“What gets one more when you take one away from it ? ” Riddle || Solution Explained

The riddle states that,

“What gets one more when you take one away from it?”

You need to find something that gets ‘one more’ when you take ‘one’ away from it.

This riddle requires some creative out of the box thinking and the answer is not obvious. There is no wordplay hidden in the riddle, take the question literally. The hint is, try to apply your math knowledge to find the one thing that gets one more when you remove one from it.

Solution :

In order to solve this problem one should have the knowledge on representation of numbers in roman numerals.

Roman numerals are written using seven different letters: I, V, X, L, C, D and M, they represent the numbers 1, 5, 10, 50, 100, 500 and 1,000.

We use these seven letters to make up thousands of others. For example, the Roman numeral for two is written as ‘II’.

The Roman numeral for three is written as III, but four is not written in the same way. Instead the subtraction principle is used. The number four is written as ‘IV’. Here we have I (1) before V (5) and because the smaller number is before the larger number, we know that we have to subtract here — making IV four.

To solve this riddle, you need to think of the Roman Numerals. now we know that Roman Numerals have a unique numbering system, where the number before a multiple of five is written distinctively. in Roman Numerals, the numbers 1–5 are written as like this I, II, III, IV, V. Look at the number 4 and 5 in Roman Numerals. 4 is depicted with an I and a V, while 5 is just a V.

Now, look back at the riddle. What gets one more when you take away one? The answer is number 4 (IV) in Roman Numerals. When you remove one (I) from IV (4) you get V (5). Therefore, you get one more by removing one.

thus answer to this riddle is 4 which should be represented in roman numerals.