A child playing on the beach had 6-1/6 sand piles in one place and 3-1/3 in another. If he put them together, how many sand piles would he have?

Why this works

This riddle is a playful twist on fractions and how they relate to whole numbers. The child has 6-1/6 sand piles in one spot and 3-1/3 in another, which can be simplified. When you convert these mixed numbers into improper fractions, you get 37/6 and 10/3 respectively. Adding those together gives you 37/6 + 20/6 = 57/6, which equals 9-3/6, or 9-1/2. However, the trick lies in the fact that the question asks how many whole piles he would have after combining them; since it results in 9 full piles plus an extra half, the answer humorously simplifies to just "one whole pile" because the half can be seen as being part of the whole. It plays with our expectations of numbers while leading to a clever conclusion!