How do you split coupons when paying a restaurant bill?
It's Friday night and you're out to dinner with your friends. You are ready to split the bill, and you offer up a coupon to save money. How should the coupon affect how much you pay? Should the coupon reduce the entire group bill, or should the coupon reduce only how ...

One mile south, one mile east, one mile north – a classic puzzle
I was having dinner with a friend the other day. We were talking about my writing, and out of the blue he asked me what my favorite puzzle was. A lot of the puzzles I wrote about on this site came to mind, including The hat puzzle A mystery Sherlock Holmes couldn't solve, ...

A dilemma in dividing up chocolates
The day after Valentine's Day, a father ran into a math dilemma. He had bought a heart-shaped box of chocolates on clearance to be divided amongst his three daughters. The issue came when he tried to divide the chocolates. The box contained 17 pieces of chocolates. He had promised 1/2 of ...

The Wallet Paradox
Bill Gates meets Warren Buffett at a dinner party and the host tells them to play a game. Each person will place his wallet on the table. The person with less money in his wallet wins all the money. Is anyone favored to win this game? What happens when the game ...

Broken sticks puzzle, and a seemingly paradoxical ratio
image via flickr, CC by 2.0 This is a neat little problem that is an extension of a puzzle from the Richard Wiseman's blog. The puzzle A warehouse contains thousands of sticks, each 1 meter long. One day a bored worker breaks each of the sticks in two, with each of the breaks ...