G: Who’s Buried in Grant’s Tomb?

Ulysses Simpson Grant and his wife (née Julia Boggs Dent) are both entombed in Grant's Tomb, but technically speaking nobody at all is buried there. Or so I hear.

In something of the spirit of that old chestnut, here are some other trick-question riddles that, without resorting to Marxism, contain the seeds of their own answers:

  • When a rooster lays an egg at the top of a roof whose sides slope down at 45 degrees in both directions, which way does the egg fall? (Answer)
  • A plane crashes precisely on the border between the United States and Canada. Where do they bury the survivors? (Answer)
  • An electric train is traveling 45 miles an hour due west, and the wind is blowing 30 miles an hour due south. Which way does the smoke go? (Answer)
  • How much dirt is in a rectangular hole six feet by six feet by three feet? (Answer)
  • How many of each type of animal did Moses take on the ark? (Answer)
  • "I can predict the score of any sports event happening next weekend, before the game even starts." (More a bar bet than a riddle, I guess.) (Answer)
  • If an LP is eight inches in diameter, and the label is 3 inches in diameter, how many grooves are there on one side of the record? (Answer)
  • If I drop a bowling ball into a bucket of water at 45 degrees F, and at the same moment drop another bowling ball of the same size and weight into another bucket at 30 degrees F, which ball hits the bottom of its bucket first? (Answer)
  • If a farmer has five haystacks in one field and four haystacks in another field, how many haystacks would he have if he combined them all in a third field? (Answer)

In a vaguely related vein, here are some surrealist riddles (thanks to "spud" (and spud's grandfather) for reminding me about them):

  • What's the difference between a duck? (Answer)
  • What's the difference between an orange? (Answer)
  • Why is a mouse when it spins? (Answer)
  • What's the difference between a window? (Answer)

Thanks to Dobe for reminding me of many of these riddles, and to James Van Booven (via his Web page) for reminding me of some of the answers.


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