Aaron Tovish
1 min readJan 14, 2025

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[Disclaimer: I am not a member so I could only read the first few paragraphs of this piece. Apologies in advance if I am discussing something already covered by it. AT]

This is how I figure it:

Nothing is gained by doing more than three trips. So the trail should be lined with one banana per kilometer as far toward the destination as possible. Thus during the first trip four bananas should be deposit on each kilometer outbound. And one more per kilometer will have been eaten during the trip out and one of four on the way back, so the trail with two deposited bananas stretches out 200 kilometers. On the second trip, having eaten one of the three on the way out, the camel reaches 250 with all 1000 bananas; proceeding, he deposits two bananas, eating one as he returns to 200, the banana trail now reaches 333 kilometers further. He completes the return home by eating one of the two bananas left on the 200 leg. On the final trip, he eats the bananas from his load while collecting the ones previous left and remaining on the trail. These all reach market: 200+333=533 (plus 1 actually).

This agrees with what others have found.

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