Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Jelly bean contest

Candy store had a guessing contest to see who could tell how many jelly beans were in the jar. Sue guessed 92, William guessed 88, Jane guessed 95, Alice guessed 87, and Jack guessed 101. They were wrong, not in the given order, by six, eight, three, and seven, and one of them was correct. How many jelly beans were there? (from A. Salny)

3 comments:

Amy said...

The correct answer is 95. Sue under guessed by 3, William under guessed by 7, Jane was correct, Alice under guessed by 8, and Jack over guessed by 6.

Maria said...

Very cool, Amy!
Peter and Rachel - you have a serious new competitor here.

For those dying to know how Amy did this -
the easiest way to find the answer is by taking one guess at a time guess, assuming it is correct answer and verifying whether it would fit puzzle description.
Amy - let us know if you used a different strategy.

Amy said...

Maria, that was pretty much how I came to the conclusion. I started off with the first 2 numbers and wrote down what the numbers would be with a difference of +/- 6,8,3, and 7. Once I saw the pattern (95), I verified that 95 would work for all of them.

Post a Comment

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.