Birbal was jester, counsellor, and fool to the great Moghul emperor, Akbar.
The villagers loved to talk of Birbal's wisdom and cleverness,
and the emperor loved to try to outsmart him.
One day Akbar (emperor) drew a line across the floor.
"Birbal," he ordered, "you must make this line shorter, but you cannot erase any bit of it."
Everyone present thought the emperor had finally outsmarted Birbal.
It was clearly an impossible task.
Yet within moments the emperor and everyone else present had to agree that Birbal had made the line shorter without erasing any of it.
How could this be?
A pregnant woman is preparing to name her seventh child. Her children's names so far are Dominique, Regis, Michelle, Fawn, Sophie, and Lara. What will she name her next child -- Jessica, Katie, Abby or Tilly?
A bridge is about to collapse. There are four people P, Q, R and S on one of the sides. Before the bridge collapses, they want to cross it. Now since the bridge is too weak, it can only stand the weight of two people at a time. Also, it is night time and nothing is visible. They have just one torch with them.
Now P takes one minute to cross the bridge, Q takes two minutes to cross, R takes five minutes to cross and S takes ten minutes to cross.
The bridge will collapse in seventeen minutes. How will they be able to cross the bridge before it collapses?
