The captain of a ship is telling you an interesting story and then poses a question. He says, “I have travelled the oceans far and wide. One time, two of my sailors were standing on opposite sides of the ship. One was looking west and the other one east. And at the same time, they could see each other clearly. Can you tell me how that was possible?â€
A woman lives in a Tall building thirty-six floors high and served by several elevators which stop at each floor going up and down. Each morning she leaves her apartment and goes to one of the elevators. Whichever one she takes is three times more likely to be going up than down. Why?
In a secret society, a buried chamber can be accessed only via a secret password. The password is seven characters long and comprises of just letters and numbers.
You find a code that can help you in cracking the password. The code says "You force heaven to be empty".
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.
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.