As a result of temporary magical powers, you have made it to the Wimbledon finals and are playing Roger Federer for all the marbles. However, your powers cannot last the whole match. What score do you want it to be when they disappear, to maximize your chances of hanging on for a win?
It sounds obvious that you should ask to be ahead two sets to love (it takes 3 out of 5 sets to win the men’s), and in the third set, ahead 5-0 in games and 40-love in the sixth game. (Probably you want to be serving, but if your serve is like mine, you might prefer Roger to be serving the sixth game down 0-40 so that you can pray for a double fault.)
Not so fast! These solutions give you essentially 3 chances to get lucky and win, but you can get six chances—with three services by you and three by Roger. You still want to be up two sets to none, but let the game score be 6-6 in the third set and 6-0—in your favor, of course—in the tiebreaker.
A train is a half mile long and is about to enter a 10 mile tunnel. If the train is traveling at 35mph, how long will it take for the entire train to make it through the tunnel, from the front of the train entering to the end of the train leaving the tunnel?
I am a word of 5 letters and people eat me. If you remove the first letter I become a form of energy. Remove the first two and I’m needed to live. Scramble the last 3 and you can drink me. What am I?
Her birthday is December 31st. Today is January 1st so she was 7 two days ago, and turned 7 last year. Now she’s 8 and will turn 9 this year. And next year she’ll turn 10.
For example, if today is 01 Jan 2015:
30 Dec 2014 = age 7 (two days ago) 01 Jan 2015 = age 8 (today, she turned 8 on 31 Dec 2014, which was last year) 31 Dec 2015 = age 9 (her birthday this year) 31 Dec 2016 = age 10 (her birthday next year)
Sentries are posted at borders, gates, or doors. The gentry (in this case to referring to the general populace) bar their doors at night. The first month is January, named after the Roman god Janus, the double-faced God of doorways, passages and thresholds. You pass through the doorway (hence the slip), and dun is a brown color, referencing the color of wood, which most doors are made of. Though it’s not commonly referred to, the “lip of the door” is the part of the door that fits into the doorframe on the handle/knob side, particularly if the door is lipped or ridged in order to fit the door frame better.
Thanks to Helena for creating this and sending it in.