You are a prisoner sentenced to death. The Emperor offers you a chance to live by playing a simple game. He gives you 50 black marbles, 50 white marbles, and 2 empty bowls. He then says, 'Divide these 100 marbles into these 2 bowls. You can divide them any way you like as long as you use all the marbles. Then I will blindfold you and mix the bowls around. You then can choose one bowl and remove ONE marble. If the marble is WHITE you will live, but if the marble is BLACK... you will die.'
How do you divide the marbles up so that you have the greatest probability of choosing a WHITE marble?
Two friends were stuck in a cottage. They had nothing to do and thus they started playing cards. Suddenly the power went off and Friend 1 inverted the position of 15 cards in the normal deck of 52 cards and shuffled it. Now he asked Friend 2 to divide the cards into two piles (need not be equal) with equal number of cards facing up. The room was quite dark and Friend 2 could not see the cards. He thinks for a while and then divides the cards in two piles.
On checking, the count of cards facing up is same in both the piles. How could Friend 2 have done it ?
There were three women in all the swimming costumes!
One was happy and the other two were sad!
The happy one was crying and the sad ones were smiling.
Why was this?
In a box, there is a jumble of 7 red balls, 6 blue balls, 5 green balls, and 4 yellow balls. What is the minimum number of balls, will you have to pick up so that you have at least 4 balls of the same colour?
John, Jack and Jill are in a desert. John doesn't like Jill and hence decides to murder him. He poisons the water supply of Jill. Since it is a desert area, Jill must drink or he will die of thirst.
Jack does not know of the actions of John and also decides to murder Jill. To succeed in his ill motives, he removes the water supply of Jill so he dies of thirst.
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.