Looking for More Misdirection-Style Riddles
July 25, 2017 12:25 PM   Subscribe

I'm looking for a few more riddles of a very particular style (that probably has a name I don't know) in which the askee is intentionally mislead, thus obfuscating an otherwise simple answer. I only know of one of these and I'm hoping for more (example inside).

This is the riddle I heard as a kid:

Three ladies are traveling and decide to stop at a motel for the night. They approached the front desk and asked the price. The man behind the counter told them thirty dollars per night. The ladies agree they will share a room and each hand the man a ten-dollar bill. They go up to their room for the night.
Later on, the man realizes he over charged the ladies by five dollars. He is not an honest man, so he pockets two of the overcharged dollars before going up and refunding the ladies three dollars - one dollar apiece.
Now, if you asked the ladies how much they spent on the room, they would say nine dollars each - or twenty-seven dollars together. The man at the front desk kept two. Added up, that's only twenty-nine dollars. They originally spent thirty. What happened to the extra dollar?

Obviously this question kind of falls apart as a riddle if you think about it at all. But it can confuse you if you pay attention to what the riddler wants you to. Kind of like a verbal magic trick through misdirection.

Are there any other riddles like this?
posted by FakeFreyja to Grab Bag (26 answers total) 16 users marked this as a favorite
 
Best answer: I'm not sure if this is exactly the type of riddle you're aiming for, but when I was a kid this one riddle went around that went something like this: You're the driver of a bus, at the first stop 18 people get on, at the second stop 7 people get on and 4 people get off, at the third stop, (some more addition/subtraction) etc... What was the color of the bus driver's eyes?
At this point the person will forget you began the riddle with "You are the bus driver" and won't understand how the heck they could know the answer to that question.
posted by alon at 12:29 PM on July 25, 2017 [10 favorites]


Well, there's the old joke -
Q: What's brown and sticky?
A: A stick!
posted by notsnot at 12:34 PM on July 25, 2017


What has 4 letters
never has 5 letters
and sometimes has 9 letters
posted by ananci at 12:37 PM on July 25, 2017 [14 favorites]


Best answer: Ha - I was going to give the same bus driver joke that alona did.

So instead I'll throw in this math one, which is similar to yours in a different way:

Did you know you have eleven fingers? Hold up your hands. count all the fingers on one hand: 10 - 9 - 8 - 7 -6... count all the fingers on the other hand: 1... 2... 3... 4... 5...

6 + 5 = 11. So clearly you have 11 fingers
posted by Mchelly at 12:38 PM on July 25, 2017 [1 favorite]


You are being chased by a bear. Up ahead you see a cabin so you run to it and lock yourself inside. The bear walks in circles around the outside of the the cabin, growling. All of the walls of the cabin face south. What color is the bear?

Hint: if all of the walls face south then the cabin is located at the north pole.
posted by vignettist at 12:40 PM on July 25, 2017


Best answer: A shepherd is standing in a field with 2 sheepdogs and 100 sheep. How many feet are in that field?

Two. The dogs have paws, and the sheep have hooves.

(Can be embellished in between the first two sentences by accounts of how thirteen sheep had to be taken away for dipping, but then two of those escaped from the dip-trough and ran back to the field; oh, and three of the non-dipped sheep are each missing a leg, etc.)
posted by Morfil Ffyrnig at 12:54 PM on July 25, 2017


Best answer: Q: What's brown and sticky?
A: A stick!


Same vein -
Q: What's orange and sounds like a parrot?
A: A carrot.

Q: What's blue and smells like red paint?
A: Blue paint.

And some that for whatever reason sit in my brain in the same "trick question" space occupied by the aforementioned bus driver riddle:
Q: An electric train is traveling due east at 45 mph. The tracks turn northward, and the train picks up speed to 50mph. There is no wind. Which way does the smoke blow?
A: An electric train does not produce smoke.

Q: A rooster lands on top of a house on the exact peak of the roof, which faces east and west. It lays an egg, which way does the egg roll?
A: Roosters don't lay eggs.

Q: If a plane crashed at Four Corners, where would they bury the survivors?
A: You don't bury the survivors.
posted by solotoro at 12:56 PM on July 25, 2017


My grandfather was fond of this one:

Q: Railroad crossing, watch out for cars. Can you spell that without any R's?
A: T-H-A-T
posted by telepanda at 1:07 PM on July 25, 2017


Best answer: Here's a small collection of the "misdirection" (false assumptions) riddles:

http://www.iub.edu/~ensiweb/falsas+ans.pdf
posted by jpeacock at 1:07 PM on July 25, 2017 [1 favorite]


As I was traveling to St. Ives, I met a man with seven wives. Each wife had seven sacks, each sack had seven cats. Kits, cats, sacks and wives; how many were traveling to St. Ives?
posted by Oyéah at 1:21 PM on July 25, 2017 [1 favorite]


