Three men in a cafe order a meal the total cost of which is $15. They each contribute $5. The waiter takes the money to the chef who recognises the three as friends and asks the waiter to return $5 to the men.
The waiter is not only poor at mathematics but dishonest and instead of going to the trouble of splitting the $5 between the three he simply gives them $1 each and pockets the remaining $2 for himself.
Now, each of the men effectively paid $4, the total paid is therefore $12. Add the $2 in the waiters pocket and this comes to $14. Where has the other $1 gone from the original $15?
You visit a home for specially-abled children on the occasion of Christmas where you meet with 50 children. You have a box of chocolates containing 50 chocolates exactly.
What if you were asked to one chocolate to each child in a manner that one chocolate still remains in the box? Is it possible?
Two friends were betting. One said to the other, "The coin will be flipped twenty times and each time the coin lands on the head, I will give you $2 and each time it lands on the tale, you will give me $3." After flipping the coin twenty times not a single penny was exchanged among them.
With pointed fangs I sit and wait; with piercing force I crunch out fate; grabbing victims, proclaiming might; physically joining with a single bite. What am I?
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.
