At the local BrainBashers Sunday School meeting, the teacher brought in some puppies.
There were 20 more children than puppies.
In the corner of the room, within the ant's nest, the number of ants was 10 times the number of children.
In total, including the teacher, the children, the puppies, and the ants, there were 1440 legs in the room.
How many children attended?
Puzzle Copyright © Kevin Stone
workings hint hide answer print
Share link – www.brainbashers.com
Answer
23 children (46 legs).
With 230 ants (1380 legs), 3 puppies (12 legs), and 1 teacher (2 legs).
If we call the number of puppies P, then there were (P + 20) children and 10 x (P + 20) ants, and a single teacher. If we now count the legs, we get:
Puppies:
P x 4 = 4P
Children:
(P + 20) x 2 = 2P + 40
Ants:
10 x (P + 20) x 6 = 60P + 1200
Teacher: 2
A total of 66P + 1242
Giving:
66P + 1242 = 1440
66P = 198
P = 3
So there were 3 puppies, hence 23 children.
Note: BrainBashers has a Dark Mode option – I recommend not using your browser's dark mode or extensions for BrainBashers