A man stands on one side of a river, his dog on the other. The man calls his dog, who immediately crosses the river without getting wet and without using a bridge or a boat. How did the dog do it?
A California farmer owns a beautiful pear tree. He supplies the fruit to a nearby grocery store. The store owner calls the farmer to see how much fruit is available for him to buy. The farmer knows the main trunk has 24 branches. Each branch has exactly 12 boughs and each bough has exactly 6 twigs. Since each twig bears one piece of fruit, how many plums will the farmer be able to deliver?
You walk into a room where there are three primates held in their respective cages:
1) A lion who is eating the flesh of a goat.
2) An orangutan who is playing with blocks.
3) A donkey who is sitting idle.
In 2011, people playing Foldit, an online puzzle game about protein folding, resolved the structure of an enzyme that causes an Aids-like disease in monkeys. Researchers had been working on the problem for 13 years. The gamers solved it in three weeks.
