(This "nonsense puzzle" gets its name from the puzzle I saw it from)

A shopper went into a shop and wanted a dollar's worth of chestnuts when he gave the shopkeeper a one dollar bill and was given five chestnuts. "It is not enough; I ought to have a sixth," the shopper remarked. "But you will have five too many if I gave you one chestnut more", the shopkeeper replied.

How many chestnuts should the man have gotten for 3 twenty dollar bills?

It seems plausible to me that the shopkeeper means 5 too many n-ths of a chestnut. Thus 5/n should be more than 0 and less than 1/2 since the buyer thinks he deserves 6 (due to rounding). Thus n > 10. I pick 12 because the shopkeeper thinks the buyer has a case, albeit a marginal one, for getting 6 instead of 5 and $60 presumably buys a whole number of chestnuts. Hence $60 should buy 60 x 5 7/12 = 335 chestnuts.
Edited on January 5, 2004, 10:29 pm

Posted by Richard on 2004-01-05 22:16:06