Saturday Marketing

Here is an amusing little case of marketing which, although it deals with a good many items of money, leads up to a question of a totally different character. Four married couples went into their village on a recent Saturday night to do a little marketing. They had to be very economical, for among them they only possessed forty shilling coins. The fact is, Ann spent 1s., Mary spent 2s., Jane spent 3s., and Kate spent 4s. The men were rather more extravagant than their wives, for Ned Smith spent as much as his wife, Tom Brown twice as much as his wife, Bill Jones three times as much as his wife, and Jack Robinson four times as much as his wife. On the way home somebody suggested that they should divide what coin they had left equally among them. This was done, and the puzzling question is simply this: What was the surname of each woman? Can you pair off the four couples?

H. E. Dudeney, Amusements in Mathematics (1917) · No. 141