A deaf and mute man goes to the train station. Tickets for the train are 50 cents each. The man goes to the ticket booth and hands the man inside just a dollar. The man in the booth hands him two tickets.
How did the man in the booth know to give him two tickets without even looking at him?
A California farmer owns a beautiful pear tree. He supplies the fruit to a nearby grocery store. The store owner calls the farmer to see how much fruit is available for him to buy. The farmer knows the main trunk has 24 branches. Each branch has exactly 12 boughs and each bough has exactly 6 twigs. Since each twig bears one piece of fruit, how many plums will the farmer be able to deliver?
A bag contains 64 balls of eight different colours. There are eight of each colour (including red). What is the least number you would have to pick, without looking, to be sure of selecting 3 red balls?
A hen, a dog, and a cat are stolen. Three suspects are arrested named Robin, Steve, and Tim. The police are sure that all of them stole one of the animals but they don't know who stole which animal.
Sherlock Holmes is appointed to identify and is provided with the following statements from the investigation.
Robin - Tim stole the hen
Steve - Tim stole the dog
Tim - Both Robin and Steve are lying. I neither stole a hen nor a dog.
Sherlock is somehow able to deduce that the man who stole the cat is telling a lie and the man who stole the hen is telling truth.
John was going on a jungle trip. He asked his wife to pack something to eat, something to drink and something to burn if he feels cold in the jungle. When John opens the backpack he found just one thing in the bag. What was it?
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.