Posted: 10/23/2015 9:50:02 AM EDT
| Three people check into a hotel room. The clerk says the bill is $30, so each guest pays $10. Later the clerk realizes the bill should only be $25. To rectify this, he gives the bellboy $5 to return to the guests. On the way to the room, the bellhop realizes that he cannot divide the money equally. As the guests didn't know the total of the revised bill, the bellhop decides to just give each guest $1 and keep $2 as a tip for himself. Each guest got $1 back: so now each guest only paid $9; bringing the total paid to $27. The bellhop has $2. And $27 + $2 = $29 so, if the guests originally handed over $30, what happened to the remaining $1. |
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Quoted:
Three people check into a hotel room. The clerk says the bill is $30, so each guest pays $10. Later the clerk realizes the bill should only be $25. To rectify this, he gives the bellboy $5 to return to the guests. On the way to the room, the bellhop realizes that he cannot divide the money equally. As the guests didn't know the total of the revised bill, the bellhop decides to just give each guest $1 and keep $2 as a tip for himself. Each guest got $1 back: so now each guest only paid $9; bringing the total paid to $27. The bellhop has $2. And $27 + $2 = $29 so, if the guests originally handed over $30, what happened to the remaining $1. where do you get a 30$ hotel and who still had bellhops? |
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Quoted: Three people check into a hotel room. The clerk says the bill is $30, so each guest pays $10. Later the clerk realizes the bill should only be $25. To rectify this, he gives the bellboy $5 to return to the guests. On the way to the room, the bellhop realizes that he cannot divide the money equally. As the guests didn't know the total of the revised bill, the bellhop decides to just give each guest $1 and keep $2 as a tip for himself. Each guest got $1 back: so now each guest only paid $9; bringing the total paid to $27. The bellhop has $2. And $27 + $2 = $29 so, if the guests originally handed over $30, what happened to the remaining $1. $27 Guest Fee - $2 Bell Hop Payment = $25 Hotel Fee |
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27 - 2 = 25
The "riddle" works by presenting the reader with a detailed narrative that presents a lot of useless information which seems important. Then it presents the 27 + 2 = 29, which is a correct equation yet is also completely irrelevant. There are only 30 dollars. The hotel ends up with 25, the bellhop has 2, and the guests together have 3. No missing dollar. The "riddle" essentially counts the bellhop's $2 twice and tries to get you to not notice. Incidentally, this is how many confidence scams work. |
