Light It Up
If you have one match and enter a room in which there is a stove, a kerosine lamp, and an oil burner, what will you light up first?
SOLUTION
The match.
Category: Insight
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Half Empty, Half Full
You have a glass with perfectly cylindrical shape which has some water in it. How can you figure out if the glass is exactly half full without using any measurement tools (like a ruler)?
SOLUTION
Use the geometry of the cylinder. Start tilting the glass until the water surface gets either to the top or the bottom edge. If the glass is exactly half full, then the surface should touch both edges simultaneously.
Single Word
Cross out nine letters so that the remaining letters spell a single word.
N A I S N I E N L G E L T E T W E O R R S D
SOLUTION
Cross out every other letter starting with the first one – N I N E L E T T E R S.
The remaining letters are – A S I N G L E W O R D.
Sarah’s Mother
If Sarah’s mother is Barbara, then Barbara is the ??? of Sarah’s mother.
SOLUTION
The answer is NAME.
Lucky Day
Scientists have discovered that on one particular date in the year, there is
SOLUTION
February 29 – it happens only once every four years.
Out of Place
Which of the numbers below is out of place and why?
1011, 2223, 3940, 5646, 8910
SOLUTION
Every number except 5646 can be split into a sequence of consecutive numbers: 1011~10-11, 2223~22-23, 3940~39-40, 8910~8-9-10.
Two Games at Once
The Devil offers you a deal – you have to play two games of chess simultaneously against the two best GrandMasters in the world, one with black pieces and one with white pieces. If you win at least 1 point from the two games, you will get whatever your heart desires, if you don’t – you will go straight to Hell. Would you accept the challenge?
SOLUTION
Accept the challenge. You can easily get 1 point by just repeating the moves of your opponents. For example, if the white GrandMaster plays e4, then you play e4 against the black GrandMaster. If the back GrandMaster plays e5, then you play e5 against the white GrandMaster and so on.
Magic Liquid
You buy a bottle with a letter from the merchant, the merchant tells you that when you drink the liquid in the bottle it grants you eternal life, he supposedly deciphered this from the letter.
After you get home you decide to study the letter if it really says what the merchant told you, can you figure out if the bottle really grants eternal life?
You come to a fork in the road.
To the left is an empty well made from stone.
On the right is a pirate’s buried treasure.
Ahead you only see a tall straight tree.
The night is dark with only a dying moon in the sky.
Source: Puzzling StackExchange
SOLUTION
The objects described in the last paragraph have the following shapes:
fork in the road = T
empty well = O
buried treasure = X
straight tree = I
dying moon = C
The 5 letters form the word “TOXIC”, which suggests you shouldn’t drink from the bottle.
Bottle, Coin and Cork
You put a little coin in an empty wine bottle and then insert the cork in its opening. How can you remove the coin without taking out the cork or breaking the bottle?
SOLUTION
Push the cork inside and then take out the coin.
Camel in the Desert
One man is trying to cross the desert to reach the neighboring village. It takes 4 days to get there, but his camel can carry bananas which will feed him for 3 days only. How can the man reach the neighboring village without starving?
SOLUTION
The man travels one day, leaves one portion of bananas in the desert and returns back to his village. Then he leaves again with 3 new portions of bananas, picks the portion left in the desert on his way and ends up in the neighboring village on the sixth day.