Crack your head

Hi all,

Check this one:

One day it was very cold and Martha was walking along the street stopping in some shops to buy some presents for Christmas for her 3 children. Suddently she found her friend Paula, whom she didn't see for some years now. Paula, curious as always asked Martha the ages of her children and Martha replied: I have 3 children, the product of their ages equals 36 and their sum equal the number of the door of this shop. Paula replied that the information Martha gave her would be insufficient for her to deduce the ages of her children so Martha said: My oldest son has blue eyes. What are the ages of Martha's 3 sons?



Best regards,

Who said she has 3 sons? All we know is she has 3 children and at least one is a son. Oh, well, I guess I should put in some

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In the standard form of this puzzle Paula is supposed to reply that she now knows the ages, and we are to conclude that the answer must be 2,2 and 9 (rather than 1, 6 and 6). Of course this is nonsense because even if you have two children the same age, it's perfectly possible to speak of one as the oldest (they don't need to be twins, and even with twins one came out first). And this time it's even sillier because the two six-year-olds could be a son and a daughter.

Department of Mathematics http://www.math.ubc.ca/~israel University of British Columbia Vancouver, BC, Canada V6T 1Z2

Actually, by proper English usage, the fact that she says 'oldest' rather than 'older' indicates that she has at least three sons.

The implication from the original text is that somehow the statement about the blue eyes indicates *exactly* one solution. The only actual content there is about the 'uniqueness' of the eldest son.

It's a little contrived, at least in this presentation.