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The full fruit bowl brainteaser

By David Shaw, 24 July 2019

There are three types of fruit in the fruit bowl:

• All pieces of fruit are bananas, except for three of them.
• All pieces of fruit are apples, except for four of them.
• All pieces of fruit are oranges, except for five of them.

Can you work out how many pieces of each fruit are in the bowl?

Scroll down for the answer!

Brainteaser answer

Comparing the last two statements, there is one more apple than orange (as the number of bananas won’t change). From the first statement, there are three non-banana fruits. So the number of apples and oranges must add up to three. That means there is one orange and two apples.

If there is one orange, and five non-oranges (from the last statement), there must be six pieces of fruit in total. And if there are two apples, and one orange, that means the other three are bananas.

There’s another answer, but it’s quite tricky. Can you work it out?

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