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

The average age of 10 members of a committee is the same as it was 4 years ago, because an old member has been replaced by a young member. Find how much younger is the new member ?

Asked by Neha on 19 Jul 2021


There is a barrel with no lid and some wine in it. 'This barrel of wine is more than half full,' said Curly. 'No it's not,' says Mo. 'It's less than half full.' Without any measuring implements and without removing any wine from the barrel, how can they easily determine who is correct?

Asked by Neha on 05 May 2023

Two fathers and two sons decided to go to a shop and buy some sweets upon reaching. Each of them bought 1 kg of sweet. All of them returned home after some time and found out that they had 3kg of sweets with them.

They did not eat the sweets in the way, nor threw or lose anything. Then, how can this be possible?

Asked by Neha on 01 Jun 2024


You have two strings whose only known property is that when you light one end of either string it takes exactly one hour to burn. The rate at which the strings will burn is completely random and each string is different. How do you measure 45 minutes?

Asked by Neha on 17 Feb 2026

Is the statement valid that it does not matter how much older a sibling is, eventually the younger one will be half as old as the older one?

Asked by Neha on 23 Feb 2023

There was a kingdom in which the king had no heir to take over his thrown. Even the queen was dead and he himself was on the verge of dying. He thought about it and then summoned all of the teenagers. He gave one seed each to all of them and asked them to grow the plant. He announced that the one with the most beautiful plant will become the king/queen of the empire after the death of the king.

After a month, all of them were called. The king looked at all of the plants but announced the girl with an empty pot as the queen of the empire. Why?

Asked by Neha on 24 Sep 2024


Find the hidden tiger in the given optical illusion ?

Find the Tiger

Asked by Neha on 13 Jan 2021

I am soft and cuddly that soothe your heart. But, If you pick my last name I am going to tear you all apart. Who am I?

Asked by Neha on 13 May 2024

Can you find the next number in the below sequence
3 , 7 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 17 ?

Asked by Neha on 04 Mar 2025


Make a sentence consisting of three words that have the whole alphabet.

Asked by Neha on 11 Dec 2025

Hot Articles

Amazing Facts

Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence has crushed all human records in the puzzle game “2048,” achieving a high score of 839,732 and beating the game in only 973 moves without using any undo.