A boy was at a carnival and went to a booth where a man said to the boy, "If I write your exact weight on this piece of paper then you have to give me $50, but if I cannot, I will pay you $50." The boy looked around and saw no scale so he agrees, thinking no matter what the carny writes he'll just say he weighs more or less. In the end the boy ended up paying the man $50. How did the man win the bet?
An octopus has 8 legs. A hippogriff has 6 legs and 2 pairs of wings. A sphinx has 6 legs and one pair of wings. Now we have all 3 kinds and a total of 18 insects in a cage. We have a total of 118 legs and 20 pairs of wings. How many insects do we have of each kind?
Two natural numbers have a sum of less than 100 and are greater than one.
John knows the product of the numbers and Jacob knows the sum of numbers.
The following conversation takes place between them:
John: 'I am not aware of those numbers.'
Jacob: 'I knew you wouldn't be. I am not aware myself.'
John: 'Now I know them!'
Jacob: 'Now I know them, too!'
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.
