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Math riddles
There are three apples and you take away two. How many apples do you have?
A subtraction problem that is not a subtraction problem. The numbers are tiny; the trick is in who the question is about.
There are three apples and you take away two. How many apples do you have?
Hint: You took them.
Reveal the answer
Two
You took two apples, so you have two.
How to solve it (spoilers)
How to think about it
- The automatic move is 3 − 2 = 1, which answers “how many apples are left”.
- Read the last line again. It asks how many apples you have, not how many remain on the table.
- You took away two apples. They are in your hands now.
- So you have exactly the two apples you took.
Why “Two” is the answer
The question is about the apples in your possession, and you took two, so you have two. The one apple left behind belongs to whoever owned the pile. The riddle works because the phrase “take away” sounds like a subtraction instruction, while “how many do you have” is a question about ownership.
Common wrong answers
- One. One apple is left on the table, but the question asks how many you have, and you took two.
- Three. You only have three if you took them all, and you took two.
Related riddles
- What is half of two plus two?
- Which three positive whole numbers give the same result when added together as when multiplied together?
- If two is company and three is a crowd, what are four and five?
- Two fathers and two sons go fishing. Each catches one fish, yet only three fish are caught. How?
- Which English word has three double letters in a row?
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