How many mangoes (minimum) was stolen?

Question

Tom, Dick and Harry stole some mangoes from their neighbors garden.
Tom woke up in the middle of the night , ate one and took one-third.
Dick woke up a little later, ate one and took one third.
A few hours later Harry woke up, ate one mango and took one third.
In the morning they counted the mangoes, threw away one rotten mango
and divided the remaining mangoes equally.

How many mangoes had they stolen? There are many answers to this puzzle, try to find the minimum no. of mangoes they had stolen?

Answer 1

Let s be the total number of mangoes stolen then
The portions that remained after each of them took thier share
After Tom's share taken = s - 1 - ((s - 1)/3) = T
After Dick's share taken = T - 1 - ((T - 1)/3) = D
After Harry's share taken= D - 1 - ((D - 1)/3) = H

Here H = 3n + 1 ( because after throwing 1 the remaining mangoes were split among the three equally )

After some calculations it turns out that initially they had 79 mangoes.