Impossible Quiz for Seniors: Brain Teasers & Riddles

Do you think you’re pretty sharp for your age? If so, you might want to try your luck at the impossible quiz for seniors! Can you see through a trick, a trap, and a bamboozle?

Easy Best Senior Citizen Trivia Questions: Fun Elderly Quizzes

The riddles for seniors below will try to trick you, so keep both eyes open! At the end of the elderly quiz, see how much of a senior you really are.

Impossible Quiz: Brain Teasers

1. What word is spelled incorrectly in every dictionary?
2. What never asks a question but gets answered all the time?
3. What goes up but never comes down?
4. What starts with an e and ends with an e but has only one letter in it?
5. How do you make the number one disappear?
6. What will you find at the end of every rainbow?
7. How many months have twenty-eight days?
8. How many seconds are there in a year?
9. What can you hold without touching it at all?
10. Can you name three consecutive days without using the words Wednesday, Friday, or Sunday?
11. What occurs once in a minute, twice in a moment, and never in your life?
12. What travels the world while stuck in one spot?
13. What moves faster – heat or cold?
14. What was the President’s name in 1974?
15. What two words in combination hold the most letters?
16. You have two coins that together total thirty cents, but one isn’t a quarter. What two coins do you have?
17. How many 6” by 9” books can you fit into a two-foot-square crate so that it is no longer empty?
18. Is the capital of Kentucky pronounced “Lewis-ville” or “Looie-ville?”
19. Forwards, I’m heavy; backward, I’m not. What am I?
20. What’s as big as a building and weighs nothing?
21. How many pounds of dirt are there in a 5-foot-square hole?
22. What do you call a woman who always knows where her husband is?
23. Why are 1968 pennies worth more than 1967 pennies?
24. How many times can you fold a newspaper in half?
25. Which president is on the $100 bill?

Impossible Quiz: Longer Riddles for Seniors

The Car Crash

A man and his young son are driving down the road when a driver hits the car. The father and son are both badly injured and are rushed to the hospital. The father is in a coma, and the boy has to be rushed in for emergency surgery.

But the surgeon takes one look at him and says, “I can’t operate on this boy – he’s my son.” How is this possible?

Drowning

Close your eyes and imagine that you’re in a room with no doors and no windows. There’s just a lamp in the corner and a small hole about two inches across in the floor. But as you watch, water begins to flow out of the hole and fill up the room.

The room will be completely filled up with water in a few minutes, and you have to get out. How do you get out of the room?

Beth’s Family

Beth’s mother has three daughters. Her oldest daughter is named Thelma, and her second daughter is named Louise. What is the third daughter’s name?

Only One Match

You are closed in a dark room, and when you feel around in your pockets, you discover you have a matchbook with only one match in it. By feeling around the room, you discover there is a pile of papers, a kerosene lamp, and a fireplace with some logs in it. Which should you light first to make sure you’ll be able to see?

Walking in the Rain

A man goes for a walk one afternoon, but he gets caught in a rainstorm. Not expecting the bad weather, he left his umbrella, his raincoat, and even his hat at home. But despite the downpour, not one hair on his head gets wet.

How is this possible?

A Nice Lunch

Two mothers and two daughters go out for lunch one day. They visit a wonderful pizzeria that they enjoy, and they decide to share a pizza that comes with eight slices. Each of them eats a piece of pizza, and at the end of the meal, there are five slices of pizza left.

How can they all have eaten pizza and only three slices have been consumed?

Multiple Marriages

Tracey has married lots of men in her lifetime, and yet she claims never to have been married. How is this possible?

Impossible Quiz: Fun Trivia Questions

Finally, let’s round out with some quick trivia questions from the golden years.

1. Who said, “Old soldiers never die, they just fade away?”
2. Which longest-running daytime drama moved from radio to television in 1952?
3. What did Francis Watson and James Crick become famous for discovering?
4. What fast-food franchise opened to the jingle, “Hold the pickle! Hold the lettuce!” in 1954?
5. What phenomenon made popular in the 1950s made it possible for anyone to become an artist?

