Age Puzzles 13four times as old; last year I was three times as old; and this year I am two
and one-half times as old."
What are their ages?- A SQUARE FAMILY
A man had nine children, all born at regular intervals, and the sum of the
squares of their ages was equal to the square of his own. What was the age of
each? Every age was an exact number of years.- IN THE YEAR 1900
A correspondent, in 1930, proposed the following question. The reader
may think, at first sight, that there is insufficient data for an answer, but he
will be wrong:
A man's age at death was one twenty-ninth of the year of his birth. How
old was he in the year 1900?
- FINDING A BIRTHDAY
A correspondent informs us that on Armistice Day (November 11, 1928)
he had lived as long in the twentieth century as he had lived in the
nineteenth. This tempted us to work out the day of his birth. Perhaps
the reader may like to do the same. We will assume he was born at midday.
- THE BIRTH OF BOADICEA
A correspondent (R. D.) proposes the following little puzzle:
Boadicea died one hundred and twenty-nine years after Cleopatra was
born. Their united ages (that is, the combined years of their complete lives)
were one hundred years. Cleopatra died 30 B.C. When was Boadicea born?
- ROBINSON'S AGE
"How old are you, Robinson?" asked Colonel Crackham one morning.
"Well, I forget exactly," was the reply; "but my brother is two years older
than I; my sister is four years older than he; my mother was twenty when I