A Puzzle A Day: 2026-03-30

At 'Grocer's Grab', the manager decides to highlight a new brand of cookies. They have 10 boxes of these new cookies to distribute. The plan is to place one box on every third shelf in the snack aisle, starting with the very first shelf. If the snack aisle has a total of 20 shelves, how many shelves in that aisle will *not* have a box of the new cookies?
Correct: 13
The puzzle asks for the number of shelves without cookies. First, let's identify which shelves will have cookies: - The plan is to place a box on every third shelf, starting with the very first shelf. This means the shelves with cookies will be: 1st, 4th, 7th, 10th, 13th, 16th, and 19th. - The next shelf (22nd) would be beyond the 20 available shelves. - Therefore, a total of 7 shelves will have a box of cookies. - The information about having '10 boxes' available is extra information designed to distract; only 7 boxes are actually placed because there are only 20 shelves. - If there are 20 total shelves in the aisle and 7 of them have cookies, then the number of shelves without cookies is 20 - 7 = 13.
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