A man is leaving on a business trip and stops by his office on the way to the airport. The night watchman stops him and says, “Sir, don’t take that flight. I had a dream last night that your plane would crash and everyone would die!” The business man cancels his trip and sure enough, the plane crashes, killing all the passengers. The man gives his watchman a $10,000 reward for saving his life, then fires him. Why?
You are given eight coins and told that one of them is counterfeit. The counterfeit one is slightly heavier than the other seven. Otherwise, the coins look identical. Using a simple balance scale, how can you determine which coin is counterfeit using the scale only twice?
First weigh three coins against three others. If the weights are equal, weigh the remaining two against each other. The heavier one is the counterfeit. If one of the groups of three is heavier, weigh two of those coins against each other. If one is heavier, it’s the counterfeit. If they’re equal weight, the third coin is the counterfeit.
Two of your neighbors were arguing about if the first man’s peacock laid an egg in the seconds man’s garden, who would own the egg. They asked you to solve their dilemma. What would you tell them?
The executor went to the neighbouring farm and asked to borrow a sheep for a few minutes. Then he returned to the sons and said, “Half of the (now) twenty sheep is 10. A quarter of the twenty sheep is 5. A fifth of the twenty sheep is 4. 10 + 5 + 4 = 19. Then the executor took the borrowed 20th sheep back to the neighbour.
This is a most unusual paragraph. How quickly can you find out what is so unusual about it? It looks so ordinary you’d think nothing was wrong with it – and in fact, nothing is wrong with it. It is unusual though. Why? Study it, think about it, and you may find out. Try to do it without coaching. If you work at it for a bit it will dawn on you. So jump to it and try your skill at figuring it out. Good luck! Don’t blow your cool!