Riddles

Last night during dinner, Auntie Shannon showed the girls and I a supposed quiz question from a Hong Kong elementary school admission test.  According to the source that posted this quiz question, it takes elementary school children a mere few seconds to solve the puzzle, but can take highly educated adults days or more.  The experiment went awry in our situation, however, as I was the one to immediately know the answer, while the girls were clueless.

Here's the picture, with the question being "What number spot is the parked car in?"

Julia was just floundering around, guessing random numbers, while Madeleine unlocked the first key in understanding the problem.

MADELEINE: Auntie Shannon?  I can't tell if that's sixteen or sixty-one!
AUNTIE SHANNON: That's a great observation, Madeleine!  You're on the right track.

But the right track led nowhere.  So I jumped in.

ME: How ELSE can you view the numbers, rather than left to right or right to left?
GIRLS: (silence)
AUNTIE SHANNON: How about upside down?
GIRLS: (baffled silence)
ME: (turning Auntie Shannon's computer upside down) Now what do you see?
JULIA: Uh...is the answer 99?

Nope.

AUNTIE SHANNON: When it's upside down, what numbers are next to the car?
JULIA: 86 and 88?
AUNTIE SHANNON: Right!  So what's in between?
MADELEINE: 89?
AUNTIE SHANNON: No...
JULIA: 87?
AUNTIE SHANNON AND I: Right!  You got it!
MADELEINE: (bursting into tears) Julia got it and I diiiiiiidn't!
AUNTIE SHANNON: No, Madeleine, you were the first one to realize you had to look at the numbers differently!

But Madeleine was inconsolable.

AUNTIE SHANNON: You realized that we needed to read the numbers in a different direction.
MADELEINE: (amidst her sobs) No I DIDN'T!  I didn't realize ANYTHING!  I'll NEVER EVER get the answer right!

So Auntie Shannon decided to give Madeleine a crack at a different riddle.

AUNTIE SHANNON: Okay, Madeleine.  What's greater than God, more evil than the devil, a poor man has it, a rich man needs it, and if you eat it, you'd die.
MADELEINE: (thoughtful) Uh...POISON??

No.

ME: Madeleine, let's think about it.  What's greater than God?
MADELEINE: Nothing?
AUNTIE SHANNON: (with great enthusiasm) Right!  You got it!  The answer is nothing!  Nothing is greater than God.  A poor man has nothing.  A rich man needs nothing because he has everything already.
MADELEINE: (mulling this over) But what about eating?
ME: If you eat nothing, after a while you'll die because you'll starve.
MADELEINE: But what was the other one?
AUNTIE SHANNON: What's more evil than the devil.
MADELEINE: Uh...GUNS?

Wow.  These kids are Brain-Teaser MASTERS.  The REALLY get it.  Call Mensa, folks, because I'm pretty sure my kids are a shoe-in.