Remember Tom & Jerry?

Number Theory Level pending

A number of cats got together and decided to kill between them 999919 mice. Every cat killed an equal number of mice and also each cat killed more mice than there were cats.

How many cats do you think were there?

Clarification: It is not one cat that killed the lot because I have said 'Cats' and it is not 999919 cats each killed one mouse because I have said 'Mice'!


The answer is 991.

This section requires Javascript.
You are seeing this because something didn't load right. We suggest you, (a) try refreshing the page, (b) enabling javascript if it is disabled on your browser and, finally, (c) loading the non-javascript version of this page . We're sorry about the hassle.

1 solution

Nashita Rahman
Feb 24, 2017

For the problem to have only one answer , the number 999919 has to have two prime factors. After prime factorising 999919 , we get 991 & 1009 as the prime factors.

It is said that each cat killed more mice than there were cats , so the 991 cats killed 1009 mice.

0 pending reports

×

Problem Loading...

Note Loading...

Set Loading...