Which would you say is heavier, a pound of cotton or a pound of gold?

A pound of cotton is heavier than a pound of gold because cotton is

weighted by the avoirdupois pound, which consists of 16 ounces, whereas
gold, being a precious metal is weighted by the troy pound which consists
12 ounces.

Look at the figure. How can exactly four sticks be moved to make three
equal squares?

Look at the figure below, which shows fifteen men. The figure is
subdivided into three areas (upper left, upper right, and the bottom half).

By exchanging the upper two parts of the figure, one gets the figure
below. This new figure however only shows fourteen men! (If you don't
belief what happened here: please print it, cut it, and try it out yourself!)

Now the question is where did the missing man go?

Similar figures:

The trick of this puzzle is that every man has grown a little bit in the
second figure. So you can say that the "missing" man is divided among
the other men who became taller... But to really grasp it, take your time
and study the figures, because it does look like magic!

Another example of the same kind of magic is depicted below:

Use five 5 s to make 37.

Can you make a target number 37 by using five 5s? You can use any
math operator as you want. There are at least two different ways.

5 5 5 5 5 = 37
Since the total of five 5s is 25, we have to choose an operator which can
make a large number. Obviously, the multiplication operator is not good
enough. We chose the factory operator!

((5!+5!)-55)/5 = (120+120-55)/5 = 185/5 = 37

The investigator asked Jaclyn about her children. Jaclyn said "I have 3
daughters, Alice, Betty, and Cindy. The product of their ages is 36. The
sum of their ages is the same as the street number of our next door
neighbor."

The investigator went next door and came back and said: "Still not
enough information". Jaclyn said: "Oh, I forgot to tell you that my oldest
daughter is now in school".

The investigator found out the ages of her daughters immediately. Do you
know their ages?

The possiblities are that makes the product 36 are

a) 1, 4 ,9, Sum=14
b) 1, 2, 18, Sum=21
c) 1, 1, 36,Sum=38
d) 1, 6, 6,Sum=13
e) 2, 2, 9,Sum=13
f) 2, 3, 6, Sum=11
g) 3, 3, 4, Sum=10

The investigator could not get the answer even after checking the
street number of next door neighbor. This gives us the clue that there are
more than one case where the sum of their ages is the street number of
next door neighbor. From above possibilities, only sum 13 has two cases.
The case 2, 2, 9 will be more likely the case because the oldest
daughter(age 9) goes to school.

Assume that you have a number of long fuses, of which you only know
that they burn for exactly one hour after you lighted them at one end.
However, you don't know whether they burn with constant speed, so the
first half of the fuse can be burnt in only ten minutes while the rest takes
the other fifty minutes to burn completely. Also assume that you have a
lighter.
How can you measure exactly three quarters of an hour with these fuses?

With only two fuses that burn exactly one hour, one can measure three
quarters of an hour accurately, by lighting the first fuse at both ends and
the other fuse at one end simultaneously. When the first fuse is burnt out
after exactly half an hour you know that the second fuse still has exactly
half an hour to go before it will be burnt completely, but we won't wait for
that. We will now also light the other end of the second fuse. This means
that the second fuse will now be burnt completely after another quarter
of an hour, which adds up to exactly three quarters of an hour since we
started lighting the first fuse!
Ravi is a strange liar. He lies on six days of the week, but on the seventh
day he always tells the truth. He made the following statements on three
successive days:
Day 1: "I lie on Monday and Tuesday."
Day 2: "Today, it's Thursday, Saturday, or Sunday."
Day 3: "I lie on Wednesday and Friday."
On which day does Ravi tell the truth?

We know that Ravi tells the truth on only a single day of the week. If the
statement on day 1 is untrue, this means that he tells the truth on
Monday or Tuesday. If the statement on day 3 is untrue, this means that
he tells the truth on Wednesday or Friday. Since Ravi tells the truth on
only one day, these statements cannot both be untrue. So, exactly one of
these statements must be true, and the statement on day 2 must be
untrue.

Assume that the statement on day 1 is true. Then the statement on day 3
must be untrue, from which follows that Ravi tells the truth on
Wednesday or Friday. So, day 1 is a Wednesday or a Friday. Therefore,
day 2 is a Thursday or a Saturday. However, this would imply that the
statement on day 2 is true, which is impossible. From this we can
conclude that the statement on day 1 must be untrue.

This means that Ravi told the truth on day 3 and that this day is a
Monday or a Tuesday. So day 2 is a Sunday or a Monday. Because the
statement on day 2 must be untrue, we can conclude that day 2 is a
Monday.

So day 3 is a Tuesday. Therefore, the day on which Ravi tells the truth is
Tuesday.

A man needs to pay his rent and he was out of money. He found that his
rent was worth about one gold link on his chain per day. What is the
fewest number of cuts he can make in his 23-link chain to pay the rent
for up to 23 days?
Considering that the chain is not closed, it requires only two links to be
cut. Cut link number 4 and link number 11 counting from the same
beginning link. He then has 2 pieces of length 1 (the cut links), and one
of 3, 6, and 12. He can then pay the rent as follows. One each of the first
two days he can give a cut link. On the third day he gives the chain of 3
and gets his two cut links back. He uses them on days 4 and 5, and then
trades all given so far and gives the 6-link chain on day 6. He then again
repeats the first steps for days 7-11. On day 12 he gets all those links
back and gives the 12-link chain. The then repeats the actions of the first
11 days to go all the way though day 23. For those knowing numbering
systems, it will be noticed that this is basically a trinary numbering
scheme.

An explorer wishes to cross a barren desert that requires 6 days to cross,

but one man can only carry enough food for 4 days. What is the fewest
number of other men required to help carry enough food for him to
cross?

The answer is clearly that only two other men are required. The first
helper only goes one day into the desert. He feeds the other two men
during the first day, so that at the beginning of the second day, he only
has one day rations left. So he goes back to camp. On the second day,
the second helper feeds himself and the explorer. On the beginning of the
third day the helper now has two days rations left so he heads back. The
explorer is two days into the journey and still has all four days of his food
left, so he continues on alone.

http://onepuzzleaday.blogspot.com.tr/2007/08/11-august-2007.html