I got this one in the email today:

3 men go into a hotel.
The man behind the desk said the room is $30 so each man paid $10 and went to the room.
A while later the man behind the desk realized the room was only $25 so he sent the bellboy to the 3 guys’ room with $5.
On the way the bellboy couldn’t figure out how to split $5 evenly between 3 men, so he gave each man a $1 and kept the other $2 for himself.
This meant that the 3 men each paid $9 for the room, which is a total of $27 add the $2 that the bellboy kept = $29. Where is the other dollar?

I love this one, it totally does your head in. And it drove my mum crazy and a whole host of other people. It’s called a trick, it gets you with one simple little phrase: “the 3 men each paid $9 for the room, which is a total of $27″.

It doesn’t work like that. The $2 for the bellboy comes from the $27 they “spent on the room”, the rest ($25) paid for the room, and they all got $1 back. So $25 for the room, $2 for the bellboy and $1 (x3) goes back to them.

It’s the order the story is written in and the way that it makes you think. You are lead to believe that the room cost $27, but it didn’t it only cost $25! And the $2 cost was the $2 the bell boy stole. And the other $3 being the $1 each they got.

The real question asked should be “what are 3 men doing in the hotel room in the first place?”