Long...long ago, there lived an old man with his three sons in a deserted village, located in the vicinity of a desert. He had 17 camels, and they were the main source of his income. He used to rent out camels as means of shipping in the desert. One day, he passed away and he had a will, leaving his assets for his three sons.
After the funeral and the other obligations were over, the three sons read the will. While he divided all the properties he had into three equal parts, he divided the 17 camels in a different way. It wasn’t shared equally among the three as ‘17’ is an odd number and prime number, which cannot be divided.
The deceased old man stated that the eldest son will own half of the 17 camels and the middle one will get the one third of the 17 camels and the youngest one will get his share of camel as one ninth!
All of them were stunned to read the will and questioned how to divide 17 camels as mentioned in the will.
It is neither possible to divide 17 camels and give the half of the 17 camels to the eldest one nor able to divide the camels to the other two sons. They spent several days to divide the camel as mentioned in the will, but none could find the answer.
They finally took this issue to the wise man in their village. The wise man heard the problem and instantly found a solution. He asked them to bring all 17 camels to divide them as intended by their father.
The sons brought the camels to the place. The wise man added a camel owned by him and made it count 18.
Now, he asked the first son to read the will, he get half the camels, which now counts to 18 / 2 – 9 camels! The eldest one got 9 camels as his share.
Remaining camels left – 9 camels
The wise man asked the second son to read the will – he was assigned a share of 1 / 3 of the total camels.
It comes to 18 / 3 – 6 camels. Second son got 6 camels as his share.
Total camels shared by the elder sons – 9 + 6 = 15 camels.
The third son read his share of camel – 1 / 9th of total camels – 18 / 9 = 2 camels.
The youngest one got 2 camels as his share.
Totally there were 9 + 6 + 2 camels shared by the brothers, which counts to 17 camels.
One camel brought by the wise man was taken back.
The wise man solved this problem smartly with his intelligence. Intelligence is nothing but finding a common ground to solve an issue.
In short, every problem has a solution.