The riddle thread - Page 5

On March 16 2009 03:55 Z-BosoN wrote:
lost in the desert, a travelr sees a box in the sand. In the lid, there is a hole of the size of a needle head and four colored buttons, one blue, one yellwo, one green, and one red. He tries to look throught the hole but cannot see anything. Next to the box he sees the following letter. What should he do?
"Inside this box there is a small fan, well lubrificated, silent, powerred by batteries and does not vibrate when on.
The buttons on the top of the box, is pressed, stay on the "on" position, and when pressed again, they go back to "off". Only one of them is connected to the fan. Keeping the box closed, you can press buttons however you want and put whatever you want through the hole in the lid. When you open it, you have to figure out immediately which is the button that turns on the fan. A right answer will give you access to a secret oasis. A mistake will encarcerate you to the hienas."

On March 16 2009 06:40 ZerG~LegenD wrote:
You have 12 balls. They are all coloured differently to help you tell them apart. 11 of these have the same weight, 1 is either slightly heavier or slightly lighter than the rest. Can you, with the help of 3 weightings with a basic balance scale, find out which ball that has a unique weight and whether it's heavier or lighter than the rest?

+ Show Spoiler +

On March 16 2009 03:55 Z-BosoN wrote:
lost in the desert, a travelr sees a box in the sand. In the lid, there is a hole of the size of a needle head and four colored buttons, one blue, one yellwo, one green, and one red. He tries to look throught the hole but cannot see anything. Next to the box he sees the following letter. What should he do?
"Inside this box there is a small fan, well lubrificated, silent, powerred by batteries and does not vibrate when on.
The buttons on the top of the box, is pressed, stay on the "on" position, and when pressed again, they go back to "off". Only one of them is connected to the fan. Keeping the box closed, you can press buttons however you want and put whatever you want through the hole in the lid. When you open it, you have to figure out immediately which is the button that turns on the fan. A right answer will give you access to a secret oasis. A mistake will encarcerate you to the hienas."

On March 15 2009 05:56 EffOrt wrote:
1.In this thread you will write some riddles and in spoiler write the answer
2.If you have a riddle but do not know the answer also post that in bold or make it stand out some way
3.If you're going to answer someone else's riddle please put it in spoiler
btw this is just a example so don't take it to seriously ^^

example 1.What can you catch but you can't throw?
+ Show Spoiler +

example 2.What came first the chicken or the egg?
Don't know

#1.

You are wearing a blindfold and thick gloves. An infinite number of quarters are laid out before you on a table of infinite area. Someone tells you that 20 of these quarters are tails and the rest are heads. He says that if you can split the quarters into 2 piles where the number of tails quarters is the same in both piles, then you win all of the quarters. You are allowed to move the quarters and to flip them over, but you can never tell what state a quarter is currently in (the blindfold prevents you from seeing, and the gloves prevent you from feeling which side is heads or tails). How do you partition the quarters so that you can win them all?

Definitions

The dilemma can be interpreted differently using different definitions of a chicken or an egg. In biology, the term egg is biologically ambiguous and the theory of punctuated equilibrium, for example, does not support a clear division between a chicken and the closest ancestors of that chicken. Both of those factors tend to contribute to the circular nature of the question (causing problems similar to either a hasty generalization or a fallacy of definition). Below are a few different definitions that could be assumed and their logical outcomes.[6]

If the egg is not necessarily of any specific type:

Then it could be said that the egg came first, because other animals had been laying eggs long before chickens existed, such as the dinosaurs. In biology, egg is used as a general term in this way.

*If only an egg that will hatch into a chicken can be considered a chicken egg:

Then a re-consideration of the original question suggests: Some animal other than a chicken laid the first chicken egg which contained the first chicken. In this case the chicken egg came before the chicken. In reality, many scientific theories suggest that this would not have been a simple event. For example, the theory of punctuated equilibrium theorizes that the actual speciation of an organism from its ancestral species is usually the result of many mutations combined with new geographical surroundings, called cladogenesis.

If only an egg laid by a chicken can be considered a chicken egg:

Then a re-consideration of the original question suggests: The first chicken (which hatched from a non-chicken egg) laid the first chicken egg. In this case the chicken came before the chicken egg. Again, this would not necessarily be a straightforward event.

On March 16 2009 10:29 fast ball player wrote:
What gets wetter as it dries??