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?
While going to your grandmother's house, you counted Twenty houses on the right side. While returning back to your home, you counted Twenty houses on the left side.
How many houses are there between your home and your grandmother's home?
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?
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.
