While preparing the table for dinner, wife came up with an idea to tease his mathematician husband. She asked her husband to pick nine toothpicks and make ten without breaking any toothpick.
The husband was also smart and did it within seconds. How ?
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 chess tournament is taking place on knock-out terms (the one who loses the match is out of the game).
(a) If 10 matches are played in total, how many players participated?
(b) If 20 players took part in the tournament, how many matches were played?
John and his team plan to rob a safe. They got just one chance to break the code else the local police will be informed. Below are clues:
A) Exactly one number is perfectly placed: 9 8 1
B) Everything is incorrect: 9 2 4
C) Two numbers are part of the code of the safe but are wrongly placed: 0 9 3
D) One number is part of the code of the safe but is wrongly placed: 1 4 7
E) One number is part of the code of the safe but is wrongly placed: 7 8 3
Accidentally, two trains are running in the opposite direction and enter a tunnel that is 200 miles long. A supersonic bird that has fled the lab and taken shelter in the tunnel starts flying from one train towards the other at a speed of 1000 mph. As soon as it reaches the second train, he starts flying back to avoid collision and meets the first train again at the other end. The bird keeps flying to and fro till the trains collide with each other.
What is the total distance that the supersonic bird has traveled till the trains collided?
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.
