Tease and Test Your Brain

To test your mental acuity, answer the following questions (no peeking at 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?

Answers

1. Johnny.
   2.Meat.
   3. Mt. Everest. It just wasn’t discovered yet.
   4. There is no dirt in a hole.
   5. Incorrectly (except when it is spelled incorrecktly).
   6. Billie lives in the southern hemisphere.
   7. You can’t take a picture with a wooden leg. You need a camera (or iPad or cell phone) to take a picture.
   8. You would be in 2nd place. You passed the person in second place, not first.
   9. Neither. Egg yolks are yellow.
   10. One. If he combines all his haystacks, they all become one big stack.

Okay, some of these are a bit corny. But they all illustrate several brain idiosyncrasies that affect how we make decisions in the world.