your resolution.
Which is the strongest day of the week?
Sunday, because all the rest are week days.
What’s black and white and red all over?
A newspaper.
The above two cases rely on homophones, i.e. words that have the same pronuncia-
tion but a different spelling and meaning. You need to remember that riddles are basically part of an oral tradition - so the listener hears the words without knowing how they are spelled. The key words in the above cases are week (and its homophone weak), and red (and its homophone read). A week day in the case of this riddle is any one of the days from Monday to Saturday. Sunday is thus not a week day, nor is it a weak day (it is ‘stronger’ than the others). In the case of the newspaper, the color is of the paper is white with black print. It is read all over in the sense that the reader reads every page.
In some cases in the sections on riddles I have put the key words in italics, so that you can then focus on working out what the double meaning is.
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Rhyming Forms
Did you ever have a walkie talkie as a child and did you play ping pong? walkie talkie and ping pong are examples of what is known as ‘reduplication’.
Rhyming word combinations like these have been around since the 14th century.
Some examples that would seem to have been of recent coinage have actually been
around for centuries. For example hip hop and flip flop appeared at the end of the 17th century, though obviously with different meanings from today’s meanings of a type of music and a type of beach sandal.
Rhyme and alliteration are frequently used by newspapers in English-speaking
countries. In the tabloid press they may be used to describe someone’s sexual
orientation:
gender bender (person who seeks to define gender expression outside of the
binary terms of man and woman)
toy boy (a male partner who is significantly younger than his partner)
randy andy (a man who doesn’t waste opportunities for having sex)
hanky panky (typically sexual behavior that is humorously considered as being
improper)
Similes
A simile is a figure of speech that compares two supposedly similar objects or
describes a similar property that two different objects each possess. Some reflect the observations of our ancestors and thus represent actions that are no longer commonly made. For example we say:
As clean as a whistle.
As clear as a bell.
As dry as a bone.
As stiff as a poker.
Such expressions, although clear in meaning, don’t actually make much sense in the modern age.
The origin of some is obscure:
As cool as a cucumber.
This common expression means: Extremely calm, relaxed and in control of your
emotions. Why a cucumber? Perhaps because of the sound. Or maybe, as Bloomsbury
International tells us:
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This phrase may have originated from the fact that even in hot weather, the inside of cucumbers are approximately 20 degrees cooler than the outside air.
Others have been made famous by particular books or authors. For example, to
describes something as being completely crazy you can say:
As mad as a hatter.
or
As mad as a March hare.
which are both found in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. For
more on Lewis Carroll see the earlier section.
Not all similes follow the as ... as formula. Some similes also begin with like: Like a bat out of hell.
Like a bull in a china shop.
Like ships that pass in the night.
Like nothing on earth.
Like a lamb to the slaughter.
Like a ton of bricks.
Like a rolling stone.
Others use like plus a verb.
It’s like talking to a brick wall.
It’s like watching paint dry.
It’s like trying to scratch your ear with your elbow.
And others are found with look like. Below are some expressions to describe what someone looked like on a particular occasion:
Like a drowned rat.
Like something the cat brought in.
Like a million bucks.
Like death warmed up.
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Tongue Twisters
A tongue twister is a phrase or short verse that is designed to be difficult to say. On other hand, it is relatively easy to read.
A tongue twister can be a very short, but difficult to articulate, phrase such as: Red lorry, yellow lorry.
The Leith police dismisseth us.
The sixth sick sheik’s sixth sheep’s sick
Alternatively it can be a verse:
Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.
Did Peter Piper pick a peck of pickled peppers?
If Peter Piper Picked a peck of pickled peppers,
Where’s the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked?
How much wood would a woodchuck chuck
If a woodchuck could chuck wood?
He would chuck, he would, as much as he could,
And chuck as much as a woodchuck would
If a woodchuck could chuck wood.
Betty Botter bought a bit of butter.
The butter Betty Botter bought was a bit bitter
And made her batter bitter.
But a bit of better butter makes better batter.
So Betty Botter bought a bit of better butter
Making Betty Botter’s bitter batter better.
Some tongue twisters when mispronounced can produce humorous (and often vul-
gar) results. Here is an example:
I’m not a pheasant plucker, I’m a pheasant plucker’s son,
I’m only plucking pheasants till the pheasant plucker comes.
