My friend Andrew was throwing a very grand party and wanted to borrow from me 100 wine glasses. I wanted to send them through my neighbour’s servant Harry.

Just to give an incentive to Harry to deliver the glasses intact I offered him 30 paise for every glass delivered safely and threatened to forefeit 90 paise for every glass he broke. On settlement, Harry received 24 Rupees from me.

How many glasses did Harry break ?

( Given: 1 Rupee = 100 Paise )

(In reply to alternate method by K Sengupta)

Harry would have received 0.3*100 = 30 rupees, had he delivered all the 100 glasses intact.

Let us suppose then, that the reward of 30 paise has already been paid to Harry.

In the above scenario, a penalty of (90+30) = 120 paise for each glass broken must be imposed to conform to the given conditions.

Let the total number of glasses broken by Harry be g.
Since a sum of 24 rupees was paid to Harry, we must have:

30 - 1.2g = 24
or, 1.2g = 6
or, g = 5

Consequently, the required number of glasses broken by Harry was 5.

Edited on March 14, 2008, 3:01 pm

Posted by K Sengupta on 2008-03-14 15:00:43