King and the poisoned wine bottle

A ruthless king has a cellar of 1,000 bottles of very expensive wine. An assassin infiltrates the wine cellar to poison the wine. Fortunately the king’s guards catch the plotter after she has poisoned only one bottle. Unfortunately, the guards don’t know which one of the bottles is poisoned. The poison is so strong that no amount of dilution will make it safe to drink. Furthermore, it takes one month to have an effect. The ruthless king decides he will get some of the prisoners in his dungeons to test the wine. But he has only 20 prisoners. King's advisors tell him thats more than enough to find the poisoned bottle. How do they know that?

Sachin

P and C

A Teacher needs to distribute 6 red balls and 6 black balls among 10 students such that each student gets at least one ball .
In how many ways can this be done if all black balls are identical and all red balls are identical ?



Sachin

The ill-prepared adventurer

Ragknot

Dinosaurs

On the island of Triassic, the Dinosaur population, thought to be near extinction, has expanded enormously. We know now two facts about them:

1> There are 400 Dinosaurs
2> No Dinosaur has more than 50 wrinkles on his body

From this we can deduce that there must be two Dinosaurs with the same number of wrinkles?

Minimize triangle area

A right triangle, shown below,the right angle at origin. What are the dimensions of x and y such that the hypotenuse passes thru point (2,5) and the triangle area is minimized.

Another Image (click)

9 bikes

You have 9 bicycles. They all look exactly the same but one is lighter than the rest. You can perform 2 measurements of any kind on the bikes, but only 2. How can you determine which bike is the lightest.


Michael Cook

Broken keyword

The Author suddenly had an epiphany, when he realized that he can only write using the first line of letters in his keyboard.

What can you write with one line of a broken keyword ?

The Rancher's Corral

A rancher has 400 feet of fencing material and needs to built a corral
that's divided into three equal rectangles. Here's a diagram...



What are the length and width (x and y) of each rectangle that will
maximize the total fenced area, and what is the area enclosed?

Ragknot
hjg

Division Problem

What is the solution to this division problem?



-hjg (Harrell)

* Rather than work it like a mathematician, work it like a detective.

What is going on ?

Surrounded by people.
1 girl is crying but is really happy.
1 girl looks happy but is really sad.
What is going on here?

- Steve Rosander

Snowflakes

Shetty, Sameer, Sandeep, and Rajesh planned for a reunion at Minneapolis MN in the weekend. There they come across a unique kind of snowflakes, which according to Sameer, happens only at this time of the year, that too at a very unique temperature and when air flows in a very unique speed.

After returning, Rajesh, still intriqued by the phenomenon called Sameer to ask what was the temperature which caused the Snowflakes of such design and what was the air speed, to which Sameer gave two numbers. When Rajesh enquired whether the temperature was in Fahreheit or Centigrade and the speed kilometer per hour or miles per hour, to his astonishment Sameer said:

"It absolutely makes no difference !"

How ?

- Bob (Robert)

Solve for X

If 5*x^2=3*x+8 then what are two solutions for x?

- Harrell

Doomsday

The Planets Zylon, Tylon and Fylon moved in a circular orbit around the dwarf star Celion, with orbital period of three, four and two earth years respectively. In the year 2001, the four celestial bodies all lies along the straight line.

The next such event would cause a doomsday for these planets. When do you think this will happen.

Hungry and Angry

Think of words ending in "-gry". "Angry" and "hungry" are two of them. There are only three words in the English language. What is the third word?

- Diana Remington

Short Change

3 traveling salesmen check into a hotel. They all share one room and the owner of the hotel charges them $10.00 each for a total of $30.00. After a couple of hours, the owner calls the bell boy and tells him that these salesman come every couple of weeks and wants to give them a discount on the room rate. The owner gives the bell boy $5.00 and tells him to give it back to the salesmen. The bell boy goes upstairs and tries to figure out how to evenly divide the $5.00 for the 3 salesman. He decides to give each one of them back $1.00 and keeps the remaining $2.00 for himself. Each salesman paid $10.00 and got $1.00 back so each salesman only paid $9.00. If 3 salesmen paid $9.00, that equals $27.00 plus the $2.00 the bell boy kept is $29.00. Where is the other $1.00?

