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.
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.
What is the longest unscientific English word that uses every letter in the word exactly twice? For example, noon has two Ns and two Os, but it’s not nearly long enough.
Happenchance. There are two Hs, two As, and so on for all the letters in the word. The longest scientific word with the same property is probably esophagographers.
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.
Each letter represents a different digit. Any digit can be used, but zero can never start a word. Given W = 2 and R = 6, what do the rest of the letters represent?
