I have five eggs with me. I broke two, cooked two, and I ate two. How many eggs are left?
There are multiple possible answers for this question based on how you interpret it.
Scenario 1: I have five eggs with me. I broke two, cooked two, and I ate two.
If we play according to the rules of tenses in grammar, the eggs that were broken, cooked and eaten do not matter.
You have five eggs with you. So these five eggs are different from the lot that were broken, cooked and eaten.
The answer for this scenario is five eggs left.
Scenario 2: Let us assume that the past and present tense in the statement is just meant as a diversion.
So the eggs broken, cooked and eaten were from the five eggs you had initially.
Now, if you consider the eggs broken are the same eggs that were cooked and eaten.
Afterall, you need to break the egg to cook it whatever way you wish to, be it a scrambled egg, an omelette or even a boiled egg (in which case you will break the shell open).
In this case there will be three eggs remaining.
Scenario 3: Again, let’s assume there is no word play based on the tenses in the original statement.
Like in the above scenario, the eggs broken, cooked and eaten were from the five eggs you had initially.
For this case, I would interpret the broken eggs differently. You might have broken it by mistake, spilled the egg white and yolk in the process, basically rendering it useless for consumption.
So, you take another two and cook them and eat those two eggs.
In this case, two eggs were lost broken, another two eggs were cooked and then eaten. So that leaves with one remaining eggs.
Scenario 4: Out of the 5 eggs, you broke two eggs (like the above case, not fit to use), cooked another two eggs and eaten another two eggs (either raw or after cooking).
Here, we can assume that the eggs that were eaten are different from the ones that were cooked, since it wasn’t specified explicitly that they are the same eggs.
Don’t ask me what happened to the two “cooked” eggs. They could have been consumed by another family member or a guest in the house!!
So, in this case there would be no remaining eggs. As stated above, the answer to this question could be either 5,3,1 or even 0 depending on how you look at it.
