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

Detective John was investigating a murder in China.
It was a difficult case, and John was completely stumped until he noticed a message sent to him by the killer cunningly hidden in a newspaper advertisement selling Car Licence Plates.
Detective John thought about it for a while, and when he had solved the puzzle, immediately arrested the guilty man.

Q1) How did John know the advert was a clue for him?

Q2) Solve the code and tell me who John arrested.

This is the newspaper advert (Car licence plates for sale) that Detective John saw.

Plates For Sale;

[W 05 NWO]
[H 13 HSR]
[O 05 EBM]
[D 08 UNE]
[U 10 HTY]
[N 04 BRE]
[N 16 TTE]
[I 26 LHC]
[T 10 AEE]
[I 26 CNA]
[X 22 VDA]

A man is shown a portrait painting. He looks closely, then tells, “Brothers and sisters have I none, but that man’s father is my father’s son!” Who is the man in the portrait?

How will you measure 15 minutes using two hourglasses of 7 minutes and 11 minutes respectively?

Alpha is Beta's sister.

Gamma is a Beta mother.

Delta is Gamma's father.

Tango is Delta's mother.

Then,

How is Alpha related to Delta?

Shyla was sleeping in her apartment when suddenly a robber broke into her house. He asked her to stay quiet and started looting the cash and jewelry. Suddenly the landline phone started ringing. The robber pointed a gun at Shyla and asked her to pick up and talk without giving away the situation.

She picked up the phone and it happened to be her husband. She spoke, Is it an emergency darling? Do give me a call when your flight lands, I will prepare your favorite food that will help you relieve the stress. Then she hanged up.

10 minutes after, the police arrive at the scene and catch the robber. How did the police know about the robbery?

What number comes next in this sequence:
7 8 5 5 3 4 4 _

In a concert, Christina is performing a dance show with her group.
At 10:00, she and her crew were dancing in an absolutely straight line. At that time Christina was standing in 4th position from both the front and back end of the row.

What was the size of her crew?

Three cars are driving on a track that forms a perfect circle and is wide enough that multiple cars can pass anytime. The car that is leading in the race right now is driving at 55 MPH and the car that is trailing at the last is going at 45 MPH. The car that is in the middle is somewhere between these two speeds.
Right now, you can assume that there is a distance of x miles between the leading car and the middle car and x miles between the middle car and the last car and also, x is not equal to 0 or 1.
The cars maintain their speed till the leading car catches up with the last car and then every car stops. In this scenario, do you think of any point when the distance between any two pairs will again be x miles i.e. the pairs will be x distance apart at the same time ?

Nine marbles are arranged in the image below. Can you slide two marbles to form a square?