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?
A bag contains 64 balls of eight different colours. There are eight of each colour (including red). What is the least number you would have to pick, without looking, to be sure of selecting 3 red balls?
If two fifty-foot ropes are suspended from a forty-foot ceiling that is twenty feet apart, how much rope will you be able to steal if you have a knife?
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.
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.
