What 8 letter word can have a letter taken away and it still makes a word. Take another letter away and it still makes a word. Keep on doing that until you have one letter left. What is the word?

A sea diver is a real show-off. He showed everyone that he can hold his breath underwater for 15 minutes.

I went to the diver and told him that I can be underwater for double the time i.e 30 minutes.
He responded that he will give me 100$ if I would be able to do it. I won 100$.

What did I do?

A swan sits at the center of a perfectly circular lake. At an edge of the lake stands a ravenous monster waiting to devour the swan. The monster can not enter the water, but it will run around the circumference of the lake to try to catch the swan as soon as it reaches the shore. The monster moves at 4 times the speed of the swan, and it will always move in the direction along the shore that brings it closer to the swan the quickest. Both the swan and the the monster can change directions in an instant.
The swan knows that if it can reach the lake's shore without the monster right on top of it, it can instantly escape into the surrounding forest.

How can the swan successfully escape?

I have a big mouth and I am also quite loud! I am NOT a gossip but I do get involved with everyone's dirty business.

John has played 50 ODI's and his average is 50. How many runs should he score in his 51st ODI, so that his average score jumps to 51?

Every words stands for unique digit that makes the arithmetic equation true

SEVEN + SEVEN + SIX = TWENTY.

What are the digits ?

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 research team went to a village somewhere between the jungles of Africa. Luckily for them, they reached the day when quite an interesting custom was to be performed. The custom was performed once a year as they confirmed and was performed in order to collect the taxes from every male of the region.

The taxes were to be paid in the form of grains. Everyone must pay pounds of grain equaling his respective age. This means a 20-year-old will have to pay 20 pounds of grain and a 30-year-old will pay 30 pounds of grain and so on.

The chief who collects the tax has 7 weights and a large 2-pan scale to weigh. But there is another custom that the chief can weigh only three of the seven weights.

Can you find out the weights of the seven weights? Also, what is the maximum age of the man that can be weighed for the payment of taxes?

There are two insects on a tile. Insect X is sitting on one side of the tile (point A) and Insect Y is sitting opposite on the other side of the tile (point B). Now both of them decide to change their position and thus X starts crawling to point B and Y starts crawling to point A. When they meet and pass each other in between, X takes 20 seconds to reach B and Y takes just 5 seconds to reach A.

Can you calculate the total time each of the insects took to change their positions?

I am a five-letter word under you,
Remove the first letter and I am above you,
Remove the second as well and I am around you.

Who am I?