Word Games, Riddles and Logic Tests

Home > Other > Word Games, Riddles and Logic Tests > Page 6
Word Games, Riddles and Logic Tests Page 6

by Adrian Wallwork


  plus.

  What is the color of the wind? Blew.

  Who earns a living by driving his customers away? A taxi driver.

  What breaks when you say it? Silence!

  What instrument can you hear but never see? Your voice! You can sing with

  your voice like an instrument and hear it, but no one can see it!

  What do you call a fish with no eyes? A fsh.

  What comes down but never goes up? Rain

  A lawyer, a plumber and a hat maker were walking down the street. Who had

  the biggest hat? The one with the biggest head.

  If two’s company and three’s a crowd, what are four and five? Nine!

  Can you name the two days starting with T besides Tuesday and Thursday?

  Today and tomorrow.

  36

  Keys to Chapter 3

  Cryptic Meaning

  YY UR - too wise you are

  YY UB - two wise you be

  I C U R - I see you are

  YY 4 ME - too wise for me

  Funny Book Titles

  I Lived in Detroit by Helen Earth = Hell on earth (i.e. a horrible place)

  I Love Mathematics by Adam Up = Add them (i.e. numbers) up

  I Was a Cloakroom Attendant by Mahatma Coate = My hat, my coat

  I Win! by U. Lose = You lose

  I Say So! by Frank O. Pinion = frank (sincere) opinion

  Animal Idioms

  a dark horse - person whose true value is unknown

  a little bird told me - avoids saying directly how you heard news

  a night owl - someone who stays up late

  a white elephant - something expensive and worthless

  donkey’s years - going back a long time into the past

  not enough room to swing a cat - very little space

  till the cows come home - for an indefinitely long time into the future

  to have a bee in one’s bonnet - have an obsession about something

  to make a pig’s ear of something - do something very badly

  to smell a rat`something fishy - suspect that something is wrong

  Keys to Chapter 3

  37

  Anagrams 2

  leaks

  tales

  trams

  swarm

  smile

  times

  names

  lemon

  dense

  renew

  Mathematical 1

  # 57+23=80+1+4+6+9 = 100

  Mathematical 2

  #

  Mathematical 3

  # 3

  Tense Challenge - Present Simple vs Will

  In Medieval times jesters were very much a part of the royal courts of Europe.

  One particular court jester made a fortune traveling from country to country

  playing the following trick on unsuspecting monarchs.

  On seeing the king, queen or whoever he would say: “I bet that if I tell you a really big lie, you will give me a pot of gold.”

  One day he decided to go to England and arriving at His Majesty’s palace he

  demanded to see the king, he then announced his challenge and added:

  38

  Keys to Chapter 3

  “If you agree to my proposal, you will end up giving me a pot of gold. I am the best liar in the world you know!

  “OK then,” replied the king wearily, “if you tell me a really big lie, I will give you a pot of gold”.

  The jester smiled and continued:

  “You owe my father a pot full of gold. You lost it to him 25 years ago at poker and you never paid him back.”

  “But I’ve never even met your father,” protested the king, “that’s the biggest

  lie I’ve ever heard.”

  The king then realised that he had been fooled and that he would have to pay

  the jester. Why?

  #If the king admits that it was a lie, he will have to pay the jester a pot of gold (this was part of the challenge). But if it’s not a lie, then he really does owe the jester’s father a pot of gold and so he will have to pay the jester anyway.

  Word Ladder

  MICE

  RICE (staple diet of much of the world)

  RACE (competition)

  RATE (assign a rank or rating to)

  RATS

  Chapter 4

  Play up! play up! and play the game

  Numbers

  Numbers occur quite frequently in the abbreviations used in the social media. Due to the bizarre spelling system of English, numbers can be used in many different ways:

  1) /won/, 2) /tu/, 3) /thri/ or /fri/, 4) /for/, 8) /eit/

  Match the ‘numbers’ in the first column with the meanings in the second column.

  1ce

  anyone

  every1

  before

  ne1

  everyone

  sum1

  face to face

  2day

  I’m too good for you

  f2f

  once

  im2gud4u

  please forgive me

  lk2ul8r

  see you later

  wan2

  someone

  b4

  talk to you later

  plz 4gv me

  today

  cul8er

  waiting for you

  w8in4u

  want to

  © Springer International Publishing AG 2018

  39

  A. Wallwork, Word Games, Riddles and Logic Tests, Easy English!,

  https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67241-0_4

  40

  Word Ladder

  Lewis Carroll, the author of Alice in Wonderland, enjoyed converting one word into another by changing one letter at a time. For example: H A T E > h a v e > h o v e > L O V E

  See if you can convert FIRE into HEAT. You can use the clues in brackets to help you.

