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

Replace all '*' with digits 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 to make below statement true.

* *
x *
=====
* * *

Asked by Neha on 29 Jul 2021


Take away my first letter, then take away my second letter. Then take away the rest of my letters, yet I remain the same. What am I?

Asked by Neha on 14 Oct 2021

As we know that white starts the game of chess. Can you find the scenario shown in the picture below is possible when all the white pieces are at the original place while the black pawn is not as in the below picture?

Chess Game Trick

Asked by Neha on 04 Sep 2023


If eleven plus two equals one, what does nine plus five equal?

Asked by Neha on 28 Mar 2022

Divide 110 into two parts so that one will be 150 per cent of the other. What are the 2 numbers?

Asked by Neha on 27 Oct 2024

A large water tank has two inlet pipes (a large one and a small one) and one outlet pipe. It takes 3 hours to fill the tank with the large inlet pipe. On the other hand, it takes 6 hours to fill the tank with the small inlet pipe. The outlet pipe allows the full tank to be emptied in 9 hours.

What fraction of the tank (initially empty) will be filled in 0.64 hours if all three pipes are in operation? Give your answer to two decimal places (e.g., 0.25, 0.5, or 0.75).

Asked by Neha on 08 Jan 2026


A time long back, there lived a king who ruled the great kingdom of Trojan House. As a part of the renovation of the kingdom to meet future security needs, he asked his chief architect to lay down a new play in a manner that all of his 10 castles are connected through five straight walls and each wall must connect four castles together. He also asked the architect that at least one of his castles should be protected with walls. The architect could not come up with any solution that served all of King's choices, but he suggested the best plan that you can see in the picture below. Can you find a better solution to serve the king's demand?

Castles in a line

Asked by Neha on 18 Sep 2023

John and Jill are madly in love with each other. To remind Jill of his pure love, John wants to send her a ring by post but in their country where burglary is quite prominent, any package that is not locked comes under the risk of being stolen for the contents.

John and Jill possess many padlocks but neither one of them has the other key.

Can you find a way John can send the ring to Jill safely?

Asked by Neha on 03 Dec 2025

The more of this there is, the less you see. What is it?

Asked by Neha on 19 May 2022


James bond was pushed out of an aeroplane without any parachute.
He survived, How come?

Asked by Neha on 28 Sep 2024

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.