I just did this little math puzzle for an assignment in my discreet structures class and I thought I'd share it with you guys, let's see who can get the correct answer first.
The story goes like this: There are five pirates partying over a chest of diamonds they've just plundered which they're planning on splitting up in the morning before they go their separate ways. During the night one of the pirates wakes up and decides to go ahead and take his share so he can set sail early, so he splits the diamonds equally into five piles. At the end of the five piles he ends up with one extra diamond, so he thinks about it for awhile and decides to throw it in the ocean, take his pile, pool the rest of the diamonds back into the chest, and take off with his share.
A few minutes later, another pirate wakes up and does the exact same thing, not noticing that the first pirate had already taken his share, thus making five piles again. At the end, he too ends up with one extra diamond and decides to toss it into the ocean. After taking one of the piles and pooling the rest back into the chest, he sets sail as well.
This goes on one by one until all five pirates have eventually left, never noticing that the others left before them, and each time there is one extra diamond.
The question is: what is the least possible number of diamonds that could have possibly originally been in the chest? GOOD LUCK
Tags:
None
-
Fun counting math puzzle
-
oh, that's a nice puzzle.
-
Can these diamonds be broken into halves, or is the answer a whole number?
-
The answer is a whole number, assume the diamonds are all exactly the same size and value.
-
I'm assuming that the final pirate doesn't throw a diamond into the ocean.
-
YES THE FINAL PIRATE THROWS A DIAMOND!
-
What an idiot.
Originally Posted by Necronopticous
-
he didn't know his friends left
honor amongst thieves! -
The thing is that they all make five piles, and they all throw one extra diamond away because they don't realize the others already did the same thing.
Anyway, this is a math puzzle, it only follows that the characters involved would be completely stupid and not in any kind of sound mind. -
This is stupid. I hate you, Jeremy.
-
I can't believe I worked for an entire page to try and figure this out. I couldn't even get past the second to last pirate.
-
I got up to four pirates when I ran into a number not divisible by four.
-
i'm still at 3
-
AHAHAH!!! YAY!
Yeah, I figured it out. It took a while to get the graph going and write so small but I pulled through.
(SPOILER)They started with 3,121 diamonds? -
Thank god I stopped trying to figure it out by hand. Originally Posted by Xaven
AHAHAH!!! YAY!
Yeah, I figured it out. It took a while to get the graph going and write so small but I pulled through.
(SPOILER)They started with 3,121 diamonds?
