Riddles3


				The missing dollar


			The problem:

			Three friends check into a motel for the night and the clerk tells them the bill is $30, payable in advance. So, they each pay the clerk $10 and go to their room. A few minutes later, the clerk realizes he has made an error and overcharged the trio by $5. He asks the bellhop to return $5 to the 3 friends who had just checked in. The bellhop sees this as an opportunity to make $2 as he reasons that the three friends would have a tough time dividing $5 evenly among them; so he decides to tell them that the clerk made a mistake of only $3, giving a dollar back to each of the friends. He pockets the leftover $2 and goes home for the day! Now, each of the three friends gets a dollar back, thus they each paid $9 for the room which is a total of $27 for the night. We know the bellhop pocketed $2 and adding that to the $27, you get $29, not $30 which was originally spent. Where did the other dollar go?


			The Answer:

			If you look at the payment in a different way, you will see that all of the money is accounted for. The original charge is $30. If the clerk realised he had overcharged $5, then the actual cost was $25. One dollar for each of the guests = $3. So $25 + $3 = $28. Then if you remember, the bellhop pocketed the $2 so $28 + $2 = $30 which equals the original cost. Therefore, there is no missing dollar.

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