An inspection by the superintendent of St. Joseph School was scheduled on the next day. The class teacher Jenifer knew that he would be asking questions from her class and she would have to choose a pupil to answer. To offer a perfect impression over him, the teacher explained certain instructions to the students to maximise the chances of getting correct answer every time.
I want to fill my bucket using both cold and hot water.
I have two taps for both cold and hot water. The hot water tap fills the bucket in exact 6 hours and the cold water tap fills the bucket in exact 4 hours.
I turn both of them simultaneously but I forgot to turn off another tap which removes the water out of the bucket. This tap can empty the bucket in 12 hours.
Three men in a cafe order a meal the total cost of which is $15. They each contribute $5. The waiter takes the money to the chef who recognises the three as friends and asks the waiter to return $5 to the men.
The waiter is not only poor at mathematics but dishonest and instead of going to the trouble of splitting the $5 between the three he simply gives them $1 each and pockets the remaining $2 for himself.
Now, each of the men effectively paid $4, the total paid is therefore $12. Add the $2 in the waiters pocket and this comes to $14. Where has the other $1 gone from the original $15?
In the attached figure, you can see a chessboard and two rooks placed on the chess board. What you have to find is the number of squares that do not contain the rooks. How many are there?
In 2007, a puzzle was released and $2 million prizes were offered for the first complete solution. The competition ended at noon on 31 December 2010, with no solution being found. Wiki
