At Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory, sweets are always packed into boxes of \(3\).
One day, Charlie, Veruca and Augustus each bring a bag of sweets to the factory. Charlie has some number of sweets, Veruca has one more sweet than Charlie, and Augustus has one more than Veruca.
When they put all their sweets together, will they be able to pack them perfectly into boxes of \(3\), with no sweets left over?
Friday shows Robinson Crusoe a magic trick:
He asks Robinson to write down any 15 whole numbers of his choice on a piece of paper. Then Friday looks at the list, and is always able to pick two of the numbers so that, when one is subtracted from the other, the result is a multiple of \(13\).
Can you explain why this trick works?