You have two strings whose only known property is that when you light one end of either string it takes exactly one hour to burn. The rate at which the strings will burn is completely random and each string is different.
John and Jenni are a married couple. They have two kids, one of them is a girl. Assume safely that the probability of each gender is 1/2.
What is the probability that the other kid is also a girl?
Usually, a boxing match consists of twelve rounds. In a particular friendly match between two heavyweights, the match was finished in the ninth round itself as one of the boxers knocked out the other one.
But, in that fight, no man threw even a single punch.
How many people must be gathered together in a room, before you can be certain that there is a greater than 50/50 chance that at least two of them have the same birthday?
A man hijacks an aeroplane transporting both passengers(8 of them) and valuable cargo. After taking the cargo, the man demands nine parachutes, puts one of them on, and jumps, leaving the other eight behind. Why did he want eight?
A frog is at the bottom of a 30-meter well. Each day he summons enough energy for one 3-meter leap up the well. Exhausted, he then hangs there for the rest of the day. At night, while he is asleep, he slips 2 meters backwards. How many days does it take him to escape from the well?
You are an expert on paranormal activity and have been hired to locate a spirit haunting an old resort hotel. Strong signs indicate that the spirit lies behind one of four doors. The inscriptions on each door read as follows:
Door A: It's behind B or C
Door B: Its behind A or D
Door C: It's in here
Door D: It's not in here
Your psychic powers have told you three of the inscriptions are false, and one is true. Behind which door will you find the spirit?
Find a 9-digit number, which you will gradually round off starting with units, then tenth, hundred etc., until you get to the last numeral, which you do not round off. The rounding alternates (up, down, up ...). After rounding off 8 times, the final number is 500000000. The original number is commensurable by 6 and 7, all the numbers from 1 to 9 are used, and after rounding four times the sum of the not-rounded numerals equals 24.
In 2011, people playing Foldit, an online puzzle game about protein folding, resolved the structure of an enzyme that causes an Aids-like disease in monkeys. Researchers had been working on the problem for 13 years. The gamers solved it in three weeks.