(My favorite)
A man is driving with his wife when he suddenly pulls over, gets out of the car, and runs to the nearest house. The wife locks the car doors from the inside. When the man returns, his wife is dead and there's a stranger in the car. When the police arrive, they do not arrest the stranger. What happened?
posted by violetish at 1:40 PM on July 25, 2017 [1 favorite]


Q: A man leaves home at a run, makes three left turns and returns home with a tremendous sense of accomplishment. Why?
A: He was a baseball player and hit a home run
posted by dotparker at 1:43 PM on July 25, 2017 [1 favorite]


A plane crashed and everyone on board was killed. Where did they bury the survivors?
posted by mogget at 2:09 PM on July 25, 2017


Best answer: It's simple, but a classic of the genre is "Susan's mom has three daughters. The first two are named April and May. What is the third one named?"

(Susan.)
posted by Pater Aletheias at 2:27 PM on July 25, 2017 [1 favorite]


Same as above, but Dave's father has 3 sons: Snap, Crackle, and ___. However, no one said Dave is a male, so I think it should be phrased that Dave's father has three children.
posted by soelo at 2:43 PM on July 25, 2017


A plane is flying from the U.S. to Canada, and crash lands exactly on the border. Where do you bury the survivors?
(Hopefully, you don't.)
posted by stormyteal at 2:44 PM on July 25, 2017


THE MOTHER IS THE DOCTOR.

--running family joke.
posted by athirstforsalt at 2:51 PM on July 25, 2017 [6 favorites]


Answer to the gender bias revealing riddle: https://www.ecenglish.com/learnenglish/lessons/english-riddle-can-you-answer-question
posted by athirstforsalt at 2:54 PM on July 25, 2017


There is a town that is so small that it has only two barbers. It just so happens that one of them is the best barber in the country. However, he is not the best barber in town. How can that be?
posted by Multicellular Exothermic at 2:56 PM on July 25, 2017


http://www.kith.org/logos/things/sitpuz/answers.html
posted by H21 at 3:00 PM on July 25, 2017


Here's two that aren't riddles but that work by hijacking rhyming/ verbal muscle memory so they probably won't work in text, but surprisingly effective in person

1. Me:
Say the word roast five times

You:
ROAST
ROAST
ROAST
ROAST
ROAST

Me:
What do you put in the toaster

You:
Toast

(Nope you put bread in)

2.
Spell the word Pots out loud

You: P. O. T. S.

Me: what do you do at a green light?

You: Stop.

(No you go)


You get the idea. Bonus is making your friends say roast a lot. Sounds funny and loses meaning after a few repeats.

ROAST
ROAST
ROAST
ROAST
posted by sol at 3:03 PM on July 25, 2017 [1 favorite]


The classic "proof" that 2=1:

Suppose you have two variables, a and b, and a=b.
a = b (given)
a² = ab (multiply both sides by a)
a²-b² = ab-b² (subtract b² from both sides)
(a+b)(a-b) = b(a-b) (factor both sides)
a+b = b (cancel a-b from both sides)
b+b = b (we were given a=b, so substitute b for a)
2b = b (add left side)
2 = 1 (divide both sides by b)

Where's the error? (solution)
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 3:17 PM on July 25, 2017


Under the "trick question" vein of misdirection that solotoro started and you marked best:

Q: What are the Canary Islands named after?
A: Dogs (the birds are named after the islands).

Q: Who's buried in Grant's tomb?
A: Two variants 1) Grant AND his wife 2) nobody: they are entombed above ground, not buried.

Q: How much water will a ten gallon hat hold?
A: About 3 quarts.
posted by SaltySalticid at 12:12 PM on July 26, 2017


The day before yesterday, Bob was 32 years old. Next year, Bob will turn 35 years old. When is Bob's birthday and how is this possible?
(Answer: Bob's birthday is December 31. Today is New Year's Day, so Bob turned 33 yesterday. He will turn 34 on December 31 of this year and he will turn 35 on December 31 next year.)

A man sees a picture of another man on the wall and says "Brothers and sisters have I none, but this man's father is my father's son." Who is the man in the picture?
(Answer: The speaker's son.)
posted by SisterHavana at 9:52 PM on July 26, 2017


Q: How do you spell poke?
A: P-O-K-E
Q: How do you spell woke?
A: W-O-K-E
Q: How do you spell joke?
A: J-O-K-E
(Etc etc for as many words you can think of that rhyme with poke)
Q: What's the white of an egg called?
A: The yolk
posted by girlgenius at 4:12 AM on July 28, 2017


We called those 'conundrums'. One person would know the answer and the rest of the crew would ask yes/no questions until they come up with the answer. Some of them are really convoluted.

There were a couple of books published in the fifties (that I'm proud to say I own) that are full of that stuff: 'How Come?' and 'How Come - Again?' by Agnes Rogers.
posted by DandyRandy at 10:11 PM on August 7, 2017


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