Can you place six X (crosses) in below board without making three in a row in any way ?

There are hundred red gems and hundred blue gems. The blue gems are priceless while the red gems equal wastage. You have two sacks one labeled Heads and the other Tails. You have to distribute the gems as you want in the two sacks. Then a coin will be flipped and you will be asked to pick up a gem randomly from the corresponding sacks.

How will you distribute the gems between the sacks so that the odds of picking a Blue gem are maximum?

I want to fill my bucket using both cold and hot water.
I have two taps for both cold and hot water. The hot water tap fills the bucket in exact 6 hours and the cold water tap fills the bucket in exact 4 hours.
I turn both of them simultaneously but I forgot to turn off another tap which removes the water out of the bucket. This tap can empty the bucket in 12 hours.

How Long will it take to fill the bucket?

Christina, Allison and Lena are 3 daughters of John a well-known Mathematician, When I asked John the age of their daughters. He replied "The current age of her daughters is prime. Also, the difference between their ages is also prime."

How old are the daughters?

Outside a massage parlour, there is a board that reads
"I only massage those who do not massage themselves."

Reading the above statement, does the masseur massage himself?

A beggar on the street can make one cigarette out of every 6 cigarette butts he finds. After one whole day of searching and checking public ashtrays the beggar finds a total of 72 cigarette butts. How many cigarettes can he make and smoke from the butts he found?

Jack was having a candle light dinner with his girlfriend. Suddenly a cold gush of wind entered through the open window and three of the ten candles were extinguished. Assuming that none of the other candles were extinguished.

How many candles are they left with in the end ?

A small town is visited by an ice-cream truck every day. On the first day of February, the truck visits as usual and 5 children, one from each of the first 5 houses on the street buys an ice cream that is of the different flavor from each other along with a completely different topping.

Go through the details below and find out which child lives in which house and bought which ice-cream flavor with which topping:

1. Jim lives between the child who bought the Raspberry topping and the child who bought mango ice cream.

2. Joyce, whose house has an even number, bought the cherry topping. Nancy does not live next to Joyce.

3. The blackcurrant ice cream had no topping.

4. The child who lives in house number 2 had the butterscotch ice cream. The child in house number 3 did not have chocolate ice cream.

5. Mike had banana ice cream. He hates banana cherry.

6. The child who had the cashew topping lives in house number 5. Dustin does not live in house number 4.

Please note that the odd numbered houses and the even numbered houses are located on the exactly opposite sides of the street.

Take away my first letter, then take away my second letter. Then take away the rest of my letters, yet I remain the same. What am I?

Two friends were stuck in a cottage. They had nothing to do and thus they started playing cards. Suddenly the power went off and Friend 1 inverted the position of 15 cards in the normal deck of 52 cards and shuffled it. Now he asked Friend 2 to divide the cards into two piles (need not be equal) with equal number of cards facing up. The room was quite dark and Friend 2 could not see the cards. He thinks for a while and then divides the cards in two piles.

On checking, the count of cards facing up is same in both the piles. How could Friend 2 have done it ?