How Many Mice?
Trick brain teasers appear difficult at first, but they have a trick that makes them really easy.
Mice are famous for their ability to multiply at breakneck speeds. The type of mouse we have here gives birth once a month, birthing 12 babies each time. Baby mice mature and can give birth two months after they are born.
You picked up one of these cute baby mice at the pet shop and brought it home the day after it was born. In 10 months from now, how many mice will you have?
Answer
One.
The mouse cannot birth any babies by itself.
Hide
Comments
Starriddler   
Jun 19, 2008
| Did you get that from a game? |
kunju 
Jun 20, 2008
| great teaser  |
Bob-Bomb
Jun 20, 2008
| Unexpected  |
sourdough
Jun 20, 2008
| Rats! You got SourDough good, you did! ARRRRRGGGGGHHH!!!
$D |
Zozo_The_Zo 
Jun 21, 2008
| tht was a awsum teaser i actually got this one |
Quickq 
Jun 22, 2008
| Rats!I knew there was going to be a trick!How did I miss that?  |
avnibavishi1
Jun 23, 2008
| Quickq, the category shouldve told u there was a trick!! 
Nice teaser,...quite simple however! fun nonetheless.... |
Lita_Lightheart
Jun 25, 2008
| great teaser, that got me! |
enaram  
Jun 25, 2008
| wow i actually got that 1!!! |
rexlamos
Jun 26, 2008
| Fun! I think this was on Professor Layton and the Curious Village |
Starriddler
Jun 26, 2008
| Yeah,that's what I was talking about.He told me that he got it from a friend. |
Starriddler
Jun 26, 2008
| *she |
unklemyke
Jun 28, 2008
| Cute teaser!! ---BUT --- One mouse certainly CAN give birth alone -  She just needs another mouse to aid in CONCEIVING the next generation!  |
2thGirl
Jun 29, 2008
| Due to my dislike of math, I looked for, and quickly found, the answer (which didn't include math!). |
7mi27
Jul 01, 2008
| Good one! |
kwelchans
Jul 01, 2008
| unklemyke, it said it was a BABY mouse. I doubt that it has matured enough to be able to conceive. |
lauren044--
Jul 03, 2008
| You got me! Nice one XD |
aball911
Jul 08, 2008
| Yes, unklemyke, because you bought the BABY mouse the day after it was born, it couldn't be pregnant. It's only one day old, and the riddle states that these mice can conceive after two months. 
Good teaser! |
npf2005
Jul 10, 2008
| great teaser
could have been phrased a bit better, but still great |
ads1
Jul 14, 2008
| That teaser tricked me ok      |
HarryPutter
Jul 15, 2008
| I got it..quite simple |
Kelby
Jul 15, 2008
| This was cute |
sourdough
Jul 17, 2008
| $ourDough belted out a major guffaw with this one
$D |
PhoenixW
Jul 20, 2008
| This was stolen from:
Professor Layton And the Curious Village on the Nintendo DS. |
Sand_Kirton
Jul 20, 2008
| Thank you, PhoenixW, for revealing what you claim to be the true source of this teaser.
Curious myself, I was prompted to read a review for PLATCV. Now I MUST get that game for my DS! |
sammyfish
Jul 20, 2008
| Wow!
That was fantastic
kinda easy though i think i might have heard something like this before. |
flutflutflyer
Jul 20, 2008
| Nice teaser. Really hard, but I got it. Yay!!! |
doehead 
Jul 20, 2008
| Very catchy but still easy if you just think about it. You know it is a riddle,not a math test. |
psychoserenity
Jul 20, 2008
| Way too easy. Even if there hadn't been a trick you would still need to know the number of specifically female mice in each litter. |
shawneeo
Jul 20, 2008
| That was fun, and I GOT IT!!!
Hey, PhoenixW, you should just accuse someone of ROBBERY just because you saw the teaser in a different medium. The person who "made it", or submitted it to Braingle and got it accepted, apparently said to someone else that they got it from a friend. That is entirely possible. The friend may have seen it on "thatever show you're naming", and told it to RiddleMeThis.
\
In fact, it says in the credits "Submitted by:", not "created by", and as far as I know, it's totally legit on Braingle to submit a teaser that was on a game, or in a movie, etc.
Even if it wasn't OK, and even if Riddlemethis claimed to have "created" the teaser, and it was in a book of teasers, the submitter may not have known that, and may have made it up independently of another source, or gotten it from a friend who said it was OK with them to submit it as a teaser.
