Dec 24, 2022
Time for the new puzzler. Well, the new old puzzler. This one is from a while ago. It is very old. But still good! Here goes.
A fellow enters a subway station in our fair city.
He bounded down the stairs.
And in the subway station is a woman in the little booth dispensing subway tokens which cost 40 cents a piece. 40 cents! Yeah, this is an old puzzle.
Tokens then were 40 cents a piece, if you can believe it.
The man hands the woman behind the window one dollar. There are no words spoken. No words are spoken at all because the man can't speak. He is deaf.
Without words being spoken and without any hand signs or signaling, the woman dispensing the tickets, the attendant, hands back to the man two tokens, and 20 cents change.
The question is, how did she know the man wanted two tokens?
And remember, no words were spoken, no sign language used, and he had no companion with him at that time.
How did the token attendant know to sell him two tokens and give him 20 cents change for his dollar?
Okay it is time for an old answer to the old puzzler.
Here we go.
Subway station, and a 40 cent ride. A guy who is deaf comes in and hands the woman who is selling tickets a dollar. He does this without a word, with out any hand signs or signals.
The woman hands him two tickets and 20 cents change. How did she know that he wanted two tickets?
The answer is very simple.
He handed her 4 quarters.
So, I know we have a mindset that a dollar is a piece of paper. But in this case, the dollar demomination is 4 quarters.
And since each ticket was 40 cents, the teller assumed that since he gave her 4 quarters, he wanted two tickets, because if he just wanted one ticket, he would have given her two quarters.
