Fifty minutes ago it was four times as many minutes past three — what's the time now?
Right now, it is some number of minutes before six o'clock. Fifty minutes ago, the number of minutes past three o'clock was exactly four times that number. What is the time now?
Reveal the answer
26 minutes before six o'clock, meaning the current time is 5:34. Fifty minutes earlier, at 4:44, that's 104 minutes past three, exactly four times 26. This is Puzzle No. 58, 'A Time Puzzle,' from Henry Dudeney's 1917 collection Amusements in Mathematics.
— Henry Ernest Dudeney, Amusements in Mathematics — Puzzle No. 58, 1917