But even if they definitely did COPY it and it was somehow KNOWN they did, you don't just post "This was stolen from..."!!! You would PM a moderator or Jake from Braingle, and tell them what you suspected. Sorry I've gone on a bit here, but, it's really offensive to me when people just hurl an accusation at someone, in public, which isn't even true or is in question!!!
Once again, GREAT TEASER, thanks for submitting it, I'm going to see if I can trick some of my family with this one.
|
gmcquillar
Jul 20, 2008
| That was a geat teaser and thank you for it, I needed a good laugh. |
hradilv
Jul 20, 2008
| Yawn... |
auntiesis
Jul 20, 2008
| I got this one in a split second. Too obvious. I can just picture people with pencil & paper trying to figure it out. Very funny, tricky but easy. |
LeenaBabii22
Jul 20, 2008
| This was a good teaser.
And no mouse can reproduce
by its self
duhhhh! =]
-Dont even try to conclude
conceiving with another mouse either. |
nailteachd
Jul 20, 2008
| Good practice for state board exams. I am always telling the students to read the question carefully! |
victort21
Jul 20, 2008
| I figured this out right away. In reality though, a one day old mouse would die of starvation, since it would not be able to get milk from its mother. I am sure it needs to be nursed for at least a week or two, as I have seen baby mice with their mother, and they were over a day old! But I'm nitpicking!  |
glowtmickey
Jul 20, 2008
| Sweet. I got it |
avonma
Jul 20, 2008
| I got it!
Yes, it was easy; but I completely miss some of these that are easy. Good one. Thanks! |
Ritzy33
Jul 20, 2008
| Dang. That got me. I started to do the math, then said, "Ugg. I give up. I'm just gonna look at the answer." When I saw it was one, I went crazy. |
bradon182001
Jul 20, 2008
| I got a good laugh out of this one. Very clever no matter who thought of it first. Thanks for posting. |
carolyns
Jul 20, 2008
| Yeah! I got this one!!! |
FatHead
Jul 21, 2008
| I asked myself, What was the catgory? That usually does it for me in this category. |
kiwikitty1995
Aug 17, 2008
| i knew it was one but i thought it was because boy mice can't give birth like in the paragragh it said boy mice mature and can GIVE BIRTH in two months so yepp. |
7thgraderocks
Aug 31, 2008
| RATS!!!!LOL!!!!!!!!! |
markmonnin
Sep 08, 2008
| I got this one easily. But I had to remind myself that it was a trick question. Very good. |
elwxxxswimchick
Oct 02, 2008
| I forgot it was in the trick catagory... ya, i said 60 |
(user deleted)
Oct 08, 2008
| lol i should smack you i wrote it all out |
Calehay
Oct 10, 2008
| Concerning the comment about this being taken from Professor Layton:
The wording is exactly the same, so yes, I assume the author of this puzzle took it straight from that game. However, I'm sure this puzzle has existed for years in many forms. |
trickster2005
Oct 13, 2008
| easy |
Calehay
Nov 02, 2008
| "In fact, it says in the credits "Submitted by:", not "created by", and as far as I know, it's totally legit on Braingle to submit a teaser that was on a game, or in a movie, etc."
I haven't looked through the TOS of this site yet, but I doubt that out and out plagarism is allowed.
"Even if it wasn't OK, and even if Riddlemethis claimed to have "created" the teaser, and it was in a book of teasers, the submitter may not have known that, and may have made it up independently of another source, or gotten it from a friend who said it was OK with them to submit it as a teaser."
That's not what the situation is. This is a verbatim word for word transcription from Professor Layton. These puzzles, with this specific sequence of words, belong to Level 5. If someone wrote a teaser LIKE this one (and there's been many forms of this particular teaser, so this isn't just a hypothetical) no one would have anything to say about it. This is a word for word copy, right down to the title.
