Ten people (five couples) go to a party and start shaking hands. You
don't shake your spouse's hand or (of course) your own. One of the
men, Jake, shouts, "Stop! How many hands did you shake?" Every person
gives a different answer. Jake's wife is the last to answer. How many
handshakes does she have?

__________________
Cheers,
:) James:)

There are totally 40 handshakes....

First couple handshake with other is 8+8 = 16
Second couple handshake with other except first couple..becuase we already add their handshakes. so ie 6+6 = 12
Third couple handshakes is 4+4 = 8 (minus the first two couples handshake)
Fourth couple handshakes is 2+2 = 4 (minus the first three couples handshake)
Last couple handshakes is 0+0 = 0 (minus the first four couples handshake)

so total 16+12+8+4 = 40..

-------------------
suresh

I think the answer is 30

It looks like you guys have not read the question completely...

__________________
Cheers,
:) James:)

May be the answer is 8 or 0. Suppose she went to handshake all the couples then her count is 8 Or if all the couples has came and handshake her then her count is 0.

I am not clear what james ask here....

-----------------
suresh

u reply this question.

i think the answer may be 0 to 8. if she starts to handshake first then her count is 8. next her count is 7,etc..at last her count is 0.

Here the doubt is when she start her handshake.??

plz james give me a clue...

OK... Here are the clues,

Ten people (five couples) go to a party and start shaking hands...One of the
men, Jake, shouts, "Stop! How many hands did you shake?" Every person
gives a different answer

that implies...the person, Jake, stopped every one when they are in the process of shaking hands with others.

Every person gives a different answer
all of them have not shaken hands with each other...

Another important clue...Jake have got diff answers from 9 people and maximum number of hand shakes a person can have is 8 and minimum is 0.

Hope this will help a lot to proceed further...

__________________
Cheers,
:) James:)

Here is the answer for your question....

So according to james clue there are 9 different answers....It means the only possible answers are 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8.

The person who answers 8 has shaken hands at least with the persons that have answered 1, 2, ..., 7. That's only 7 persons, so she or he has shaken hands with Jake's wife too. This also means that the person who answers 0 is the only one who has not shaken hands with the person who answered 8, so they must be a couple.

So we eliminate that couple. Now totally 8 peoples left.Originally, the 7 persons in this group answered 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. All these people have shaken hands with the person who answered 8 and none of them has shaken hands with the person who answered 0. So when restricting themselves to the new group, they would have answered: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6.

If we eliminate like this then finally we have a couple of jake. We can conclude that Jake's wife has shaken hands with 4 people. Because we will eliminate the four couples.

---------------------
suresh

the qns is not clear that james asked

Jakes Wife had shaken hands with 4 persons

There are total 10 members. Based on the condition no one make more than 8 handshakes. That means possible hand shakes are 0 to 8, i.e. Maximum 9 different answers will come. According to the question, all 10 members said different answers, but we cant get more than 9 different answers. Don't you think the question itself is contradicting????

answer is 4.

up to jack's wife all have given different answers. JACK and his wife had given equally 4 shake hands.
couple1(0-8), couple2(1-7),couple3(2-6), couple4(3-5),
couple5(4-4) this the jack's couple

totally 40 handshakes. . .

hello sir,
in my opinion it may be 8........

regards
ruparam

hi james

As per my view the answer is 0

thanks
Deepasree

hi james,

I think its only jakes wife that we're talking about and since shes the last one to answer i guess its none