The Puzzle Page is dedicated to bringing you the best puzzles collected from around the world along with original puzzles not seen anywhere else.

The staff at The Puzzle Page always enjoy seeing new puzzles and would love to hear from you. If you have a puzzle that's giving you problems, drop us a line -- we'd love to help.





Saturday, January 26, 2008

The Motel Room

Three businessmen are in Cleveland for a convention. Since they are on a budget, they decide to share a room at a motel that charges $30 per night ($10 per man). The motel manager is in a good mood that night and decides to reimburse some of the money. He gives the bell boy $5 and tells him to give it to the three men. However, the bell boy is dishonest and figures that you cannot divide $5 evenly among three men, so he gives back $1 to each man and keeps the other $2 for himself.

Now, the businessmen have each paid $9 for the room, or $27 all together, and the bell boy has $2, for a total of $29.

What happened to the other $1?

2 comments:

Bon said...

The manager reimbursed $5, making the room total $25 not $30.

The men paid $9 each, $27 in total. That's $25 for the room and $2 for the bell boy.

CT said...

You're right.

The problem is that: the sentence "the bell boy has $2" does not mean the bell boy pay $2 for rent.
It should be subtract by 2, instead of plus by 2.