Cracking the Card Conundrum: Determining Sam's Share in a Trio's Card Collection

To solve this problem, we first need to establish a relationship between the number of cards each person received. Let's say Zizi received "x" cards. According to the problem, Ciska received 12 times as many cards as Zizi, so Ciska received 12x cards. Sam, on the other hand, received 14 times as many cards as Ciska. Since we know that Ciska received 12x cards, Sam therefore received 14*12x = 168x cards. We also know that the total number of cards they shared is 299. Therefore, the sum of cards that Zizi, Ciska, and Sam received must be 299. We can write this as: x (Zizi's cards) + 12x (Ciska's cards) + 168x (Sam's cards) = 299 or 181x = 299 To find the value of x, we divide both sides of the equation by 181: x = 299 / 181 ≈ 1.65 Since the number of cards can't be a fraction, we will round it up to 2. Therefore, Zizi received 2 cards, Ciska received 2*12 = 24 cards, and Sam received 14*24 = 336 cards. However, this total exceeds the original total of 299 cards, so the problem does not seem to have a valid solution with whole numbers. Perhaps there was a mistake in the original problem regarding the distribution or total number of cards.