Find the age of the three kids. The product of their ages is 36. Telling the sum of their ages would not help. The eldest of all is a programmer. I know of all the controversies and lets see if we can have something here as well
Ages in ascending order : 2 units, 2 units, 9 units. Here unit may be year, month, day or whatever shabbir had in mind while saying that the product is 36 (unit)³. :hurray: :hurray: :happy: :hurray: :hurray: :happy: :hurray: :hurray: EDIT :: Controversy : Shabbir, you should mention whether the product of their ages is 36 year³ or month³ or day³ etc ... LOL [ Of course in the later units, the oldest one cannot be a programmer ! ]
Forgot to mention the reason : (1) Conclusions from "The product of their ages is 36." : The ages of the kids can be : `AGES######SUMS 1, 1, 36####x##38##x##[UNIQUE] 1, 2, 18####x##21##x##[UNIQUE] 1, 3, 12####x##16##x##[UNIQUE] 1, 4, 9##x##x##14##x##[UNIQUE] 1, 6, 6###x#x##13##x##[DUPLICATE] 2, 2, 9##x##x##13##x##[DUPLICATE] 2, 3, 6##x##x##11##x##[UNIQUE] 3, 3, 4##x##x##10##x##[UNIQUE] (2) Conclusions from "Telling the sum of their ages would not help." : As you can see above only we have one pair of duplicates for the sum 13. For all other sums, "Telling the sum of their ages would help" ! So, the kids ages can be 1, 6, 6 or 2, 2, 9. (2) Conclusions from "The eldest of all is a programmer." : Note the use of "The eldest" which means only 1 of them has the max. age. So, 2, 2, 9 is the required triad of ages.
i agree its not that easy as saswat made it look like, quite cool saswat btw i like these puzzles, you can't find them over the net, you have to think....and there is a unique ans bravo... btw a bulb would have been a better symbol then thumbs down...
