This is a work problem from Geoffrey Mott-Smith from 1954.

“ ‘If a man can do a job in one day, how long will it take two men to do the job?’

No book of puzzles, I take it, is complete without such a question. I will not blame the reader in the least if he hastily turns the page, for I, too, was annoyed by “If a man” conundrums in my schooldays. Besides, the answer in the back of the book was always wrong. Everybody knows it will take the two men two days to do the job, because they will talk about women and the weather, they will argue about how the job is to be done, they will negotiate as to which is to do it. In schoolbooks the masons and bricklayers are not men, they are robots.

Strictly on the understanding that I am really talking about robots, I will put it to you:

If a tinker and his helper can refabulate a widget in 2 days, and if the tinker working with the apprentice instead would take 3 days, while the helper and the apprentice would take 6 days to do the job, how long would it take each working alone to refabulate the widget?”

Answer.

See Refabulating Widgets for a solution.