What has hands, but can’t clap?

What is the next number in this matchsticks series riddle?

A swan sits at the center of a perfectly circular lake. At an edge of the lake stands a ravenous monster waiting to devour the swan. The monster can not enter the water, but it will run around the circumference of the lake to try to catch the swan as soon as it reaches the shore. The monster moves at 4 times the speed of the swan, and it will always move in the direction along the shore that brings it closer to the swan the quickest. Both the swan and the the monster can change directions in an instant.
The swan knows that if it can reach the lake's shore without the monster right on top of it, it can instantly escape into the surrounding forest.

How can the swan successfully escape?

Count the number of lines in the image below ?

_ _ _ IE _ _
_ _ _ IE _
_ _ IE _ _
_ _ IE _
_ _ _ _ IE

Like you see, some letters have gone missing from these words that contain the IE pair at some or the other place. The letters that will be used to fill the blanks are given below. Use them and form meaningful words. Can you do that?

A, C, D, F, H, K, L, M, N, N, O, R, R, S, S, S, T, T, Y and Y.

You are given 16 witch hats. The hats are divided in four different colours – red, blue, green and yellow. Every colour has been assigned to four hats. Now each of the hat will be glued with a label of an arithmetic sign – ‘+’, ‘-‘, ‘x’ or ‘/’. But you can label one sign only once on one colour. In such an arrangement, the hats can be uniquely defined by its colour and symbol.

Can you arrange all the 16 hats in a 4x4 grid in a fashion that no two rows and columns have a repetition of colour or sign?
We have arranged four hats in the below picture to assist you.

Your mother’s brother’s only brother-in-law is asleep on your couch. Who is asleep on your couch?

There are three boxes. One is labeled "APPLES" another is labeled "ORANGES". The last one is labeled "APPLES AND ORANGES". You know that each is labeled incorrectly. You may ask me to pick one fruit from one box which you choose.

How can you label the boxes correctly?

Trying to tease Birbal, Akbar gave him one gold coin and ask him to buy
* something for him to eat
* something for him to drink.
* something to feed the cows
* something to plant in the garden
and most important you need to buy only one thing.

What must Birbal buy to silence Akbar?

During which month do people sleep the least?