Birbal was jester, counsellor, and fool to the great Moghul emperor, Akbar.
The villagers loved to talk of Birbal's wisdom and cleverness,
and the emperor loved to try to outsmart him.
One day Akbar (emperor) drew a line across the floor.
"Birbal," he ordered, "you must make this line shorter, but you cannot erase any bit of it."
Everyone present thought the emperor had finally outsmarted Birbal.
It was clearly an impossible task.
Yet within moments the emperor and everyone else present had to agree that Birbal had made the line shorter without erasing any of it.
How could this be?
A boy was at a carnival and went to a booth where a man said to the boy, "If I write your exact weight on this piece of paper then you have to give me $50, but if I cannot, I will pay you $50." The boy looked around and saw no scale so he agrees, thinking no matter what the carny writes he'll just say he weighs more or less. In the end the boy ended up paying the man $50. How did the man win the bet?
If a zookeeper had 100 pairs of animals in her zoo, and two pairs of babies are born for each one of the original animals, then (sadly) 23 animals don’t survive, how many animals do you have left in total?
There is an ancient kingdom where every married woman keeps information regarding the fidelity of other men. However, what they don't know is the fidelity of their own husbands. Also, there is an ancient belief that they don't tell each other about the fidelity of their husbands.
On a certain day, the queen of the kingdom declares that she has identified at least one unfaithful man in the kingdom. She allows the wives to identify and gives them authority to kill their husbands if they are unfaithful at midnight.