Three men in a cafe order a meal the total cost of which is $15. They each contribute $5. The waiter takes the money to the chef who recognises the three as friends and asks the waiter to return $5 to the men.
The waiter is not only poor at mathematics but dishonest and instead of going to the trouble of splitting the $5 between the three he simply gives them $1 each and pockets the remaining $2 for himself.
Now, each of the men effectively paid $4, the total paid is therefore $12. Add the $2 in the waiters pocket and this comes to $14. Where has the other $1 gone from the original $15?
A thief enters a store and threatens the clerk, forcing her to open the safe. The clerk says, “The code for the safe is different every day, and if you hurt me you’ll never get the code.†But the thief manages to guess the code on his own. How did he do it?
John was running from 40 thieves. John has got 3 gold boxes which weigh as 4kg, 2kg, and 1kg respectively. A witty man asked John to stay with him for seven days in exchange for 1kg gold per day. John needs to stay there for seven days and also do not want to give the witty man any advance. How can John pay for his seven days stay?
The great emperor Akbar once ruled India. He was well known for his intelligence. But along with that, he was known for the Nine Gems in his court. One of the nine gems was Birbal, a quick witted and extremely intelligent man. The stories of his wit were widely popular.
Once a king ruling in a distant land heard of Birbal. To check his wit, he sent an invitation and called him to visit his land. Akbar allowed Birbal to go and he took off on the journey.
Upon reaching that kings kingdom, he was welcomed with flowers. He was then escorted to the palace of the king. Upon entering the palace, Birbal found that there were six people sitting in front of him adorning the same robe. They were also lookalike and it was hard to judge who the real king was.
After a couple of minutes, Birbal approached one of them and bowed in front of him greeting him.
That was the real king. How did Birbal know who was the real king ?
John and Jill are madly in love with each other. To remind Jill of his pure love, John wants to send her a ring by post but in their country where burglary is quite prominent, any package that is not locked comes under the risk of being stolen for the contents.
John and Jill possess many padlocks but neither one of them has the other key.
Can you find a way John can send the ring to Jill safely?
The day before the 1996 U.S. presidential election, the NYT Crossword contained the clue “Lead story in tomorrow’s newspaper,” the puzzle was built so that both electoral outcomes were correct answers, requiring 7 other clues to have dual responses.
