10. Missing Mangoes
We are continuing our list of easiest math problems that look hard with a problem that is quite exciting if you are a fruit lover. As you can tell from the title, it involves mangoes. The problem goes like this — one night an eager King couldn’t rest. He went down to the kitchen, where he found a box full of mangoes. To fulfill his craving, he took 1/6 of the mangoes. Later that same night, the Queen woke up and found a same container of mangoes. She took 1/5 of what the King had left and retired to bed. Still later, the Prince woke up, went to the kitchen, and ate one-fourth of the rest of the mangoes. His brother also went to the kitchen and ate 1/3 of what remained. At last, the princess ate 1/2 of the remaining mangoes, leaving just three mangoes in the container. How many mangoes were there, to begin with? The problem can be easily solved if you start working backward from the three remaining mangoes. If you start adding up as the fractions suggest, you will end up with 18 mangoes, which is the correct answer.
Pixabay/Public Domain