Nevertheless, I loved it in Layton, and I still love it. Great teaser. |
Elios
Nov 12, 2008
| I said one, cause it was male. As for the whole fiasco of where this came from, how do we know the people who put it into that game made it up? Riddles & teasers have been around WAAY longer than video games - this could've been around for centuries! Thanks for submitting it, either way! |
Malika123
Nov 27, 2008
| Sweet. |
here2
Dec 08, 2008
| I'm just glad i figured it out before I did the math. |
EnderofGames
Dec 22, 2008
| This was used on The Curious Village, but is a really old teaser. It can be used anywhere, and it is fine here. |
tetris4t
Jan 02, 2009
| That was really easy, I got it immediatly |
Trickster1992
Jan 12, 2009
| I love trick teasers they're always soooooo easy.... of course a mouse can't have babies by itself! its not bacteria ya know |
aranara89
Jan 12, 2009
| i actually had the paper and pencil out and the problem figured out before i saw that only one mouse was bought. how embarassing |
nouser
Jan 28, 2009
| I thought the anser was you cant have mice (like giving birth) |
shendy
Feb 14, 2009
| Isn't it from 'Proffesor Layton and The Curious Village'??? |
thisisme91
Apr 02, 2009
| It's easy-peasy for people who can be very sarcastic. Like me. Nice trick though (and I'm not being sarcastic) |
reggie57
Apr 06, 2009
| that was VERY cute!!!
whats with all the nitpicking people??? |
jingles01
Apr 07, 2009
| So you made me go through and do all the math only to realize I did not have to after I finish!!! Arrg! Cool though. |
weizhong
Jun 14, 2009
| Great Teaser, and I got it. |
mercedes13
Jul 06, 2009
| i actually attempted to solve this mathematically, spending 15 minutes before i gave up and clicked answer.
stupid me. |
mathisnice
Aug 30, 2009
| I thought that it was 108, and it was trick because people might put 120. Great teaser! |
Wittykittymi
Oct 20, 2009
| very well |
Flamey500
Jan 05, 2010
| I just guessed 1 and I got it right.
The category gave it away.. |
dragoran
Feb 17, 2010
| Saw this before in Professor Layton, but still a great teaser |
logicgenius
Jul 22, 2010
| LOL Great teaser |
hoodguy
Jun 02, 2011
| The mouse could have died. |
jrcactus
Jul 20, 2011
| Quite easy, but heard of a tribble? |
Jeppydog
Jul 20, 2011
| In my apartment the answer would be several grey and white mice. I'd buy a white one and it would mate with the grey ones we are trying to get rid of. |
HABS2933
Jul 20, 2011
| Fairly easy teaser but still a good one.
Tribbles hate Klingons and Klingons hate tribbles. |
doehead
Jul 20, 2011
| The answer now is zero. Since this teaser is three years old the mouse died of old age. |
gaylewolf
Jul 20, 2011
| I've said it before, and I'll say it again (probably in two or three years! ) The teaser was a good one and made me smile! BUT the comments made me laugh out loud!!! |
rockstar1009
Jul 20, 2011
| I got it right away, but it felt familiar, so I'm sure I've heard it years before (years before Prof. Leyton came out, which I've never played). It reminds me of the question about if a rooster's egg will roll to the left or right if it lays the egg on the peak of a roof.
It certainly pays to read a question carefully - I once had a maths teacher who got frustrated with no one following directions, so he handed out a 100 question test with extremely complicated problems, which clearly could not be finished within a 40-minute class. Eventually, several students began to put their heads on their desks, with smiles on their faces, really panicking those of us still trying to figure out even the initial calculus problems. Eventually, everyone figured it out when we went back and reread the directions at the top of the test (which he clearly told us to read as he handed the tests out), which told us to solve the last five problems and put our heads on our desks when finished (and naturally, the last five questions of the test involved embarassingly simple maths like 5-4 and 2+3).
I've been very good at trick questions since that day! |
Gazelle
Jul 20, 2011
| Although I worked this one out as being only one (or possibly none as the baby mouse was taken so early from its mother), I thought I would crunch the numbers anyway:
Presuming the original mouse is female, a male is introduced only for one night once the mouse is two months old, and that each litter produces 6 of each gender then the final number after just 10 months would be a staggering 52,545!!! Phew. |
Gazelle
Jul 20, 2011
| Correction - Small mistake during the process , actual answer would be 82,273 |
JakyT
Jul 22, 2011
| Nice teaser..really got me guud.. |
JakyT
Jul 22, 2011
| Nice teaser..really got me guud.. |
jediliz
Jul 29, 2011
| well, DUH! You only bought ONE mouse! |
Benjiboo
Nov 18, 2011
| if it did have babies you would have 120 mice |
brains2beauty96
Jun 15, 2012
| Very easy ;) |
Back to Top
| |
|
