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Sunday Times Teaser 2710 – Sterling Achievement

by Robin Nayler

A number of people all used different combinations of 5p, 10p, 20p and 50p coins to donate one Pound to charity. I also did the same but I could not avoid repeating a combination of coins that had already been used.

After collecting all the donations together it was found that there were a whole number of Pounds in coins of each denomination.

Which coins did I use to make my donation?

One Comment Leave one →
  1. brian gladman permalink

    This teaser is an example of Frobenius Numbers, a subject which I cover in some detail here. Although it can be solved without any knowledge of such techniques, the following solution uses my Python version of the Bocker Liptak algorithm for solving problems that involve Frobenius Numbers.

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