How many apples are left for the knights to share?

[minger]

You've probably heard this one before. If you have, then oh well. Anyways, here goes.

15 knights are riding 15 horses on a warm summer day. They approach an apple tree where coincedentally, there are 15 ripe apples. Each took an apple and ate it. How many apples are left?

Hint: If the answer is 0, then it wouldn't be a very good brain teaser now would it?

 

[Rahmuss]

From http://www.lakemetroparks.com/PDFs/AppleCurriculum.pdf it states that most apples are not ripe until fall, so if 15 are ripe, then there are more that are not ripe. And since this seems like a tree just off the side of the road, then there probably wouldn't be anyone taking care of the tree, so it's probably not much more than 15. Now, since it's a place where knights are, it's in europe, and there are a few birds that eat apples, and they would most likely eat the ripe ones... so then that ups the nubmer just a bit. I say there are 20 left.

 

[nnnnnnnn]

14? Each being a persons name.

 

[BicycleTree]

I tend to side with Rahmuss, but if you count apple cores as apples and you assume there are no non-ripe apples, then there are 15 apples left[/color]

 

[minger]

nnnnnnnnnn is correct!

 

[quark]

Paradoxically, the answer should be same even if none took an apple

 

[BicycleTree]

nnnnnnnnnn is correct!

I'm afraid I don't get it... each apple is a person's name?

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

'Each' is the name of one of the knights. Quark points out that the puzzle works as well (the puzzle fails to work at all in my opinion) if 'None' took an apple and ate it.