Question

Greedy Gatekeepers
Remember Birbal, the clever minister of King Akbar? (Math-Magic Class IV. page 14) Do you know how he became a minister?
Birbal was then a young boy living in a village. He was very clever and could write poetry.
He thought he would try his luck in the King's court. So he took some of his poems and set off for the city.
When he reached the outer gate of the palace, he was stopped by the gatekeeper. "Hey! Stop there! Where are you going?", shouted the gatekeeper.
"I am a poet. I want to see King Akbar and show my poems to him", replied the poet.
"Oh, you are a poet! The king is kind, he will surely give you a prize. I will let you in if you give me $\frac{\mathbf{1}}{\mathbf{10}}$ of your prize".

Young Birbal agreed since he had no other way.
When he went in, the gatekeeper calculated "If he gets 100 gold coins I will get _________ gold coins".
The poet came to a second gatekeeper.
This gatekeeper also said, "I will let you in if you give me two-fifth of your prize". The poet agreed.
The gatekeeper happily calculated, "The poet will get at least 100 gold coins so I will get ___________ gold coins!"
The poet reached the last gate. The gatekeeper said, "I will allow you to see the king only if you give me half of the prize that you get". The poet had no other way. He agreed and went inside.
The gatekeeper thought, "Today is a great day. If he gets 100 gold coins I will get __________ gold coins. But if he gets 1000 coins ― wow! I will get ____________".
The king was very happy with the poems and said, "Your work is very good. You can ask anything as your prize".
"My Lord, I want 100 slaps". "What! 100 slaps? ___________". The king was shocked ―
• What happened after that? Complete the story. What part of the prize did the poet get?

Answer 1

The first gatekeeper thought that the king would give 100 gold coins to Birbal as a prize. The first gatekeeper demanded $\frac{1}{10}$ of the prize that he would get from the king.
So, number of gold coins that would be received by first gatekeeper = 100 ÷ 10 = 10

The second gatekeeper demanded $\frac{2}{5}$ of the prize that Birbal would receive from the king.
One-fifth of 100 = 100 ÷ 5
= 20

So, number of gold coins that would be received by second gatekeeper = 20 × 2
= 40

The third gatekeeper demanded half of the prize that Birbal would receive from the king.
So, number of gold coins that would be received by third gatekeeper = 100 ÷ 2
= 50

After listening to his poems, the king became happy. Then, Birbal requested the king to give him 100 slaps as a prize.

Hence, the third gatekeeper got 50 slaps, second gatekeeper got 40 slaps, and the first gatekeeper got 10 slaps. The poet got 0 slaps.