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A person picks up cigarette butts from the ground and can make a cigarette with 4 butts. If he finds 16 cigarette butts, how many cigarettes can he make?

Illustration for riddle: A person picks up cigarette butts from the ground and can make a cigarette with 4 butts. If he finds

5. After making 4 cigarettes from 16 butts and smoking them he will be left with 4 more butts which he can use to create another cigarette

Why this works

This riddle is a fun exercise in iterative logic! Initially, the person has 16 cigarette butts, which allows them to make 4 cigarettes (since it takes 4 butts to make one cigarette). After smoking those 4 cigarettes, they are left with 4 additional butts. Since these 4 butts can be used to create one more cigarette, the total comes to 5 cigarettes made in total. The trick lies in recognizing that the butts from the smoked cigarettes can be reused, leading to an extra cigarette, thus extending the total count beyond the initial batch.

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Common Wrong Answers

“4”

This answer assumes that the person can only make cigarettes from the initial 16 butts without considering the butts created from smoking the first 4 cigarettes.

“3”

This answer underestimates the number of cigarettes that can be made by not accounting for the butts generated after smoking the first set of cigarettes.

“6”

This answer overestimates the total by incorrectly accounting for the additional butts after smoking, leading to an erroneous calculation.

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