THE BICYCLE THIEF.
(
Money Puzzles)
Here is a little tangle that is perpetually cropping up in various
guises. A cyclist bought a bicycle for L15 and gave in payment a cheque
for L25. The seller went to a neighbouring shopkeeper and got him to
change the cheque for him, and the cyclist, having received his L10
change, mounted the machine and disappeared. The cheque proved to be
valueless, and the salesman was requested by his neighbour to refund the
amount he had received. To do this, he was compelled to borrow the L25
from a friend, as the cyclist forgot to leave his address, and could not
be found. Now, as the bicycle cost the salesman L11, how much money did
he lose altogether?
Answer:
People give all sorts of absurd answers to this question, and yet it is
perfectly simple if one just considers that the salesman cannot possibly
have lost more than the cyclist actually stole. The latter rode away
with a bicycle which cost the salesman eleven pounds, and the ten pounds
"change;" he thus made off with twenty-one pounds, in exchange for a
worthless bit of paper. This is the exact amount of the salesman's loss,
and the other operations of changing the cheque and borrowing from a
friend do not affect the question in the slightest. The loss of
prospective profit on the sale of the bicycle is, of course, not direct
loss of money out of pocket.
