Friday Puzzler -- The price of biscuits
Alex Y
This is a paraphrase of a puzzle appearing recently in the NYT.
My favorite barbecue restaurant used to give out cheese biscuits to all diners. They were so good that some people started abusing the policy, ordering only a very small item from the menu, then gorging themselves on the biscuits. To combat that, the restaurant finally put a reasonable (if fattening) cap on the number of free biscuits a diner could take, and then charged a flat amount for any in excess.
After this change, my friend and I went to the restaurant, and got 12 biscuits between us. Each of us received a bill that included the biscuits he ate, and between us the biscuit charge was $4. I realized that if I had been eating alone and got those 12 biscuits, the biscuit charge would have been $14.
How many biscuits did the restaurant let you have before starting to charge, and how much did they charge for each biscuit over that number?