My co-worker has brought this up and while I know there’s something wrong with the way it’s being presented, for the life of me I can’t articulate (or even put my finger on) it. So where’s the inherent trickery?
3 guys go to a hotel, get a room for $30. They each pay $10. Manager realizes he’s made a mistake, mid week the room is only $25. He gives the bellman five $1 bills to return to the guys.
Bellman realizes he has no quarters and can’t split it evenly, so he lies to the guys and says the room is $27, you each get $1 back. He pockets the other $2.
So the guys paid $10 each, get $1 back each, so they’ve each spent $9. $9 x 3 = $27. Bellhop has $2 in his pocket. $27 + $2 = $29.
Where’d the other $1 go to make a total of $30?
Obviously is you go in the other direction… $9 x 3 = $27, minus the $2 for the bellhop, you get back to the “correct” rate of $25. But if you just focus on how much the 3 guys each paid, and then take the bellman’s tip into account, the total seems to come up $1 short. What are we missing?
If the room was only $27, he would only have returned $2, but the riddle says he returned $3. You glossed over where that dollar went.
The room is $25 + $3 back to them = $28 Plus $2 to the bellhop = $30
There’s no reason to add the bellman’s $2 to the $27. It doesn’t make any sense. The guys didn’t pay $27 for the room and another $2 for the bellhop. They paid $27 total. $25 of that went to pay for the room, and $2 went for a unilaterally determined tip to the bellhop. The fact that they paid for it in $10 bills before getting change is immaterial.
So, if you want to do some meaningful math, you can say: $27 (total) - $2 (tip) = $25 (room).
This is how Enron “made” all that money…
Thanks for the responses and the link!
Also, there is no third word, you should choose the other door, and yes they do echo.
Usram writes:
> . . . and yes they do echo.
Not if they’re hummingbirds:
Silent hummingbirds don’t echo. Noisy ones do. I saw a couple fighting once and you could hear the skull-cracks echo like gunshots off the house across the street. (Well, pellet gun shots, at least.) Just the hum? They used to fly into our living room to get my attention when their feeder was empty–not a distinct echo per se, but it definitely resonates.
The Mythbusters “ducks quacking” episode was funny, BTW. You could hear the darned duck’s quacks echoing around the warehouse as soon as they got it in there. But would it quack for the test equipment? No.
Sorry, what was the topic? Oh, yes. Two hummingbirds nest and have three offspring. How many hummingbirds are there? (Hint: How fast is your cat?)
mwbrooks writes:
> Sorry, what was the topic? Oh, yes. Two hummingbirds nest and have three
> offspring. How many hummingbirds are there? (Hint: How fast is your cat?)
Seven, but only if ice cream has no bones and it takes nine pancakes to shingle a doghouse.