A river should be crossed by a father, a mother and their two sons and two daughters.
There are some rules that should be followed while crossing the river. There can be only two people in the raft while crossing. The daughters cannot be with their father unless there is the presence of the mother. The sons cannot be with their mothers unless the father is present. Unless the guard is on the board, the criminals cannot be with any of the family members. Only the adults like the father, the guard, and the mother knows to use the raft.
I ask Joseph to pick any 5 cards out of a deck with no Jokers.
He can inspect then shuffle the deck before picking any five cards. He picks out 5 cards then hands them to me (Jack can't see any of this). I look at the cards and I pick 1 card out and give it back to Joseph. I then arrange the other four cards in a special way, and give those 4 cards all face down, and in a neat pile, to Jack.
Jack looks at the 4 cards i gave him, and says out loud which card Joseph is holding (suit and number). How?
The solution uses pure logic, not sleight of hand. All Jack needs to know is the order of the cards and what is on their face, nothing more.
I can sizzle like bacon,
I am made with an egg,
I have plenty of backbone, but lack a good leg,
I peel layers like onions, but still remain whole,
I can be long, like a flagpole, yet fit in a hole.
A man was gazing through the window of the 23rd floor of the building. He suddenly opened the window and jumped on the other side of the window. On landing on the floor, there was not a sheer mark of injury on him.
How can that be possible if he did not use any kind of parachute and did not land on a soft surface?
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.
