see, there can be more to riddles than meets the eye, that’s part of the appeal actually. Also, there’s rarely a single correct answer to a riddle. If you take the time and effort to thing logically and creatively about a solution, a new one can often be created.

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