A farmer picked oranges and put them all into 9 boxes. Each box had the same number of oranges. Which of the following could be the number of oranges the farmer picked? \( \begin{array}{l}\text { A. } 299\end{array} \)

To determine if the farmer could have picked 299 oranges, we need to check if 299 is divisible by 9, since all the oranges were evenly distributed into 9 boxes. When we divide 299 by 9, we get approximately 33.222, which means there’s a remainder. Thus, 299 is *not* divisible by 9 and cannot be the total number of oranges the farmer picked. On the quest for possible orange counts, remember that any multiple of 9 fits perfectly into those boxes! For example, numbers like 9, 18, 27, or even larger ones like 252 or 360 would work just fine. Happy counting and box-stacking!