Here is a class of a dozen boys, who, being called up to give their names were photographed by the instantaneous process just as each one was commencing to pronounce his own name. The twelve names were Oom, Alden, Eastman, Alfred, Arthur, Luke, Fletcher, Matthew, Theodore, Richard, Shirmer, and Hisswald. Now it would not seem possible to be able to give the correct name to each of the twelve boys, but if you practice the list over to each one, you will find it not a difficult task to locate the proper name for every one of the boys.

1. You’re playing bridge. Each of four players is dealt 13 cards. You and your partner find that between you you hold all 13 cards of one suit. Is this more or less likely than that the two of you hold no cards of one suit?
2. As he left a restaurant, a man gave the cashier a card bearing the number 102004180. The cashier charged him nothing. Why?
3. How can you position a marble on the floor of an empty room so that I can’t hit it with a baseball?
4. Thrice what number is twice that number?

A tricky problem by Ernest Clement Mortimer. This position was reached after Black’s fourth move in a legal chess game. Can you reconstruct the game?

A traveler wants to stay at an inn for seven days. He has no money, but he has a gold chain with seven links. The innkeeper agrees to accept this in payment for the week’s stay, but the traveler is reluctant to part with all seven links at once. He prepares to cut the chain into seven pieces.

The innkeeper stops him. If the traveler is willing occasionally to accept change in the form of links previously paid, then they can work out a plan that minimizes damage to the chain and yet permits the traveler to pay only what he owes on each successive day. How many links must they cut?

By Eric M. Hassberg, New York Post, April 21, 1945. White to mate in two moves.

There are 13 ways to draw four of a kind and 40 possible straight flushes.

Why then does a straight flush beat four of a kind?

Consider the classic story of Henry, a backwoods villager watching a theatrical performance, who leaps to the stage to save the heroine from the clutches of the villain and a horrible death. Of course Henry is mistaken if he thinks he can save the actress. She is not in danger; there is nothing to save her from. But the character she portrays is in danger and does need saving. Can Henry help her, despite the fact that he doesn’t live in her world?

— Kendall L. Walton, “How Remote Are Fictional Worlds From the Real World?”, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 1978

Death row is overcrowded, so the warden proposes a radical solution. He places 100 boxes in a sealed room. Each contains a slip of paper bearing the name of one of the 100 prisoners on the row.

Each prisoner will enter the room by one door, open 50 boxes, and exit by another door. Unless every prisoner can discover his own name, all 100 will be executed.

The prisoners will be supervised by a guard. They cannot communicate with one another, and they must leave the room as they found it, but the group can prepare a plan in advance and post it on the wall of the room.

If they proceed at random, their chance of succeeding is 1/2¹⁰⁰, or about 0.00000000000000000000000000000008. What should they do?

A puzzle by David Wells:

Every day I take the subway from Startville to Endville. Today I arrived at the Startville station to find that my train was just departing. I caught the next train to Endville, where I left the station at exactly the same time as if I had caught the first train. How did I manage this? The two trains traveled at the same speed, and I myself did not have to rush to make up the lost time.