Three men in a cafe order a meal the total cost of which is $15. They each contribute $5. The waiter takes the money to the chef who recognises the three as friends and asks the waiter to return $5 to the men.
The waiter is not only poor at mathematics but dishonest and instead of going to the trouble of splitting the $5 between the three he simply gives them $1 each and pockets the remaining $2 for himself.
Now, each of the men effectively paid $4, the total paid is therefore $12. Add the $2 in the waiters pocket and this comes to $14. Where has the other $1 gone from the original $15?
After teaching his class all about Roman numerals (X = 10, IX=9 and so on) the teacher asked his class to draw a single continuous line and turn IX into 6. The teacher's only stipulation was that the pen could not be lifted from the paper until the line was complete.
A pet show was happening in my locality. I went down along with my kids. In that show, I noticed that all except two of the entries were cats. All except two were dogs and all except two were Monkeys.
Can you find out how many of each animals were present in that pet show?
If you paint a brown house white it will become a white house. If the stoplight changes from red to green, then the light is green. So, if you throw a white shirt into the Red Sea, what will it become?
You have 1023 apples and 10 bags. You have to distribute these apples in these 10 bags in any way you choose. But when I ask for a certain number of apples you have to give them in terms of bags without transferring the apples from other bags. How do you distribute the apples?
A detective visits his friend John just to discover that John's neighbour Dr Jacob was murdered. Dr Jacob, who is a mathematician wrote the murderer's name in a code word "Hcqtfz". There were five suspects
1. Ajit
2. Pankaj
3. Ganpat
4. Deenu
5. Hariya
The Detective was instantly able to find the murderer.
Can you?
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.