They are the origins of the names of each day of the week.
Sunday – Sun day. Monday – Moon day. Tuesday – Tiw’s or Týr’s day, the god of single combat, son of Odin. Wednesday – Woden’s or Odin’s day, god of poetry and of the dead. Thursday – Thor’s day, god of thunder, son of Odin. Friday – Frigg’s day, goddess of the clouds, wife of Odin. Saturday – Saturn’s day, god of fertility and agriculture.
On the sixth of May in the year 1978 at exactly thirty-four minutes past noon, a most extraordinary event occurred. This singular occasion will probably never be witnessed by anyone who was alive at that time. What happened?
The time and date was 12:34 5/6/78, counting from one to eight. The next time this event will occur is 12:34 6 May 2078. Unless someone alive in 1978 lives to be over a hundred, they won’t be alive when it happens again.
The letter X. It is the 24th letter of the alphabet, two Xs in Roman numerals equals twenty and triple x represents adult content, and adulthood is eighteen by law in most countries.
When Julian and Penelope met, one was half the others age plus seven years. Ten years later when they married, Penelope was thirty, but this time one was nine tenths the age of the other. How old was Julian? (No fractions or partial years, whole numbers only).
A variation of this brain teaser includes laser printers (they were invented by Gary Starkweather) and bulletproof vests (invented by Casimir Zeglen using silk, though modern vests use Kevlar, so it’s halfway right).
Imagine you are in a dark room with a locked door. All you have with you is a rope and a pencil. You can hear the rain outside, but there are no windows. How do you get out?
Early one morning Hal, the owner of a hardware store, sells a mailbox for $25 to Courtney that cost him $20 wholesale. Courtney pays with a $100 bill and Hal discovers he doesn’t have enough change. He runs to the jewelry shop next door, where Jack, the owner, gives him change in exchange for the $100. Later that afternoon, Jack discovers the $100 bill is a counterfeit and Hal pays him $100 to make it right.
The total loss was $95. -$20 = The wholesale cost of the mailbox $100 = The money from Jack -$75 = The change paid to Courtney -$100 = To pay Jack back -$20 + $100 – $75 – $100 = -$95
It’s easy to think Hal lost $195 but that fails to account for the $100 used to make the change, which came from Jack, not Hal. Jack paid $100 in exchange for a worthless piece of paper, so the $100 was initially Jack’s loss. Hal had made a $5 profit until Jack’s discovery. If you guessed $100, that’s arguably correct, but not making $5 in profit isn’t a loss in the strictest sense of the word.