I have branches, but no fruit, trunk or leaves. What am I?

Two brothers were watching a horror film on video late one night. One brother dozed off and dreamed that he was being chased by the crazy man from the movie, who was trying to kill him. In the dream, he hid in a cupboard. There was no sound except his heart pounding, and he had no idea where his crazed captor was. He was terrified! At that moment, the video finished, and his brother put his hand on the shoulder of his sleeping sibling to wake him. The shock at that tense moment was enough that the sleeping brother suffered a massive heart attack and died instantly. True or false?

A famous swimmer can swim downstream in a lake in exactly 40 minutes with the lake current.
He can swim upstream in that lake in exactly 60 minutes against the lake current.
The length of the lake is 2 km.

How long he can cover the distance of one side at a still lake with no current?

Can you solve the tricky chess rebus puzzle below by ciphering the hidden meaning?

John can place six large boxes or nine small boxes into a carton.

Can you find out in how many cartons can he place sixty-six boxes in total?

How many pluses should we put between the digits of 987654321 to get a total of 99, and where?

I can be cracked, made, told, and played. What am I?

Find out a multi-digit number that if multiplied by the number 9 or any of its multiplications products (i.e. 18, 27, 36, 45,..) will result in the multiplication factor repeated (n) number of times.

A little girl goes to the store and buys one dozen eggs. As she is going home, all but three break. How many eggs are left unbroken?

There was a kingdom in which the king had no heir to take over his thrown. Even the queen was dead and he himself was on the verge of dying. He thought about it and then summoned all of the teenagers. He gave one seed each to all of them and asked them to grow the plant. He announced that the one with the most beautiful plant will become the king/queen of the empire after the death of the king.

After a month, all of them were called. The king looked at all of the plants but announced the girl with an empty pot as the queen of the empire. Why?