Problem: Three boys agree to divide a bag of marbles in the following manner. The first boy takes one more than half the marbles. The second takes a third of the number remaining. The third boy finds that he is left with twice as many marbles as the second boy. The original number of marbles.
Answer Choices:
A. none of these answers
B. cannot be determined from the given data
C. 20 or 26
D. 14 or 32
E. 8 or 38
Solution:
The first boy takes marbles, leaving marbles. The second boy takes . The third boy, with twice as many, must necessarily have , so that is indeterminate; i.e. may be any even integer of the form , with .