A palindrome is a word, number, phrase, or other sequence of characters which reads the same backward as forward, such as radar, level.
(*Note : Some puzzle part was modified in April 2024)
One day, a census taker approaches a house and asks me who answers the door “Mr.Shah, how many children do you have, and what are their ages?”
I replies “I have three children; the product and the sum of their ages are palindrome numbers.”
The census taker says “I need more information.”
I replies “Yesterday was my second child’s birthday and my oldest child’s age is related to lily, banana and potato.”
Census taker then says “Thank you, I now have everything I need.”
What are the ages of children? How?
[This puzzle was originally published in my book “Out of Box Computational Thinking Puzzles”. Find more interesting puzzles (including from that book) on this link. Also, don’t forget to check my puzzle books “Computational Puzzles To Flex Your Brain: 50 original puzzles to sharpen computing mind and mathematical skills” and “Brain Teasers with Coding For Data Scientist 2: 9 New Computational Puzzles” and “Puzzles with Coding: Puzzles for Everyone” at Amazon. For purchasing my books or related queries, feel free to contact me. Even in coding puzzle books, you will find interesting puzzles those are suitable for coders as well as non-coders. Coding solutions are also provided with Python code. So, grab a copy of those books and jump into the world of fascinating and exciting puzzles.]
.
.
.
.
.
.
B
Y
T
E
–
M
A
N
.
.
.
.
.
.
Solution
The oldest child age is related to lily, banana and potato. Now if you remove either the first or the last letter from the given words’ group then they will become palindromes.
LILY > remove last Y > LIL (palindrome)
BANANA > remove first B > ANANA (palindrome)
POTATO > remove first P > OTATO (palindrome)
So, there is only one possible number for the oldest child’s age and that’s number 9(Nine).
NINE > remove last E > NIN (palindrome)
Now, there are two possibilities for children’s age [ 0, 0, 9 ] or [ 1, 1, 9 ]
Any single number between 0 and 9 is also palindrome number. But as yesterday was the second child’s birthday so only possible solution will be [ 1, 1, 9 ]
Now you may think if two children of Mr.Shah (again, my surname becomes palindrome if you remove the first letter) are twins then why didn’t I say my twins’ birthday was yesterday? The logic behind this is that one child was born just before 12 PM and the other was born just after 12 PM (so next day). So even though I has twins, our family celebrates twins’ birthday on different dates. So when a census taker visited that day was the youngest child’s birthday.
In the end, the ages of the children are 1, 1 & 9.