Here are 5 of my favorite riddles. Do not post the answer in the comments. Good riddles are hard to find and once you know the answer, you can never go through the fun of solving it!
You're on the top of a 200 foot building with 150 feet of rope. Half way down there is a ledge to stand upon. There are hooks at both the roof and the ledge of the building that you may attach your rope to. You are free to cut or tie the rope as you see fit. You cannot withstand a fall from any height. How do you get down?
You have two candle wicks; each wick will burn from end to end in one hour's time. The wicks are not evenly distributed, meaning that half of the wick may burn in 1 minute, while the second half burns in 59 minutes. You do not know the distribution. How can you measure 45 minutes?
A band of pirates stumble upon a buried chest of treasure. They need to figure out how to divide up the 200 pieces of treasure among the 5 of them. The procedure works like this: the pirate with the highest seniority proposes a division. If 50% or more of the pirates (including himself) agree, then that is how the gold is divided and they call it a day. Else, that pirate is killed and the same procedure begins again with the pirate next in seniority. No two pirates are tied in seniority. You can assume that all pirates are rational thinkers (a rarity among pirates) and that each pirate is greedy (not so rare). How will the gold be divided in the end?
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