Hailey Anderson

March 11, 2019

A sultan arranged his wives in order of increasing seniority and presented each with a gold ring.

Next, every third wife, starting with the second, was given a second ring. Of the wives with two

rings, every third one starting with the second received a third ring, and so on in this manner.

His most senior and most cherished wife was the only one to receive 10 rings. How many wives

did the sultan have?

Step 1: Understand the Problem

We are trying to figure out who the most senior and cherished wife is. Everyone gets one ring

but you start with the second and give every third wife a second ring. You repeat this process

with only the wives that have two rings. Continue this process until figuring out the wife that has

10 rings.

Step 2: Devise a Plan

It sounds like it will take awhile to get to the wife with the tenth ring so I plan on writing out

numbers to represent the number of wife they are. I also plan to keep track of the wife who gets

the first ring of that round. I believe that those number will help me find some sort of pattern that

will help me find the answer to how many wives that the sultan has. It will also be quicker than

going through the process for all ten rings.

Step 3: Carry Out the Plan

I started by numbering out to 50 to represent the wives so that I could keep track of who was

getting the rings. I started out by giving everyone one ring which I will represent with an
asterisk. Starting with the second, I gave every third wife a second ring. The first wife to receive

that 2nd ring is wife number 2

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
* * * * * *
20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
* * * * * *
37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
* * * * *
Then, starting with the wives that have two rings, I added a third ring to every third wife starting

with the second of the wives that had 2 rings. The first wife to receive this ring was wife number

5. I continued this process for rings 4 and 5. Wife number 14 was the first one to get the 4th ring

and wife number 41 was the first one to get the 5th ring.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
* * * * * *
* *
*

20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
* * * * * *
* *

37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
* * * * *
* *
*
*

I started to look at the number if wives recovering the first rings but then I started to look at the

differences and they were increasing by power of three every time. So from ring two which was
first given to the second wife to ring three which was first given to the fifth wife there was a

difference of 3. From wife five to the fourteenth wife who received the fourth ring first there is a

difference of 9. Then from the fourteenth wife to the fourth-first wife who received the fifth ring

first there is a difference of twenty-seven. I continued to solve for the powers of 3 adding them to

the previous number and ended up with 9,842. That’s a lot of wives...

Step 4: Look Back

I think that my plan was effective. I’m grateful that I didn’t count out the whole way clear to

9,842 by figuring out who gets the rings. It would have taken a long time and a lot of paper.

Even just getting to 5 rings on paper was getting confusing for me. When I was just looking at

the original numbers of the wives that first received the rings, I was getting confused. Once I

looked at the differences between the wives, it was easy to figure out the answer.