Superstitious Super Salesman

By

KT Rajagopalan

The question:

Vijay is a super salesman. He travels nearly twenty days a month. Wherever he goes, he necessarily has to stay in hotels.

He is superstitious and has been told by his numerologist to choose a room carefully. ‘Do not take a room whose number is such that the last digit is the sum of first two digits.’

Today Vijay is in Supertown and plans to stay in Hotel California where he is booked. The rooms there are numbered from 101 to 999. From among how many rooms can Vijay choose?

(a) 45           (b) 855         (c) 854         (d) 819

Would you like a hint?

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