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

Tell me the Hindi name of a Vegetable which if we remove 1st word will become a precious Stone and by removing the last word it will become a sweet eatable.

A man has to get a fox, a chicken, and a sack of corn across a river.

He has a rowboat, and it can only carry him and one other thing.
If the fox and the chicken are left together, the fox will eat the chicken.
If the chicken and the corn are left together, the chicken will eat the corn.

How does the man do it?

One fine day, an intellectual man came to the emperor's court with the aim of testing Birbal's wittiness. In order to do this, he challenged Birbal to answer his question and hence prove that he was as intelligent and witty as he was said to be.
He asked Birbal, Do you want me to ask one difficult question or a hundred easy ones?
Since both Akbar and Birbal had had a tough day and were eager to leave, Birbal hastily told the intellectual to ask him a single difficult question.
Intellectual: OK. Tell me what came first into the world, the egg or the chicken?
Of course, the chicken, Birbal replied with a smile.
This time with a note of victory in his voice, the intellectual asked Birbal, How will you demonstrate that?
What did Birbal say?

A woman lives in a skyscraper thirty-six floors high and is 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?

A girl was standing near the window thinking something. All of a sudden she decides something and throws something out of the window. She dies very soon after throwing it. She was perfectly healthy and had no disease or allergy. No one killed her and she did not commit suicide.

Can you think of any possible explanation that is logical as well for what happened there?

Can anyone tell me a word in the English dictionary which has a silent 'z'?

Can you replace the X (both small and big x) with the numbers between 1 to 19 such that all the rows of 3 numbers between X (big x) sum to 23?

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?

Can you find the hidden animal in the picture below?