There are 20 people in an empty, square room. Each person has full sight of the entire room and everyone in it without turning his head or body, or moving in any way (other than the eyes). Where can you place an apple so that all but one person can see it?
You are a cab driver who pools passengers. You pick 3 people from a destination and drop 1 after an hour. 2 people climb aboard at the same time and you drop 3 at the next destination. After some time, you pick 2 passengers only to drop 1 after a short distance where 3 more passengers climb up the cab. You leave the rest of the passengers one by one to their destination and then come back home.
Here is what you have to do. You have to throw a ball as hard as you can but it must return back to you even if it does not bounce at anything. Also, you have nothing attached to the ball. There is no one on the other end to catch that ball and throw it back at you.
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.
