Solution to $ THE MISSING DOLLAR RIDDLE $ or Where IS the other dollar?

T

The Key is to Follow the Money, not the people.

• The girls check in and pay $10 each for a total of $30.
• The manager realizes his mistake and takes $5 back to return to the girls.  This leaves $25.
• He has the bellhop take the $5 to the girls.
• The bellhop is not so trustworthy and keeps $2 returning only $3 to the girls.

This is where the deception occurs.

• You now buy into the lie that the girls have only paid $9 each which adds up to $27 plus the $2 the bellhop kept makes only $29.
• The truth is, following the money, that the Motel still has $25, the girls have $3, and the bellhop has $2, which all adds up to the original $30.

I sounds so good and you begin to BELIEVE the perpetrator's logic.  The flaw is in switching sides of the equation during the presentation.  They move from the motel's perspective to the perspective of the girls in mid-stream and it seems to make sense, but it doesn't.

This is a classic: "figures don't lie, but liars figure!"

~klock