A chess tournament is taking place on knock-out terms (the one who loses the match is out of the game).
(a) If 10 matches are played in total, how many players participated?
(b) If 20 players took part in the tournament, how many matches were played?
John and Jill are madly in love with each other. To remind Jill of his pure love, John wants to send her a ring by post but in their country where burglary is quite prominent, any package that is not locked comes under the risk of being stolen for the contents.
John and Jill possess many padlocks but neither one of them has the other key.
Can you find a way John can send the ring to Jill safely?
James Bond is caught up in a mysterious scenario where the evil villain has him blindfolded. He somehow breaks through the handcuffs but is unable to get the blindfold off. Upon searching, he comes across a bow and 3 arrows. He can hear the villain speak, and thus tries to take a shot at him. He launches the first arrow, it misses the villain. He then launches the second arrow and it misses by a greater margin.
What is the probability that this third shot our James bond takes will be worse than the second shot?
John was writing his first book. After saving the document, he locked his laptop with a password and mentioned some phrases for the hint box.
A friend of his tried opening his laptop but found out that it was password protected. Following is the hint that appeared.
1 mobile 3 books 2 roars 1 night 4 balls 2 lighters 1 ghost 1 hat 3 watches.
I inserted a coin in a bottle and closed its mouth with the help of a cork. Now, I was able to take the coin out from the bottle without taking out the cork or breaking the bottle. Can you tell me how I did it?
John is pretty weird. He likes toffees but hates chocolates. He loves books but never reads. He likes to build his troops in an online game but does not proceed with the war. He likes to go swimming but is afraid of water.
Seeking this behaviour, can you tell whether he likes balloons and parties?
One day, I thought of ways that can be used for creating a palindrome. So I decided that I will turn into a larger number by adding the reversed digits to the original number and keep doing it till I finally obtained a palindrome.
I am not sure if this process will always result in a palindrome eventually but I was able to produce a four-digit palindrome. Can you guess my starting number?
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.