Once upon a time, there was a castle on a square island. The entire island was surrounded by a 14m wide trench. The Romans had wanted to invade the castle and had brought a few wooden planks along with them to facilitate themselves in crossing the moat. The planks were however found to be only 13m long.
The Romans still managed to cross the trench. How did they do it?
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. How do you measure 45 minutes?