Dudeney 谜题 6

As the purchase of apples in small quantities has always presented considerable difficulties, I think it well to offer a few remarks on this subject. We all know the story of the smart boy who, on being told by the old woman that she was selling her apples at four for threepence, said: "Let me see! Four for threepence; that's three for twopence, two for a penny, one for nothing—I'll take one !" There are similar cases of perplexity. For example, a boy once picked up a penny apple from a stall, but when he learnt that the woman's pears were the same price he exchanged it, and was about to walk off. "Stop!" said the woman. "You haven't paid me for the pear!" "No," said the boy, "of course not. I gave you the apple for it." "But you didn't pay for the apple!" "Bless the woman! You don't expect me to pay for the apple and the pear too!" And before the poor creature could get out of the tangle the boy had disappeared. Then, again, we have the case of the man who gave a boy sixpence and promised to repeat the gift as soon as the youngster had made it into ninepence. Five minutes later the boy returned. "I have made it into ninepence," he said, at the same time handing his benefactor threepence. "How do you make that out?" he was asked. "I bought threepennyworth of apples." "But that does not make it into ninepence!" "I should rather think it did," was the boy's reply. "The apple woman has threepence, hasn't she? Very well, I have threepennyworth of apples, and I have just given you the other threepence. What's that but ninepence?" I cite these cases just to show that the small boy really stands in need of a little instruction in the art of buying apples. So I will give a simple poser dealing with this branch of commerce. An old woman had apples of three sizes for sale—one a penny, two a penny, and three a penny. Of course two of the second size and three of the third size were respectively equal to one apple of the largest size. Now, a gentleman who had an equal number of boys and girls gave his children sevenpence to be spent amongst them all on these apples. The puzzle is to give each child an equal distribution of apples. How was the sevenpence spent, and how many children were there?

由于小批量购买苹果一直存在相当大的困难，我认为对此问题发表一些评论是有道理的。我们都知道一个聪明的男孩的故事，当老妇人告诉他她的苹果要卖四便士三便士时，他说：“让我想想！四个三便士；那是三个两便士，两个一便士，一个免费——我要一个！”类似的困惑案例还有很多。例如，有一次，一个男孩在摊位上捡到了一个一分钱的苹果，但当他得知女人的梨是同样的价格时，他就把它换掉了，正准备走开。 “停止！”女人说。 “你还没付钱给我买梨呢！” “不，”男孩说，“当然不是。我把苹果给了你。” “但是你没有付钱买苹果！” “上帝保佑那个女人！你别指望我也付苹果和梨的钱吧！”还没等这个可怜的生物摆脱困境，男孩就消失了。然后，再一次，我们有一个例子，一个男人给了一个男孩六便士，并承诺一旦这个年轻人把它变成九便士，他就会再次赠送礼物。五分钟后，男孩回来了。 “我已经把它变成了九便士，”他说，同时递给他的恩人三便士。 “你怎么看出来的？”有人问他。 “我买了价值三便士的苹果。” “但这还不到九便士！” “我宁愿认为是这样，”男孩回答道。 “那个苹果女人有三便士，不是吗？很好，我有三便士的苹果，我刚刚给了你另外三便士。那不是九便士又是什么？”我引用这些案例只是为了表明这个小男孩确实需要一些购买苹果艺术的指导。因此，我将针对这个商业分支做一个简单的介绍。一位老妇人出售三种大小的苹果——一个一分钱，两个一分钱，三个一分钱。当然，第二个尺寸的两个和第三个尺寸的三个分别相当于一个最大尺寸的苹果。现在，一位拥有同等数量男孩和女孩的绅士给了他的孩子们七便士，让他们一起花在这些苹果上。难题是给每个孩子平等分配苹果。这七便士是怎么花的，有多少个孩子？