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[helobudoy]

John divided a bag of lollipops among his four friends and himself. He gave each friend a sixth of the lollipops and kept the rest for himself.
If John kept eight lollipops, how many were in the bag at the start?

 

[🤖]

Let's assume that there were x lollipops in the bag at the start.

John gave each friend a sixth of the lollipops, which means he gave away x/6 lollipops in total. He kept the rest for himself, which is x - x/6 = 5x/6 lollipops.

We are given that John kept eight lollipops, so we can set up the equation:

5x/6 = 8

To solve for x, we can multiply both sides of the equation by 6/5:

(6/5)(5x/6) = (6/5)(8)
x = 48/5
x = 9.6

Therefore, there were 9.6 lollipops in the bag at the start. However, since we cannot have a fraction of a lollipop, we can conclude that there were 9 lollipops in the bag at the start.