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
Puzzle Solution: Method III by K Sengupta)
Let us assume, that at the outset a deposit amount of 0.9*100 = 90 rupees were taken from Harry on the assumption that he would break all the 100 glasses.
In this situation for every glass remaining unbroken after delivery, Harry would receive a reward of (90+30) = 120 paise.
Let the total number of glasses remaining unbroken be u.
Then, we must have:
-90 + 1.2*u = 24
Or, 1.2*u = 114
Or, u = 114/1.2 = 95
Consequently, the required number of glasses broken by Harry = 100 - 95 = 5.