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?

A woman lives in a Tall building thirty-six floors high and served by several elevators which stop at each floor going up and down. Each morning she leaves her apartment and goes to one of the elevators. Whichever one she takes is three times more likely to be going up than down. Why?

Below the four parts have been reorganised. The four partitions are exactly the same in both arrangements. Why is there a hole?

You have two buckets - one holds exactly 5 gallons and the other 3 gallons. How can you measure 4 gallons of water into the 5 gallon bucket?

(Assume you have an unlimited supply of water and that there are no measurement markings of any kind on the buckets.)

John was so frustrated to be the suspect of being a sleeper terrorist that he shoot himself right between the eyes with a revolver in his toilet. The revolver and the bullets were accurate. Minutes later John walks out of the toilet unharmed.
How can this be possible?

A pet show was happening in my locality. I went down along with my kids. In that show, I noticed that all except two of the entries were cats. All except two were dogs and all except two were Monkeys.

Can you find out how many of each animals were present in that pet show?

There is an exact a week gap between Christmas and New Year. Hence, It is obvious that the new year that comes right after Christmas comes on the same day of the week.

A Strange thing happened in the Year 1777. Christmas occurs on Wednesday and New Year on Monday. How is that possible?

There is a basket full of hats. Three are white and two are black. Three men, Tom, Tim, and Jim, each take a hat out of the basket and put it on their heads without seeing the hat they selected or the hats the other men selected. The men arrange themselves so Tom can see Tim and Jim’s hats, Tim can see Jim’s hat, and Jim can’t see anyone’s hat. Tom is asked what color his hat is and he says he doesn’t know. Tim is asked the same question, and he also doesn’t know. Finally, Jim is asked the question, and he does know. What colour is his hat?

Can you fill the blank with the correct number?

6 30 870 756030 _____

You have two strings whose only known property is that when you light one end of either string it takes exactly one hour to burn. The rate at which the strings will burn is completely random and each string is different.

How do you measure 45 minutes?