Jessica is telling her friends this story and asks them to guess if it’s the truth or a lie: “There was a man sitting in a house at night that had no lights on at all. There was no lamp, no candle, and no other source of light. Yet, he sat in the house and read his book happily.†Her friends say she’s lying, but Jessica corrects them and says she’s telling the truth. Jessica’s story is true—but how?
A research team went to a village somewhere between the jungles of Africa. Luckily for them, they reached the day when quite an interesting custom was to be performed. The custom was performed once a year as they confirmed and was performed in order to collect the taxes from every male of the region.
The taxes were to be paid in the form of grains. Everyone must pay pounds of grain equaling his respective age. This means a 20-year-old will have to pay 20 pounds of grain and a 30-year-old will pay 30 pounds of grain and so on.
The chief who collects the tax has 7 weights and a large 2-pan scale to weigh. But there is another custom that the chief can weigh only three of the seven weights.
Can you find out the weights of the seven weights? Also, what is the maximum age of the man that can be weighed for the payment of taxes?
There are two beautiful yet remote islands in the South Pacific. The Islanders born on one island always tell the truth, and the Islanders from the other island always lie.
You are on one of the islands and meet three Islanders. You ask the first which island they are from in the most appropriate Polynesian tongue, and he indicates that the other two Islanders are from the same island. You ask the second Islander the same question, and he also indicates that the other two Islanders are from the same island.
Can you guess what the third Islander will answer to the same question?
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.
