Fun Brain Teasers for Kids and Adults Alike!

Haha

What is the “◯” in papa? Finding it quickly will lead you to the answer. In this quiz, papa’s “◯” is the handakuten (the small circle) attached to the character in the word for papa. If you remove it, the sound is no longer voiced, turning “papa” (パパ) into “hahaha” (ハハ), revealing “mother” (母).

and

If you convert the kanji for “弟” (younger brother) and “妹” (younger sister) into hiragana, you get “おとうと” and “いもうと.” Then you’ll notice that “おとうと” has two “と” while “いもうと” has only one. From that, the answer to what the younger brother has two of is “と.”

recorder

In this quiz, the key point is that the word “落とした” is written in hiragana. From there, you shift the idea by converting “おとした” to “音した” (“made a sound”). This reveals that the answer should be something that makes a sound, so the answer is a recorder.

English-Japanese dictionary

An English-Japanese dictionary lists words in ABC order. When the seasons are rendered in English—spring as “Spring,” summer as “Summer,” autumn as “Fall,” and winter as “Winter”—rearranging them to match the sentence in the problem results in the same order as they would appear in the dictionary.

condominium apartments, hotel rooms, and hospital rooms

In apartment buildings, hotels, and hospital rooms, the room number increases by one as you move to the next room. And each time you go up one floor, the room number increases by 100. The key is to broaden your perspective and think about what kinds of things fit the numerical rule described in the problem.

detective novel

Because the character for vinegar, 酢 (read as “su”), is inserted between the characters for 'novel' 小 and 説, the answer is 'detective novel' (推理小説). You can also substitute other kanji that are read as 'su' in the same way, so it might be fun to present it like this when quizzing friends.

railroad crossing

At a railroad crossing, the barrier goes down when a train passes and is up when no train is passing. By identifying what passes through and what opens and closes—combining these two—you can arrive at the answer: “railroad crossing.”