Brandon was walking around at the carnival. A man called out from a booth and said, “If I can write your exact weight on this piece of paper, you have to pay me $50. If I can’t do it, I’ll pay you $50.”
Brandon checked the booth for a scale but saw nothing. He agreed. Since your weight can fluctuate by a pound or two, he decided that no matter what number the man wrote, he would just say he weighed a pound more or less. In the end, the man in the booth won the $50. How did he do it?
A fish. A fish bowl or aquarium is the fish’s house and the people inside are the decorative divers that offer no reply (one might ask how the fish knows, given that they aren’t a talkative bunch themselves).
Alfred is at the bank to cash his $200 check. He tells the cashier he would like some one dollar bills, ten times as many two dollar bills and the rest in fives.
How many of each denomination does the cashier need to give Alfred?
We know that in order to give the rest of the amount in fives, the sum of the one and two dollar bills needs to be divisible by five (i.e. end in 0 or 5).
If we start with a single one dollar bill, we’d need ten two dollar bills to satisfy the request, making $21. But we need a sum that is divisible by 5. So we keep going up, like so:
I make memories that last a lifetime, Without me you’ll be miserable, If you miss me you can gourge and it’s okay. Some say I am naturally split in two.
Sleep. It’s the time your mind organizes memories and knowledge. Sleep deprivation is miserable (as you well know if you’ve experienced it). If you miss a few nights of sleep, you can sleep more to catch up with no problems. And some believe that segmented sleep, where you sleep, wake for an hour, then go back to sleep, was the dominant form of sleep before the Industrial Revolution.
A zebra was going to the river. On the way the zebra encountered five giraffes. Each giraffe had five monkeys on their neck. How many animals were going to the river?
Jim was canoeing on a lake when a sudden thunderstorm blew in tipped his boat. He swam to a rocky island about a mile from his family’s cottage and found a small, abandoned shack. Inside was an old kerosene lamp and a few matches. All the wood on the island was too damp to burn and the lamp was his only means of signaling for help but it only held an inch of kerosene, not enough to reach its short wick. How did he get the lamp burning to summon help?
Knowing kerosene and water wouldn’t mix and kerosene is less dense than water, he dipped the lamp in the lake and filled it with enough water so the kerosene rose to the top to cover the wick. The lamp was still burning an hour later when a motorboat rescued him.