I’ve always shied away from riddles, mostly because they confirm I’m not the sharpest pencil in the drawer, but there is one that is pretty famous and was brought to light several weeks ago by a delightful pundit named Tom Henderson.

Tom is a well-known and quite crafty writer on AOL’s Parent Dish and when my Morning Reading included some of his riddles not long ago, I read the first one and spent the day trying to figure it out. Growingly perplexed, I took it to my favorite late-afternoon watering hole, gathered around some morons and posed this question:

A father and a son are in a terrible car crash and the father is killed instantly. The child, in critical condition, is rushed to a nearby hospital and the trauma surgeon looks at the patient and cries, “I can’t operate on this boy; he is my son!”

Well, it wasn’t two seconds before my favorite brain-dead buddies all had the answer and I seethed because it is so obvious. C'mon, they used the riddle on the Bill Cosby Show and “Dr. Huxtable” couldn’t get it, this some years after Edith Bunker almost had a hissy over the same riddle on the wonderful Archie Bunker Show.

So why is it people I think are stupid can get it and someone like me, a genuine thinker and handsome, too, flounders? And why is it kids can immediately answer most riddles while adults wander around in deep consternation over the course of a day when the riddle is just another “dumb question” that any 10-year old can answer?

Trust me, four out of five kids will look at you and immediately tell you, “You idiot … the surgeon is the boy’s mother.” Don’t fret; the fifth kid, the one who can’t figure it out, will go on to become a National Merit Scholar.

So today, in a bit of a turn from my usual diatribe, allow me to share ten more riddles from Tom’s “Riddle Me This” playbook, because not only will the simple-minded among us relish at their new-found intellect, the rest of us can scratch and think and then scroll down for the answers.

Tom’s Ten Riddles

1. How could the 22nd and 24th U.S. Presidents have the same parents, but weren’t brothers?

2. How can you use the letters in NEW DOOR to make one word?

3. Railroad crossing, look out for the cars. Can you spell that without any R’s?

4. How could all of your cousins have an aunt … who is not your aunt?

5. Johnny’s mother had four children. The first was April, the second was May, and the third was June. What was the name of her fourth child?



6. Imagine you are in a sinking rowboat surrounded by sharks. How would you survive?

7. There was an airplane crash, every single person died, but two people survived. How is this possible?

8. That attorney is my brother, testified the accountant. But the attorney testified he didn’t have a brother. Who is lying?

9. What came first, the chicken or the egg?

10. How far can you walk in the woods?

STOP!

Before you read the answers…why don’t you walk away and try to figure out one or two? If you do, a magical thing will happen. Suddenly you won’t worry about political races, the rising price of gasoline, or the coal miners who were trapped in Chile.

Sometimes it’s fun to be a kid again.

Answers:

1. Grover Cleveland was elected twice to be the 22nd and 24th U.S. president.



2. ONE WORD.



3. T-H-A-T.



4. She’s your mother.



5. Johnny.



6. Quit imagining.



7. They were married.

8. Neither. The accountant was his sister.

9. Dinosaurs laid eggs long before there were chickens.



10. Only halfway. After that, you’re walking out of the woods.