A riddle is a short, puzzle-like question that hides its answer inside clever wording, forcing the brain to slow down and really listen. It usually sounds simple at first, then suddenly feels confusing, and that tiny moment of “Wait, what?” is exactly where the fun begins.
Classic riddles often use everyday topics, such as family, numbers, and objects, but twist the language just enough to trip people up. This “brothers and sisters I have none” puzzle is one of those old-school logic riddles that keep popping up in exams, WhatsApp groups, and even YouTube shorts because it’s easy to share and oddly satisfying once the answer clicks.
The Riddle: Question
The riddle is usually told like this:
“Brothers and sisters I have none, but that man’s father is my father’s son. Who is that man?”
Sometimes there’s a little scene around it: a man is looking at a photograph, a friend asks who the person is, and this line is his answer. At first hearing, the brain tends to latch onto the wrong person many people guess “father,” “nephew,” or even “himself,” because all the repeated “father’s son” phrases feel like verbal spaghetti.
This is exactly why the riddle works so well in logical reasoning and blood relation practice: it tests the ability to untangle relationships step by step instead of reacting to the first familiar phrase.
The Riddle: Answer
The answer to the “brothers and sisters I have none” riddle is: the man in the picture is the speaker’s son. In a simpler line: that man is my son.
Most people realise this only after going over the sentence a second or third time, sometimes even sketching a tiny family tree on paper.
In classroom or coaching-centre settings, it often leads to a funny moment where half the batch gets it instantly, and the other half insists it must be a trick, which, in a way, it is.
The trick is not mathematics or hidden clues; it’s just grammar and who “my father’s son” can logically be when there are no siblings.
Answer Explanation
The explanation of the riddle comes down to carefully decoding each phrase and using the “no siblings” clue properly.
“Brothers and sisters I have none”
The speaker has no siblings.
So “my father’s son” can only refer to one person: the speaker.
“That man’s father is my father’s son”
Replace “my father’s son” with “me” (the speaker), because there are no brothers.
Now the sentence becomes: “That man’s father is me.”
If “that man’s father is me,” then “that man” must be the speaker’s son.
So the man in the photograph is the speaker’s son, and the entire riddle is basically a cleverly phrased way of saying, “This is my son,” but wrapped in a logic puzzle. This is why the riddle shows up in logical reasoning practice for exams like CLAT and other aptitude tests: it rewards slower, structured thinking over guesswork.
