This hotel riddle is going viral on TikTok and I will never sleep at night again

Ah, there’s nothing like the sweet sweet mental torment of a riddle to fry your brain, make you feel stupid and therefore write off all your responsibilities for the day. And it’s even better when it’s a TikTok riddle because we can all come together collectively and realise we need to go back to school.

This riddle was posted to TikTok and claims that only 9 per cent of people can suss it out. It’s since got over 4.2 million views and probably only half of them are me watching it a million times over to try and work out the answer. So here we go:

The riddle starts: “You must be familiar with the man who walks into a hotel, pays £30, goes up to his room and the manager says ‘Oh no he should have only paid £25 we’ve got a deal on’ so he calls the bellboy and says ‘can you go give £5 back to the man in the room?’ And the bellboy thinks to himself on the way up that this guy doesn’t know any better, he doesn’t know how much he owed, I’m gonna pocket £3 to myself. So he goes to the room and says ‘excuse me, sir, sorry you paid £30 you paid too much, here’s £2 change. So how much has the man now paid?”

You’d think it’s £28 right?? Because he paid £30 and got £2 back which is £28? But how much has the bellboy got in his pocket? Yep, he’s got £3, which then makes £31 in total. So where the hell did the extra pound come from then?? Still confused? Try thinking of it a slightly different way and write it down.

But if you still can’t get it (spoiler alert!) the answer is below: 

So basically, it’s more about the way the question is worded. So the man pays too much to the hotel and gets £2 change back from the bellboy. This means he paid £28, as we said before. But instead of subtracting £3 for the money the bellboy takes, in the riddle it is added. So, if you minus the £3 the bellboy took instead of adding it, you get £25, not £31. The maths was always right, it’s just the way the riddle is worded!

Okay, but I’m just wanting to know what hotel costs £30 nowadays, to be honest.

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