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.
While house hunting in London, I came across a very good leasehold property Discussing the lease the landlady told me:
'The property was originally on a 99 years lease and two-thirds of the time passed is equal to four-fifths of the time to come. Now work it out for yourself and see how many years are to go!
An express train takes 3 seconds to enter the tunnel which is 1 km long.
If it is travelling at 120 km an hour, how long will it take to pass completely through the tunnel?
You are provided with a grid (as shown in the picture). Can you fill the squares with numbers 1-8 in a manner that none of the two consecutive numbers are placed next to each other in any direction (vertically, horizontally or diagonally?)
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.