A vicar's yearly gift to the poor had to look different every single year
A man left instructions to give exactly 55 shillings to the poor each year — 18 pence to each woman, half a crown (2s 6d) to each man — but only for as long as the executors could make the split with a different number of men and women every year. For how many years could the charity be administered?
Reveal the answer
Six years. Only six combinations of men and women add up to 55 shillings at those rates — and one near-miss (35 women, 1 man) gets disqualified because, as Dudeney notes, a single man isn't 'men.' From Henry Dudeney's Amusements in Mathematics (1917), puzzle No. 6.
— Henry Dudeney, Amusements in Mathematics — Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1917, Puzzle No. 6
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