Kill 300 Pigs in Three Days, an Odd Number Each Day
A man owns 300 pigs and orders them all slaughtered over exactly three days, with an odd number killed on each of the three days. He wants the same done with a smaller herd of just 30 pigs. How many pigs should die on each day?
Reveal the answer
It's a trick question — there is no solution. Three odd numbers always add up to an odd total, but 300 and 30 are both even, so no combination of three odd daily counts can ever reach either number. Scholars believe Alcuin planted this deliberately as an unsolvable 'gotcha,' Problem 43 in his Propositiones ad Acuendos Juvenes (c. 800 CE), the oldest surviving collection of recreational math problems in Latin.