New Scientist Enigma 510 – Out of Court

by Oliver Anderson

From Issue #1662, 29th April 1989

Professor Puzzleothers has privately decided to allow his ex-wife a resettlement of precisely one third his current annual salary, but only if she can work out exactly how much she is to get.

He instructs his solicitor to tell her lawyers that he will agree to alimony calculated according to the following formula.

She has to find two numbers A and B which between them contain each of the digits from 1 to 9 exactly once and contain no 0 digit, such that B = 2A, A is divisible by 3, and the quotient when A is divided by 3 is a number which contains all the digits from 1 to 4. Then £A will be the annual settlement.

What does Puzzleothers currently earn?