Some Riddles & Puzzles

Black and White Stones

If there are 6 white and black stones ; 6 black stones and 6 white stones and 6 black and white stones then how many black and white stones are there?

Can you give an easy answer to this?

Colour disc puzzle

Question: If you have three red discs and only one blue disc, how do you EITHER stack OR arrange them so that no two discs of the same colour are touching?

Clue: Imagine that the discs are triangles.

Answer: There is only one way to arrange them and that is to put one red disc on the right of the blue disc; one red disc on the left and one red disc either above or below it (which would be more obvious using 3 sided shapes or  4 sided shapes like squares) but it’s impossible to do by stacking the discs or by trying to arrange them in a straight line because you only have one blue disc to place between the red discs. (Also you could put one disc above; one disc below and one disc on the left or right).

The three things puzzle

Question: On a table, in front of you, I place three objects; an apple on the right; an orange in the middle and a pear on the left.

Can you, just moving one thing once, place the apple on the left of the orange and the pear on the right of the orange?

Answer: The one thing that you move is the table. You just rotate it 180 degrees (or you can move yourself and sit on the other side of the table) and the apple and pear will switch places.

Mysterious boxes riddle

Question: Inside a large glass box, with a hinged lid, is a smaller box. The smaller box is upside down but, remarkably, without tipping the larger box over or touching the box inside you can turn the little box over. Furthermore there is something else that is strange about the boxes; though you can see through the transparent walls of the large glass box that there is an upturned box inside, when you actually open the glass box and look inside there is nothing in it.

Two questions:

1. How without touching the box inside can you turn it over?
2. Why is it that whenever you look inside the larger box the little box vanishes? 

    

   Answer: The bottom of the little box is attached to the lid of the big box so when you open the lid of the big box you both turn the little box upside down and remove it from the big box.