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

A high school has a strange principal. On the first day, he has his students perform an odd opening day ceremony:

There are one thousand lockers and one thousand students in the school. The principal asks the first student to go to every locker and open it. Then he has the second student go to every second locker and close it. The third goes to every third locker and, if it is closed, he opens it, and if it is open, he closes it. The fourth student does this to every fourth locker, and so on. After the process is completed with the thousandth student, how many lockers are open?

Principal in the School

Asked by Neha on 05 Mar 2021


On the dull night when the blonde was dozing, she heard an odd clamour and she saw that there was a bizarre man with a gun simply outside her home. So she raced to the telephone to call the police, however, she can't dial 911. Why?

Asked by Neha on 09 Oct 2024

A guy in his thirties is found dead in a forest. The shocking thing about the body is that he is wearing his swimming trunks snorkel and a facemask.

For your information, the nearest lake is some 10 miles away and the sea is hundreds of miles away.

How did he die then?

Asked by Neha on 15 Oct 2025


What do you answer even though it never asks you questions?

Asked by Neha on 12 Oct 2021

There once were seven dwarfs who were all brothers. They were all born two years apart. The youngest dwarf is seven years old. How old is his oldest brother?

Asked by Neha on 13 Jun 2025

Do you know of a place where the wind blows south and then suddenly shifts direction towards the north?

Asked by Neha on 14 Sep 2025


Teacher ask the student

'Why are you standing on that chair in music class ?'.

what did student replied ?

Asked by Neha on 10 Jan 2021

Give it food and it will live; give it water and it will die.

Asked by Neha on 17 Dec 2023

I am weightless, but you can see me. Put me in a bucket, and I'll make it lighter. What am I?

Asked by Neha on 23 Nov 2025


The first box has two white balls. The second box has two black balls. The third box has a white and a black ball.

Boxes are labeled but all labels are wrong!

You are allowed to open one box, pick one ball at random, see its colour and put it back into the box, without seeing the colour of the other ball.

How many such operations are necessary to correctly label the boxes?

Asked by Neha on 24 Jun 2021

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.