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.
Category: Brain Teasers
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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.
Basket with Apples
A mother was carrying a basket with 4 apples inside. She went to her 4 children and gave each of them an apple. Yet, there was still one apple left in the basket. How come
SOLUTION
The mother gave one of the children the basket with one of the apples inside.
Birthday Candles
If 10 Birthday candles burn out in 8 minutes, in how many minutes will 15 Birthday candles burn out?
SOLUTION
Every candle burns out in 8 minutes, so the answer is 8.
15 Puzzle
On the picture, you can see the famous “15 Puzzle”. The rules are simple – you can slide any of the 15 squares to the empty spot
SOLUTION
No, you can’t. In order to see this, at each moment count the number of pairs of little squares, which are wrongly ordered. For example, if the numbers on the first row are 7, 2, 12 and 5 in this order, then 7 and 2, 7 and 5, and 12 and 5 are wrongly ordered. Notice that after every move you make, the number of wrongly ordered pairs changes with an odd number – ± 3 or ± 1. If you want to go from the state in which squares 14 and 15 are exchanged to the solved state on the picture, you must make an even number of moves and therefore you would change the number wrongly ordered pairs by an even number. However, the number of wrongly ordered squares in the starting state is 1, whereas in the ending state is 0, which yields a contradiction.
Color of 2016
In what color is “2016” written below?
SOLUTION
You can not see 2016, so it must be written in white color.
Cryptic Symbols
Which is the next symbol in the following sequence?
SOLUTION
This is the sequence 1, 2, 3, 4, 5… with all numbers stuck to their mirrored images.