If I put in one canary per cage, I have one bird too many. If I put in two canaries per cage, I have one cage too many. How many cages and canaries do I have?
You visit a home for specially-abled children on the occasion of Christmas where you meet with 50 children. You have a box of chocolates containing 50 chocolates exactly.
What if you were asked to one chocolate to each child in a manner that one chocolate still remains in the box? Is it possible?
You stand in front of two doors. A guard stands next to each door. You know the following things: one path leads to paradise, the other leads to death. You cannot distinguish between the two doors. You also know that one of the two guards always tells the truth and the other always lies. You have permission to ask one guard one question to discover which door leads to paradise. What one question would you ask to guarantee you enter the door to paradise?
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.