A friend of mine, Sol announces that he has a number of coins in his pocket that add up to precisely one dollar. When he tells me how many coins he has, I ask if any one of them is a half-dollar. Sol tells me "no". I realize that I can't tell for sure what coins he has, because there are six different combinations that produce precisely one dollar.

How many coins does Sol have in his pocket?

(In reply to computer solution by Charlie)

DIM num(100)
amt = 100
FOR q = 0 TO 4
  amt = amt - 25 * q
  FOR d = 0 TO amt / 10
     amt = amt - d * 10
       FOR n = 0 TO amt / 5
         amt = amt - 5 * n
           p = amt
           PRINT USING "####"; q; d; n; p; q + d + n + p
           num(q + d + n + p) = num(q + d + n + p) + 1
         amt = amt + 5 * n
       NEXT
     amt = amt + d * 10
  NEXT
  amt = amt + 25 * q
NEXT
FOR i = 1 TO 100
  IF num(i) = 6 THEN PRINT i
NEXT

Then the output was sorted on total coins.

Posted by Charlie on 2013-07-30 16:24:39