ee groups in arithmetical progression, the
common difference being the same in each group, and A being less than
12. How many doubloons were there in every one of the nine boxes?

133.--THE FIVE BRIGANDS.

The five Spanish brigands, Alfonso, Benito, Carlos, Diego, and Esteban,
were counting their spoils after a raid, when it was found that they had
captured altogether exactly 200 doubloons. One of the band pointed out
that if Alfonso had twelve times as much, Benito three times as much,
Carlos the same amount, Diego half as much, and Esteban one-third as
much, they would still have altogether just 200 doubloons. How many
doubloons had each?

There are a good many equally correct answers to this question. Here is
one of them:

A 6 x 12 = 72
B 12 x 3 = 36
C 17 x 1 = 17
D 120 x 1/2 = 60
E 45 x 1/3 = 15
___ ___
200 200

The puzzle is to discover exactly how many different answers there are,
it being understood that every man had something and that there is to be
no fractional money--only doubloons in every case.

This problem, worded somewhat differently, was propounded by Tartaglia
(died 1559), and he flattered himself that he had found one solution;
but a French mathematician of note (M.A. Labosne), in a recent work,
says that his readers will be astonished when he assures them that there
are 6,639 different correct answers to the question. Is this so? How
many answers are there?

134.--THE BANKER'S PUZZLE.

A banker had a sporting customer who was always anxious to wager on
anything. Hoping to cure him of his bad habit, he proposed as a wager
that the customer would not be able to divide up the contents of a box
containing only sixpences into an exact number of equal piles of
sixpences. The banker was first to put in one or more sixpences (as many
as he liked); then the customer was to put in one or more (but in his
case not more than a pound in value), neither knowing what the other put
in. Lastly, the customer was to transfer from the banker's counter to
the box as many sixpences as the banker desired him to put in. The
puzzle is to find how many sixpences the banker should first put in and
how many he should ask the customer to transfer, so that he may have the
best chance of winning.

135.--THE STONEMASON'S PROBLEM.

A stonemason once had a large number of cubic blocks of stone in his
yard, all of exactly the same size. He had som