Brain teaser thread

[Winston]

Then he could also be 51, or 52, or... you know, old.



Shouldn't that last piece of information have been ""but I'll only tell you that my oldest child is exactly such and such younger than you"?

[OzzyKP]

Originally posted by Winston
Well, I looked it up...

If you have another teaser for us, I don't see any harm in posting, since Zero-Tau apparently isn't.

I don't have any, and I think the only one i've gotten so far was that hour glass riddle. Oh well, maybe I'm not as smart as I thought. But of course the fact that no one is telling them correctly and leaving out information doesn't help either, hehe.

I don't know what to make of this Prof. Jones one. I'm thinking something critical is left out.

[DaShi]

Originally posted by Stefu


Dammit! I know I screwed it up somehow. In original version, I think, the gnomes didn't know how many blue and red hats were there.

However, the right answer's close to this (First one gnome stands somewhere, then another gnome checks the first gnome's hat and goes stand... Oh, wait, I just remembered I screwed the question up in more ways than one. Blast. I'm not really good at this, am I?)

Anyway, Winston gets to go next for his sanguine (Do I even know what that means?) and intelligent opinion which we all should strive to remember at all times.

Stefu, that was bloody brilliant!

[N. Machiavelli]

Originally posted by Zero-Tau
Yay! The Danes will conquer the thread!

...now where the hell did ADG go...

Okay, here's the brain teaser, for all of you.

One day when professor Jones is going for a walk, he meets his old friend, maths teacher Smith. Smith has been married twice, and now has three children.
"Say, " asks Jones, "how old are your children?"
Smith answers: "Well, since you like puzzles, you can think a bit about this. The product of their age is 2450, and the sum of their age is equal to the age of our mutual friend, vicar Anderson."
Jones knows the age of Anderson, and with this in mind, he sets about working out the age of the children.
Late that night, Jones calls Smith and says: "That really wasn't nice of you. You know very well that I need one more piece of information to work out the ages."
"Yes," Smith answers, "but I'll only tell you that my oldest child is younger than you." And then he hung up.
With this information, Jones could work out the ages of the children.

Now, here's the question for you: How old is professor Jones?

Yessir, that's no typo, it really says professor Jones!

Edit: Winston, be patient.

Now if we had a link between Jones' and anyone else's age (other than OldestChildsage < Jonesage), there'd be a more concrete answer. Otherwise I'll guess:

Child1: 25
Child2: 14
Child3: 7
Anderson: 46
Jones: 26 or older

[Zero-Tau]

To everyone: There's nothing left out of the riddle. It can be solved using only the information I've given you.

But anyway, a hint: Remember that even knowing the sum of the ages, Jones can't solve the problem. Anderson can't be 46 years old, as Machiavelli suggested, because then Jones would have solved the problem. But he didn't.

Hope this helps.

[rah]

First you must factor 2450. It breaks down into 1x2x5x5x7x7. Combining these numbers to make 3 ages reveals 20 different combinations: (1 1 2450), (1 2 1225), blah blah blah. Now Jones obviously knows the Vicar's age but can't figure out the ages of the children. This implies that two sets of factors add up to the same value. The sets (5 10 49) and (7 7 50) both have a sum of 64.
When Smith reveals that Jones is older than all of the children, that's the final piece of information needed. If Jones was 51 or older we would not be able to figure out which set of factors is correct, so he must be 50 years old and the children's ages must be 5, 10, and 49.


Nasty.

[Stefu]

Jones: 50
Child1: 49
Child2: 10
Child3: 5
Anderson: 64

Please no-one get this before me.

[Zero-Tau]

Rah got it first. By less than a minute. Bad luck, stefu.

Go ahead, rah, your turn.

Nasty.

[rah]

RAH

[Stefu]

Goddamn you rah! God damn you!

Well, I get the moral victory, because I'm younger than you!

(I would have probably got it before rah if I hadn't bothered to write that part about no-one getting it before me...)

My chain of logic was that Jones must obviously be struggling with two choices, where the age of the oldest child is separated by an year (so there's only one answer.) After that, it was only a matter of experimentation until I found 49 and 50, and after that, it was easy.

[Immortal Wombat]

@ Stefu

[N. Machiavelli]

Nice 1 Rah.

[rah]

There are five houses, all in a row.
You are standing in front of the houses.
Each house has its own unique color.
All house owners are of different nationalities.
They all have different pets.
They all drink different drinks.
They all smoke different cigarettes.
The Englishman lives in the red house.
The Swede has a dog.
The Dane drinks Tea.
The green house is directly to the left of the white house.
In the green house they drink coffee.
The man who smokes Pall Mall has Birds.
In the yellow house they smoke dunhill.
In the middle house they drink Milk.
The Norwegian lives in the first house.
The man who smokes Blend, lives in the house next to the house with cats.
In the house next to the house with the Horse, they smoke Dunhill.
The mak who smokes Blue Master drinks Beer.
The German smokes Prince.
The Norwegian lives next to the blue house.
They drink water in the house that is next to the house where they smoke
Blend.

So, who owns the camel?

[Stefu]

Hey, waittaminute!

How old is professor Jones?

He's fifty

I WIN! I WIN!

[Kassiopeia]

Well, I get the moral victory, because I'm younger than you!

Rah wrote a longer reply and still got ahead of you