A chess tournament is taking place on knock-out terms (the one who loses the match is out of the game).
(a) If 10 matches are played in total, how many players participated?
(b) If 20 players took part in the tournament, how many matches were played?
A woman lives in a skyscraper thirty-six floors high and is served by several elevators which stop at each floor going up and down. Each morning she leaves her apartment and goes to one of the elevators. Whichever one she takes is three times more likely to be going up than down. Why?
I went to the bookshop and spent one-half of the money that was in my purse.
When I came out, I found that I had as many cents as I had dollars and half as many dollars as I had cents when I went in. Find the money in my purse when I entered the store.
A pack of cards has 40 cards. You are blindfolded. Out of 40, 25 cards are facing down while 15 are facing up. You have been asked to divide this pack of cards into two decks - so that each deck contains an equal number of face-up cards. Remember, you are blindfolded.
The day before the 1996 U.S. presidential election, the NYT Crossword contained the clue “Lead story in tomorrow’s newspaper,” the puzzle was built so that both electoral outcomes were correct answers, requiring 7 other clues to have dual responses.