Pigeons on Poles
Out on my street, there are a certain number of pigeons sitting on telephone poles. If there were exactly 2 pigeons sitting on each telephone pole, then 1 pigeon would have no space to sit on. If there were exactly 3 pigeons sitting on each telephone pole, then there would be 1 telephone pole with no pigeons on. How many pigeons were there?
The answer is 9.
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1 solution
Let the number of pigeons be p and the number of poles be t.
then, 2t+1=p.............(i)
also, 3(t-1)=p.............(ii)
from (i) and (ii), we get t=4 and p=9
so, the number of pigeons=9