# Where is the one dollar? [duplicate]

Three men go to a restaurant. They order some food. After they have finished, they ask for the bill. The bill was 30$. They pay the bill and leave the restaurant. As soon as they leave, the manager find out that there was a miscalculation and that they actually had to pay 25$ .

He calls the waiter, give him the extra 5\$, and ask him to pass this money back to men. The waiter leaves the restaurant with 5\$ , but he put 2\$in his pocket and give each man 1\$.

So

Each man payed $10\$-1\$= 9\$ $. Three man payed$ 9\$*3=27\$ $. The waiter has$ 2\
The total is $27\$ + 2\$= 29\$ $Where is the last$ 1\?

## marked as duplicate by Wu33o, elias, IAmInPLS, Deusovi♦Aug 29 '16 at 13:31

• Please solve this: I am new in this site... I knew a puzzle, I've searched the site to find if the puzzle is there or not.. I couldn't find it, (as you might guess a puzzle can be asked in many different ways) . I put a new post... I get 4 down votes. Why do I get down votes ? Isn't a marked as duplicate enough ?! – Alireza Fattahi Aug 30 '16 at 5:28

Let's represent restaurant manager by R, men by M and waiter by W.

Since money can neither be created nor be destroyed (unless government is involved).

We can represent it by a simple mathematical equation :

Money(R) + Money(M) + Money(W) = 0

For manager,

Money(R) = 30\$- 5\$ = 25\$For mens, Money(M) = -30\$ + 3\$= -27$

For waiter,

Money(W) = 2\$summing them up 25 - 27 + 2 = 0. And explanation to why your calculation was wrong: 27 should be represented with a negative sign, since that was a loss (from calculation perspective). And the 2 should be positive as it was gain. • ...It's a restaurant. :P – Mithrandir Aug 29 '16 at 12:57 • @Mithrandir Done..:D – Laschet Jain Aug 29 '16 at 13:00 • Haha, law of conservation of money ^-^ – ABcDexter Aug 29 '16 at 17:21 • @ABcDexter I know :D.. while writing the answer this struck me. – Laschet Jain Aug 29 '16 at 17:26 In fact, they payed 27$, 25$to the restaurant and 2$ to the waiter.

This is a classic puzzle. The answer is

They gave \$30. The waiter keeps 2 and gives 3 back. Everyone gets one dollar. \$25 + \$2 + \$3 = \\$30. No missing money.