The captain of a ship was telling this interesting story: "We travelled the sea far and wide. At one time, two of my sailors were standing on opposite sides of the ship. One was looking west and the other one east. And at the same time, they could see each other clearly." How can that be possible?
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?
What is a word made up of 4 letters, yet is also made up of 3. Sometimes is written with 9 letters, and then with 4. Rarely consists of 6, and never is written with 5.
You have a thousand Re. 1 coins with you. You have ten bags with you and you can put any number of coins in each of the bags. The condition is that if someone asks you for any amount between 1 and 1000, you must be able to give that amount by just giving the bag (you are not allowed to open the bag and give coins).
There was once a college that offered a class on probability applied to the real world. The class was relatively easy, but there was a catch. There were no homework assignments or tests, but there was a final exam that would have only one question on it. When everyone received the test paper it was a blank sheet of paper with a solitary question on it: 'What is the risk?'.Most students were able to pass, but only one student received 100% for the class! Even stranger was that he only wrote down one word!
What did he write?
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.
