Tag Archives: arithmetic

Seven Girls Puzzle

This problem comes from the Scottish Mathematical Council (SMC) Senior Mathematical Challenge of 2007:

“A group of seven girls—Ally, Bev, Chi-chi, Des, Evie, Fi and Grunt—were playing a game in which the counters were beans. Whenever a girl lost a game, from her pile of beans she had to give each of the other girls as many beans as they already had. They had been playing for some time and they all had different numbers of beans. They then had a run of seven games in which each girl lost a game in turn, in the order given above. At the end of this sequence of games, amazingly, they all had the same number of beans—128. How many did each of them have at the start of this sequence of seven games?”

Answer.

See the Seven Girls Puzzle for solutions.

Three Counting Puzzles

Here are three counting puzzles from Alex Bellos’s book, Can You Solve My Problems?  Bellos recalls the famous legend of the young Gauss in the 19th century who summed up the whole numbers from 1 to 100 by finding a pattern that would simplify the work.  Bellos also mentioned that Alcuin some thousand years earlier had discovered a similar, but different, pattern to sum up the numbers.  In presenting these three problems he said, “The lesson … is this: If you’re asked to add up a whole bunch of numbers, don’t undertake the challenge literally.  Look for the pattern and use it to your advantage.”

Answer.

See Three Counting Puzzles for solutions.