Riddle of the Month!

TRY TO FIGURE IT OUT BEFORE YOU READ BELOW!!!

This is a deceptively tricky riddle! 

If your first thought was that Mr. Smith has eight children, you’re not alone. Lots of people think that each daughter has one brother, making four daughters and four brothers, which equals eight children. 

But nope, that’s not right! 

The riddle seems like a math test on the surface, but it’s actually all about reading comprehension.

The answer to the riddle is … five. 

Mr. Smith has five children. Each of his daughters has a brother, but they all share the same brother. Therefore, four daughters plus one brother equals five children in total. Grammar nerds might have gotten this one right before math lovers!

Of course, it’s called the “Mr. Smith had four daughters” riddle, so you could interpret that past tense “had” in two ways: 

First, that Mr. Smith had four daughters—i.e., that four daughters were born to him. 

Or you could read it to mean that Mr. Smith used to have four daughters, they all died, in which case the answer to how many children he had might be one.

However, the more commonly accepted interpretation is the first one: that Mr. Smith has four daughters and one son, making five children in total.

From Reader's Digest - original HERE