#243 Emmental arithmetic
Set by Alison Kiddle
Chaos reigned during my last visit to Cheese Louise, the local delicatessen. Two customers both claimed to have picked ticket number 6 from the machine that dispenses these to show who is next to be served. For such machines, the numbers appear like those on a calculator.
“You can’t both be number 6,” said Louise, the owner. “One of you must be number 9. I think the only fair thing to do is serve you both after numbers 7 and 8.”
“This system is terrible,” she told me later. “If there are four customers in the shop, there can …