Its something that each of us devours,
Not just us but birds, beats, trees, and flowers,
Frets iron and nibbles steel,
Toil hard stones to meal,
Exterminates king, collapse town,
And blows the mountains down.
I am beautiful, up in the sky. I am magical, yet I cannot fly. To people I bring luck, and to some people, riches. The boy at my end does whatever he wishes. What am I?
Two guards were on duty outside a barracks. One faced up the road to watch for anyone approaching from the North. The other looked down the road to see if anyone approached from the South. Suddenly one of them said to the other, "Why are you smiling?"
John speaks the truth only once a day in a week. Below are a few hints for you:
First: Days are Sunday, Monday and so on.
Second: One day he says, "I lie on Monday and Tuesday".
Third: On the next day, he says, "Today is either Thursday, Saturday or Sunday".
Fourth: On the next day, he says, "I lie on Wednesday and Friday".
Can you identify the day on which he speaks the truth?
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.
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.