John is on an island and there are three crates of fruit that have washed up in front of him. One crate contains only apples. One crate contains only oranges. The other crate contains both apples and oranges.
Each crate is labelled. One reads 'apples', one reads 'oranges', and one reads 'apples and oranges'. He know that NONE of the crates have been labeled correctly - they are all wrong.
If he can only take out and look at just one of the pieces of fruit from just one of the crates, how can he label all of the crates correctly?
He digs out tiny caves and stores gold and silver in them. He also built bridges of silver and made crowns of gold. They are the smallest you could imagine. Sooner or later everybody needs his help, yet many people are afraid to let him help them. Who is he?
What is the four-digit number in which the first digit is one-third the second, the third is the sum of the first two, and the last is three times the second?
In a jungle where there are no street lights or any other artificial source of lights, I notice a black snake crossing the road.
How did I get sight of the snake?
Only one color, but not one size,
Stuck at the bottom, yet easily flies.
Present in sun, but not in rain,
Doing no harm, and feeling no pain.
What is it?
Four people need to cross a rickety bridge at night. Unfortunately, they have only one torch and the bridge is too dangerous to cross without one. The bridge is only strong enough to support two people at a time. Not all people take the same time to cross the bridge. Times for each person: 1 min, 2 mins, 7 mins and 10 mins. What is the shortest time needed for all four of them to cross the bridge?
It was a dark stormy night and a couple were in a car driving madly to a city. The car broke down and the husband had to go get help from someone who spoke his language. He was afraid to leave his wife alone in the car so he locked the car before leaving. When he came back, the car was in the same state as he had left it but his wife was dead, there was blood on the floor and there was a stranger in the car. What happened?
If the number is divided by 3, it gives the remainder of 1;
If the number is divided by 4, it gives the remainder of 2;
If the number is divided by 5, it gives the remainder of 3;
If the number is divided by 6, it gives the remainder of 4.
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.