Imagine a box with two cogwheels, one big with 24 teeth and one small with 8 teeth. The big one is firmly attached to the center of the box which means it does not turn or move while the small one rotates around the big one.
How many times do you think that the smaller wheel will turn compared to the box when it turns once around the big one?
I ask Joseph to pick any 5 cards out of a deck with no Jokers.
He can inspect then shuffle the deck before picking any five cards. He picks out 5 cards then hands them to me (Jack can't see any of this). I look at the cards and I pick 1 card out and give it back to Joseph. I then arrange the other four cards in a special way, and give those 4 cards all face down, and in a neat pile, to Jack.
Jack looks at the 4 cards i gave him, and says out loud which card Joseph is holding (suit and number). How?
The solution uses pure logic, not sleight of hand. All Jack needs to know is the order of the cards and what is on their face, nothing more.
I went to the bookshop and spent one-half of the money that was in my purse.
When I came out, I found that I had as many cents as I had dollars and half as many dollars as I had cents when I went in. Find the money in my purse when I entered the store.
You’re out on the water and see a boat filled with people. You look away for a second and look back again, but this time you don’t see a single person on the boat. Why? Hint: The boat did not sink.
The day before the 1996 U.S. presidential election, the NYT Crossword contained the clue “Lead story in tomorrow’s newspaper,” the puzzle was built so that both electoral outcomes were correct answers, requiring 7 other clues to have dual responses.