You have a basket containing ten apples. You have ten friends, who each desire an apple. You give each of your friends one apple.
Now all your friends have one apple each, yet there is an apple remaining in the basket.
How?
You have two bottles of pills marked with labels A and B. The pills are identical. The doctor has asked you to take one A pill and one B pill daily. You cant take more or less than that.
While taking out the pills one day, you took out one pill from A and by mistake took out two from B. You have no idea which pill is which now.
You cant throw away the expensive pills. What will you do now?
In front of you, there are 9 coins. They all look absolutely identical, but one of the coins is fake. However, you know that the fake coin is lighter than the rest, and in front of you is a balance scale. What is the least number of weightings you can use to find the counterfeit coin?
The day before the 1996 U.S. presidential election, the NYT Crossword contained the clue “Lead story in tomorrow’s newspaper,” the puzzle was built so that both electoral outcomes were correct answers, requiring 7 other clues to have dual responses.