Maya’s Marbles

By

KT Rajagopalan

The question:

In the Alpha Boy’s Club (abbreviated to ABC – and rightly so for reasons that will soon be obvious), the membership was restricted to one – and only one – boy whose name began with a letter of the alphabet.

Maya came to the boy’s club with a box of marbles and distributed them among the members Anil, Brij, Chand, Dhan, Ebrahim, Farooq, … et al (arranged in alphabetical order). Anil was given 1 and a tenth of what remained. Brij was given 2 and a tenth of what remained. Chand was given 3 and a tenth of what remained. Dhan was given 4 and a tenth of what remained. Marbles were distributed by Maya in this manner to the boys in alphabetical order till the last boy who was given all that was left. (The other members were obviously not given any marbles.)

Then the boys who received marbles realised that all of them had an equal number. What is likely to be the name of the last boy who received marbles?

(a) Hari         (b) Indra       (c) Raj          (d) Siddharth   (e) Jay  

Would you like a hint?

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