The interruptions split into half a minute for the grocer and eight and a half for the draper. The grocer needs 24 minutes of weighing, so 24 minutes 30 seconds in all. The draper needs only 47 cuts, because the last yard is left over once the 47th is made, which is 15 minutes 40 seconds, and 24 minutes 10 seconds in all.
A country shop has a grocery counter and a drapery counter, and their two assistants race. The grocer has to weigh out 48 one-pound bags of sugar, at two a minute. The draper has to cut a 48-yard roll of cloth into one-yard lengths, at three cuts a minute. Customers interrupt them for nine minutes in all, and the draper is interrupted seventeen times as long as the grocer. Who wins, and by how much?
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How many cuts does it take to make 48 pieces?
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The draper, by 20 seconds
Source: Henry Ernest Dudeney, Amusements in Mathematics, 1917, No. 34