A man has to get a fox, a chicken, and a sack of corn across a river.
He has a rowboat, and it can only carry him and one other thing.
If the fox and the chicken are left together, the fox will eat the chicken.
If the chicken and the corn are left together, the chicken will eat the corn.
You are trapped in a room with two doors. One leads to certain death and the other leads to freedom. You don't know which is which.
There are two robots guarding the doors. They will let you choose one door but upon doing so you must go through it.
You can, however, ask one robot one question. The problem is one robot always tells the truth, the other always lies and you don't know which is which.
What is the question you ask?
15 caves are arranged in a circle at the temple of doom. One of these caves has the treasure of gems and wealth. Each day the treasure keepers can move the treasure to an adjacent cave or can keep it in the same cave. Every day two treasure seekers visit the place and have enough time to enter any two caves of their choice.
How do the treasure seekers ensure that they find the treasure in the minimum number of possible days?
A bag contains 64 balls of eight different colours. There are eight of each colour (including red). What is the least number you would have to pick, without looking, to be sure of selecting 3 red balls?
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.