Pronounced as 1 letter, And written with 3, 2 letters there are, and 2 only in me. I’m double, I’m single, I’m black blue and grey, I’m read from both ends, and the same either way. What am I?
On my way to St. Ives I saw a man with 7 wives. Each wife had 7 sacks. Each sack had 7 cats. Each cat had 7 kittens. Kittens, cats, sacks, wives. How many were going to St. Ives?
Once upon a time, there was a castle on a square island. The entire island was surrounded by a 14m wide trench. The Romans had wanted to invade the castle and had brought a few wooden planks along with them to facilitate themselves in crossing the moat. The planks were however found to be only 13m long.
The Romans still managed to cross the trench. How did they do it?
Assume there are approximately 5,000,000,000 (5 billion) people on Earth. What would you estimate to be the result, if you multiply together the number of fingers on every person's left hand? (For the purposes of this exercise, thumbs count as fingers, for five fingers per hand.) If you cannot estimate the number then try to guess how long the number would be.
A and B have a certain number of chocolates with them. If B gives one chocolate to A, they will have an equal number of chocolates. But if A gives one chocolate to B, then A will be left with half the number of chocolates that B has.
Can you find out the number of chocolates they have right now?
Only one color, but not one size,
Stuck at the bottom, yet easily flies.
Present in sun, but not in rain,
Doing no harm, and feeling no pain.
What is it?
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.