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#21. Brain puzzle for the whole brain: The Blind Beggar

October 20, 2006 by Caroline Latham

Exer­cise mul­ti­ple areas of your brain by try­ing to answer this riddle:

A blind beg­gar had a broth­er who died. What rela­tion was
the blind beg­gar to the broth­er who died?
“Broth­er” is not the answer.

Now, your brain’s turn. What is the answer?

tick tick tick tick…

still work­ing on it? …


Expla­na­tion (answer at bottom):
This puz­zle is very sim­ply stat­ed and yet stumps those who have not heard it before, because the lis­ten­er tends to make an implic­it assump­tion about gen­der — in this case that a blind beg­gar is a man.

Brain Use:
This puz­zle touch­es on ana­lyt­i­cal func­tions like abstract rea­son­ing, hypoth­e­sis test­ing, and implic­it assump­tions resid­ing in your frontal lobes, as well as your cre­ativ­i­ty in find­ing nov­el solu­tions to prob­lems and emo­tion­al memory.

Answer:
The blind beg­gar was the sis­ter of her broth­er, who died.

 

 

Next brain teas­er in Sharp­Brains’ top 25 series:

  • #22. Find the the Real­ly, Real­ly, Real­ly Big Number

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Filed Under: Brain Teasers, Brain/ Mental Health, Technology & Innovation Tagged With: Brain Teasers, Brain-anatomy-and-imaging, Brain-exercises, Brain-Fitness, Brain-games, Brain-health, Brain-Training, Cognitive Neuroscience, Cognitive-Training, Decision-making, Emotions, Executive-Functions, Mental-flexibility, Mind-Fitness, Mind-Games, Neuropsychology, Serious-Games

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. yahobahne says

    January 20, 2008 at 9:05

    wow, assump­tion is a pow­er­ful thing. we all do it and as a result many bias, dis­crim­i­na­tions and prej­u­dices are formed.

  2. terrell owens says

    February 28, 2008 at 8:33

    The beg­gar is obvi­ous­ly the sister

  3. Alvaro says

    February 28, 2008 at 10:47

    good job-and welcome!

  4. Rhiannon says

    February 29, 2008 at 7:45

    There is a sim­i­lar rid­dle that I heard a num­ber of years ago that remind­ed me of and helped me with this one: A man and his son are in a car acci­dent and both rushed to the hos­pi­tal with seri­ous injuries. The doc­tor who is about to oper­ate on the son says, “I can’t oper­ate on this boy; he is my son.” How is this possible?

  5. Alvaro says

    March 1, 2008 at 9:43

    Hel­lo Rhi­an­non, that’s a good one. I’ll post it on its own-and we can post the answer, say, by Monday.

  6. jacky says

    March 27, 2008 at 8:13

    THIS RIDDLE REALLY HAD ME THINKING LOL

  7. Lisbeth Laursen says

    April 29, 2008 at 6:37

    Just found this great page! I am at my first year as a math teacher (grade 1–6) and have found a lot of inter­est­ing infor­ma­tion and things to try out! Thanks very much for all your work

    🙂 Lis­beth, Denmark

  8. Alvaro says

    April 30, 2008 at 5:47

    Glad to hear, Lis­beth! Feel free to share with us good teasers and exer­cis­es you may find.

  9. spunkey_monkey says

    November 2, 2008 at 10:31

    rhan­non
    i know that one the answer is.….….…..
    the doc­tor was his mother

  10. emina says

    November 3, 2008 at 1:31

    i like this type of teas­er, and I’m look­ing for­ward in see­ing more of this!
    It’s actu­al­ly my first time to vis­it and I instant­ly got hooked. great blog!

  11. Jess says

    November 8, 2008 at 2:27

    well… i thought for about 10 secs… and then i got it 😀
    I’m 16..

  12. kate says

    January 3, 2009 at 7:14

    hmm…I don’t real­ly get this. Why could­n’t the beg­ger be a man? If he was a man, he could still have a Brother..?

  13. chico says

    January 11, 2009 at 12:27

    Sis­ter

  14. Annemarie Lykke Hansen says

    March 9, 2009 at 7:48

    sis­ter

  15. Colleen Rae says

    May 1, 2009 at 1:09

    The cor­rect answer should be — sibling.
    There is no evi­dence of gender.

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