These types of puzzles are known as charades. What you have to do is to find two words that are referred to in the first stanza and the second stanza and put them together to form the third word in the third stanza.
Just for example, if my first refers to 'off' and my second refers to 'ice', then my whole will be the 'office'.
My first is present - future's past -
A time in which your lot is cast.
My second is my first of space
Defining people's present place.
My whole describes a lack of site -
A place without length, breadth, or height.
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.
When a clock is observed, the hour hand is at a minute mark and the minutes hand is six minutes ahead of it.
When the clock is observed again after some time, the hour hand is precisely on a different minute mark and the minute hand is seven minutes ahead of it.
Can you calculate how much time has elapsed between the two observations?
The host of a game show, offers the guest a choice of three doors. Behind one is a expensive car, but behind the other two are goats.
After you have chosen one door, he reveals one of the other two doors behind which is a goat (he wouldn't reveal a car).
Now he gives you the chance to switch to the other unrevealed door or stay at your initial choice. You will then get what is behind that door.
You cannot hear the goats from behind the doors, or in any way know which door has the prize.
A man looks at a painting in a museum and says, “Brothers and sisters I have none, but that man’s father is my father’s son.†Who is in the painting?
It can't be seen, can't be felt, can't be heard, and can't be smelt.
It lies behind stars and under hills, And empty holes it fills.
It comes first and follows after, Ends life, and kills laughter.
What is it?
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.