A vacuum salesman rings on the door of a woman, trying to sell her a vacuum. The woman declines the continous offers and gets annoyed by the persistent salesman. She eventually offers to buy a vacuum from him if he can name the ages of her three daughters based on the following information:
The product of the ages of my daughters is 36 and their sum is our house number.
The salesman takes a walk around the block, of course seeing the house number. He eventually ends up back at the woman's doorstep, complaining that there still is a missing piece of information. The woman agrees and tells him:
My youngest daughter plays piano.
He immediately knows the ages of the three daughters, successfully selling the woman a vacuum.
What are the ages of the three daughters?
PS: There are no tricks involved, all necessary information is contained in what the woman says.
Answer
I would say the answer is
6, 6 , 1.
I don't think the unrealistic 1 year old playing piano was intended. The real information was lying in, there being a youngest.
You know since the vacuum cleaner (after looking at the number) didn't know the answer. There must be a more combination with that sum. So calculating the sums:
36+1+1=38
18+2+1=21
12+3+1=16
9+4+1=14
9+2+2=13
6+6+1=13
6+3+2=11
4+3+3=10
(All combination. The only possibility is 6,6,1 and 9,2,2 But knowing there is a youngest, that must be
6,6,1
No comments:
Post a Comment