A merchant has 21 sacks of grain: 7 full, 7 half-full and 7 empty. He wants to divide them equally among his three sons. How can he do this, without transferring any grain between sacks, so each son has the same quantity of grain and number of sacks?
Wind (or anything blown by the wind). It moves all over, reaches the rich and the poor equally and no one knows exactly which way the next gust of wind will blow. You can’t see the wind, but you can see what it blows, like leaves or dust.
I turn polar bears white
and I will make you cry.
I make guys have to pee
and girls comb their hair.
I make celebrities look stupid
and normal people look like celebrities.
I turn pancakes brown
and make your champagne bubble.
If you squeeze me, I’ll pop.
If you look at me, you’ll pop.
Can you guess the riddle?
The answer to this admittedly lame riddle is, “No.” The reason is that the question at the very end asks if you can guess the riddle and there is nothing that satisfies all of the riddles’ requirements.
Some say that pressure is the answer, but they can’t explain how it turns polar bears white or pancakes brown. Nothing turns polar bears white, any more than something turns a snowflake white and heat makes pancakes brown, not pressure.
You are given eight coins and told that one of them is counterfeit. The counterfeit one is slightly heavier than the other seven. Otherwise, the coins look identical. Using a simple balance scale, how can you determine which coin is counterfeit using the scale only twice?
First weigh three coins against three others. If the weights are equal, weigh the remaining two against each other. The heavier one is the counterfeit. If one of the groups of three is heavier, weigh two of those coins against each other. If one is heavier, it’s the counterfeit. If they’re equal weight, the third coin is the counterfeit.