Riddle

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Heard this on Virgin radio today didnt hear this answer, can anyone work it out.

Three men go into a hotel and book a room.
room costs £30

each man pays £10

reception latere that day notices the room should have cost £25, so sends a porter with £5 to give to the three men.

The porter can't work out how much each man should get so decides to give the three men £1 each making £9 payed by each man the porter then pockets the £2.


question is what has happened to the missing £1

 

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I cant see that there is a missing pound anywhere. 9x3=27-2 £25 thats the fiver account for.

 

there was £30
9x3=27
porter takes £2 total = £29

£1 missing

 

You adding the £2 when you should be taking it away as your are multiplying the discounted rate 9x3 thats already 10-1 so you need to minus the 2 pounds which gets you to £25 which is the correct cost of the room and the £5 discount is all accounted for.

 

Dales is right, its a puzzle because of false logic introduced by the fact english is not very good at describing maths.

The correct sum is
9x3= 27
27-2= 25

The original question falsely asserts

9x3= 27
27+2=29

Which is not thirty so it hints theres a missing pound, this is false logic because the addition is incorrect.
You need to look at it like dales and work from the £25 figure, the £30 does not exist, only 27 or 25 depending on if you include the tip.

The only way to get the £30 is to add the £3 handed back onto the £27.

 

This has been here posted before, and to be honest, I hate it. With a vengence

However, I can account for the loss (I'm ignoring the replies from Dales and Dmarsh by the way):

The following night two friends check into the same motel. Once again the clerk charges them £30, or £15 per person. After the clerk remembers the total rate is only £25 he sends the porter upstairs with five £1 notes to pay the two friends back. The porterknows he got away with larceny once so he tries it again. But this time he pockets £3 and returns £2 to the hotel guests (£1 per guest). So each of the two guests got £1 back from their original £15. Therefore each paid £14 which is a total payment of £28 for the room. Now the porter has £3, the guests paid £28, for a total of £31....THERE'S THE MISSING DOLLAR!!!!

 

apparently it was a gcsc question, and thats how they worded it. Trying to catch the poor kids out now

 

It wasn't a Dollar it was a Poundand why so much hate and vengence

 

because it always does my nut in.

 

No Trolling Fergal!!

 

We had to do this on a management principles course.

Even if you understand the maths, it's still hard to explain it - especially when the person who asked the question is determined to make you doubt yourself.

It gets harder to answer the longer the discussion goes on.

The people who see it straight away and don't even understand that it's a riddle tend to lack imagination.
By that, I mean they are more mathematical rather than artistic in their thinking.

(no offense to anyone here who falls into that category!)

 

I'm not. But I always feel like my head is going to explode when I try to get my head around the maths.

Strangely though, it seems slightly easier today than usual.

 

At first I was like, eh?

and because the initial question was intended to lean me to find the missing £1 as opposed to looking at the mathematical structure, I was coming up with all kinds of crazy answers, just to name a few hehe:

1) One of the men went to the toilet to buy a condom
2) One of the men bought a souveneir on the way up to their room

etc etc but suffice to say, I enjoyed the question, even if i didn't logically get it

 

That must be me then! (none taken by the way), when I read it I was trying to figure out why it was a riddle, because im normally rubbish at riddles. Its just a plain old maths question!

 

Maths this then : look at your left hand and count down 10,9,8,7,6 look at your right hand and count back up again 11 fingers

 

ah very good, I can see that will be a good one to play on my daughter!

 

OMG I've got 11 fingers!!...wait a mi...