Impossible Quiz: Brain Teaser Answers

1. Don’t worry; your dictionaries haven’t been flawed your whole life. The word spelled incorrectly in every dictionary is “incorrectly.”
2. Although it never asks you a question, you answer your phone every time it rings.
3. The one thing that defies Newton’s laws of nature by going up and never coming down is your age.
4. Yes, it is possible for a word to both begin and end with the letter e and only have one letter in it. That word is “envelope.”
5. Making the number one disappear is easy, and it doesn’t involve an eraser. Simply add the letter “g” to the front of the word, and “one” is now “gone!”
6. Unfortunately, our St. Patrick’s Day dreams of a pot of gold aren’t true. The only thing you’ll find at the end of every rainbow is the letter “w.”
7. You may have learned to keep up with which months have thirty days and which have thirty-one by counting on your knuckles. But the truth is every month has twenty-eight days!
8. Although the musical Rent taught us that there are five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes in a year, you don’t have to bust out your calculator to figure out the number of seconds. There are twelve of them – January 2nd, February 2nd, March 2nd, and so on.
9. No, you don’t have to summon the power of the Force to answer this one. The thing you can hold without touching it at all is a conversation.
10. The only way to name three consecutive days without naming Wednesday, Friday, or Sunday is to think outside the box. The answer is to say, “Yesterday, today, and tomorrow.”
11. Don’t worry, you aren’t missing out on some amazing part of life. The thing that occurs once in a minute, twice in a moment, and never in your life is the letter “m.”
12. Virtual reality is making it more possible to see the wonders of the world all from your favorite chair. But one thing has long since figured out the art of seeing the world while stuck in one spot – a stamp.
13. The answer to which moves faster, heat or cold, doesn’t lie in a physics textbook. It’s heat, because you can always catch a cold!
14. Before you start thinking back to the days of Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, think again. In 1974, the President’s name was the same as what it is today. Our President was born before 1974, and they’ve had the same name their whole life.
15. The two words that hold the most letters aren’t bacteria names or even “Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia” – the fear of long words. The answer is “post office.”
16. Although it’s impossible to construct thirty cents from two coins that aren’t quarters, we didn’t say both coins weren’t quarters. One is a quarter, and the other is a nickel.
17. It only takes one of those 6” x 9” books to make your two-foot-square crate no longer empty. As soon as the first book is put in, the crate has something in it.
18. No matter which side of the pronunciation debate you fall on, you’re still pronouncing the capital of Kentucky wrong. You see, it’s not Louisville – it’s Frankfort.
19. You have to think outside the box on this one – backward, the word “ton,” a very heavy unit of measure, is “not.”
20. No matter how big it gets, a shadow, even the one cast by the Empire State Building, never weighs anything.
21. You don’t have to know how much dirt weighs to answer this question. There’s no dirt in a hole, and therefore, the answer is “nothing.”
22. The only way a woman always knows where her husband is is if she’s a widow.
23. No, pennies from 1968 aren’t more rare or valuable than those from the previous year. But 1,968 pennies make $19.68, one cent more than 1,967 pennies.
24. You can only fold a newspaper in half once. After that, you’re folding it in quarters, eighths, sixteenths, and so on.
25. Before you go reaching for your wallet, remember your history classes. Benjamin Franklin, who appears on the $100 bill, was never president.

Impossible Quiz: Longer Riddle Answers

The Car Crash

Although the boy’s father was in a coma in another part of the hospital, the surgeon who couldn’t operate on her son was a woman – the boy’s mother.

Drowning

The answer to escaping the water-filled room doesn’t lie in the small hole or the outlet the lamp is plugged into. The best way to escape that room is to open your eyes and stop imagining.

Beth’s Family

Remember, we said that Beth’s mother has three daughters. Her third daughter’s name is Beth.

Only One Match

You don’t have to think through whether it would be more prudent to light the lamp, the papers, or the fireplace first. The first thing you’re going to light in that dark room is a match.

Walking in the Rain

The man who goes walking in the rain is definitely getting soaked. But not one hair on his head is getting wet because the man is bald.

A Nice Lunch

The two mothers and two daughters can all have had their piece of pizza while only eating three slices. A grandmother, her daughter, and her granddaughter were in attendance at the lunch. The grandmother and her daughter are both mothers, and the daughter and granddaughter are both daughters.

Multiple Marriages

Tracey isn’t lying when she says she’s never been married. She’s a minister, and the men she’s married have been grooms whose weddings she was officiating in.

Impossible Quiz: Fun Trivia Answers

1. General Douglas MacArthur spoke that iconic line in his farewell speech to Congress in 1951.
2. Guiding Light, which made its television debut in 1952, ran for more than 18,000 episodes and seventy-two years before its final episode aired in 2009.
3. Together, Francis Watson and James Crick are credited with discovering the double-helix structure of our DNA that would enable us to begin unraveling our genetic code.
4. Burger King became the first restaurant chain to pioneer the idea of “Have it your way” fast food with its 1954 commercial.
5. Paint by number sets made it possible for everyone to feel like an artist in the 1950s, though, if we’re being honest, the final product never looked as good as the real deal.

How Did You Do on the Impossible Quiz for Seniors?

So how did you do on our impossible quiz for seniors?

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