Sample Problems for Guess & Check Tables
Ramon and Kyle are weighing in their sheep at the county fair. Ramon notices that his sheep weighs 15
pounds more than Kyle’s. Together the two sheep weigh 205 pounds. How much does Kyle’s sheep weigh?
Kaitlin went to the fair. It cost $5 to get in. The tickets for the rides were $1.25 each. How many rides did
she go on if she spent $26.25 in all?
I am thinking of a number. First multiply it by 5, then subtract 8. The result is 77. What is my number?
Greg, Rick, and Cory are brothers. They are each one year older than the next. When their ages are added
up the sum is 84. Greg was the oldest and Cory the youngest. How old are the three brothers?
Kaitlin’s friend, Ahmed, went along to the fair. He brought $23 with him but spent all his time at the Dart
Booth. If it cost $5 to get in and $1.50 each time he played the dart booth, how many games could he play?
George has some erasers and coins in his pocket. He has seven more erasers than coins, and altogether he
has 17 objects. How many of each item does he have?
I am thinking of a number. If you add 3 to the number and then multiply the sum by 4 you get 48. What is
my number?
Alex built a rectangular pen for his sheep with an area of 242 square feet. He only had 66 feet of fencing to
use. He wanted the length to be twice as long as the width. What were the dimensions of the pen? Draw a
picture of the pen and label the length and width, then fill in the table and solve.
The student store wants to sell t-shirts. Brianna’s Shirts charges a $50 set-up fee to silkscreen blank t-shirts
with the school logo. Each blank t-shirt costs $3. The bill for the t-shirts, not including sales tax, is $131.
How many t-shirts were ordered?
Elizabeth and Kristin wanted to decorate the pen where they kept their pig. It took 42 feet of crepe paper to
go all the way around the pen. The pen was twice as long as it is wide. How long and how wide was the
pen?
Paola bought six notebooks for $2.49 each sand some pens for $0.78 each. How many pens did she buy if
she spent exactly $21.18?
There are three Ferris wheels at the fair. They all have the same number of seats, but one can hold three
people in each seat. The other two can only hold two in each seat. Altogether, 112 people can ride the
Ferris wheels at one time. How many seats are on each Ferris wheel?
I am thinking of a number. If you double the number, add it to 23, then subtract 7, the result is 60. What is
my number?
The perimeter of a triangle is 31 centimeters. The length of the small side plus three is equal to the length of
the middle side. If you double the small side it equals the length of the longest side. How long is each side
of the triangle? Sketch the triangle, then set up your table.
Joe is twice as old as his brother. Together their ages add up to 51. How old is Jose?
The student store is selling personalized key chains. You can buy a key chain with your name on it. The
basic chain costs $0.75 and the beads for each letter of the name are $0.35 each. If a key chain cost $2.85
total, how many letters were in the student’s name?
Thomas Jefferson wrote the declaration of Independence in a year whose tens and hundreds digits are equal
and whose ones and thousands digits have a sum equal to one of the middle digits. The entire digit sum is
21. In what year was the Declaration written?
The author of this problem was born in a year whose digit sum is 21. The last two digits have a sum of 11
and a difference of three, and the last digit is greater than the one preceding it. When was this author born?
Carrie works at the lemonade stand at the fair. She sold 235 glasses of lemonade. She sold four times as
many large glasses as small ones. How many of each size did she sell?
Lindsey, Stephanie, and Grant entered quilts they made in the fair. Lindsey took 8 hours longer than her
sister, Stephanie, to make her quilt. Grant took the same amount of time as Lindsey and Stephanie
combined. Altogether the three quilts required 168 hours to make. How long did Grant take to make his
prize-winning quilt?
On her tour of the world, Mrs. Poppington stopped in Chicago. The tallest building in Chicago is the Sears
Tower. A clever tour guide posed this problem: 417 is 23 less than 4 times the number of stories in the
Sears Tower. How many stories does the Tower have?
If the perimeter of an isosceles triangle is 122 centimeters and the base length is 8 more than the two equal
sides. Write an equation and find the lengths of the sides.
Debbie cut a 60-inch long rope into two unequal pieces. The longer piece is four inches longer than that of
the shorter one. How long is each piece?