In the above case the humor or vulgarity arises from inadvertently reversing the initial sounds of pheasant and plucker.
Chapter 2
We do not stop playing because we grow old,
we grow old because we stop playing!
Riddles 1
Match the questions (1-10) with the answers (a-j).
1. What is at the end of a rainbow?
2. What occurs once in a minute, twice in a moment and never in one thousand years?
3. What word becomes shorter when you add two letters to it?
4. What is the longest word in the dictionary?
5. We see it once in a year, twice in a week, and never in a day. What is it?
6. What is the center of gravity?
7. What starts with the letter “t”, is filled with “t” and ends in “t”?
8. Take away my first letter, and I still sound the same. Take away my last letter, I still sound the same. Even take away my letter in the middle, I will still sound the same. I am a five letter word. What am I?
9. What has 4 eyes but can’t see?
10. What starts with “P” and ends with “E” and has more than 1000 letters?
a) A post office!
b) A teapot!
c) EMPTY
d) Mississippi
e) Short
f) Smiles, because there is a mile between each ‘s’
g) The letter E
h) The letter M
i) The letter V
j) The letter W
© Springer International Publishing AG 2018
15
A. Wallwork, Word Games, Riddles and Logic Tests, Easy English!,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67241-0_2
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Anagrams
Can you work out the connection between the two columns?
Eskimos
some ski
Families
life’s aim
Incompetents
in
ept men cost
Pirates
sea trip
Schoolmaster
the classroom
Shop lifter
has to pilfer
Vocabulary: inept = no skill at all, pilfer = steal
Funny Book Titles
Match the titles with the authors.
titles
authors
I Didn’t Do It!
Alec Tricity
The Great
Freida
Escape
Convict
Under Arrest
Ivan Alibi
Unsolved
N. Igma
Mysteries
It’s a Shocker
Watts E Dunn
Limericks
Practise reading the limericks aloud and hear/find the rhythm.
There was an old man of Madrid
There was a young man from Japan
Who ate sixty eggs - yes, he did!
Whose limericks never would scan.
When they asked ‘Are you faint?’
When asked why that was,
He replied ‘No, I ain’t
He replied ‘It’s because
But I don’t feel as well as I did.’
I always try to cram as many words into
the last line as I possibly can’.
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Proverbs
Insert the words from the box into the spaces. The sentences in brackets are a brief explanation of the meaning of the proverb.
1. Don’t ______ off your nose to spite your face. (don’t overreact to a situation) 2. Don’t ______ your dirty linen in public. (keep your private affairs private) 3. It’s no use ______ over spilt milk. (what is done is done)
4. There’s no point ______ a dead horse. (don’t continue because the outcome has already been decided.
5. Necessity ______ the mother of invention. (if you need something you will find a way)
6. Once ______ twice shy. (when you are scared to do something because you had
a negative experience the first time you did it)
7. A rolling stone ______ no moss. (constantly changing thus never becoming
attached to anything)
8. Some people can’t ______ the wood for the trees. (unable to see the overall
point)
9. A watched pot never ______ . (a process appears to take longer if we only focus on that and do not engage in other activities)
10. You can’t have your cake and ______ it. (you can’t have the best of both worlds) bitten, boils, crying, cut, eat, flogging, gathers, is, see, wash
Logic 1
Three boxes contain two coins each. One contains two nickels, one contains two
dimes, and one contains a dime and a nickel. All three boxes are mislabeled.
If you are permitted to take out only one coin at a time, how many must you take out in order to be able to label all three boxes correctly?
Logic 2
Two barmen in London were looking at a barrel, which was partly filled with beer.
One barman said to the other: “Look, it’s more than half full.” To which the other barman replied: “You’re wrong, it’s actually less than half full.” How could they find out, without using any measuring devices or any equipment of any kind, if it was more or less than exactly half?
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Word Combinations 1
Combine a word from the first column with a word from the second column.
arm
bag
back
brow
ear
chair
eye
lace
finger
line
hair
nail
hand
ring
head
stick
lip
style
neck
wards
Word Combinations 2
Combine a word from the first column with a word from the second column. The
first part of the word combination may be in the second column.
back
brush
face
cap
hand
end
head
first
knee
flash
leg
in
spine
less
tooth
lift
voice
some
wrist
watch
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Tense Challenge 1
Underline the correct form of the verbs in italics.
