Here is a simple-looking puzzle that may be harder than you think.
A little boy was playing with a book at home.
He was not reading the story or looking at the pictures.
Instead, he started tearing out some pages from the book.
His mother later found that six page numbers were missing.
They were pages 7, 8, 100, 101, 222, and 223.
Now, here is the interesting question.
How many pages were actually torn out?
Take a moment to look at the numbers and think carefully before choosing your answer.
There are five possible answers.
A: 6
B: 3
C: 7
D: 5
E: 4
At first, answer A may seem like the obvious choice.
After all, the boy tore out pages 7, 8, 100, 101, 222, and 223.
That is six different page numbers.
But this puzzle is not simply about counting numbers.
We need to understand how pages are arranged in a normal book.
A book is usually made of sheets of paper.
Each sheet has two sides, and each side has a page number.
This means that two consecutive page numbers can be printed on the front and back of the same sheet.
For example, pages 7 and 8 are on opposite sides of one sheet of paper.
So, when the boy tears out page 7 and page 8, he actually removes only one physical sheet.
That is the first important detail.
Now, let’s look at pages 100 and 101.
These two pages are next to each other when we open the book.
However, they are on two different sheets of paper.
Page 100 is on the back of the sheet containing page 99, while page 101 is on the front of the next sheet, which has page 102 on its back.
Therefore, tearing out pages 100 and 101 means removing two sheets.
The same thing happens with pages 222 and 223.
They are facing each other in the open book, but they belong to two different sheets.
So, removing these two pages also means removing two sheets.
Now, let’s put everything together.
Pages 7 and 8 belong to one sheet.
Pages 100 and 101 belong to two separate sheets.
Pages 222 and 223 also belong to two separate sheets.
That gives us:
1 sheet for pages 7 and 8.
2 sheets for pages 100 and 101.
2 sheets for pages 222 and 223.
In total, the boy removed five physical sheets of paper.
Therefore, the correct answer is D: 5.
This puzzle reminds us that sometimes the easiest-looking questions require us to think beyond the obvious answer.
Before counting, we should understand exactly what we are counting!
