What number should come in place of the question mark below?

A chess tournament is taking place on knock-out terms (the one who loses the match is out of the game).
(a) If 10 matches are played in total, how many players participated?
(b) If 20 players took part in the tournament, how many matches were played?

If 1+9+8=1, what is 2+8+9?

For an extra income, John decided to work at a Hotel for one hour daily. The manager offers him that they will pay him $11 after every 11 days.
However, John offered a different proposition to the manager. The offers stand as:
He will be paid just a penny on his first day.
Two pence will be paid on the second day,
Four pence will be paid on the third day.
And so on till the 11th day.

Should the Hotel manager accept his offer?

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?"

How did he know his companion was smiling?

There is a bag which have 21 blue balls and 23 red balls. You also have 22 red balls outside the bag. Randomly remove two balls from the bag. * If they are of different colors, put the blue one back in the bag. * If they are the same colour, take them out and put a red ball back in the bag. Repeat this until only one ball remains in the bag. What is the color of the sole ball left in the bag ?

You have two bottles of pills marked with labels A and B. The pills are identical. The doctor has asked you to take one A pill and one B pill daily. You cant take more or less than that.

While taking out the pills one day, you took out one pill from A and by mistake took out two from B. You have no idea which pill is which now.

You cant throw away the expensive pills. What will you do now?

In order to complete the racing competition, the Mexico racetrack has to submit its top and the most famous three horses to win the competition. Due to an electrical storm, all the records are cleared and no one knows which horse holds the record. They all look identical and it becomes even more difficult to differentiate the horses. There are 25 horses in the Mexico racetrack. But there can be only five horses at a time on the track. What will the least number of races that can be conducted to find out the three fastest horses?

Can you find the missing letter in the sequence?
S - T - I - L - ? - T - F - Y - C

John is looking at Jenifer, but Jenifer is looking at Jacob. John is married, but Jacob is not.

Is a married person looking at an unmarried person ?