You’re standing 11 feet away from a doorway and with each step you move halfway to the doorway. How many steps will it take for you to get to the doorway?
Technically, the answer is infinity. If you keep going halfway, you’ll never actually make it to the doorway.
But in practice, after 10 steps you’ll be 1/8th of an inch to the doorway and anyone behind you would say to stop being a baby and take a real step through the doorway already.
A woman shoots her husband, then holds him under water for five minutes. Finally, she hangs him. Five minutes later they enjoy a wonderful dinner together. How can this be?
9pm (or 21:00). There are 12 hours between 1pm and 1am, so 6 hours after 1am is halfway. 6 hours + 1pm equals 7pm. In order for 7pm to be 2 hours behind the current time, it must be 9pm.
At a quirky fruit stand, an orange costs 18 cents, a pineapple costs 27 cents and a grape costs 15 cents. Using the same logic, how much does a mango cost?
The moon. The moon has been around for quite some time, but there’s a “new” moon every month or so. A Blue moon is a rare event. The moon is a body of rock, so it’s never empty, but we do see what we call a full moon some nights. And the moon’s gravity “pulls” on the ocean to create low and high tides, but it doesn’t push anyone around because it’s a friendly fellah.
Four cards are placed in front of you on the table, each with a number on one side and a color on the other. The visible cards show 3, 8, red and brown. Which cards should you turn over in order to test the truth of the statement that if a card shows an even number on one face, then its opposite face is red?
You’d need to turn over only the 8 and brown card. Only a card with an even number on one face and which is not red on the other face can invalidate the stated rule. If you turn over the 3 card and it’s not red, it doesn’t invalidate the rule, nor does turning over the red card and finding it has the label 3.
This test was devised by Peter Cathcart Wason and is known as the Wason selection task. Less than 10% of test subjects got it correct in two separate studies.
