Quick question - its driving me mad

[cockandbull]

You and two friends go out to eat...the bill comes to $30 so you pay $10 each. The waiter comes back and says sorry the bill was incorrect...takes $2 for himself and gives $1 back to each of you.

How much do you pay?

[Tron]

Uhm... ~$8.33 for the actual food? $9.33 with the tip. Is this a trick question?

[Shajen]

queue dung pile...

[cockandbull]

How does the figure have an x.xx when you paid $10 and recieved a $1 back. $9 seems like the right answer until you add all the totals up...it seems a $1 has gone missing. /images/graemlins/confused.gif

[Lazymeatball]

Well, you threw in $10, and got back a single from the waiter. so you paid $9. Now the riddle goes, if you each paid $9, that adds up to $27, and the dealer took $2, so where did the other dollar go? and of course that would be a dumb question since you should be subtracting the waiter's 2 from 27 to get $25, the actual cost of the meal, instead of adding it to 27 to try to make 30, what you paid originally.

[jakethebake]

WTF?

You paid $30 and got $3 back. You paid $27 including tip. Excluding the $2 tip you paid $25. What's missing?

[cockandbull]

belive it not this is how i did it the first time and got tricked into beliving i was wrong.

[Duke]

[ QUOTE ]
belive it not this is how i did it the first time and got tricked into beliving i was wrong.

[/ QUOTE ]

I think this is how the "riddle" is usually told.

riddler: [insert story here], and 27+2=29, so what happened to the other dollar?

riddlee: why are you adding those 2 numbers? (25 + 2)/3=9

riddler: no you add that $2 to the 9x3 and there's a dollar missing.

riddlee: you're an idiot.

~D