2, 3, 5, 9, 17, _ What is the next number in the sequence?

There was a strange boy who was born before his father. How can this be possible?

I am a type of word that is spelt incorrectly or used differently, on purpose for humour. What am I?
Hint 1: You can find me in a joke.
Hint 2: I am a play on words.

If two fifty-foot ropes are suspended from a forty-foot ceiling that is twenty feet apart, how much rope will you be able to steal if you have a knife?

The more it dries, the wetter it becomes. Can you tell what it is?

The first box has two white balls. The second box has two black balls. The third box has a white and a black ball.

Boxes are labeled but all labels are wrong!

You are allowed to open one box, pick one ball at random, see its colour and put it back into the box, without seeing the colour of the other ball.

How many such operations are necessary to correctly label the boxes?

I add 5 to 9 and get 2. The answer is correct, so what am I?

A man dies of old age on his 25 birthday. How is this possible?

What demands an answer, but asks no questions

A thief enters a store and threatens the clerk, forcing her to open the safe. The clerk says, “The code for the safe is different every day, and if you hurt me you’ll never get the code.” But the thief manages to guess the code on his own. How did he do it?