Three friends check into a motel for the night and the clerk tells them the bill is $30, payable in advance. So, they each pay the clerk $10 and go to their room. A few minutes later, the clerk realizes he has made an error and overcharged the trio by $5. He asks the bellhop to return $5 to the 3 friends who had just checked in. The bellhop sees this as an opportunity to make $2 as he reasons that the three friends would have a tough time dividing $5 evenly among them; so he decides to tell them that the clerk made a mistake of only $3, giving a dollar back to each of the friends. He pockets the leftover $2 and goes home for the day! Now, each of the three friends gets a dollar back, thus they each paid $9 for the room which is a total of $27 for the night. We know the bellhop pocketed $2 and adding that to the $27, you get $29, not $30 which was originally spent. Where did the other dollar go????

This is a great oldie but goodie, Honi! I will restrain from answering, but let's see how much fun we can have with this. (Someone has probably seen this before, and if so, let someone new try it!) Good one!

I also know the answer to this classic teaser,I go back to 1968 .
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I just recently seen this riddle for the first time and I admit that the answer is almost as confusing as the riddle.

Is this your answer:

The trick here is that the guys paid $27, yes...but two of them went to the bellhop. You don't add the bellhop's "tip", you subtract it. You then get $25, which is what the hotel got.

You're explanation makes sense Honi. This is a a two story question and the confusion comes from the fact that both stories get mixed up . There is a $30.00 original story and then when the $5.00 quits the cash register, it becomes a $25.00 story.

Basically you cannot add something that's missing ( $27 + $2 = $29).You have to substract it ( ask any accountant ). Therefore it should read $27-$2=$25. So the PLUS SIGN was the ( confusing) key of the question. There is no missing dollar, just ( subtle ) bad Maths.

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This message has been edited. Last edited by: Mozart56,

Thanks Mozart.