Three guests check into a hotel room. The manager says the bill is $30, so each guest pays $10. Later the manager realizes the bill should only have been $25. To rectify this, he gives the bellhop $5 as five one-dollar bills to return to the guests.
On the way to the guests’ room to refund the money, the bellhop realizes that he cannot equally divide the five one-dollar bills among the three guests. As the guests are not aware of the total of the revised bill, the bellhop decides to just give each guest $1 back and keep $2 as a tip for himself, and proceeds to do so.
As each guest got $1 back, each guest only paid $9, bringing the total paid to $27. The bellhop kept $2, which when added to the $27, comes to $29. So if the guests originally handed over $30, what happened to the remaining $1?
(Answser Below)
Answer:
The riddle tricks you into focusing on the wrong numbers.
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Here’s the breakdown:
- Guests initially paid: $30
- Actual room cost: $25
- Returned to guests: $3
- Kept by bellhop: $2
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Why the “missing dollar” is an illusion:
- The riddle misleads you by adding the $27 (what the guests effectively paid) to the $2 the bellhop kept.
- This is incorrect because the $27 already includes the money the bellhop took.
- The $27 covers both the hotel’s $25 and the bellhop’s $2.
In simpler terms:
Imagine the guests paid $30.
- The hotel gets $25.
- The bellhop gets $2.
- The guests get $3 back.
The money is all accounted for.
The riddle creates a false sense of a missing dollar by trying to combine the guests’ reduced payment with the bellhop’s tip, which are already intertwined.
