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November 10, 2015

10 Cigaratte Butts Puzzle


Bruce is an inmate in a large prison, and like most of the other prisoners, he smokes cigarettes. During his time in the prison, Bruce finds that if he has 3 cigarette butts, he can cram them together and turn them into 1 full cigarette. Whenever he smokes a cigarette, it turns into a cigarette butt.
One day, Bruce is in his cell talking to one of his cellmates, Steve.
"I really want to smoke 5 cigarettes today, but all I have are these 10 cigarette butts," Bruce tells Steve. "I'm not sure that will be enough."
"Why don't you borrow some of Tom's cigarette butts?" asks Steve, pointing over to a small pile of cigarette butts on the bed of their third cellmate, Tom, who is out for the day on a community service project.
"I can't," Bruce says. "Tom always counts exactly how many cigarette butts are in his pile, and he'd probably kill me if he notices that I had taken any."
However, after thinking for a while, Bruce figures out a way that he can smoke 5 cigarettes without angering Tom. What is his plan?

5 comments:

Ólafur said...

Bruce uses 9 of the 10 butts to smoke as 3 cigarettes. The 3 butts this creates he combines into a fourth cigarette and smokes that as his 4th cigarette of the day. Now he has 2 butts in his possession. He borrows one of Tom's butts, combines with his own two, and smokes the 5th cigarette of the day. After smoking her returns the remaining butt to Tom's collection.

Jerry Critter said...

Looks like the right answer to me.

David and Anne lymn said...

Uses 9 butts to make 3 cigarettes, smokes them. Has 3 butts from these so makes a cigarette and smokes it. Has 1 butt over, adds this to his 10th butt adds 1 from Tom, makes a cigarette and smokes it. Ends up with a butt which he puts back in Tom's pile.

Anonymous said...

He smokes all of Tom's butts and when he gets back he shanks him... Bruce is in prison for a reason!

Anonymous said...

He could also take 5 butts from tom to make 15 total. That will give him the 5 cigarettes and then he could just put back the butts from each of those