Word Games, Riddles and Logic Tests Page 6
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.