Brain Teasers

The distinguishing characteristic of a brain teaser is that the only thing required to solve it is your brain. Sometimes, a simple calculation or trivia fact is necessary, but generally a brain teaser only requires a brain. This is different from other types of puzzles, like Crosswords or Rubik's Cubes, which are not considered to be brain teasers, because they involve a lot of work with pencil and paper or a physical object.

Brain teasers are often categorized by their method of construction or by the skill required to solve them. The categories used on Braingle are as follows.

Cryptography
Cryptography brain teasers are phrases, expressions, quotes or lists that have been encoded in some way (frequently replacing letters with other letters, although other methods are acceptable). You need to figure out the encoding method and then decode the message to find the answer. Cryptography teasers generally fall into three categories: Cryptograms, Crypto-Lists and Crypto-Math.

Group
These brain teasers rely on your ability to recognize groups of common attributes. For each of these puzzles you'll need to figure out why the words or letters are grouped as they are. Sometimes you will be asked to pick the odd-one-out or to place a new word into the correct group.

Language
Language brain teasers are those that involve the English language. You need to think about and manipulate words and letters.

Letter-Equations
Letter Equations are well known phrases or facts where the key words have been replaced with the first letter of that word. These are often in the form of an equation, which contain a number, an = sign and the rest of the obscured phrase or fact.

Logic
Logic puzzles require you to think. You will have to be logical in your reasoning.

Logic-Grid
Logic Grid puzzles come with a handy interactive grid that will help you solve the puzzle based on the given clues.

Math
Math brain teasers require computations to solve.

Mystery
Mystery teasers are little stories where you need to figure out what happened based on the given clues.

Probability
Probability puzzles require you to weigh all the possibilities and pick the most likely outcome.

Rebus
Rebus brain teasers use words or letters in interesting orientations to represent common phrases.

Riddle
Riddles are little poems or phrases that pose a question that needs answering. Riddles frequently rhyme, but this is not a requirement. There are over a thousand riddles here at Braingle for you to enjoy.

Science
Science brain teasers require understanding of the physical or biological world and the laws that govern it.

Series
Series teasers are where you try to complete the sequence of a series of letters, numbers or objects.

Situation
Situation puzzles (sometimes called lateral thinking puzzles) are ones where you need to ask lots of yes or no questions to figure out what happened in the situation. These are good puzzles for groups where one person knows the puzzle and answers the questions.

Trick
Trick brain teasers appear difficult at first, but they have a trick that makes them really easy.

Trivia
Trivia brain teasers have some element of trivia in them, but they are not just pure trivia questions.