#21. Brain teaser to challenge your brain: The Blind Beggar

Exer­cise mul­ti­ple areas of your brain by try­ing to answer this riddle…fast!

A blind beg­gar had a broth­er who died. What rela­tion was the blind beg­gar to the broth­er who died?

Impor­tant: “Broth­er” is not the answer.

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

Tick tick tick tick…

still work­ing on it? …


Explanation:

This brain teas­er IS clear­ly stat­ed and yet stumps many who have not heard it before, because often the lis­ten­er tends to make an assump­tion about gen­der — that a blind beg­gar is a man, and always so.

The cog­ni­tive 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 sad­ly died.

 

 

Next in Sharp­Brains’ top 25 series of brain teasers for adults of any age:

40 Comments

  1. yahobahne on 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 on February 28, 2008 at 8:33

    The beg­gar is obvi­ous­ly the sister



  3. Alvaro on February 28, 2008 at 10:47

    good job-and welcome!



  4. Rhiannon on 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 on 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 on March 27, 2008 at 8:13

    THIS RIDDLE REALLY HAD ME THINKING LOL



  7. Lisbeth Laursen on 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 on 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 on November 2, 2008 at 10:31

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



  10. emina on 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 on November 8, 2008 at 2:27

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



  12. kate on 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 on January 11, 2009 at 12:27

    Sis­ter



  14. Annemarie Lykke Hansen on March 9, 2009 at 7:48

    sis­ter



  15. Colleen Rae on May 1, 2009 at 1:09

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



About SharpBrains

SHARPBRAINS is an independent think-tank and consulting firm providing services at the frontier of applied neuroscience, health, leadership and innovation.
SHARPBRAINS es un think-tank y consultoría independiente proporcionando servicios para la neurociencia aplicada, salud, liderazgo e innovación.

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