Death By Marbles

You are a prisoner sentenced to death. The Emperor offers you a chance to live by playing a simple game. He gives you 50 black marbles, 50 white marbles and 2 empty bowls and instructs you to divide the 100 marbles into the two bowls. You can divide them however you want as long as all the marbles are in the bowls. You will be blindfolded and the bowls and marbles will be thoroughly mixed. You will then choose a single marble from one of the bowls. If the marble is white, you live. Black and you will be put to death.

How do you divide the marbles up so that you have the greatest probability of choosing a white marble?

Place one white marble in one bowl and place the rest of the marbles in the other bowl (49 whites, and 50 blacks).

This way you begin with a 50/50 chance of choosing the bowl with one white marble and living. Even if you choose the other bowl, you still have an almost 50% chance of picking one of the 49 white marbles. There are no guarantees in life, but this gives you the best change of surviving.

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I Hide In A Dark Tunnel

I hide in a dark tunnel awaiting my time.
I can only be released by pulling back.
Once released, I may do unspeakable damage.

A bullet.

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Ties One Another

What ties one to another and is closest to the heart?

A wedding ring.

I know, this is nearly a duplicate with What Holds Two People Together.

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I Can Sound a Gong

I’m in bowling and baseball,
For better or for worse,
On a match (but not the sporting kind),
I can sound a gong,
And I’m gone.

What am I?

Strike.

A strike in bowling is good. In baseball it’s good for the pitcher but not for the batter. You can strike a match to light it. When the clock strikes one a gong sounds and when you strike a paragraph, it’s gone.

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Sentca

Four words can be made from the letters below. What are the words?

S E N T C A

1. ENACTS
2. ASCENT
3. STANCE
4. SECANT

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You’ll See Me When the Sun is High and Also Late at Night

You’ll see me when the sun is high and also late at night,
I’m in the songs of holidays, when the snow is white,

Kings and Queens and royalty, are all found in me,
I’m the largest of them all, with just one you see,

Step by step with pounding feet, I’m tribes of angry men,
I’m above your hands right now, for help or to go again,

You’ll use me in the kitchen, or add a little more,
I’ll be in the years to come, and the days of yore.

What am I?

Twelve (12).

Noon and midnight are both 12 o’clock and the Twelve Days of Christmas is a popular Christmas carol.

There are twelve face cards in a standard 52-card deck and twelve is the largest number with one syllable.

There are twelve steps in Alcoholics Anonymous, a troy pound is 12 ounces, there were 12 tribes of Israel and a popular movie was called, “Twelve Angry Men” (12 members of the jury). There are twelve function keys on your keyboard. F1 often shows a help screen and F5 reloads pages in your browser.

Many recipes measure items by the dozen, adding one more for a baker’s dozen. There are twelve months in a year.

It’s surprising how many times the number twelve shows up in our culture.

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Soft And Fragile Is My Skin

Soft and fragile is my skin
I get my growth in mud
I’m dangerous as much as pretty
For if not careful, I draw blood.

A thorn.

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Starts and Ends with E

What starts with “e”, ends with “e” and has one letter in it?

Envelope. Eye is a potential alternative. When spoken out loud it sounds like a single letter (I).

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What Surrounds The World

What surrounds the world, yet dwells within a thimble?

Space.

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From Standard to Sequence

Starting with the word STANDARD, how can you take away two letters and add three digits to make a logical sequence?

Remove the two A’s, leaving: ST ND RD
Add 1, 2, 3 to produce: 1st, 2nd, 3rd.

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