A California farmer owns a beautiful pear tree. He supplies the fruit to a nearby grocery store. The store owner calls the farmer to see how much fruit is available for him to buy. The farmer knows the main trunk has 24 branches. Each branch has exactly 12 boughs and each bough has exactly 6 twigs. Since each twig bears one piece of fruit, how many plums will the farmer be able to deliver?
These types of puzzles are known as charades. What you have to do is find two words that are referred to in the first stanza and the second stanza and put them together to form the third word in the third stanza.
Just for example, if my first refers to 'off' and my second refers to 'ice', then my whole will be office.
My first is present - future's past -
A time in which your lot is cast.
My second is my first of space
Defining people's present place.
My whole describes a lack of site -
A place without length, breadth, or height.
A girl has as many brothers as sisters, but each brother has only half as many brothers as sisters. How many brothers and sisters are there in the family?
A man has a barrel filled with oil that weighs 100 pounds, and then he puts something into it. Now the barrel weighs less than 100 pounds. What did he put in the barrel?
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.
