Girl Talk

A census-taker calls at a house. He asks the woman living there the ages of her three daughters.

The woman says,"If you multiply their ages the total is 72;if you add together their ages the total is same as the number on my front door,which you can see."

The census-taker says, "That is not enough information for me to calculate their ages."

The woman says, "Well,my eldest daughter has a cat with a wooden leg."

The census-taker replies, "Ah! Now I know their ages."

Find the sum of squares of the ages of the girls

61 74 82 76

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1 solution

Daniel Lim
Mar 17, 2014

First, we start off by listing all the factors of 72 72 , then add them up because all of them are possible to be the girls' age

It might be long, so I want you to write it down yourself

The census-taker may think that he can already solve it because he knows the woman's door number, BUT , there are two sums that are equal to the door number, 2 , 6 , 6 2, 6, 6 and 3 , 3 , 8 3, 3, 8 thus he can't know their ages

Then, the woman told him that he has an eldest daughter, only 3 , 8 , 8 3, 8, 8 has an eldest daughter because the other one only has a youngest daughter

Correct

Shikhar Jaiswal - 7 years, 2 months ago

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