After a heavy Thanksgiving meal, the night watchman went to work. In the morning, he told his boss he had dreamed that a saboteur planted a bomb in the factory and that he felt it was a warning. The boss promptly fired him. Worker confused, Why boss fire him?
A man plots the murder of his wife. His plan is full proof. Nobody saw them leaving their house. He stabbed her with a knife while driving. She died on the spot. He threw her body in a valley. He threw the knife carefully wiping his finger prints on a random garbage bin. Then he went back to his home and no one was watching him this time as well.
After an hour, he was called by the local police department who informed him that his wife was murdered. They asked him to reach the scene of crime immediately. But as soon as he arrived at the crime scene, he was arrested by them.
How did the police know that he himself is the murderer?
You are in a room that has three switches and a closed door. The switches control three light bulbs on the other side of the door. Once you open the door, you may never touch the switches again. How can you definitively tell which switch is connected to each of the light bulbs?
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.