Greg and Cleo are playing a game and they each have a certain number of chips. Greg starts with twice as many chips as Cleo. After he gives her 8 chips, he still has 9 more than Cleo. How many chips did Greg have before he gave the 8 chips to Cleo?

A) 18

B) 34

C) 48

D) 50

The correct answer is D, but how do you get it?

50

Step-by-step explanation:

I toke me a lot of time to figure out why am I getting always 34 and still it isn't working : 34-8 = 26 and 26-25=1 wich is false

now I'll show you how

Let x be the number of chips that Greg has and y the number of chips that Cleo has Greg starts with twice as many chips as Cleo so we can say : x=2y so we can state : x-2y=0

Greg gives Cleo 8 chips but still he has 9 more chips than Cleo:

so x-8 is the number of chips that Greg has the trick now is to notice that he gave those chips to Cleo, he didn't left them. so the number of chips that Cleo has is y+8 we khow that now after giving the chips Greg has 9 more chips than Cleo so basically we can write : x-8 - (y+8) = 9 The equation will be : x-y=25

I guess now that we we are smelling that 50

our two equations are : x-2y = 0 and x-y-25=0 let's multiply x-2y by (-1) to get rid of x

we get - x+2y=0 and all we should do now is to add it to the second equation to make a normal one with one unkhown value y

-x+2y+x-y-25=0 ⇒ y=25 so x = 2*y=2*25=50

finaaly the aswer is 50

the trick is to try to imaginate the situation