Riddle: Three friends check into a hotel 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 three by $5. He asks the bellhop to return $5 to the three 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????
Answer: The facts in this riddle pretty obvious: There is the initial $30 charge. It should have been $25, so $5 needs to be returned and accounted for. $3 is given to the three friends, and $2 is kept by the bellhop - there you have the $5. The trick to the riddle is that the addition and subtraction are done at the wrong times to misdirect you. Each of the 3 friends did indeed pay $9, not $10, and as far as the friends are concerned, they paid $27 for the night. But we know that the clerk will tell us that they were charged only $25 and when you add the $3 returned with the $2 kept by the bellhop, you come up with $30.
Share:
10 Best Riddles For Kids are hand picked 10 Best Riddles For Kids for use by teachers in the classroom and for home school lessons. This 10 best riddles for kids quiz provides the option to be downloaded as a PDF or printable directly from the 10 Best Riddles For Kids quiz page.
Thanksgiving Riddles are hand picked Thanksgiving Riddles for use by teachers in the classroom and for home school lessons. This thanksgiving riddles quiz provides the option to be downloaded as a PDF or printable directly from the Thanksgiving Riddles quiz page.
Christmas Riddles are hand picked Christmas Riddles for use by teachers in the classroom and for home school lessons. This christmas riddles quiz provides the option to be downloaded as a PDF or printable directly from the Christmas Riddles quiz page.
