Can you solve the tricky chess rebus puzzle below by ciphering the hidden meaning?

What is harder to catch the faster you run?

John gave half of the apples he had plus one more to Jacob. He gave half of the remaining ones plus one more to James. Now, John was left with just one apple.

Can you find out how many did he have in the beginning?

You are given 16 witch hats. The hats are divided in four different colours – red, blue, green and yellow. Every colour has been assigned to four hats. Now each of the hat will be glued with a label of an arithmetic sign – ‘+’, ‘-‘, ‘x’ or ‘/’. But you can label one sign only once on one colour. In such an arrangement, the hats can be uniquely defined by its colour and symbol.

Can you arrange all the 16 hats in a 4x4 grid in a fashion that no two rows and columns have a repetition of colour or sign?
We have arranged four hats in the below picture to assist you.

John is the son of Jacob.
So,
Jacob is the_____of John's father?

Wednesday, Steve and Pam go to a restaurant to eat lunch. After eating lunch, they pay the bill. But Steve and Pam do not pay the bill. So…who does?

An old Woman left INR 33,333 to be divided equally among two fathers and two sons and each was to receive INR 11,111.
How was this possible?

The pound is not a finish.

We are sharing a few instructions below, which you have to use in any suitable order to modify the above sentence such that the end sentence is a scientific fact.

- Eliminate a letter and supplement another in its place.
- Take away one word.
- Remove one letter from one word.
- Get rid of two letters from one word.
- Swap a word with its antonym.

_ _ _ IE _ _
_ _ _ IE _
_ _ IE _ _
_ _ IE _
_ _ _ _ IE

Like you see, some letters have gone missing from these words that contain the IE pair at some or the other place. The letters that will be used to fill the blanks are given below. Use them and form meaningful words. Can you do that?

A, C, D, F, H, K, L, M, N, N, O, R, R, S, S, S, T, T, Y and Y.

There are a number of books on a shelf. If one book is the 4th from the left and 6th from the right, how many books are on the shelf?