At a party, there are five people and a whole round cake lying at the centre of the table. Only four people will make a cut and take their piece and the last one will get the remaining piece on the table. How can they make sure that everyone gets a 1/5th of the piece?
The barber of Town shaves all men living in the town. No man living in the town is allowed to shave himself. The barber lives in that town. Who then shaves the barber of the town?
Your last good ping-pong ball fell into a narrow metal pipe embedded one foot deep in concrete.
How can you get it out undamaged, if all the tools you have are your tennis paddle, shoe laces, and plastic water bottle, which does not fit into the pipe?
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.