I torture children and parents
Many people scream and wail in my presence
Parents drag their kids to me
I am supposed to create smiles,
But often there is only a frown.
The word vex. “v” is Roman numeral 5, which is odd. “x” is Roman numeral 10, which is even. “e” is the base of the natural logarithm and is irrational (e = 2.718281828…). Its mantissa (the part to the right of the decimal point) is infinitely long.
Three closed boxes have either white marbles, black marbles or both, and they are labeled white, black and both. However, you’re told that each of the labels are wrong. You may reach into one of the boxes and pull out only one marble. Which box should you remove a marble from to determine the contents of all three boxes?
The one labeled both. Since you know it’s labeled incorrectly, it must have all black marbles or all white marbles. After you determine what it contains, you can identify the other two boxes by the process of elimination.