“If there is a vowel written on one side of a card, then there is an even number written on the other side.” How many of these four cards do you need to flip in order to check the validity of this sentence?
What would the answer be if you know that each card contains one letter and one number?
SOLUTION
You need to flip all cards except for the second one. If each card contains one letter and one number, then you need to flip only A and 7.
I give you a pen and paper and ask you to write the numbers from 1 to 100 in succession so that there are no three numbers such that twice the second one is equal to the sum of the first and the third one. The three numbers do not need to be successive in the sequence.
You have 5 minutes, what do you do?
Remark: The sequence 3, 1, 2, 5, 4 works, but the sequence 1, 4, 2, 5, 3 does not because of the numbers 1, 2, and 3.
and keep iterating until you get a sequence with all numbers from 1 to 128. On each step you take the previous sequence, multiply all elements by 2, and then add the same result but with all elements decreased by 1. This will ensure that the first half contains only even numbers and the second half contains only odd numbers. Since the sum of an odd and an even number is not divisible by 2, if some sequence violates the property, then the previous sequence would have violated it as well.
Once you construct a sequence with 128 numbers, simply remove the numbers from 101 to 128 and you are done. To speed up the process, you can reduce the sequence 8, 16, 4, 12, 6, 14, 2, 10, 7, 15, 3, 11, 5, 13, 1, 9 to 8, 4, 12, 6, 2, 10, 7, 3, 11, 5, 13, 1, 9 and then continue the process.
One person went to the store and bought groceries for $13.59 total. He paid with a $100 bill, took his change, and left the store. There was something special about this transaction. What is it?
SOLUTION
The person paid with a $100 bill. The cashier returned him a $50 bill, a $20 bill, a $10 bill, a $5 bill, a $1 bill, a quarter, a dime, a nickel, and a cent. The transaction consisted of exactly one of each (frequently used) denominations.
Use exactly two threes (3) and two eights (8) to get the number 24. You can use multiplication (×), division (÷), addition (+), subtraction (-) signs, and brackets. You can not use any advanced arithmetic operations, such as exponential, factorial, etc.
The numbers on the right count the total number of “holes” in the digits on the left. “1”, “2”, “3”, “4”, “5” and “7” have 0 holes in them. “0”, “6” and “9” have 1 hole in them. “8” has 2 holes in it. Therefore, the corresponding number is 3.