A man has a barrel filled with oil that weighs 100 pounds, and then he puts something into it. Now the barrel weighs less than 100 pounds. What did he put in the barrel?
You have two strings whose only known property is that when you light one end of either string it takes exactly one hour to burn. The rate at which the strings will burn is completely random and each string is different.
In the image below, you can see two glasses and two matchsticks.You need to move four matchsticks in such a manner that the crosses come inside the glasses. Note: you cannot move the crossed.
If I put in one canary per cage, I have one bird too many. If I put in two canaries per cage, I have one cage too many. How many cages and canaries do I have?
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.