ChilliSauce.org - Bar Brainteasers

Bar Brainteasers - Brainteasers that will bend the mind of the inebriated!

Challenge 1

Remove a £5 note from under a pint without spilling a drop.

What’s it going to be – the slow, steady approach? Or sudden death? How you do it says a lot about you.

Challenge 2

Rearrange a triangle of 10 pints so it points in a different direction, moving no more than 3 pints.

You’ll need to borrow your mates’ pints for this one. Make sure you treat each pint with the respect it deserves – don’t spill a drop or you won’t be very popular!

Challenge 3

Make 4 equilateral triangles from 6 matches. You aren’t allowed to break them, bend them round corners or burn them down. In fact, you can’t alter them in any way except move them around. Even if you get frustrated. Having trouble? Think laterally...

Challenge 4

Tie a knot in a piece of string without letting go of either end of it.

One word of advice - keep your pint safely to one side while you do this. Things can get very physical, and imagine how gutted you’d feel to achieve this feat of dexterity, only to lose your pint to the carpet.

Challenge 5

Divide 10 coins between 3 empty glasses so that there’s an odd number in each glass.

Don’t even think about leaving all the coins on the table and calling zero an odd number or some cheating trick like that. Every coin must go in a glass.

There are in fact 15 solutions to this one. Can you get them all? (Once you’ve got one, you’ll soon have the rest.)

Solutions

SOLUTION ONE
So were you able to conquer your fear of losing your pint? Can’t blame you. Yet – reckless as it might seem – the most reliable way to succeed at this challenge is the sudden death option. It’s all or nothing. Take a firm grip of the £5 note, say a prayer, and pull hard and smoothly. But remember. There are no guarantees.

SOLUTION TWO
The solution’s totally simple. You either get it or you don’t. If you don’t get it, don’t let it get you down. Some people can put their feet in their mouth. You don’t feel bad about not being able to do that, do you?

Remove the 3 pints that stand at the points of the triangle (Fig.1). Once you’ve done that you’ll see you have a choice of how to reform the triangle – so instead of putting the pints back where they were, place them in the positions 45 degrees round from where they were before (Fig.2).

Fig.1	Fig.2

SOLUTION THREE
Managed to change your perspective? To solve this one you have to enter another dimension.

Think 3D. Get those matches off the table and up in the air. Build a pyramid with a triangular base and 3 matches pointing upwards and meeting at a point. Kicking yourself?

SOLUTION FOUR
You can spend a long, long time looking very silly trying to solve this one. Or you can fold your arms, take hold of each end of the string, and unfold your arms.

Wouldn’t it be great if everything in life was so easily solved!

SOLUTION FIVE
Sure, it seems impossible. Until you cheat a bit. (Except it’s not cheating.)

The trick is to put one glass inside another. Then you can divide the coins as you please. Put five in one glass and five in the upper of the two stacked glasses, for instance (which means both the stacked glasses are holding the same five coins).

Or you can put two in the lower of the two stacked glasses, three in the upper of the two stacked glasses, and five in the other glass. Here, the lower stacked glass contains both the two it holds and the three in the upper stacked glass, whereas the upper stacked glass only contains its own three.

And so on for 15 different combinations, if you can bear it…