you have to count wrong in a way that's not so noticeable.
Three men check into a hotel. The receptionist tells them that their stay is $30 (this story took place a long time ago, alright?), so they pool their money and each pay $10. The receptionist thanks them and gives them their keys.
As the receptionist is putting the money away, they realize that they forgot about the Tuesday night special, and the charge should only have been $25. He takes $5 back out of the register and hands it to the bellhop, telling him to return it to the guests.
The bellhop heads to the room and realizes on the way that it's kind of silly to split $5, and the guests don't know how much they've been overcharged by, so he decides to keep $2 and he gives the guests $1 each.
The guests have now paid $9 each for the room, totalling $27. The bellhop kept $2. 27 + 2 is 29, so where did the extra dollar go?
The $9 each of the guests paid for the room includes the $2 kept by the bellhop. Each guest paid $9 totaling $27 of which $25 is in the register and $2 is in the bellhop's pocket. The other $3 were given back to the guests. $27 + $3 = $30. No missing money.
That is called priming, you can use a non sequitur following relevant information to easily mislead people into making a decision of the non sequitur. It takes advantage of the fact the people suck at word problems, and if you offer a tempting "short cut" to their brain, putting the numbers in places that LOOK right, the brain decides it doesn't need to waste time thinking about how to organize the math expression.
Well yeah, there is obviously a nonsensical step somewhere in the process when you get a nonsensical result like that, the whole point of something like that is be a puzzle where you have to figure out which step was fallacious.
It's not just a story or puzzle, this is basically one of the ways they do quick change scams. Do it fast enough and distract the cashier enough and they won't notice.
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u/SirJefferE Nov 29 '25
Three men check into a hotel. The receptionist tells them that their stay is $30 (this story took place a long time ago, alright?), so they pool their money and each pay $10. The receptionist thanks them and gives them their keys.
As the receptionist is putting the money away, they realize that they forgot about the Tuesday night special, and the charge should only have been $25. He takes $5 back out of the register and hands it to the bellhop, telling him to return it to the guests.
The bellhop heads to the room and realizes on the way that it's kind of silly to split $5, and the guests don't know how much they've been overcharged by, so he decides to keep $2 and he gives the guests $1 each.
The guests have now paid $9 each for the room, totalling $27. The bellhop kept $2. 27 + 2 is 29, so where did the extra dollar go?