Anyone for MENSA

Twice Four and Twenty blackbirds were sitting in a tree,

I shot one seventh of them with a shotgun

How many blackbirds remained



Answer will be provided on Friday 16th May


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[Message Edited]
32,705 views 107 replies
Reply #1 Top
/me wonders if it is going to take Hoppity that long to gather up the ones he got and count them?
Reply #2 Top




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Reply #3 Top
6/7 of them?
Reply #5 Top
Unless the dead ones were splattered all over the tree, in which case you still have all 28 - just four of 'em are dead.
Reply #6 Top
So far so not good



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Reply #7 Top
none of them - at least until they calm down and return to the tree. This is assuming the dead ones fall out of the tree, of course.



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Reply #10 Top
Confucious say when question is hard, answer is also hard.

/me thinks 1/7th of 28-4 * the number of dead bird + the number of alive ones less the twice of the four the...man where did I get my edjumacation?
Reply #11 Top
Lateral Thinking Guys & Gals
Reply #12 Top
Confusious should have said ,

When question is Lateral answer is easy




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Reply #13 Top
/me thinks none of those birds stayed. As soon as they heard the shot they got out of there....
Reply #14 Top
/me 'cept maybe the poor birds that Hoppity got!
Reply #15 Top




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Reply #16 Top
hrm - wrong? Im never wrong.
assumptions :
Number : 2*(4+20) birds or (2*4)+20 birds? So 48 or 28 since you killed 1/7th i assume the number is divisible by 7 without remainder and the number of birds is 28.

The dead ones aren't going anywhere so you killed 4.
The live ones aren't gonna stick around to get shot again, so they dont remain.

but does a dead blackbird count as a blackbird or just a generic bird corpse?

anyway - I say 4 remain, but I still agree with LS_Boreas
Reply #17 Top
and if thats not right Im gonna be wondering what time zone Hoppity is in so I know when friday starts
Reply #18 Top
No defining of Question is needed, it remains a lateral question, it has been answered.

you just need to think sideways



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Reply #19 Top
oh - one more thing - Lateral thinging is just logical thinking with no assumptions.
Reply #20 Top
BTW

An object is still a object



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Reply #22 Top
Twice four and twenty is 48.
Reply #23 Top
Twice 4 and twenty might be twenty-eight.
Is it 2 * 4 + 20, or 2 * (4 + 20)?
Or does it even matter? All of them is all of them.
Reply #24 Top

Well, there is a few problems with the question to start with: How does a blackbird "sit", anyways?

But assuming a bunch of birds were acttually sitting down in a tree, I doubt anyone could shoot 7 of them, as all the other would have flown away from the very first shot.

Reply #25 Top
The benefits of a good Bazooka