A traveller rents a room in an inn for a week and offers the innkeeper a chain of seven silver links as payment – one link per day, with the condition that they will be payed everyday. The innkeeper agrees, with the condition that the traveller can only cut one of the links. How did the traveller manage to pay the innkeeper?
There are 6 locked suitcases and 6 keys for them. It is not known which keys are for which suitcase. What is the smallest number of attempts do you need in order to open all the suitcases? How many attempts would you need if there are 10 suitcases and keys instead of 6?
Fred and George together with their mother were decorating the Christmas tree. So that they would not fight, their mother gave each brother the same number of decorations and branches. Fred tried to hang one decoration on each branch, but he needed one more branch for his last decoration. George tried to hang two toys on each branch, but one branch was empty. What do you think, how many branches and how many decorations did the mother give to her sons?
In order to glaze 15 windows of different shapes and sizes, 15 pieces of glass are prepared exactly for the size of the windows (windows are such that each window should have one glass). The glazier, not knowing that the glass is specifically selected for the size of each window, works like this: he approaches a certain window and sorts out the unused glass until he finds one that is large enough (that is, either an exactly suitable piece or one from which the right size can be cut), if there is no such glass, he goes to the next window, and so on, until he has assessed each window. It is impossible to make glass from several parts. What is the maximum number of windows which can be left unglazed?
There were seven boxes. In some of them, seven more boxes were placed inside (not nested in each other), etc. As a result, there are 10 non-empty boxes. How many boxes are there now in total?