Brain Teasers
The munificent Pa Mason
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This year marks the 12th ANNUAL Mason Family Shopping Spree. The family patriarch, Pa Mason, has allotted the other family members a certain amount of money to shop with. Every year he devises an arbitrary method for determining how much each will get (last year he chose their weight, and everyone had a lot of loot to spend). Below is his note sheet to remind him of how much to give out:
*Note that Pa Mason capitalized the A in Mason. I think he did this to remember to distinguish between the values of the 'A's' in the method he worked out.
'Don MAson' gets $245
'Mad MAson' gets $245
'J.J.J. MAson' gets $246
'Sad MAson' gets $244
and 'Ma MAson' gets $214
Task:
This year he chose the names of the other 5 family members as well as the fact that it is the '12th Annual' shopping spree as the basis for his allotment method. What quirky method did Pa Mason use to determine who gets what for the '12th Annual Mason Family Shopping Spree'?
*Note that Pa Mason capitalized the A in Mason. I think he did this to remember to distinguish between the values of the 'A's' in the method he worked out.
'Don MAson' gets $245
'Mad MAson' gets $245
'J.J.J. MAson' gets $246
'Sad MAson' gets $244
and 'Ma MAson' gets $214
Task:
This year he chose the names of the other 5 family members as well as the fact that it is the '12th Annual' shopping spree as the basis for his allotment method. What quirky method did Pa Mason use to determine who gets what for the '12th Annual Mason Family Shopping Spree'?
Hint
-Remember, this is the '12TH annual' Mash-a-thon.-In all their names, the Mason's use only 7 out of 26 letters in the English Language.
-Lastly, if Pa Mason included himself in the allotment method, it would not work on account of his name.
Answer
Pa Mason's method was as follows:-He assigned a numeric value to each letter in the person's name based on the months of the Gregorian Calendar, whose months being with the letters: J, M, A, S, O, N, and D, which are the same letters used in the Mason's names given money. He used the number of days in each month as that value, and added the letters accordingly. Pa Mason didn't use February, because no one's name has an F in it.
-Pa Mason used a capital A in MAson to distinguish August (31) from April (30), using the lower case a for the month w/ the LOWER number of days, and the capital for the month with the HIGHER number of days.
-If Pa Mason had included himself in this method it would not have worked because, of course, there is no month on the Gregorian calendar that begins with the letter 'P'.
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