The Queen of Sheba was desperate - her best friend, Rowenna, was captured/had been captured by the terrible Bingoid tribe, and she needed/had needed someone to rescue her. She had three faithful knights, all of whom were equally courageous.
But she needed/had needed to find a way of discovering which of these three knights was the the most intelligent and could rescue Rowenna.
So she decided/had decided to set the knights a test. She blindfolded each man and put a cap on each of their heads.
“Knights listen to your queen,” she said, “each of you is now wearing a red or a blue cap. When I take off your blindfolds, you are to raise your hand as soon as you see a black cap. But as soon as you know what color cap you yourself are wearing, put your hand down.”
She took off their blindfolds and straightaway all the knights put up their hands, because in fact the Queen put/ had put a black cap on all of them. After a few minutes, one of the knights, Sir Galawas, dropped/had dropped his hand and pro-claimed: “My cap is black”.
Question: How did Sir Galawas know that his cap was/had been black?
Ambiguous Headlines
Try to understand what makes the headlines ambiguous.
Panda mating fails; vet takes over
Miners refuse to work after death
Juvenile court to try shooting defendant
Killer sentenced to die for second time in 10 years
Red tape holds up new bridge
Astronaut takes blame for gas in spacecraft
Plane too close to the ground, crash probe told
Local high school dropouts cut in half
Sex education delayed, teachers request training
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Riddles 2
Insert the words in the box into the blank spaces.
1. If you were in a _____ and passed the person in second place, what place would you be in?
Second place!
2. What goes up, but never comes down?
Your _____ !
3. What gets bigger and bigger the more you _____ away from it?
A hole!
4. How many _____ have 28 days?
All of them!
5. Which weighs more, a ton of _____ or a ton of bricks?
Neither, they both weigh a ton!
6. What is full of _____ but can still hold water?
A sponge!
7. What has two hands, a _____ face, always runs, but stays in place?
A clock!
8. Where does _____ come before work?
In the dictionary!
9. If a man is born in Turkey, grows up in Italy, comes to England and dies in
Manchester what is he?
_____ .
10. What is it that no one wishes to have, yet no one wishes to _____ ?
A bald head.
age, dead, feathers , holes , lose, months, race, round, success, take
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Tongue Twisters
Practise reading the tongue twister aloud. Then see if you can memorize and say it quickly without getting your tongue tied!
A tutor who tooted the flute
Tried to tutor two tooters to toot.
Said the two to their tutor:
“Is it harder to toot,
Or to tutor two tooters to toot?”
Logic 3
An Englishman was up in Edinburgh on bu
siness. One night he decided to go into
the local pub for a pint of beer. The publican, a canny old man, said that if the Englishman could drink four pints of the local beer, he would give him another pint free. Otherwise, the Englishman would have to buy all the people in the pub a free round. The Englishman’s eyes lit up and he agreed. The publican then produced a
full eight pint jug of beer and two smaller empty ones - one five pint and one three pint. He then told the Englishman that if he wanted to get his free pint he would have to measure out exactly four pints using the three different jugs.
How did the Englishman win his fifth pint and avoid buying a round for the rest of the pub?
Anagrams
Create an anagram from the letters of the words in the first column. The anagram should correspond to the definition.
anagram
definition
cures
profane or obscene expression usually of surprise or anger
diary
a farm where milk products are produced
deals
electric wires, cables
early
single thickness of usually some homogeneous substance
earth
the most important human organ
there
the number after two
field
archived
gates
section or portion of a journey or course
grown
based on or acting or judging in error
sweat
any materials unused and rejected as worthless or
unwanted
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Tense Challenge 2
An American scientist wanted to prove that the Loch Ness monster exists so he
decided/was decided to prove it. All his photographic equipment sent/was sent from the USA to Loch Ness in Scotland where the scientist and his team put/was put it on a large boat. The scientist then spent/was spent a week on the Loch waiting for the monster to appear. Suddenly one night there was a terrible crash and the scientist found/was found himself face to face with the monster under the water . His boat smashed/was smashed to pieces by the monster, and the oil, which powered the boat, leaked onto the Loch. Every day the oil slick doubled/was doubled in size and Scottish environmental groups became/were become very worried. After 13 days half the Loch covered/was covered by the oil slick.
How many more days did it take to cover the entire Loch?
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 >
Word Games, Riddles and Logic Tests Page 4