A woman who lived in Germany during World War II wanted to cross the German/Swiss border in order to escape Nazi pursuers. The bridge which she is to cross is a half mile across, over a large canyon. Every three minutes a guard comes out of his bunker and checks if anyone is on the bridge. If a person is caught trying to escape German side to the Swiss side they are shot. If caught crossing the other direction without papers they are sent back. She knows that it takes at least five minutes to cross the bridge, in which time the guard will see her crossing and shoot her. How does she get across?
She waits until the guard goes inside his hunt, and begins to walk across the bridge. She gets a little more than half way, turns around, and begins to walk toward the german side once more. The guard comes out, sees that she has no papers, and sends her "back" to the swiss side.
A man has two ropes of varying thickness (Those two ropes are not identical, they aren’t the same density nor the same length nor the same width). Each rope burns in 60 minutes. He actually wants to measure 45 mins. How can he measure 45 mins using only these two ropes.
He can’t cut the one rope in half because the ropes are non-homogeneous and he can’t be sure how long it will burn.
He will burn one of the rope at both the ends and the second rope at one end. After half an hour, the first one burns completely and at this point of time, he will burn the other end of the second rope so now it will take 15 mins more to completely burn. so total time is 30+15 i.e. 45mins.
James ordered a fishing rod, priced at $3.56. Unfortunately, James is an Eskimo who lives in a very remote part of Greenland and the import rules there forbid any package longer than 4 feet to be imported. The fishing rod was 4 feet and 1 inch, just a little too long, so how can the fishing rod be mailed to James without breaking the rules? Ideally James would like the fishing rod to arrive in one piece!
Insert the fishing rod into a box which measures 4 feet on all sides, the fishing rod will fit within the diagonal of the box with room to spare.
