I am the black child of a white father, a wingless bird, flying even to the clouds of heaven. I give birth to tears of mourning in pupils that meet me, even though there is no cause for grief, and at once on my birth, I am dissolved into air. What am I?

I ask Joseph to pick any 5 cards out of a deck with no Jokers.

He can inspect then shuffle the deck before picking any five cards. He picks out 5 cards then hands them to me (Jack can't see any of this). I look at the cards and I pick 1 card out and give it back to Joseph. I then arrange the other four cards in a special way, and give those 4 cards all face down, and in a neat pile, to Jack.

Jack looks at the 4 cards i gave him, and says out loud which card Joseph is holding (suit and number). How?

The solution uses pure logic, not sleight of hand. All Jack needs to know is the order of the cards and what is on their face, nothing more.

You are on your way to visit your Friend, who lives at the end of the hill. It is his birthday, and you want to give him the cakes you have made. Between your house and his house, you have to cross 5 bridges, and as it goes in the land of make believe, there is a troll under every bridge! Each troll, quite rightly, insists that you pay a troll toll. Before you can cross their bridge, you have to give them half of the cakes you are carrying, but as they are kind trolls, they each give you back a single cake. How many cakes do you have to leave home to make sure that you arrive at a friend's house with exactly two

500 women soldiers are arranged in an array of ten rows and fifty columns in accordance with their respective heights. Now, the tallest woman from each row is asked to move out in the front. From them, the shortest one is labelled as Alpha. They are then asked to resume their original position.

Now, the shortest woman in each column is asked to come out in front. The tallest among them is labelled as Beta.

Can you find out if Alpha will be taller or Beta?

You are in a room with no metal objects except for two iron rods. Only one of them is a magnet.
How can you identify which one is a magnet?

Jack have ten pairs of black socks, eight pairs of white socks and seven pairs of green socks. Everything is mixed in a draw. As there is no light he were not able to identify the colour of the socks. How many of the socks did he want to take to match one pair

By including only four matchsticks in below picture, you have to make "Four Triangles And Two Squares"

Solve the counting riddle by identifying the number of triangles in the given picture.

In a science lab, a petri dish hosts a healthy colony of yeast for an experiment. Now every minute, all the yeast cells divide into two. At noon, there was just a single cell of yeast and at 1:22, the Petri dish was half full. Can you calculate when the dish will be full of yeast?

The answer I give is yes, but what I mean is no. What was the question?