If two fifty-foot ropes are suspended from a forty-foot ceiling that is twenty feet apart, how much rope will you be able to steal if you have a knife?
Two boys wish to cross a river. The only way to get to the other side is by boat, but that boat can only take one boy at a time. The boat cannot return on its own, there are no ropes or similar tricks, yet both boys manage to cross using the boat.
A boy purchased a book from a bookkeeper and gave him $100.
The cost of the book is $50 but the bookkeeper has no change, so he gets the change from the next shop and returns the boy his $50.
After some time the next shopkeeper came with the $100 note and told the bookkeeper that the note was a fraud, so he took the money back.
An inspection by the superintendent of St. Joseph School was scheduled on the next day. The class teacher Jenifer knew that he would be asking questions from her class and she would have to choose a pupil to answer. To offer a perfect impression over him, the teacher explained certain instructions to the students to maximise the chances of getting correct answer every time.
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.
