10 people came into a hotel with 9 rooms and each guest wanted his own room. The bellboy solved this problem.
He asked the tenth guest to wait for a little with the first guest in room number 1. So in the first room, there were two people. The bellboy took the third guest to room number 2, the fourth to number 3, ..., and the ninth guest to room number 8. Then he returned to room number 1 and took the tenth guest to room number 9, still vacant.
How can everybody have his own room?
A man is surviving on an island along with his friend. They have been starving for four days for food. Suddenly, they find a fisherman. The friend goes with the fisherman in order to catch the fish (if they can find any).
The fisherman returns after some time but he is alone and has some salmon that he had prepared. When asked, the fisherman tells him that his best friend fell off the boat and drowned in the water. Starving for so long, he eats the meal while crying for his friend.
After being rescued, he goes to a diner and orders salmon. When he eats his meal, he jumps and commits suicide. Why did he do it?
A man died, leaving $10,000,000 for his widow, 5 sons and 4 daughters. Each daughter received an equal amount, each son received twice as much as a daughter, and the widow received three times as much as a son.
Suppose we lay down two cups in front of you. One of the cups is filled with tea and the other one with coffee. Now we ask you to take a spoonful of tea and mix it with the coffee. At this moment, the coffee cup has a mixture of tea and coffee. You have to take that mixture (spoonful) and add it back to the tea.
Can you now tell if the cup of coffee has more tea or the cup of tea has more coffee?
A man is trapped in a room. The room has only two possible exits doors. Through the first door there is a room constructed from magnifying glass. The blazing hot sun instantly fries anything or anyone that enters. Through the second door there is a fire-breathing dragon. How does the man escape?
You have two bottles of pills marked with labels A and B. The pills are identical. The doctor has asked you to take one A pill and one B pill daily. You cant take more or less than that.
While taking out the pills one day, you took out one pill from A and by mistake took out two from B. You have no idea which pill is which now.
You cant throw away the expensive pills. What will you do now?
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.