T4 wants to put his 231 marbles in bags. However, he decides to put them in such a way that he uses the greatest number of bags possible, with at least one marble per bag, and no two bags containing the same number of marbles. What is the number of bags?
Answer
231.
At first you might think it’s one in the first bag, two in the second bag… and you will have used all 231 marbles by the 21st bag. However, you can put one marble in each bag. Then, put the first bag into the second bag, so now the second bag really contains two marbles. The second hint refers to the fact that you will have to reach 231 bags to get all the marbles of the bag containing the most number of marbles.
