A chess tournament is taking place on knock-out terms (the one who loses the match is out of the game).
(a) If 10 matches are played in total, how many players participated?
(b) If 20 players took part in the tournament, how many matches were played?
John and Jill are madly in love with each other. To remind Jill of his pure love, John wants to send her a ring by post but in their country where burglary is quite prominent, any package that is not locked comes under the risk of being stolen for the contents.
John and Jill possess many padlocks but neither one of them has the other key.
Can you find a way John can send the ring to Jill safely?
You are driving down the road in your car on a wild, stormy night, when you pass by a bus stop and you see three people waiting for the bus
An old lady looks as if she is about to die.
An old friend who once saved your life.
The perfect partner you have been dreaming about.
Knowing that there can only be one passenger in your car, whom would you choose?
Three fair coins are tossed in the air and they land with heads up. Can you calculate the chances that when they are tossed again, two coins will again land with heads up?
In order to complete the racing competition, the Mexico racetrack has to submit its top and the most famous three horses to win the competition. Due to an electrical storm, all the records are cleared and no one knows which horse holds the record. They all look identical and it becomes even more difficult to differentiate the horses. There are 25 horses in the Mexico racetrack. But there can be only five horses at a time on the track. What will the least number of races that can be conducted to find out the three fastest horses?
In a box, there is a jumble of 7 red balls, 6 blue balls, 5 green balls, and 4 yellow balls. What is the minimum number of balls, will you have to pick up so that you have at least 4 balls of the same colour?
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.