Skeptics Café

1. Milan

2. Kylie Minogue

3. Cigarettes

4. Dummy

5. Nigeria

6. The Defenders and The Brady Bunch

7. Xylophone

8. A. Madrid B. Harare C. Bankok

9. 1972

10. Fried Rice

HARDER:

11. Commonwealth Scientific Industrial Research Organisation

12. Australian Competition and Consumer Commission

13. Caroline Graham

14. It’s the old postal address of the Eau-de-Cologne factory in the German town of Cologne (Koln) when under French occupation

15. Light Rum, Southern Comfort. Triple Sec, Lemon juice, Dash of Bitters

16. All have been official events in at least one Olympics

17. 1959

18. Reagan, Goneril, Cordelia

19. Pete Conrad

20. Beeswax

1. 1.6%

2. 30

3. 0.16 (Two fifths squared is four twenty fifths or 16 hundredths)

4. c

5. 324

6. Sam has 21 balls and Fred has 15 balls.
If Sam would give Fred 3 balls, they would have an equal number (i.e., 18 balls each).
If Fred would give Sam 3 balls, then Sam would have 24 balls and Fred would have 12 balls.

7. b

8. $128

9. a

10. 579 pages

1. 72

2. a. 7
b. Scores of 10 and 11 are equally likely
c. 4 and 24

3. 26. (a quick way of approaching this if you know that 676 is a perfect square is to realise that its square root must lie between 20 (20 X 20 = 400) and 30 (30 X 30 = 900). Then, since 676 ends in 6 the only candidates are 24 X 24 and 26 X 26. However, if the answer was 24, then 676 would have 3 as one of its factors; its digits must add up to some multiple of 3. But 6 + 7 + 6 =13. That rules out 24; the answer must be 26)

4. 6, if he saves and reuses the butts from his own newly rolled cigarettes.

5. 3 cats

6. Two. (83 and 89)

7. a. 15 triangles; b. 9 triangles

8. 62 photos

9. a. Yes b. Yes c. Yes (as the gap is 1.6 m some men might have to crouch a bit)

10. The ring road is about 10% quicker