The Hotel Owner's Sons

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I've been sitting the last 5 hours trying to figure out this riddle, but eventually I gave up and instead I will challenge the fine minds of this forum with the puzzle:

At a hotel the host has three sons. A guest asks for their age, but instead the host just replies: - The sum of my sons ages is 13 and the product equals your room number.

The guest tries to calculate, but eventually he has to give up. "OK, you must also know that only my eldest son was born in the US", the host replies.

Then the guest figured out the ages of the three sons. Can you also?

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Type: Question • Score: 0 • Views: 465 • Replies: 7

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1,1,11 or 2,2,9

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@chai2,

Why? Could just as well be 7,5,1 or 5,4,4

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@theroxersboxers,

Assuming this refers to a recent change from US territory to independence, the only one which might fit is Panama 1999, which makes the oldest son 11 this year. So either the answer is 11,1,1 or 10, 2,1

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@fresco,

fresco, I took the clue "oldest son" to mean that the other 2 were the same age, meaning twins.

Then again, that might mean the eldest son was one of the twins, which could make the answer 5,5,3 or 6,6,1, etc.
But I don't think they meant eldest in by a few minutes or hours.

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@chai2,

Chai,

Sorry, I think your logic is wrong.
Eldest implies 3 or more persons, not their specific ages. (Elder would imply 2 persons).

Be that as it may, I am now wondering if this question involves a cross-border hotel with a particular bunch of room numbers in US territory.

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The answer is 36 and the combination is 2, 2, 9. The hidden clue is that the additional clue about the eldest child is sufficient to answer the question, so all the answers where that clue is not sufficient are tossed out. If you look at all the combinations possible, there are two where the answer is the same, 2,2,9 and 1,6,6. All the other combinations return unique answers. The additional hint about "oldest child" is usless in helping you unless you are trying to decide between those two choices, then the answer is 2,2,9 = 36.

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@engineer,

Bravo !

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The Hotel Owner's Sons

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