Restless Legs Syndrome (RLS) Discussion Board

3 men go into a restaurant for a meal. They pay £5 each to the waiter = £15. The waiter takes the money to the chef. The chef knows the diners and tells the waiter to give £5 back to the diners.

The waiter cannot be bothered to work out the figures to refund each diner, so he gives them back £1 each and pockets the other £2.

This means each diner paid £4, making a total of £12. The waiter pocketed £2.

Where did the other £1 go ??????

Can anyone who 'gets this ' please explain it very simply.

It's an illusion, there is no extra pound.

The chef has 10, the waiter had 5, he pocketed 2, and gave 1 each to the 3 men.

15 - 5 = 10 to the manager
5 - 3 = 2 to the waiter

The men (3) plus the waiter (2) plus the chef (10) so:

(3+2) + 10 = 15

Yuuppp. That's it.

Hubby got it after tearing his hair out for a wee while.
Son got it right away.
I was going around in circles.

It's a trick, of course. They get you to briefly and unwittingly accept that the amount paid is the amount the establishment received, even though it obviously isn't.

The trick comes when they imply that you need to add the £2 waiter theft to the £12 payment in order to get back towards the original £15 amount. However, that's wrong, because the waiter stole the £2 from the £12 payment, so it's already accounted for and should not be added in.

The correct math would be to add the £3 refund to the £12 payment, which obviously works out to the right £15 number.

I confess I actually looked it up, although I just had this feeling it was one of those trick questions... I got different scenarios from this particular one, the premise was the same..