CHALLENGE

Three guests 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 bellhop $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 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?

ANSWER

The $9 paid by each guest accounts for the $2 that went to the bellhop. So rather than adding $27 to the $2 kept by the bellhop, the $27 accounts for the bellhop’s money. The $27 plus the $3 kept by the guests does add up to $30.