What has a head and a tail, is brown and has no legs?

How to think about it

1. Head and tail without legs rules out animals, since a legless animal like a snake is rarely described as brown with a head and tail in riddles, and the coin idea is much stronger.
2. Think of flipping a coin: heads on one side, tails on the other.
3. Now use the color. Most United States coins are silver colored; only one is brown.
4. That brown coin is the penny, worth one cent.

Why “a penny” is the answer

A penny is a copper-colored coin, which reads as brown next to the silver nickel, dime and quarter. Like every coin it has a heads side and a tails side, and like every coin it has no legs. The riddle takes the general “head and tail but no body” idea and adds color so that one specific coin is the only fit.

Common wrong answers

• A snake. Some snakes are brown and have no legs, but a snake has a body between its head and tail, and the riddle is pointing at a coin.
• A quarter. A quarter has a head and a tail, but it is silver colored, not brown.