Make the Line Sorter

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?




Similar Riddles

Jack and Joseph are well-known golf rivals. One Day during a match, they were level at a score of 30. Jack hit a bad shot and Joseph added 10 to his score. Joseph then hit an awesome shot and he won the game.

How ?

Asked by Neha on 02 Jan 2021


As a whole I am both
safe and secure.

Behead me and I become
a place of meeting.

Behead me again and I am
the partner of ready.

Restore me, and I become
the domain of beasts.

What am I?

Asked by Neha on 11 May 2021

Intelligence Agency need to break the vault but the problem is that they are not able to break the vault.

On the vault, a text is written as:

31 11 33 33 43 45
21 25
31 24 11 31 51 41

To Break the code Intelligence Agency brings a mathematician named Joseph.
Minutes later he deciphers the code.

Whats the code?

Asked by Neha on 14 May 2021


There are hundred red gems and hundred blue gems. The blue gems are priceless while the red gems equal wastage. You have two sacks one labeled Heads and the other Tails. You have to distribute the gems as you want in the two sacks. Then a coin will be flipped and you will be asked to pick up a gem randomly from the corresponding sacks.

How will you distribute the gems between the sacks so that the odds of picking a Blue gem are maximum?

Asked by Neha on 29 May 2023

You have a roll of cloth 1km long. You have a machine which cuts this roll into pieces of 10-meter-long cloth.

How long would it take for the machine to cut the roll if each cut took 4 secs?

Asked by Neha on 15 Aug 2024

There was a minor accident with a doctor's son but the doctor noticed no major injury. After the treatment, the father of that doctors son is sitting with the son of the doctor without the doctor being in the room.

How can this be possible?

Asked by Neha on 02 Feb 2025


Find a 9-digit number, which you will gradually round off starting with units, then tenth, hundred etc., until you get to the last numeral, which you do not round off. The rounding alternates (up, down, up ...). After rounding off 8 times, the final number is 500000000. The original number is commensurable by 6 and 7, all the numbers from 1 to 9 are used, and after rounding four times the sum of the not-rounded numerals equals 24.

Asked by Neha on 05 Dec 2024

When Jack was six years old he hammered a nail into his favourite tree to mark his height. Ten years later at age sixteen, Jack returned to see how much higher the nail was. If the tree grew by five centimetres each year, how much higher would the nail be?

Asked by Neha on 17 May 2021

I make two people out of one. What am I?

Asked by Neha on 29 Mar 2022


We know that the number 7 is the prime followed by a cube. Which next number is also a prime followed by a cube?

Asked by Neha on 05 Apr 2026

Hot Articles

Amazing Facts

Crossword puzzles

In the 1920s, people feared that crossword puzzles would contribute to illiteracy.