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NIEHS Brainteasers and Riddles NIEHS Kids' Pages Index

No matter how hard you try, you can't baptize cats.

When your mom is mad at your dad, don't let her brush your hair.

If your sister hits you, don't hit her back. They always catch the second person.

Never ask your 3-year old brother to hold a tomato.

You can't trust dogs to watch your food.

Reading what people write on desks can teach you a lot.

Don't sneeze when someone is cutting your hair.

Puppies still have bad breath even after eating a tic tac.

Never hold a dust buster and a cat at the same time.

School lunches stick to the wall.

You can't hide a piece of broccoli in a glass of milk.

Don't wear polka-dot underwear under white shorts.

The best place to be when you are sad is in Grandma's lap.

A three year old put his shoes on by himself. His mother noticed the left was on the right foot. She said, "Son, your shoes are on the wrong feet." He looked up at her with a raised brow and said, "Don't kid me, Mom, I KNOW they're my feet."

A mother and her young son returned from the grocery store and began putting away the groceries. The boy opened the box of animal crackers and spread them all over the table. "What are you doing?" his mother asked. "The box says you can't eat them if the seal is broken," the boy explained. "So I'm looking for the seal."

A father was reading Bible stories to his young son. He read, "The man named Lot was warned to take his wife and flee out of the city, but his wife looked back and was turned to salt." His son asked, "What happened to the flea?"

A four year old girl was learning to say the Lord's Prayer. She was reciting it all by herself without help from her mother. She said, "And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us some e-mail."

The future of "I give" is "I take."

The parts of speech are lungs and air.

The inhabitants of Moscow are called Mosquitoes.

A census taker is man who goes from house to house increasing the population.

A virgin forest is a forest where the hand of man has never set foot.

The general direction of the Alps is straight up.

A city purifies its water supply by filtering the water then forcing it through an aviator.

Most of the houses in France are made of plaster of Paris.

The people who followed Jesus were called the 12 opossums.

The spinal column is a long bunch of bones. The head sits on the top and you sit on the bottom.

We do not raise silk worms in the United States, because we get our silk from rayon, a larger worm that gives more silk.

One of the main causes of dust is janitors.

A scout obeys all to whom obedience is due and respects all duly constipated authorities.

One by-product of raising cattle is calves.

The four seasons are salt, pepper, mustard and vinegar.

The word trousers is an uncommon noun because it is singular at the top and plural at the bottom.

Syntax is all the money collected from sinners.

Iron was discovered because someone smelt it.

A person should take a bath once in the summer, not so often in the winter.

DEPT OF STATISTICS:
- All grades are plotted along the normal bell curve.

DEPT OF PSYCHOLOGY:
- Students are asked to blot ink in their exam books, close them and turn them in. The professor opens the books and assigns the first grade that comes to mind.

DEPT OF HISTORY:
- All students get the same grade they got last year.

DEPT OF PHILOSOPHY:
- What is a grade?

LAW SCHOOL:
- Students are asked to defend their position of why they should receive an A; other students may cross examine.

DEPT OF MATHEMATICS:
- Grades will be variable.

DEPT OF LOGIC:
- If and only if the student is present for the final exam and if the student has accumulated a passing grade -- then the student will receive an A; else, the student will not receive an A.

DEPT OF COMPUTER SCIENCE:
- Random number generator determines grade, except in the year 2000, when no one is quite certain that will still work properly.

MUSIC DEPARTMENT:
- Each student must figure out his grade by listening to the instructor play the corresponding note (+ and - would be sharp and flat respectively).

DEPT OF PHYSICAL EDUCATION:
- Everybody races; 1st place = A, 2nd place = B, etc...

1. Don't abbrev.
   
   
2. Check to see if you any words out.
   
   
3. Be carefully to use adjectives and adverbs correct.
   
   
4. About sentence fragments.
   
   
5. When dangling, don't use participles.
   
   
6. Don't use no double negatives.
   
   
7. Avoid alliteration. Always.
   
   
8. Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are unnecessary.
   
   
9. Contractions aren't necessary and won't be as effective.
   
   
10. Foreign words and phrases are not apropos.
    
    
11. One should never generalize.
    
    
12. Eliminate quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson once said: "I hate quotations. Tell me what you know."
    
    
13. Comparisons are as bad as cliches.
    
    
14. Be more or less specific.
    
    
15. Understatement is always best and generalizations must always be eliminated.
    
    
16. Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.
    
    
17. Simplify! How? Eliminate one-word sentences.
    
    
18. Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake.
    
    
19. The passive voice is to be avoided.
    
    
20. Go out of your way to avoid colloquialisms, ya' know?
    
    
21. Even if a mixed metaphor sings, it should be derailed.
    
    
22. Who needs rhetorical questions?
    
    
23. Each pronoun agrees with their antecedent.
    
    
24. Just between you and I, case is important.
    
    
25. Join clauses good, like a conjunction should.
    
    
26. Don't use commas, that aren't necessary.
    
    
27. Its important to use apostrophe's right.
    
    
28. It's better not to unnecessarily split an infinitive.
    
    
29. Never leave a transitive verb just lay there without an object.
    
    
30. Only Proper Nouns should be capitalized.
    
    
31. a sentence should begin with a capital and end with a period
    
    
32. Use hyphens in compound-words, not just where two-words are related.
    
    
33. In letters compositions reports and things like that use commas to keep a string of items apart.
    
    
34. Watch out for irregular verbs which have creeped into our language.
    
    
35. Verbs has to agree with their subjects.
    
    
36. Avoid unnecessary redundancy.
    
    
37. Don't write a run-on sentence you've got to punctuate it.
    
    
38. A preposition isn't a good thing to end a sentence with.
    
    
39. Avoid cliches like the plague. They're old hat.

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