A football team loses 3 yards in 3 consecutive plays. What is the total yardage gained?

Question

A football team loses 3 yards in 3 consecutive plays. What is the total yardage gained?

Answer 1

Yes, this is a word problem; and it has a 'word problem' (that is, it is ambiguous).
 
Does it mean, "football team loses 3 yards in each of 3 consecutive plays" (total 9 yards lost)?  Or, does it mean, "a football team loses 3 yards total in 3 consecutive plays?"  Of course, this changes the answer.   Usually, word problems are very carefully written to eliminate ambiguity, but more complicated tests include it to check the student's ability to reason and to solve uncertainties.
 
Well. in football, there are yards gained and there are yards lost, so the announcer says. "They lost 3 yards on that play" or says, "They gained 3 yards on that play."  If a team loses 3 yards, in math class that means that "they gained -3 yards," but nobody connected with football would say such a thing.
 
So, if 3 yards were lost on each of 3 consecutive plays, then the team gained -9 yards.  It is usually time to punt.