A Long Line?
Many people stand in a queue to buy tickets to a match. There are enough tickets for each person to have two tickets.
Instead, every person at the front of the queue buys three tickets until there are none left so 12 people are left without tickets.
How many people were there in the queue to begin with?
Solution and explanation:
The answer is: 36 and here is why:
Assume that x is the number of people in the line. According to the text of the problem, 2*x is the number of tickets.
(2*x)/3 is the number of people that actually bought the tickets, and we know that 12 people didn't get a chance to buy any.
Therefore x - [(2*x)/3] = 12 which follows that x/3 = 12
From that x = 3*12 = 36!
