The Wobbly Table

For the four-legged table: you take a matchbook; you get down on your hands and knees; you shove the match book under the wobbly leg until it is even.,

For the three-legged table.  If the three-legged table wobbles, you'd better quit drinking.  The three-legged table cannot wobble.  Indeed, an alternative correct solution to the four-legged table problem is to chop off the fourth leg; then you have a three-legged table which does not wobble.

Per BBC, men know this; women pull out another matchbook.  BBC says that men get it right because the conceptualize the problem, and women get it wrong because they go straight to the solution.  In my sample set of one (not Mrs. Buce), my subject firmly insisted that a three-legged table can wobble and that she was going right home to try.  Haven't heard back.

Who Bears the Loss?

The answer is: Roomie.  He pays 15 pounds to buy the right from Romeo, but he'll have to pay another 15 pounds to recover the 20--plus, probably, a transaction cost (Romeo is out only 5 pounds net).  But the real puzzle is: how could anyone have been puzzled by this puzzle?   Isn't it obvious?  Or am I speaking now, perhaps, as a commercial lawyer?