One of the pages of our day-by-day calendar had this brain teaser on the back:
What has cities but no houses, forests but no trees, and water but no fish?
Neither Andy nor I knew the answer, but ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude had no problem with the answer. Apparently it’s a well known riddle.
But, ah! I have a puzzle book with a problem I couldn’t figure out even when they gave me the answer.
How embarrassing. I bought the book over three years ago and forgot about the problem until today. Find the value for the question mark.
The problem for ChatGPT and Perplexity is there is more than one formula that fits the answer, but if I give them the answer they can tell me the rule for it. That’s a lot better than I did! When I told it the answer they were looking for, ChatGPT said,
Nice puzzle—and a good reminder that the simplest pattern is often the right one.
(If you are curious, the answer is this. What’s the formula?)
Anyway, bless AI for telling me the formula after all these years. I don’t know any 8-12 year olds who could solve the problem for me.
March 24, 2026
Well I apparently don’t have the qualifications to be a kid 8-12 because I’m totally clueless.
Welcome to the club!
math is the subject I failed in high school, and my business math teacher gave me a D so I could graduate and said he did it because he knew how hard I tried to learn it and could not… so no clue from me
Good for your teacher!
…this goes over my head!
You aren’t missing anything. 🙂
I am no good with riddles
You aren’t missing anything. 🙂
I guess I’m a bit dense because I don’t know the answer to number one or what number two is about. My mind does not like puzzles!
You aren’t missing anything. 🙂
But what’s the answer to first one, about the cities etc.? It may be well known, but not by me.
It was a map. Andy and I didn’t know either.
I did understand the first puzzle and I’m thinking a Map? The second puzzle…I’m go into shutdown mode when it comes to puzzles with numbers..
Yes, it was a map. 🙂
I didn’t get any of them.
Not even the first one without numbers-lol!
You aren’t missing anything. 🙂
I was thinking the answer to #1 is a map. The other? I, too, am clueless.
Yes, it was a map. You did better than I did!
I am not good with riddles. I love ?? crossword puzzles, though.
You aren’t missing anything. 🙂
That one goes over my head too!
🙂
I could ask Chat, but if I had to do it myself – it would probably take days!
My rule is, if it doesn’t sound like fun, don’t do it. 🙂
I like your rule! I put about 2 seconds of effort into the first one and no effort at all into the second one. They simply didn’t feel like fun to me.
🙂