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

One day, all the courtiers from Akbar's court were gathered in the assembly hall when one of them told the Emperor that all his valuables had been stolen by a thief the previous night.
This shocked the Emperor to his core as the place where that courter stayed was the most secured in the kingdom. The Emperor thought that it is not at all possible for an outsider to enter into the courtier's house and steal the valuables. Only another courtier could commit this crime. He quickly called Birbal to identify the thief.
Birbal thought for a while and successfully solved the mystery by identifying the thief in just one statement.
What did Birbal say?

I am beautiful, up in the sky. I am magical, yet I cannot fly. To people I bring luck, and to some people, riches. The boy at my end does whatever he wishes. What am I?

We have shown you a regular water barrel as below. Without using any measuring device can you check if the barrel is more than half-filled or less than half-filled?

Which word is least like the others? Third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth?

There was a minor accident with a doctor's son but the doctor noticed no major injury. After the treatment, the father of that doctors son is sitting with the son of the doctor without the doctor being in the room.

How can this be possible?

John bought a new car. He has a habit of eating ice cream from a particular ice cream shop while returning home from office. Whenever, he eats strawberry ice cream, he faces no problem. But whenever, he eats chocolate ice cream, the car starts giving problem. At first, he thinks, it is just a co-incidence but when this awkward incident happens for 3-4 times, he reports this problem to the company.

The mechanic of the company checks but finds no problem at all. The next day, when he stops by to eat chocolate ice cream, the car again starts giving problem.

Can you find the possible reason?

By removing one matchstick and adding one matchstick, can you convert the word "ZOO" to an animal name?

Find the combined weight of the Cat, Dog and Rabbit in the given picture.

In the given figure, you can see that four match sticks are used to form a square. Can you form five squares by using six matches?