Skip to content

Sunday Times Teaser 3108 – My Grandfather’s Coins

by BRG on April 15, 2022

by Bernardo Recamán

Published Sunday April 17 2022 (link)

When my grandfather died, he left his fine collection of coins, not more than 2500 of them, to his children, a different number to each of them, and in decreasing amounts according to their ages.

To the eldest of his children, he left one fifth of the coins, while the youngest inherited just one eleventh of them. Gaby, my mother, and third oldest of the children, received one tenth of the collection. All the other children received a prime number of coins.

How many coins did my aunt Isabel, second oldest in the family, inherit?

From → Uncategorized

5 Comments Leave one →
  1. Brian Gladman permalink

  2. John Z permalink

    Very similar to your solution, Brian

  3. John Z permalink

    Using the ‘range’ method of the ‘Primes’ object makes it possible to remove 2 lines from my initial post where ‘Primes’ was used to do no more than generate the prime numbers up to 500.

  4. Sid Jones permalink

    Hmmm. Maybe I’m missing something, but if the eldest gets the most, but only 20%, how do the other four get fewer coins, determined by age order, but make up the remaining 80% of the total?

    • Brian Gladman permalink

      Hi Sid,

      You seem to be assuming that there are only five children but there are more than this.

      Brian

Leave a comment to John Z Cancel reply

Note: HTML is allowed. Your email address will not be published.

Subscribe to this comment feed via RSS