A girl says this to her best friend: “I was born in 1955, and I celebrated my 17th birthday last weekend.†Her best friend thinks she’s lying, but she’s actually correct. How is that possible?
If a zookeeper had 100 pairs of animals in her zoo, and two pairs of babies are born for each one of the original animals, then (sadly) 23 animals don’t survive, how many animals do you have left in total?
A boy collects white seashells from the sea and brings them home every night. When he has enough of them, he decides to sell them to a trader.
The trader is ready to buy the shells and he asks the boy about the quantity. At this, the boy starts calculating. He has a giant box that contains 3 mini boxes. Two of them have another mini box inside. If the giant box can hold 50 shells, how many brown shells can he sell to the trader?
A man has a barrel filled with oil that weighs 100 pounds, and then he puts something into it. Now the barrel weighs less than 100 pounds. What did he put in the barrel?
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.