Find a 9-digit number, which you will gradually round off starting with units, then tenth, hundred etc., until you get to the last numeral, which you do not round off. The rounding alternates (up, down, up ...). After rounding off 8 times, the final number is 500000000. The original number is commensurable by 6 and 7, all the numbers from 1 to 9 are used, and after rounding four times the sum of the not rounded numerals equals 24.
There is a box in which distinct numbered balls have been kept. You have to pick two balls randomly from the lot.
If someone is offering you a 2 to 1 odds that the numbers will be relatively prime, for example
If the balls you picked had the numbers 6 and 13, you lose $1.
If the balls you picked had the numbers 5 and 25, you win $2.
There are three boxes of different sizes with three cupcakes inside each of the boxes in Christina's kitchen. At night her daughter wakes up and goes to the kitchen. She opens a box and eats all three cakes.
But in the morning Christina finds out that each box still had three cupcakes. How?
At a bar, three friends, Mr Green, Mr Red and Mr Blue, were having a drink. One man was wearing a red suit; one a green suit; and the other a blue suit. 'Have you noticed,' said the man in the blue suit, 'that although our suits have colours corresponding to our names, not one of us is wearing a suit that matches our own names?' Mr Red looked at the other two and said, 'You're absolutely correct. What colour suit is each man wearing?
Alex is stranded on an island covered in forest.
One day, when the wind is blowing from the west, lightning strikes the west end of the island and sets fire to the forest. The fire is very violent, burning everything in its path, and without intervention the fire will burn the whole island, killing the man in the process.
There are cliffs around the island, so he cannot jump off.
How can the Alex survive the fire? (There are no buckets or any other means to put out the fire)
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.
