You have an empty wine bottle with a cork that has been secured at the top in a normal way. There is a metal ring inside the bottle that is suspended by a string.
How can you make the metal ring drop to the bottom if you are not allowed to touch anything - not the bottle, not the cork, not the thread and not the ring?
There are four 3-link chains. All you have to do is join them into a big 12-link chain. For joining two closed links, one of the links must be cut and placed onto the other link for closing.
How many minimum links will you have to cut to make the big chain?
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.
