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Check Mate (Posted on 2003-10-06) Difficulty: 3 of 5
Two brothers share a flock of x sheep. They take the sheep to the market and sell each sheep for $x. At the end of the day they put the money from the sales on the table to divide it equally. All money is in $10 bills, except for fewer than ten excess $1 bills. One at a time they take out $10 bills. The brother who draws first also draws last.

The second brother complains about getting one less $10 bill so the first brother offers him all the $1 bills. The second brother still received a total less than the first brother so he asks the first brother to write him a check to balance the things out.

How much was the check?

See The Solution Submitted by Ravi Raja    
Rating: 4.0000 (7 votes)

Comments: ( Back to comment list | You must be logged in to post comments.)
re: Solution | Comment 5 of 12 |
(In reply to Solution by Tristan)

I don't totally agree, because there are more squares with uneven 10$ bills. Look at: 14 => 196 and 16 => 256 which has 19 10$ bills and 25 10$ bills respectively. There are many more where those came from, but the really weird part is that ALL of the ones I have seen have a 6 as the least significant digit, so the check would be 2$

For the case where the brothers have 8866 sheep in their flock this still remains. I don't think I should even check higher because who could sell more than 8866 sheep in one day, even if there's two of them? Who is going to get 78 million dollars for a bunch of sheep anyway?
  Posted by ratsnstuff on 2003-10-07 02:56:46

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