freeCodeCamp/curriculum/challenges/english/08-coding-interview-prep/rosetta-code/sailors-coconuts-and-a-monkey-problem.english.md

---
title: 'Sailors, coconuts and a monkey problem'
id: 59da22823d04c95919d46269
challengeType: 5
---

## Description
<section id='description'>
 <p>
   Five sailors are shipwrecked on an island and
   collect a large pile of coconuts during the day.
 </p>
 <p>That night the first sailor wakes up and decides
   to take his first share early  so tries to divide the pile of coconuts equally
   into five piles but finds that there is one coconut left over, so he tosses it
   to a monkey and then hides "his" one of the five equally sized piles of
   coconuts and pushes the other four piles together to form a single visible pile
   of coconuts again and goes to bed.
 </p>
 <p>
   To cut a long story short, each of the sailors in
   turn gets up once during the night and performs the same actions of dividing
   the coconut pile into five, finding that one coconut is left over and giving
   that single remainder coconut to the monkey.
 </p>
 <p>
   In the morning (after the surreptitious and
   separate action of each of the five sailors during the night), the remaining
   coconuts are divided into five equal piles for each of the sailors, whereupon
   it is found that the pile of coconuts divides equally amongst the sailors with
   no remainder. (Nothing for the monkey in the morning.)
 </p>

 The task:


     Create a function that returns the
     the minimum possible size
     of the initial pile of coconuts collected during the day for N
     sailors.


 Note:


     Of course the tale is told in a
     world where the collection of any amount of coconuts in a day and multiple
     divisions of the pile, etc can occur in time fitting the story line, so as
     not to affect the mathematics.



 C.f:

   <a
       href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9qU20VmvaU" title="link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9qU20VmvaU">
       Monkeys and Coconuts - Numberphile</a> (Video) Analytical solution.


     <a
       href="http://oeis.org/A002021" title="link: http://oeis.org/A002021">A002021 Pile of coconuts problem</a> The On-Line
     Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences. (Although some of its references may use
     the alternate form of the tale).



</section>

## Instructions
<section id='instructions'>

</section>

## Tests
<section id='tests'>

```yml
tests:
  - text: <code>splitCoconuts</code> is a function.
    testString: assert(typeof splitCoconuts === 'function', '<code>splitCoconuts</code> is a function.');
  - text: <code>splitCoconuts(5)</code> should return 3121.
    testString: assert(splitCoconuts(5) === 3121, '<code>splitCoconuts(5)</code> should return 3121.');
  - text: <code>splitCoconuts(6)</code> should return 233275.
    testString: assert(splitCoconuts(6) === 233275, '<code>splitCoconuts(6)</code> should return 233275.');
  - text: <code>splitCoconuts(7)</code> should return 823537.
    testString: assert(splitCoconuts(7) === 823537, '<code>splitCoconuts(7)</code> should return 823537.');

```

</section>

## Challenge Seed
<section id='challengeSeed'>

<div id='js-seed'>

```js
// noprotect
function splitCoconuts(intSailors) {
  // Good luck!
  return true;
}
```

</div>



</section>

## Solution
<section id='solution'>


```js
// noprotect
function splitCoconuts(intSailors) {
  let intNuts = intSailors;
  let result = splitCoconutsHelper(intNuts, intSailors);
  while (!result) {
    intNuts += 1;
    result = splitCoconutsHelper(intNuts, intSailors);
  }

  return intNuts;
}

function splitCoconutsHelper(intNuts, intSailors, intDepth) {
  const nDepth = intDepth !== undefined ? intDepth : intSailors;
  const portion = Math.floor(intNuts / intSailors);
  const remain = intNuts % intSailors;

  if (portion <= 0 || remain !== (nDepth ? 1 : 0)) {
    return null;
  }

  if (nDepth) {
    return splitCoconutsHelper(
      intNuts - portion - remain, intSailors, nDepth - 1
    );
  }

  return intNuts;
}

```

</section>