You have four chains. Each chain has three links in it. Although it is difficult to cut the links, you wish to make a single loop with all 12 links. What is the fewest number of cuts you must make to accomplish this task?
At the market you can buy a cow for $10, a pig for $1 and 8 hens for $1. How many animals would you need to buy to get 100 mixed animals for exactly $100?
7 cows, 21 pigs and 72 hens. The trick to this is finding the combination of cows and hens with the same cost and quantity since pigs are already equal. The magic combination is 7 cows and 72 hens, giving you 79 animals that cost $79 ($70 + $9). Then you just add 21 pigs to get to 100 animals.
The first two letters of this English word refer to a male, the first three refer to a female, the first four to a great man and the whole word is a great woman.
Someone preserving food. The two most common ways of preserving food are canning and freezing. So when you preserve food, if you can can it, you do, otherwise you freeze it.
Fred brings home 100 pounds of potatoes, which (being purely mathematical potatoes) consist of 99 percent water. He then leaves them outside overnight so that they consist of 98 percent water. What is their new weight?
100 lb of potatoes with 99% water weight means there’s 99 lb of water and 1 lb of solids, a 1:99 ratio.
If the water decreases to 98%, then the solids account for 2% of the weight. The 2:98 ratio reduces to 1:49. Since the solids still weigh 1 lb, the water must weigh 49 lb for a total of 50 lbs for the answer.
Nothing. Nothing is greater than God, nothing is more evil than the devil, the poor have nothing, the rich need nothing and if you eat nothing you’ll die.
The letter E. The series contains all of the letters that rhyme with bee (apologies to any English speakers who pronounce Z as zed instead of zee if this confused you).