What is a word made up of 4 letters, yet is also made up of 3. Sometimes is written with 9 letters, and then with 4. Rarely consists of 6, and never is written with 5.
A man stands on one side of a river, his dog on the other. The man calls his dog, who immediately crosses the river without getting wet and without using a bridge or a boat. How did the dog do it?
In a rainy season, one day 3 huge ladies walked under a normal-sized umbrella.
The umbrella is not huge enough to accommodate all 3 ladies yet not a single lady got wet. Why?
You have a basket containing ten apples. You have ten friends, who each desire an apple. You give each of your friends one apple.
Now all your friends have one apple each, yet there is an apple remaining in the basket.
How?
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.
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.