Math Logic #2

[Arsenic]

A man walks into a bar, orders a drink, and starts chatting with the bartender. After a while, he learns that the bartender has three children. "How old are your children?" he asks. "Well," replies the bartender, "the product of their ages is 72." The man thinks for a moment and then says, "that's not enough information."

"All right," continues the bartender, "if you go outside and look at the building number posted over the door to the bar, you'll see the sum of the ages." The man steps outside, and after a few moments he reenters and declares, "Still not enough!"

The bartender smiles and says, "My youngest just loves strawberry ice cream."

How old are the children?

[Adron]

Factoring 72:

2*2*2*3*3

Possible ages with sums:

1 1 72 - 74
1 2 36 - 39
1 3 24 - 28
1 4 18 - 23
1 6 12 - 19
1 8 9 - 18
2 2 18 - 22
2 3 12 - 17
2 4 9 - 15
2 6 6 - 14
3 3 8 - 14
3 4 6 - 13


2,6,6 and 3,3,8 are the only ones with the same sum - one of those are it. Presumably whoever made up the problem has forgotten that one child can be younger than another even if they are the same age in whole years (could be 9 months apart), and so the answer should be 2, 6, 6. Well, that or possibly 2-year old children don't eat ice cream, making the answer 3, 3, 8.

[Arsenic]

Yeah I thought the same thing about the months apart for youngest when I first did the problem, but it obviously means years difference in this situation.

I'm pretty sure you can make any 2-year-old kid eat ice cream, so this one isn't problematic

By the way, I noticed that the answer to this problem can be looked up on google. I didn't know that, I'll be more careful next time. Those logic problems I'm posting here were asked in a computer science competition that I participated this year known as the CS Games.

[Yoni]

Those logic problems I'm posting here were asked in a computer science competition that I participated this year known as the CS Games.

Hmmmk. They should be more careful then. Those are both questions I've seen before.