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There are 5 girls in a moving bus, and each girl has a basket in her hand. Each basket contains 5 cats and each cat has 4 kittens. How many legs are there on the bus?

  • each girl has 2 legs
  • each cat has 4 legs
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  • $\begingroup$ ziadi gorbeha dare! $\endgroup$
    – question_asker
    Dec 14, 2015 at 18:01

4 Answers 4

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"Each basket contains 5 cats and each cat has 4 kittens."

As we know, all kittens are cats. To resolve this statement without creating an infinitely recursive quantity of kittens, we assume that each basket contains 5 cats all of which are kittens, and each of those cats "has" and is had by the other four kittens.

Mutual having might seem strange, but we can imagine a situation in which Alice would say that she has Bob, and Bob would say that he has Alice, demonstrating that it is grammatically possible.

So each basket has 20 legs, plus two for each girl, bringing us to 110 legs, or 112 legs if the driver has legs and isn't one of our basket-having girls.

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  • $\begingroup$ Wait, now we have to consider that only a female cat can have kittens, so aren't the cats also "girls" in this respect? Also, it's entirely possible that two or more girls could have their hands on the same basket. We don't know enough details. $\endgroup$
    – Darrel Hoffman
    Dec 14, 2015 at 19:51
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    $\begingroup$ @DarrelHoffman Only female cats can give birth to kittens, but any sex of cat can have (possess) them. I'm a male human and I have two kids, but I gave birth to neither of them. $\endgroup$
    – corsiKa
    Dec 14, 2015 at 20:01
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Zero: buses don't have legs, they have wheels. Typically 6 of them.

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    $\begingroup$ uh oh. here we go with the bus locomotion truthers $\endgroup$
    – question_asker
    Dec 14, 2015 at 18:25
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    $\begingroup$ Maybe it's a Flintstones bus? $\endgroup$
    – Irishpanda
    Dec 14, 2015 at 18:30
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    $\begingroup$ @Irishpanda I wonder if you could even fit enough people on a bus to be able to move it with foot-power... $\endgroup$
    – dfperry
    Dec 14, 2015 at 18:31
  • $\begingroup$ Ah, but how many legs on the bus route? $\endgroup$
    – user662852
    Dec 16, 2015 at 4:15
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512 legs: total of 125 cats: 500 legs, 5 girls: 10 legs, plus the 2 legs of the driver. Thanks to GentlePurpleRain for pointing out my misreading of the question.

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    $\begingroup$ Each basket has 25 cats (5 cats + 20 kittens), so there are a total of 125 cats on the bus. $\endgroup$
    – GentlePurpleRain
    Dec 14, 2015 at 17:34
  • $\begingroup$ those are some big baskets $\endgroup$
    – question_asker
    Dec 14, 2015 at 17:44
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    $\begingroup$ Try saying that to one of the girls and see what happens... $\endgroup$
    – Irishpanda
    Dec 14, 2015 at 17:45
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    $\begingroup$ There might be two too many in your answer. If I'm the driver, I'm opening the door and jumping out while in gear. With that many cats, that sounds like an awful, interminable bus ride. $\endgroup$
    – Matt
    Dec 14, 2015 at 17:47
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    $\begingroup$ Oh, but surely you can't leave just yet, Mr Snuffles seems to have taken a liking to you. $\endgroup$
    – Irishpanda
    Dec 14, 2015 at 17:52
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there must 110 legs in total in the bus - each cat has four kittens but they are not in the baskets

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