Conquer Club

Three men in a cafe order a meal the total cost of which is $15. They each contribute $5. The waiter takes the money to the chef who recognizes the three as friends and asks the waiter to return $5 to the men.

The waiter is not only poor at mathematics but dishonest and instead of going to the trouble of splitting the $5 between the three he simply gives them $1 each and pockets the remaining $2 for himself.

Now, each of the men effectively paid $4, the total paid is therefore $12. Add the $2 in the waiters pocket and this comes to $14.....where has the other $1 gone from the original $15?

As always, the answer is available online if you get stuck.

This isn't really a logic problem. This is more of a "vaguary of translating math to language" situation

Symmetry fail. The $2 in the waiter's pocket is part of the $12 the men gave him, not additional to it.

Way to not have any women in your question.

mrswdk wrote:Symmetry fail. The $2 in the waiter's pocket is part of the $12 the men gave him, not additional to it.

Way to not have any women in your question.

Nope, you've gotten yourself confused. Try to think through it carefully.

Symmetry wrote:Three men in a cafe order a meal the total cost of which is $15. They each contribute $5. The waiter takes the money to the chef who recognizes the three as friends and asks the waiter to return $5 to the men.

The waiter is not only poor at mathematics but dishonest and instead of going to the trouble of splitting the $5 between the three he simply gives them $1 each and pockets the remaining $2 for himself.

Now, each of the men effectively paid $4, the total paid is therefore $12. Add the $2 in the waiters pocket and this comes to $14.....where has the other $1 gone from the original $15?

As always, the answer is available online if you get stuck.

It didn't go anywhere.
The second part of the question is essentially rubbish and misleading.
now while the men only essentially paid 12 dollars, by giving the men back a dollar each the waiter effectively only lessened the cost of the meal to 12 instead of 10. this doesn't change the fact that the initial cost of the men was 5 (5x3=15), which was then reduced by 3 (5-2) to 12, and then the three dollars was distributed to each of the three men to make each of them get 1 dollar reducing their individual cost to 4 dollars. 4x3=12. If anything the dollar is "lost" because of the averaging occurring when distributing the money. This has to do with the fact that dividing and multiplying while reciprocal functions, if there is adding/subtracting (also reciprocal) will change the outcome of the function.

They each payed 15$. Chef takes 10$, and returns 5$ to the waiter to pass back to his friends. Waiter pockets 2$ out of the 5$ and only returns the 3 friends 1$ each; 3$ total.

==> Not sure whether to answer "nowhere" or "chef"

Symmetry wrote:where has the other $1 gone from the original $15?

Returned to where it started as 33cents each.

Customers paid $12
Chef takes $10
Waiter takes $2

So the last dollar went to the "customers" or "nowhere" depending on how you want to define this.

(Lack of clarity breaks another logic problem)

Inflation or taxes,one of the two.

There is no "last dollar". The problem messes with people because they are comparing things that can't be compared. To correctly view this-

customers paid $15 and got $3 back. So their payment is $15-$3=$12 paid.

The owner of the cafe got $10 and the waiter got $2. So the receipt is $10+$2=$12.

Now put the payments to receipts together-

$15-$3=$10+$2

It works out just fine and there is no "missing money".

you cannot add what the waitress stole from the 15$ to the 12$ actually spent by the customers. You ought to substract those 2$ from those 12$; and you get what the chef received. There is no 1$ spare because of an addition instead of a substraction, the text is false.

3 x 5$ =
10$ chef
2$ waitress
3$ change back to customers.

Indeed there is no missing dollar. Well done to those who figured it out.