Birbal was jester, counsellor, and fool to the great Moghul emperor, Akbar.
The villagers loved to talk of Birbal's wisdom and cleverness,
and the emperor loved to try to outsmart him.
One day Akbar (emperor) drew a line across the floor.
"Birbal," he ordered, "you must make this line shorter, but you cannot erase any bit of it."
Everyone present thought the emperor had finally outsmarted Birbal.
It was clearly an impossible task.
Yet within moments the emperor and everyone else present had to agree that Birbal had made the line shorter without erasing any of it.
How could this be?

My friends called me Iron59 because my parents are a chemist and a mathematician. What is my real name?

In a secret society, a buried chamber can be accessed only via a secret password. The password is seven characters long and comprises of just letters and numbers.

You find a code that can help you in cracking the password. The code says "You force heaven to be empty".

Can you deduce the password from that?

What has many teeth, but cannot bite?

Use the digits from 1 up to 9 and make 100.

Follow the rules.
=> Each digit should be used only once.
=> You can only use addition.
=> For making a number, two single digits can be combined (for example, 4 and 2 can be combined to form 42 or 24)
=> A fraction can also be made by combining the two single digits (for example, 4 and 2 can be combined to form 4/2 or 2/4)

Question: how can we do this?

A monk has a very specific ritual for climbing up the steps to the temple. First, he climbs up to the middle step and meditates for 1 minute. Then he climbs up 8 steps and faces east until he hears a bird singing. Then he walks down 12 steps and picks up a pebble. He takes one step up and tosses the pebble over his left shoulder. Now, he walks up the remaining steps three at a time which only takes him 9 paces. How many steps are there?

Do you know who was buried in John's tomb?

Why is 6 afraid of 7?

Can you discover the missing number in this series?

37, 10, 82
29, 11, 47
96, 15, 87
42, ?, 15

In two decks of cards, what is the least amount of cards you must take to be *guaranteed* at least one four-of-a-kind?