The barber of Town shaves all men living in the town. No man living in the town is allowed to shave himself. The barber lives in that town. Who then shaves the barber of the town?
There is a shop where written:
Buy 1 for $1
10 for $2
100 for $3
I needed 999 and still only paid $3. How could this be financially viable for the shop-keeper?
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?
A dead body is found outside a multi-story multinational company. The case is reported and a homicide detective is called on the crime scene.
He looks at the body and then towards the building. From the position of the body, it is evident that the victim committed suicide. He goes to the first floor of the building and then walks in the direction of the dead body, opens the window and toss a coin in the air.
He goes to second floor and again repeats the process. He keeps doing this till he is done on all the floors. Then he returns back to the floor and tells his team that it is a murder.
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.