  FIRE

  _____ (engage for work)

  HERE (not there)

  _____ (a group of cattle or sheep or other domestic mammals)

  _____

  HEAT

  41

  Proverbs

  Match the proverbs (1-10) with their explanations (a-j).

  1. A bad workman always blames his tools

  2. A bird in hand is worth two in the bush

  3. A change is a good as a rest

  4. A leopard can’t change his spots

  5. A miss is as good as a mile

  6. A stitch in time saves nine

  7. Absence makes the heart grow fonder

  8. Actions speak louder than words

  9. All good things must come to an end

  10. Beauty is only skin deep

  a) Rather than recognizing that we have done something badly, we attribute the

  responsibility to the tools we are working with.

  b) It’s better not to lose something that you already have by trying to get something extra that you cannot be certain of.

  c) If you start doing something different, then this is equivalent to having a period of rest.

  d) You cannot change human nature.

  e) It doesn’t matter by how far you have missed your target.

  f) If you fix something or solve a problem straight away you will save time later.

  g) When you are away from your loved one, you fall even more in love.

  h) What you do is more important than what you say.

  i) Enjoyable experiences don’t last forever.

  j) What is important is someone’s character not their appearance.

  42

  Tongue Twisters

  Practise reading the tongue twisters aloud. Then see if you can memorize and say them quickly without getting your tongue tied!

  Which wristwatches are Swiss wristwatches?

  Unique New York.

  Many an anemone sees an enemy anemone.

  Freshly-fried flying fish.

  Riddles

  Can
you answer the questions of the following riddles?

  1. In a one-storey pink house, there was a pink person, a pink cat, a pink fish, a pink computer, a pink chair, a pink table, a pink telephone, a pink shower–

  everything was pink! What color were the stairs?

  2. If you were forced to go through one of the following doors, which door do you go through with 100 % certainty you’d stay alive: a door with a man with a gun

  behind it, a door with a tiger who hasn’t eaten in 7 years behind it, or a door

  with an electric chair behind it?

  3. Jack rode into town on Friday and rode out 2 days later on Friday. How can that be possible?

  4. A man was cleaning the windows of a 25 storey building. He slipped and fell

  off the ladder, but wasn’t hurt. How did he do it?

  5. Two fathers and two sons go on a fishing trip. They each catch a fish and bring it home. Why do they only bring three fish home?

  6. A monkey, a squirrel, and a bird are racing to the top of a coconut tree. Who will get the banana first, the monkey, the squirrel, or the bird?

  7. Mr. Blue lives in the blue house, Mr. Pink lives in the pink house, and Mr.

  Brown lives in the brown house. Who lives in the white house?

  8. If a blue house is made out of blue bricks, a yellow house is made out of yellow bricks and a pink house is made out of pink bricks, what is a green house

  made of?

  9. How many months have 28 days?

  10. You walk into a room with a match, a kerosene lamp, a candle, and a fireplace.

  Which do you light first?

  11. What is as light as a feather, but even the world’s strongest man couldn’t hold it for more than a minute?

  12. Mary’s father has 5 daughters – Nana, Nene, Nini, Nono. What is the fifth

  daughters name?

  43

  Funny Book Titles

  Match the titles with the authors.

  titles

  authors

  Cry Wolf

  Al Armist

  It’s Unfair!

  Al Dente

  Surprised!

  Oliver Sudden

  Without Warning

  Omar Gosh

  Cooking Spaghetti

  Y. Me

  Limericks

  Practise reading the limericks aloud and hear/find the rhythm.

  There was a faith-healer of Deal

  There was a young man from Bengal

  Who said “Although pain isn’t real,

  Who went to a fancy dress ball.

  If I sit on a pin

  He went just for fun

  And it punctures my skin

  Dressed up as a bun

  I dislike what I fancy I feel.

  And a dog ate him up in the hall.

  Preposition Challenge

  Choose the correct preposition - in or to.

  There is a night watchman who works in/to a small factory in/to Pisa in/to Italy. His job is to make sure that there are no intruders in/to the factory during the night time.

  One night he had a dream about his boss. The next morning he went to see his boss and said in/to him: “Last night I had a dream. I dreamt that the plane crashed that you are taking in/to London today”. The boss got very angry and told him to go away.

  There was terrible traffic and the boss arrived too late in/to the airport to catch his plane. So he caught the next one instead. When he arrived in / to London he bought the evening newspaper and read: “Pisa - London plane crashes - all dead!” A week later he flew back in/to his factory in/to Pisa. He immediately called in the night watchman and told him that he was sacked.

  Why did the boss sack his night watchman?

