A thief is convicted in Mexico. He gets the death penalty. The judge allows him to say the last sentence to determine how the penalty will be carried out. If the thief lies, he will be hanged, if he speaks the truth he will be beheaded. The thief tells the last sentence and to everybody's surprise some minutes later he is set free because the judge cannot determine his penalty. What did the thief say?
Three people check into a hotel. They pay $60 for the rent of the room. After they check-in, the manager realize that the rent for the room is $55. So, he gives $5 to the bellboy and asks him to give it to them. The bellboy thinks that it will be difficult for the three people to share $5 among them and seeking the personal benefit, he pockets $2 and gives the remaining $3 to them.
Now, each person paid $20 and got back $1. In this manner, each of them paid just $19 which totals to the amount of $57. The bellboy has $2 with him and adding them, we get $59. So where is the remaining $1?
There are two guys standing face to face in a room. On a wall, there is a clock. One of those is a prophet. He tells the other guy that he will be stabbed in the back in five minutes.
Shocked to hear that, the other guy stares at the clock. Just after the five minutes, he is stabbed on the back. Can you tell what happened?
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.
On a bright sunny day, two fathers took their son fishing in the lake. Each man and son were able to catch one fish. When they returned to their camp, there were only three fishes in the basket. What happened?
PS: None of the fish were eaten, lost, or thrown back.
Suppose you are sitting in an interview and the interviewee asks you an aptitude question.
You have three buckets with a capacity of 4 litres, 8 litres and 10 litres and you have a large tank of water. Now you have to measure 3 litres of water precisely using those buckets. How will you do it?
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.