A wise king devised a contest to see who would receive the Princess’ hand in marriage. The Princess was put in a 50 x 50 foot carpeted room. Each of her four suitors were put in one corner of the room with a small box to stand on. The first one to touch the Princess’ hand would be the winner and become the new King.
The rules were the contestants could not walk over the carpet, cross the plane of the carpet, or hang from anything; nor could they use anything but their body and wits (i.e. no magic, telepathy, nor any items such as ladders, block and tackles etc). One suitor figured out a way and married the Princess and became the new King. What did he do?
Lucrezia Borgia invited a prospective victim to lunch. They ate a hearty meal of roast venison, with a selection of fresh vegetables, all washed down with the finest wine imported from Bordeaux, France.
After the meal, they ate figs and freshly picked grapes.
“Just one apple left”, said Lucrezia, “I insist you have it.
“No”, said the guest, “I couldn’t”.
“Tell you what”, said Lucrezia, “we’ll share it”, and promptly sliced the apple in two with her sharpest knife. The guest and Lucrezia started to eat their respective halves when the guest’s eyes rolled towards the ceiling and he fell over, dead.
“Another victim successfully dispatched,” thought Lucrezia.
Add a diagonal line on the top left of the first plus sign to convert + into a 4. You could also put a slash through the equal sign to make ≠ (not equal) but that’s not as cool.