*Blows dust off.* Happy new year! In April. *Shot.*

OK, this has been bugging me for quite some time. I mean, a year or two. I know most people here have read all the available volumes of Naruto manga or seen the anime, but just in case you haven't met characters introduced in the beginning of the chuunin exam arc, you need to catch up desperately I'm putting this in spoiler tags.

So, when Naruto, Sakura, and Sasuke meet Kakashi for the first time, Kakashi tells them that there are 27 academy students that had graduated. So if those 27 students are split up into teams of three, there are nine teams altogether. So, how can Ino, Shikamaru, and Chouji be the tenth team?

Furthermore, Kakashi tells his new team that only three of those nine teams will be allowed to become ninja and the rest will be sent back to the academy. Those three teams will be determined by whether they pass a test (I don't know if the other teams did the bell test or something else). So, what happens if a fourth team passes the test? What if only one or two teams pass?

This leads me now to Gai's team. Were Neji, Lee, and Tenten the only ones to pass the test? Or did other academy students their age pass? If so, what happened to them? Did they die? It would be pretty sad if two teams died trying to complete D-rank missions. Most likely, they just aren't mentioned. Maybe they're purposely omitted to help the fans fabricate original characters. Yeah, that's probably it.

Boy, I asked a lot of questions. Then again, plotholes can make you do that. You, the reader, don't have to answer them. It's just something to think about.