Your friend pulls out a perfectly circular table and a sack of quarters, and proposes a game.
"We'll take turns putting a quarter on the table," he says. "Each quarter must lay flat on the table, and cannot sit on top of any other quarters. The last person to successfully put a quarter on the table wins."
He gives you the choice to go first or second. What should you do, and what should your strategy be to win?
You should go first, and put a quarter at the exact center of the table.
Then, each time your opponent places a quarter down, you should place your next quarter in the symmetric position on the opposite side of the table.
This will ensure that you always have a place to set down our quarter, and eventually your oppponent will run out of space.
A man worked for a high-security institution, and one day he went in to work only to find that he could not log in to his computer terminal. His password wouldn't work. Then he remembered that the passwords are reset every month for security purposes. So he went to his boss and they had this conversation:
Man: "Hey boss, my password is out of date."
Boss: "Yes, that's right. The password is different, but if you listen carefully you should be able to figure out the new one: It has the same amount of letters as your old password, but only four of the letters are the same."
Man: "Thanks boss."
With that, he went and correctly logged into his station.
What was the new password?
BONUS: What was his old password?
HINT: It is nine letters long. Also, a "password" can be more than one word...
The old one was: Out of date
The new one is: Different
He said: My password is "Out of date." And the boss told him the new one when he said: "The password is different."
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.
A man and woman run through a field holding hands. They bound toward the sunset, happy as can be. Suddenly, the man moves off of his straight-line course and starts veering to his left. At the same time, the woman begins running off to her right.
They continue this for a full minute, but never let go of each others' hands. How is this possible?
The man was facing forward, but the woman was running backwards. The man's right hand was holding the woman's right hand. They both veered in the same geographic direction, but it was the man's left and the woman's right because the woman was running backwards.
Once upon a time, in the West Lake village, a servant lived with his master. After service of about 30 years, his master became ill and was going to die.
One day, the master called his servant and asked him for a wish. It could be any wish but just one. The master gave him one day to think about it. The servant became very happy and went to his mother for discussion about the wish. His mother was blind and she asked her son for making a wish for her eye-sight to come back. Then the servant went to his wife. She became very excited and asked for a son as they were childless for many years. After that, the servant went to his father who wanted to be rich and so he asked his son to wish for a lot of money. The next day he went to his master and made one wish through which all the three (mother, father, wife) got what they wanted. You have to tell what the servant asked the master.
The servant said, "My mother wants to see her grandson swinging on a swing of gold."
Two men are in a desert. They're both wearing backpacks. One of the men is dead. The man who is alive, has his pack open. The dead man's pack is closed. What is in their packs?
You're standing in front of a room with one lightbulb inside of it. You cannot see if it is on or off. Outside the room, there are 3 switches in the off positions. You may turn the switches any way you want to. You stop turning the switches, enter the room and know which switch controls the lightbulb. How?
You turn 2 switches "on" and leave 1 switch "off" and wait about a minute. Then enter the room, but just before you enter, turn one switch from "on" to "off". Once in the room, feel the lightbulb - if it is warm, but off, it has to be the last switch you turned off. If it is on, it has to be the switch left on. If it is cold and is off, it has to be the switch you left in the off position.
I am first in Earth, second in Heaven, I appear two times in a week.
You can only see me once in a year, although I'm in the middle of sea.
Who am I?
Answer is E
The asnwer is E. As In spelling of Earth E comes first, in Heaven it comes second, in week it comes twice, in a year it comes once and finally in spelling of sea E stands in middle of the spelling.
A king has 100 identical servants, each with a different rank between 1 and 100. At the end of each day, each servant comes into the king's quarters, one-by-one, in a random order, and announces his rank to let the king know that he is done working for the day. For example, servant 14 comes in and says "Servant 14, reporting in."
One day, the king's aide comes in and tells the king that one of the servants is missing, though he isn't sure which one.
Before the other servants begin reporting in for the night, the king asks for a piece of paper to write on to help him figure out which servant is missing. Unfortunately, all that's available is a very small piece that can only hold one number at a time. The king is free to erase what he writes and write something new as many times as he likes, but he can only have one number written down at a time.
The king's memory is bad and he won't be able to remember all the exact numbers as the servants report in, so he must use the paper to help him.
How can he use the paper such that once the final servant has reported in, he'll know exactly which servant is missing?
When the first servant comes in, the king should write down his number. For each other servant that reports in, the king should add that servant's number to the current number written on the paper, and then write this new number on the paper.
Once the final servant has reported in, the number on the paper should equal
(1 + 2 + 3 + ... + 99 + 100) - MissingServantsNumber
Since (1 + 2 + 3 + ... + 99 + 100) = 5050, we can rephrase this to say that the number on the paper should equal
5050 - MissingServantsNumber
So to figure out the missing servant's number, the king simply needs to subtract the number written on his paper from 5050:
MissingServantsNumber = 5050 - NumberWrittenOnThePaper
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.
