I am, in truth, a yellow fork
From tables in the sky
By inadvertent fingers dropped
The awful cutlery.
Of mansions never quite disclosed
And never quite concealed
The apparatus of the dark
To ignorance revealed.
Fred was almost done packing for the day, with five packages left. Unfortunately, Fred dropped the labels and had no idea which label went to which package. What is the probability that Fred managed to correctly label exactly four of the five packages?
Zero. If Fred had correctly labeled four packages, the fifth label would belong to the fifth package and all packages would be correctly labeled. Therefore it is impossible to mislabel exactly four packages.
You are decorating for spring and you’ve found a bargain. A huge box of beautifully decorated tiles, enough to provide a border in two rooms. You really can’t figure out how to arrange them. If you set a border of two tiles all around, there’s one left over. If you set three tiles all around or four or five or six there’s still one tile left over. Finally you try a block of seven tiles for each corner and you come out even. What is the smallest number of tiles you could have to get this result?
I lack much reason, but often rhyme,
And require logic to pass the time,
To get the words to tell your kin,
Look for clues that lie within,
Though all are different, they act the same,
The answer is practically in the name.
This is an unusual paragraph. I’m curious as to just how quickly you can find out what is so unusual about it. It looks so ordinary and plain that you would think nothing was wrong with it. In fact, nothing is wrong with it! It is highly unusual though. Study it and think about it. You still may not find anything odd. But if you work at it a bit, you might find out. Try to do so without any coaching.
Find the two palindromes described below. (A palindrome is a word or phrase that’s spelled the same backwards as forwards, such as Was it a bat I saw?)
Question asked by a person afraid of rodents: