You are in a room that has three switches and a closed door. The switches control three light bulbs on the other side of the door. Once you open the door, you may never touch the switches again. How can you definitively tell which switch is connected to each of the light bulbs?
An exterior architect is asked by a builder to plant seven trees in a manner that there are exactly six rows of trees in a straight line and each row has three trees in particular.
In case you were starting to feel confident, this one was meant for third graders in Vietnam. The answer is 66, but we don't blame you for scratching your head about how they got there.
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.