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?
A worker is to perform work for you for seven straight days. In return for his work, you will pay him 1/7th of a bar of gold per day. The worker requires a daily payment of 1/7th of the bar of gold. What and where are the fewest number of cuts to the bar of gold that will allow you to pay him 1/7th each day?
A dying old man wants to divide his entire land between his only two sons. Since his only wish is to treat them as equal as both of them have been too good to him, he wants to divide his land equally between them. The problem is that the land is significantly irregular in shape and thus there is no choice of cutting them into two equal halves.
Can you help him divide the land in a manner that both of his sons will be happy?
A famous swimmer can swim downstream in a lake in exactly 40 minutes with the lake current.
He can swim upstream in that lake in exactly 60 minutes against the lake current.
The length of the lake is 2 km.
How long he can cover the distance of one side at a still lake with no current?
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.