Your job is to measure 45 minutes if you have only two cords and matches to light the cords.

1. The two cords are twisted from various materials, so their different segments can burn at different rates.
2. Each cord burns from end to end in exactly one hour.

Describe your way of measuring the 45 minutes.

In front of you, there are 9 coins. They all look absolutely identical, but one of the coins is fake. However, you know that the fake coin is lighter than the rest, and in front of you is a balance scale. What is the least number of weightings you can use to find the counterfeit coin?

You are a cab driver who pools passengers. You pick 3 people from a destination and drop 1 after an hour. 2 people climb aboard at the same time and you drop 3 at the next destination. After some time, you pick 2 passengers only to drop 1 after a short distance where 3 more passengers climb up the cab. You leave the rest of the passengers one by one to their destination and then come back home.

Can you tell the eye color of the cab driver?

A swan sits at the center of a perfectly circular lake. At an edge of the lake stands a ravenous monster waiting to devour the swan. The monster can not enter the water, but it will run around the circumference of the lake to try to catch the swan as soon as it reaches the shore. The monster moves at 4 times the speed of the swan, and it will always move in the direction along the shore that brings it closer to the swan the quickest. Both the swan and the the monster can change directions in an instant.
The swan knows that if it can reach the lake's shore without the monster right on top of it, it can instantly escape into the surrounding forest.

How can the swan successfully escape?

Solve the alphametic puzzle by replacing the alphabet with the number.

S T O R M +
S O L E S
=========
T O W E L
=========

Find the next number in the series

12, 20, 40, 72, 116, 172 ?

Today is John's birthday.
A year ago, John had five candles and he lit all the candles except the one at the last.
Now he is going to light all the candles.

How old is John Today?

(He is not five today.....)

In a fruit store, there was a unique weighing machine that was made to weigh only cherries and strawberries as they were priced the same.

Other fruits like watermelons or mango had different machines as they were expensive.

A man successfully buys watermelons at the price of cherries. How?

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?

If we tell you that there is a relation between the numbers and letters in the given figure, can you analyze it and find the missing letter in the last box?