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?
You have two strings whose only known property is that when you light one end of either string it takes exactly one hour to burn. The rate at which the strings will burn is completely random and each string is different.
A rubber ball keeps on bouncing back to 2/3 of the height from which it is dropped. Can you calculate the fraction of its original height that the ball will bounce after it is dropped and it has bounced four times without any hindrance ?
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?
The day before the 1996 U.S. presidential election, the NYT Crossword contained the clue “Lead story in tomorrow’s newspaper,” the puzzle was built so that both electoral outcomes were correct answers, requiring 7 other clues to have dual responses.
