Cut the Chain

You have four chains. Each chain has three links in it. Although it is difficult to cut the links, you wish to make a single loop with all 12 links. What is the fewest number of cuts you must make to accomplish this task?




Similar Riddles

Birbal was jester, counsellor, and fool to the great Moghul emperor, Akbar.
The villagers loved to talk of Birbal's wisdom and cleverness,
and the emperor loved to try to outsmart him.
One day Akbar (emperor) drew a line across the floor.
"Birbal," he ordered, "you must make this line shorter, but you cannot erase any bit of it."
Everyone present thought the emperor had finally outsmarted Birbal.
It was clearly an impossible task.
Yet within moments the emperor and everyone else present had to agree that Birbal had made the line shorter without erasing any of it.
How could this be?

Asked by Neha on 17 May 2021


If a shopkeeper can only place the weights on one side of the common balance. For example, if he has weights 1 and 3 then he can measure 1, 3 and 4 only. Now the question is how many minimum weights and names of the weights you will need to measure all weights from 1 to 1000? This is a fairly simple problem and very easy to prove also.

Asked by Neha on 29 Oct 2023

Which of the below owl is odd one out?

Find the odd

Asked by Neha on 22 May 2021


Three people check into a hotel. They pay $60 for the rent of the room. After they check-in, the manager realize that the rent for the room is $55. So, he gives $5 to the bellboy and asks him to give it to them. The bellboy thinks that it will be difficult for the three people to share $5 among them and seeking the personal benefit, he pockets $2 and gives the remaining $3 to them.

Now, each person paid $20 and got back $1. In this manner, each of them paid just $19 which totals to the amount of $57. The bellboy has $2 with him and adding them, we get $59. So where is the remaining $1?

Asked by Neha on 02 Aug 2023

You are given 16 witch hats. The hats are divided in four different colours – red, blue, green and yellow. Every colour has been assigned to four hats. Now each of the hat will be glued with a label of an arithmetic sign – ‘+’, ‘-‘, ‘x’ or ‘/’. But you can label one sign only once on one colour. In such an arrangement, the hats can be uniquely defined by its colour and symbol.

Can you arrange all the 16 hats in a 4x4 grid in a fashion that no two rows and columns have a repetition of colour or sign?
We have arranged four hats in the below picture to assist you.

Arrange Hats in Squares

Asked by Neha on 17 May 2021

Tell me the Hindi name of a Vegetable which if we remove 1st word will become a precious Stone and by removing the last word it will become a sweet eatable.

Asked by Neha on 16 Apr 2025


One night, a man runs away from home. He turns left and keeps running. After some time he turns left again and keeps running. Later, he turns left one more time and runs back home—but when he gets home, he finds a man in a mask. Who was the man in the mask?

Asked by Neha on 31 May 2025

On my way to St. Ives I saw a man with 7 wives. Each wife had 7 sacks. Each sack had 7 cats. Each cat had 7 kittens. Kittens, cats, sacks, wives. How many were going to St. Ives?

Asked by Neha on 26 Oct 2024

What mathematical symbol can be put between 5 and 9, to get a number bigger than 5 and smaller than 9?

Asked by Neha on 20 Sep 2021


I taste better than I can smell. Who am I?

Asked by Neha on 30 Dec 2023

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There is a cryptic organization called Cicada 3301 that posts challenging puzzles online, possibly to recruit codebreakers and linguists.