What is the word or phrase?

John gave half of the apples he had plus one more to Jacob. He gave half of the remaining ones plus one more to James. Now, John was left with just one apple.

Can you find out how many did he have in the beginning?

How do you go from 98 to 720 using just one letter?

Can you replace the X (both small and big x) with the numbers between 1 to 19 such that all the rows of 3 numbers between X (big x) sum to 23?

Irene killed hundreds of people mercilessly and yet the police were not able to put her behind the bars. Why?

You are given four results as below:
1111 = F
2222 = E
3333 = T
Then, can you find out how to code 4444?

In the attached figure, you can see a chessboard and two rooks placed on the chess board. What you have to find is the number of squares that do not contain the rooks. How many are there?

During a secret mission, an agent gave the following code to the higher authorities
AIM DUE OAT TIE MOD

However, the information is in one word only and the rest are fake. To assist the authorities in understanding better, he also sent them a clue, If I tell you any one character of the code, you can easily find out the number of vowels in the codeword.

Can you find out the code word?

You want to boil a two-minute egg. If you only have a three-minute timer (hourglass), a four-minute timer and a five-minute timer, how can you boil the egg for only two minutes?

You walk into a room and see a bed. On the bed, there are two dogs, five cats, a giraffe, six cows, and a goose. There are also three doves flying above the bed. How many legs are on the floor?