Price tags · Puzzle #27 · Monday, October 26
Price tags: the answers
Four questions, each with one true number. Here they are with their answers, how to reason each one out, and where the number comes from. Play today's Price tags.
1. Halloween in America: How much were Americans expected to spend on Halloween in total in 2026, according to the National Retail Federation?
Photo: Infrogmation of New Orleans, CC BY-SA 4.0 - Planning to celebrate
- 74% of consumers
- Biggest buys
- Costumes, decorations and candy
The answer: about $13.5 billion. That held steady with 2025's record $13.1 billion, and costumes were the biggest single slice.
Napkin math - 130Mhouseholds in the US
- ×$100each on candy, costumes and decorations
≈$13B
The true figure is about $13.5 billion (National Retail Federation). To reason it out, take 130 million households in the US, times $100 each on candy, costumes and decorations, and you get about $13 billion. That lands all but on the answer, worth 9.8 out of 10 as a guess. The target is wider than it looks: every guess between $6.8 billion and $27 billion scores at least 7.0.
2. One Dollar General: How much does the average Dollar General store sell in a day, based on its 2025 fiscal year?
Photo: Ceeren, CC0 - Stores
- 20,959 in 48 states and Mexico (February 2026)
The answer: about $5,600. Dollar General is the biggest discount retailer in the US by number of stores.
Napkin math - 400shoppers a day
- ×$15a basket
≈$6,000
The real answer is about $5,600 (Dollar General Corporation). To reason it out, take 400 shoppers a day, times $15 a basket, and you get about $6,000. The estimate is 1.1 times too high, close enough to score 9.7 out of 10. The target is wider than it looks: every guess between $2,800 and $11,000 scores at least 7.0.
Source: Dollar General Corporation (SEC Form 10-K), Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended January 30, 2026
3. Twitter: What was the announced value of the 2022 deal for Elon Musk to buy Twitter?
Photo: Tobias Kleinlercher / Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0 - Buyer
- An entity wholly owned by Elon Musk, April 2022
- Premium
- 38% over the share price before Musk's stake was disclosed
- Paid in
- Cash
The answer: about $44 billion. Shareholders got $54.20 a share in cash, and Twitter became a privately held company.
Napkin math: Twitter was a mid-sized public company worth roughly $30 billion; add a 38% premium and you get to the low-to-mid forties of billions.
The real answer is about $44 billion (Twitter, Inc. press release). There's no tidy chain of numbers for this one, so the skill is a sense of scale: the answer is in the tens of billions. Because only the ratio counts, anything between $22 billion and $88 billion was worth 7.0 or more.
Source: Twitter, Inc. press release (SEC Form 8-K exhibit), Elon Musk to Acquire Twitter
4. A Thanksgiving flight home: What did AAA say a round-trip domestic flight cost, on average, for Thanksgiving travel in 2025?
- Travelers
- 81.8 million Americans were expected to go 50+ miles
The answer: about $700. That was about the same as a year earlier, AAA said, while rental cars were 15% cheaper.
Napkin math - 2flights there and back
- ×$300each way at holiday prices
≈$600
The answer comes to about $700 (AAA). To reason it out, take 2 flights there and back, times $300 each way at holiday prices, and you get about $600. It's 1.2 times too low, which as a guess would still have scored 9.3 out of 10. Because only the ratio counts, anything between $350 and $1,400 was worth 7.0 or more.
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