If I put in one canary per cage, I have one bird too many. If I put in two canaries per cage, I have one cage too many. How many cages and canaries do I have?
A dying old man wants to divide his entire land between his only two sons. Since his only wish is to treat them as equal as both of them have been too good to him, he wants to divide his land equally between them. The problem is that the land is significantly irregular in shape and thus there is no choice of cutting them into two equal halves.
Can you help him divide the land in a manner that both of his sons will be happy?
A man has a barrel filled with oil that weighs 100 pounds, and then he puts something into it. Now the barrel weighs less than 100 pounds. What did he put in the barrel?
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.