Ken's blog

Mr. Jones and Mr. Barnsworth went to purchase some bottles of wine for their employer, Acme Wine Depot.

They went to Dufour Wineries Inc., as they had heard boasts of a fine selection of French wines there.

Mr. Jones and Mr. Barnsworth decided to select only two wine types, Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon from the Bordeaux region in France.

They bought 90 bottles in total of these two types of wine.

While purchasing the wine at the Dufour Wineries Inc., Mr. Dufour invited them to sample several other wines for “future reference.”

After a bountiful sampling session with French cheese, all served by a jolie serveuse, Mr. Jones and Mr. Barnsworth managed to return home by taxi, but lost the invoice on the way.

Next day, fearful of reproach and penalties from the accountant at the Acme Wine Depot, they tried to reconstruct the purchase from a fuzzy memory.

Mr. Jones managed to remember that he had bought half as many Merlot and a third as many Cabernet Sauvignon as Mr. Barnsworth, for a total sum of 360 dollars. He also remembered that three bottles of Merlot cost as much as two bottles of Cabernet Sauvignon.

Before going to work that day, they proceeded with the painful process of working out how much Mr. Barnsworth had bought, and the full cost of their purchase.

Can you help them work out these figures?

Fred, Marcus and Seamour and their wives went to a winery to buy bottles of wine for a party they would be holding for family and friends. The wives’ names were Gracie, Mabel and Lucy, not respectively.

Both the husbands and the wives bought the same number of bottles as the price of the bottles in each case.

The men each bought 72 dollars worth of wine more than their respective wives.

Marcus bought 6 fewer bottles than Lucy and Fred bought 16 more bottles than Mabel.

What do you say were the names of the wives of Fred, Marcus and Seamour, respectively?