Chuck and Ruby were going to meet at a hotel for their anniversary dinner, but Ruby didn’t show. Chuck was angry and left her a passive aggressive message on their kitchen table in the form of fifteen matchsticks spelling “hotel” and went to bed. When Ruby got home and saw the matchsticks, she removed one and went to bed. When Chuck woke up the next morning and saw Ruby’s new message, he realized his mistake. Which stick did Ruby remove and what was the new message?
Ruby had removed the top of the T and the new message could be seen upside down from where Chuck sat at his breakfast of sadness and anger. What he saw was 7 3 1 0 4, or 7/31/04, the date of their anniversary. In his excitement, Chuck had gone to the restaurant a day early, on July 30th. All was forgiven by both parties and Chuck and Ruby had a wonderful dinner together. They also promised to buy a whiteboard for the kitchen so they wouldn’t have to use matchstick messages ever again.
She will always need to give you 5 apples. You both need at least 5 apples to begin with, but apart from that it doesn’t matter exactly how many you each have. When she gives you 5 you will have 10 more than her because she will lose 5 and you will gain 5, resulting in a net difference of 10.
For example, if you each have 25 apples and she gives you 5 of hers, she will be left with 20 and you will now have 30, precisely 10 more than she has.
Use each clue to identify a famous person who last name ends in the letters T-O-N, like George Washington.
1. Friends star 2. Cotton Club bandleader 3. Batman and Beetlejuice lead 4. Blonde, buxom country music legend
Halfway there!
5. Steamboat developer 6. Author of The Age of Innocence 7. Found of a Kmart rival and a Club 8. She lead a news website called The (her last name) Post
If you can hard boil a Kiwi bird egg in 20 minutes, how long would it take to hard boil four Kiwi bird eggs? Note: Kiwi birds are about the size of a chicken, but they lay eggs that are close to the size of an Ostrich egg. So one would assume they must take a long time to hard boil.
Zero is nothing, yet when you add zeroes to a number like 1, it becomes 10, 100 or 1,000.
The ancient Greeks did not have a name for zero and did not use a placeholder. They seemed unsure about the status of zero as a number, philosophizing about how nothing could be something. Once zero was added, it allowed for more mathematical understanding.