  44

  On a Mat up Here

  What do the following words have in common?

  moo, buzz, neigh, quack

  burp, clang, click crash, hiss, pop, squelch, jingle, snap, thud

  Anagrams

  Can you work out the connection between the two columns?

  a telephone girl

  repeating hello

  Clint Eastwood

  old west action

  French revolution

  violence run forth

  Madame Curie

  radium came

  police protection

  let cop cope in riot

  silver and gold

  grand old evils

  the countryside

  no city dust here

  the nudist colony

  no untidy clothes

  William Shakespeare we all make his

  praise

  Vocabulary notes: Clint Eastwood was a famous film star in westerns; run forth =

  flow, cop = police officer, cope = manage, evil = opposite of good, untidy = not in order, praise = say good things about

  Mathematical 1

  A farmer had two and a half haystacks in one corner of a field and three and a half haystacks in another corner of the same field. If he put them together how many

  haystacks would he have?

  45

  Mathematical 2

  A train which is 1 km long is moving at 100 km an hour. It goes into a 1 km long tunnel. How long will it take to pass through the tunnel completely?

  Mathematical 3

  A woman worked on her farm where she had a lot of chickens. She went to the

  market to sell the chickens’ eggs. The first person bought half her eggs and half an egg more. The second and third people did exactly the same thing. When she had

  given them all their eggs, she had none left and hadn’t had to break a single egg all day. How many eggs did she have at the beginning?

  Rhyming Words

  These pairs of words look as if they should rhyme, but not many of them do. Which ones do rhyme?

  aid

  said

  arm

  farm

  eat

  heat

  even

  seven

  his

  this

  hole

  whole

  laughter

  slaughter

  lose

  close

  now

  know

  on

  son

  46

  Anagrams

  Create an anagram from the letters of the words in the first column. The anagram should correspond to the definition.

  anagram

  definition

  break

  a professional bread maker

  stale

  the opposite of the most

  thing

  the opposite of day

  orals

  related to the sun

  ought

  hard

  swore

  the opposite of better

  outer

  the path followed to get from A to B

  parts

  the part of the bag that you put over your shoulder

  peach

  not expensive

  paler

  precious object found in a shell

  Logical Ladies?

  Below are four cases (1-4) all involving women. There are eight possible solutions (a-h) to the cases. Match the most appropriate solution to each case.

  1. Laura had not been seen for 24 hours. The police sent out a search party. They discovered her in a couple of hours covered in blood in an abandoned building.

  A few hours later, it was confirmed that she had been shot twice. Even though the police had no other physical evidence, they arrested the murderer. How did the

  police know the identity of the murderer?

  2. Martha decides to buy a new mobile phone and to sell her old one to a stranger.

  The stranger wants to pay in cash. Teresa accepts but says that the stranger must give her the money in front of a bank clerk in a bank. Why?

  3. Mrs Jones, who lives alone with her daughter Kate, suspects that Kate’s boy-

  friend has been staying in th
eir house. But her daughter says that she has spent the day by herself and that her boyfriend was out with his friends. In reality, the boyfriend has spent the day in the house, so Kate has made sure that he has not

  left anything behind. But Mrs Jones soon finds evidence that Kate’s boyfriend

  really has spent the day with Kate in the house. What evidence did Mrs Smith

  find?

  4. Patricia wakes up in the middle of the night and smells smoke. She knows she is in danger from the fire. She makes no attempt to leave the room where she is

  sleeping. Why?

  47

  a) She was not alone.

  b) She lives next door to the bank.

  c) She is in a prison cell.

  d) She can smell perfume.

  e) She is blind.

  f) She wasn’t dead when she was found. So she was able to reveal the identity

  of her killers.

  g) She sees that the toilet seat is up.

  h) She is a fire officer.

  Ambiguous Headlines

  Try to understand what makes the headlines ambiguous.

  Two sisters reunited after 18 years at checkout counter

  Dealers will hear car talk at noon

  Enraged cow injures farmer with axe

  Include your children when baking cookies

  Lawyers from Mexico barbecue guests.

  48

  Keys to Chapter 4

  Keys to Chapter 4

  Numbers

  1ce = once,

  every1 = everyone,

  ne1 = anyone

  sum1 = someone,

  2day = today

  f2f = face to face

  im2gud4u = I’m too good for you

  lk2ul8r = talk to you later

  wan2 = want t

  b4 = before

  plz 4gv me = please forgive me

  cul8er = see you later

  w8in4u = waiting for you

  Word Ladder

  FIRE

  HIRE (engage for work)

  HERE (not there)

  HERD (a group of cattle or sheep or other domestic mammals)

  HEAD

  HEAT

  Proverbs

  A bad workman always blames his tools - Rather than recognizing that we

  have done something badly, we attribute the responsibility to the tools we are

  working with.

  A bird in hand is worth two in the bush - It’s better not to lose something that you already have by trying to get something extra that you cannot be certain.

  Keys to Chapter 4

  49

  A change is a good as a rest - If you start doing something different then this is equivalent to having a period of rest.

  A leopard can’t change his spots - You cannot change human nature.

 

‹ Prev