Alpha, Beta, and Gamma

When Professor Nova's triplets were born, he nicknamed them alpha, beta, and gamma, and, so as not to confuse them, had their clothes monogrammed with these words to make them identifiable at a glance.

One day, Alpha said to the brother wearing the word Beta, "Do you realise we are all wearing the wrong words today?"

Who was wearing which words ?

Rooster's Dilemma

A young rooster perches on the ridge of a roof, the sides of which slope down at angles of 30 degree and 45 degree to the horizontal, respectively. If the rooster lays an egg, will the egg roll down the side with the steep slope or the side with the gentler slope?

Balance Scale

You wish to weight 40 items that weight from 1 to 40 pounds on a balance scale.

To weigh these you can have four weights of various sizes. Remember you can
put weights on both sides if needed (with the item to weigh on the scales also).

What 4 weights (integer pounds) do you need?

hjg

Square Root Mystery

Have you ever tried finding the square root of a number using a calculator and pressed the square root button more than once accidently well it happened to me once and I pushed it 50 times more in frustration.

I noticed something interesting
Ques 1) What did i notice?
Ques 2) Can you explain this?


- Sachin

Elementary, My Dear Watson

"Watson the facts are the killer began to climb the Mammoth mountain exactly at sunrise, the narrow path is, no more than a foot or two wide, spiraled around the mountain to the glittering hotel."

But remember Sherlock, "the killer might have ascended with varying rates of speed, stopping occasionally along the way to rest." added Watson.

"Thats right and he reaches the summit shortly before sun set."

"But, even if we say that, at night he does his job and come sunrise, he starts his journey back.", "how can you assume that there is a spot along the path that the killer will occupy on both trips at precisely the same time ?"

"Elementary, My Dear Watson !"

It might be elementary for Sherlock holmes but can you prove that ?

Gaurds

You are locked in a room with 2 exits. One exit leads to freedom, the other leads to death. Each exit is defended by a guard. One guard ALWAYS tells the truth, the other ALWAYS tells a lie. You do not know which guard is defending which exit but each guard knows the door to freedom. You have ONE and only ONE question for ONLY one of the guards to find the door to freedom. What is your question?

Joe D

Pun Intended

William Shakespeare had made use of puns in his works. In Romeo and Juliet: Mercutio says while he was lying, bleeding and dying:

"Ask for me tomorrow and you shall find me a grave man."

Another one: An ambassador is a man who lies abroad for the good of his country. 

My favorite is: "Eats, Shoots & Leaves" - Title of a popular book on punctuation.

So, what do you know ?

Skydiver

As a skydiver exits a plane, his downward velocity begins to accelerate.

1. What G-forces does he experience within the first few seconds.

2. At some point his velocity stablizes (if he is not twisting and turning, etc.), at that point what G force does he feel then?

Assume 1 G force is 9.8 meters per second per second = 32.2 feet per second per second even though we know that in reality, Earth's G-forces are reduces by altitude.

hjg

Two Words

Can you think of two words which are spelt differently but pronounced the same.

Oxygen

What happens to the ratio of oxygen in the air, as altitude increases ?

Perpetual Motion

There is a Swinging Bird Toy which is suppose to be in Perpetual motion. See Figure.


The Bird dips its beak in the water and having "drunk its fill" swing back into its upright position. After a while it slowly leans over to dip its beak in the water again, "drinks" and swings back.

Is this really Perpetual Motion ? How this "Perpetual" Motion works ?

Two Cops

Two cops accidentally, drive through a barricade, and off the 6th level of a parking garage. One is an average sized guy, the other is a exchange cop from Japan. He is a part-time Summo wrestler and weighs 350 pounds. Their standard police car plunges 6 floors to the sidewalk.

Would either of the policemen survive the accident?

Give an approximate percentage chance of survival for each cop, plus a percentage of the pan handler on the sidewalk who was hit by the police car.

hjg

Harrell Geron

End of Days

21 ^ST December 2012 is the End of Days according to Mayan Calendar. It also mention about that the turning point would be a year with minimum number of days.

Starting on Jan 1 and ending on Dec 31, what is the minimum number of days in ten years before 2012? How about in any given ten years ?

Weight of the plane

There is a plane how do you find the weight of the plane without using a scale.

Samuel Broadwell